“There are windmills in northern Canada. In Norway. At the Antarctic research stations. If Texas’s windmills shut down during the storm, it’s not because we don’t know how to make cold-weather windmills – it’s because allowing windmills to fail in cold weather was profitable.” — Cory Doctorow
Category: Energy
2020-04-10 11:43
Always true, just now laid bare by the pandemic:
In transit conversations we often talk about meeting the needs of people who depend on transit. This makes transit sound like something we’re doing for them. But in fact, those people are providing services that we all depend on, so by serving those lower income riders, we’re all serving ourselves.
2020-02-05 12:50
“American culture of the early 21st century is still one that thinks it’s normal to want every American to have an SUV and deviant to want every American to have an apartment in a big city with a good subway system.” The Importance of Decarbonizing Transport | Pedestrian Observations
2020-01-30 09:51
Climate emergency “skeptics” seem weirdly incapable of understanding that the various deadlines for taking action are the dates after which certain consequences become inevitable, and not the dates after which everyone is dead.
2020-01-20 15:01
A wonderfully useful tool. How walkable/busable is your address? https://app.traveltimeplatform.com/
2019-09-27 10:46
Richard Florida says Champaign-Urbana is the #3 metro for car-free living, beating out San Francisco, Boston, and New York: https://www.citylab.com/life/2019/09/where-live-no-car-america-public-transit-transportation/598606/ Via @AnthonySkaggs11
2019-09-03 14:03
I can kinda understand the 0.1% (with secure bunkers on high ground) talking down climate change. But what’s up with ordinary people living near a coast? How are they not demanding urgent action?
2019-09-03 05:50
Interesting to me that the Great Recession doesn’t even show up as a blip on this graph.
Effect of eclipse on solar farm
Yesterday’s eclipse prompted me to go look at the day’s power production from the University of Illinois’s solar farm.
Just eyeballing the graph, I’d estimate that eclipsing 94% of the sun reduced power production by about 94%.
The solar farm is exactly one mile north of Winfield Village. Jackie and I got a tour of the facility a couple of months ago and I got some pictures besides the one at the top, but haven’t gotten around to writing my solar farm post yet.
Chart of the Week: Electric Takeover in Transportation
From the IMF blog, a great chart showing the rate at which motor vehicles took over from horses early in the 20th century. Putting current motor-vehicle and electric-car use on the same graph makes a pretty good visual case that we might be as little as 15 years from the cross-over point where half the vehicles on the road are electric.
Greater affordability of electric vehicles will likely steer us away from our current sources of energy for transportation, and toward more environmentally friendly technology. And that can happen sooner than you think.
Source: Chart of the Week: Electric Takeover in Transportation | IMF Blog