by Michael Ryan
Coming up with new and innovative approaches to creating renewable energy should be the domain of any clever Global Citizen, and we should all put our collective thinking caps on to get this done!
In the ever growing, wide open Green Sector, New Ideas may not only save the Planet but could make a savvy investor the next member of the Billionaire Club. For anyone interested in the idea of “Going Green” itself as well as the practical potential for renewable energy creation from a purely immediate benefits standpoint, the potential return on investment for the Capitalist willing to gamble on new Green Tech ideas is great.
Enter an old idea with some new found energy: Solar Updraft Technology.
I found the following article on Solar Updraft technologies on the NYT Energy and Environment Page. I was pleasantly surprised and then actually became excited at the prospect of something so simple and green friendly as creating electricity from rising hot air. (Yes I know, if they could only capture my hot air…)! The technology was proposed by a German in 2001 and initial projects did create a working prototype that generated 50kW. However, further development was halted due to lack of funding. Now a company called EnviroMission Ltd. has opened an office in Phoenix AZ with a proposal on the board to create a facility with a close to mile high tower. If the project goes forward, not only do we have to potential to lead the world in Green Energy creation, but we might employ perhaps 1000’s of American’s desperate for jobs.
How cool is that!
Here is part of the article from the NYT…More at the Green Room Page.
The solar updraft tower, which uses the greenhouse effect and thermal convection to drive wind turbines and produce electricity, has been hailed as a novel — and promising — approach to renewable energy generation.
The technology relies on an elementary principle of physics: heat rises. To generate power, a massive greenhouse creates hot air and funnels it into a tall chimney-like structure. This ‘hot wind’ propels a wind turbine within the tower. According to some estimates, such towers could, if sufficiently large and located in the proper environment, generate emissions-free power at a considerable discount over traditional renewable sources.
<More at The Green Room>
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2009
Glimpses in a Fun-House Mirror (excerpts)
“It is Reason that engenders self-love, and reflection that strengthens it; it is reason that makes man shrink into himself; it is Reason that makes him keep aloof from everything that can trouble or affect him: it is philosophy that destroys his connections with other men; it is in consequence of her dictates that he mutters to himself at the sight of another in distress. You may perish for aught I care, nothing can hurt me.”
-“On the Inequality of Man”
Rousseau
Preface-Glimpses in a Fun-House Mirror
A Novel by Michael Ryan
What is this story about? Am I the chronicler of these events? Or has the other taken hold at last and I’ve become ancillary? Has the burden of so many stones of pain and regret weighed me down so that I cannot move?
There is something wrong with the mirror in my room. The reflection could not be mine… The eyes are wild, vacant. The face is one I do not recognize. I think it is one of those carnival fun-house mirrors. I don’t think it is very funny.
I am sick and I can’t say why. All I can remember of my life is in the distant past while yesterday or last week is dimly lit and will not yield to the light of my recollections. I need help and this pronouncement alone is enough to cause terror…
A dream…I can remember roads that appear and disappear on some mistaken drunken map; towns turning to dust; grasslands burning out of control before a north wind…lover’s scream at each other for an hour in a house next to a freeway, then make love for 10 minutes to the sounds of garbage trucks and machine guns. Their nerve endings repaired for future destruction, the couple strips the bed and washes the sheets. The woman retires to a barely functional living room and begins to read all the back issues of National Geographic. She studies the maps of exotic places as though this is the first time and not the hundredth. Her husband, an unemployed bricklayer, cracks open his 24th beer of the day and switches on the god box, preparing for the reading of the gospel according to General Mills. He is happy because he knows that soon he will be able to catch up on the ongoing drama of other mannequin lives in this Prime Time American Dream.
And ultimately I know that they are comfortable here in their highway house on the edge of the sun…and I remember this was a fine time but it was it my memory…This I cannot tell.
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This is an excerpt from the Preface of my “Great American Novel,” Glimpses in a Fun-House Mirror. I will be posting other pieces of this self-proclaimed brilliant work of fiction written after the style of Dostoevsky and Nabokov, 2 of my Literary Gods…stay tuned if you are as bored as I!
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