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Sometimes environmentalists fight renewable energy. Green arguments against green energy come into play wherever wind-farms spoil mountaintops or shore views and the problems are not simply aesthetics but extend to deforestation, coverage of highly productive agricultural soils or disturbance of wildlife. Cleverly, wind and solar industries have adopted the term farm to distract from the fact that their renewable energy production is often industrial and its only connection to farms is that farmland gets covered up for energy production.  Amazon Solar Farm Accomack, Virginia Local jurisdictions usually control land use, and often they are at a loss how to classify those wind and solar "farms" since the ag zoning category clearly offers little help. If big enough, power generation sometimes becomes a matter of the state and its utility controlling Public Service Commission. The Baltimore County Council just deferred an application for a solar "farm" until it had a ch...

Most think of transit as a bus or train running on a fixed route on a fixed schedule. Service that goes where the request is made and deploys when its made (or a certain time thereafter) is associated with taxis or lately with Uber and Lyft. Mini buses that provide a hybrid service, half bus half taxi, are popular in South America or Turkey ("dolmus") but in the US most know such service only from hotel shuttles or the airport service Super Shuttle. Few know that almost all US transit agencies provide such a hybrid demand responsive service every day and on a pretty big scale, although many may have wondered about the growing number of vans and sedans with the transit agencies logo on it. The reason that most don't know about it is that only a few qualify for the service. Para-transit. as this service is called, is mandated by law. It has the noble purpose of providing transit to the mobility impaired. But transit agencies had no practice in providing demand based service...

Once in a while one has to lift the gaze from the alleys and streets and set the eyes higher for a bigger view. Why not as big as the entire universe? The Tuesday announcement of the Nobel Prize in Physics seemed like a good occasion to do takes this view, because it was widely expected to go to a team that used a very practical and beautifully architectural idea to prove Einstein's highly theoretical concept of gravitational waves. Exactly 100 years ago Einstein also cautioned that those waves could never be experimentally proven. Well, he was wrong, but so were those who were sure the proof what get the Nobel Prize. Rainer Weiss (left) and Kip Thorne, right Ligo, precision architecture This is about the celebration of two pieces of architecture worth $505 million that had broken ground in 1994 and had to overcome a bunch of  scientific, financial and congressional hurdles until they were positioned as a perfect L each 2.5 miles (4km) long. And not only is this a ve...

Anytime the topic of green energy comes up, Republicans think Solyndra and Democrats think jobs. The Republicans think of a failed government intervention that cost the taxpayers money and the Democrats think of flourishing new industries making solar panels. Solar farm on a wind farm: Philippines  Both really should think about climate change and how to reduce carbon emissions. The urgency of that is driven home month after month of news that confirm the worst predictions of climate researchers regarding the negative effects of global warming, namely in terms of sea-level rising, storms, shifts in precipitation, polar ice melts and impacts on flora and fauna. How can green energy reduce carbon emissions, or more specifically, how does a post carbon energy system look like? What works and what doesn't? The answers are far from obvious. Most assume that a large part of the reduction has to come from electrical energy production which according to EPA contributes with 30% the largest...

President Obama held an passionate speech for international collaboration at the United Nations this week. He called for trade and coordination instead of building walls, tariffs and trade barriers. Anti TTIP demonstration Berlin “The acceleration of travel and technology and telecommunications — together with a global economy that depends on a global supply chain — makes it self-defeating ultimately for those who seek to reverse this progress. [...]“Today, a nation ringed by walls would only imprison itself. ... I want to suggest to you today that we must go forward, and not backward.[....]  too often, those trumpeting the benefits of globalization have ignored inequality within and among nations; have ignored the enduring appeal of ethnic and sectarian identities; have left international institutions ill-equipped, underfunded, under-resourced, in order to handle transnational challenges."    (President Obama at the UN) Obama about globalization at the United Nations As ...