Tom Raftery, social media consultant, speaker, blogger and podcaster
In my post about the DLD conference yesterday I showed the video of Shai Agassi’s presentation because I thought it was an amazingly good idea, well explained.
However, when I checked out Shai’s blog I found the following video of kids doing a far better job getting Shai’s idea across (sorry Shai!).
It is a three minute video. Watch it. You’ll be glad you did!
Then head over to Project Better Place, check it out and get involved.
I’m back in Cork after giving one of the keynote addresses at the Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin on Wednesday and speaking on a blogging panel at Microsoft’s TechEd in Barcelona on Thursday.
I didn’t create any formal presentation for the blogging panel in Barcelona but for anyone who might be interested, I uploaded my Web 2.0 Expo Keynote presentation to SlideShare:
Chris Abraham emailed me overnight asking me to
blog about the Energy Bill issue as discussed in http://www.energybill2007.org
The Energy Bill is a US environmental focussed bill and the energybill2007.org site Chris links to, urges US politicians to:
protect America’s energy, environmental, and economic security by ensuring that the final Energy Bill that goes to the president includes the Senate-passed 35 mile per gallon fuel economy standard AND the House-passed 15 percent renewable electricity standard.
The 35 mile per gallon fuel economy standard referred to is an aspiration to have a 35 mile-per-gallon fuel economy target by 2020!
Good God, my current car, which is a standard ‘02 Renault Megane Scenic typically gets 35mpg today. By 2020 I want cars to be achieving at least 100mpg!
As for 15% renewables, the Irish government, which has an appalling environmental record, has committed to 33% renewables by 2025!
Yesterday, the United Nations Environment Programme released its fourth Global Environment Outlook report. The report says
climate change is a “global priority”, demanding political will and leadership. Yet it finds “a remarkable lack of urgency”, and a “woefully inadequate” global response.
Several highly-polluting countries have refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. GEO-4 says: “… some industrial sectors that were unfavourable to the… Protocol managed successfully to undermine the political will to ratify it.” It says: “Fundamental changes in social and economic structures, including lifestyle changes, are crucial if rapid progress is to be achieved.
No prizes for guessing what it is referring to there.
If you are US-based, by all means head over to http://www.energybill2007.org. Agitate to get those first steps in place but believe me when I say you will be re-visiting those targets sooner than you think to get them revised upwards.
I see Reuters are reporting that Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have jointly been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The winners were chosen from 181 entries.
This adds even more weight and credibility to the fantastic work being done by the IPCC and the long crusade Al Gore has waged on this very important topic.
I was reading a report on Ars Technica today about an emerging battery technology which could totally change how we use batteries today.
The breakthrough comes from using capacitors as batteries. Up until now this has not been feasible because there hasn’t been a strong enough insulator to make this approach compelling. However, EEstor, the company who have made the breakthrough have applied for a patent for a highly insulated capacitor.
In their patent application, it suggests that:
the charge storage is much higher than anything achieved in an academic lab: 52 kilowatt-hours in a 2,000 cubic inch capacitor array. A rough conversion calculation suggests that this is over 10 times the power density of standard lead-acid batteries.
The Ars Technica article goes on to note that:
the Associated Press is reporting that the ZENN Motor Company, which makes compact electric cars, plans to start using the capacitors before the year is out. The company has invested in EEStar in return for production goals being met and so is in a position to know how realistic its claims are
If this has any basis in fact, it could have incredible consequences for the reduction of carbon emissions from transport and from the environment in general with the reduction in the use of the particularly nasty chemicals which currently go to make up batteries.
They had snow the other day in Buenos Aires.
Texas has had one of the wettest June’s on record with Marble Falls getting 18″ of rain overnight!
Australia is suffering from a drought for the last five years which is threatening to destroy 40% of its agricultural output.
The UK has had one of the wettest June’s on record with some people in Hull still unable to return to their homes.
And despite the weather here in Ireland of late, it seems that according to the Met Office, temperatures in Ireland have been gradually climbing for the last 27 years!
And some people still deny that climate change is occurring? Incredible.
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