Life in 2050 -- Climate Out of Control

Bill McKibben on the Symptoms of Global Warming
The author and activist says we may see out-of-control rises in sea level, enormous shortfalls in crop yields and wars over available fresh water

Arctic Is Screaming; Global Warming May Have Passed Tipping Point

clipped from www.foxnews.com An already relentless melting of the Arctic greatly accelerated this summer, a warning sign that some scientists worry could mean global warming has passed an ominous tipping point. One even speculated that summer sea ice would be gone in five years. Greenland's ice sheet melted nearly 19 billion tons more than the previous high mark, and the volume of Arctic sea ice at summer's end was half what it was just four years earlier, according to new NASA satellite data 2007 shattered records for Arctic melt in the following ways: 552 billion tons of ice melted this summer from the Greenland ice sheet A record amount of surface ice was lost over Greenland this year Alaska's frozen permafrost is warming White sea ice reflects about 80 percent of the sun's heat off Earth Earth has hit one of his so-called tipping points "At this rate, the Arctic Ocean could be nearly ice-free at the end of summer by 2012, much faster than previous predictions."

My buddy Scott is saving $3000 a year on his energy bill

If you want to get bullish on America all you need to do is think about all the little guys coming up with ways to save on their energy bills. Well we have a genius buddy (a bit on the nutty side) that has been stringing together his wild ideas and is now saving more than $3000 annually on his home energy bills. Here is how he is air conditioning his house using solar energy and lake water.


My buddy Scott runs hot water under his floors for heat, turns lake water into air conditioning, and he is curently building an electric car. If we can get some people to send this blog post around the Internet and get some comments about this post, I think we can convince him to start writing this stuff up and sharing it with the world. Oh yeah, he also built a rear projection TV for a fraction of the cost.

The main body of this post (below) about how Scott air conditioned his house using lake water is actually an email. As such, Scott just typed this off the top of his head in answer to a question, How did you do it? It is a bit choppy.

Here ya go, how Scott air conditioned his house using lake water. Please feel free to comment and share this with others.

Basically, I went over to the MSU (Michigan State University) salvage yard where the university sells any junk they want to get rid of. I happen to see two humungus heat exchangers sitting their in a wooden crate. I asked the guy and he said they were brand new "never used". Just ordered and then sent for salvage. Knowing that they were filled with copper, I offered the guy a few bucks to get them out of his pile of junk. What I paid for them, versus what they are worth if I just hauled them down to the copper recycler was about 8 times my money. However, I am not in it for the cash, so I stuck them in the ductwork of my furnace. I found a Solar powered pump ($84), and hooked it up to a Solar panel (Bobby D is working on a Chinese supplier for the best prices), and dug a hole in the ground, deep enough to get 55 degree water.

(If you live on a lake, you want to get the water from below 10 feet). Heck, even Kevin knows from drinking polluted lake water in New York, the water gets colder deeper down. [Hopefully, Kevin will do some research and learn about all the US Naval experiments which were done in the Finger Lakes in the 40s and 50s. Some very nasty chemicals in those waters.]

So the sun shines, and the pump moves the 55 degree water through a pipe (aka hose), through the heat exchangers, and then you dump it wherever you want to (like in the sewer, or in your yard, etc). Heck, it is only 1 gallon per minute. Or you could do something really "cool" with it (get the pun?) Warning: big name Blog material coming up next.

HydroKool Systems

You take the "waste" water and run it up and spray it on the roof. I learned this from my friends on the island of Grand Cayman. If you bounce around the islands, like Jamaica, St. Thomas, etc. you will learn these cooling tricks. But you need to rub elbows with the big "movers and shakers" of NYC who have the huge yachts down there, like those people Bobby D knows.

So the cold, 55 degree water, meets the warm air in your house. The result is that the hot air becomes cold and the cold water becomes hot. I think I learned that part from watching that TV show "Are you smarter than a 5th grader". A solar fan spins and sends the cold air up to replace the hot air which came down the duct. Now as long as the sun shines, everything moves along nicely. If you are really serious, you just hook up a $78 battery instead, and have the battery power everything, and just use the solar panels to charge the batteries. Then you can run it during the night. However, if you learn about the moon, it doesn't really heat your house at night, so if you really keep you house cool during the day, it is OK to sleep all night while the system is NOT running.

Of course, the engineers at Siemens already know all of this stuff. I guess they are a lot like the car companies. They go around and buy up any systems which will reduce the gas consumption of your vehicle and "deep-six" it. You have all heard those true stories about the little guy who made an amazing carburetor in his garage, just to have Ford step in and buy it up...never to be seen again.

Any way ... I got to go. Some team from Carrier is at my door offering me $238 to stop writing about total nonsense.

Got to go!!

Comments are welcome, feel free to Digg It or send it to a friend.
Thanks.

Are alternative-energy stocks the new tech?

Are alternative-energy stocks the new tech stocks, or are they simply socially responsible stocks and funds in disguise?



Full text at the Robert T DeMarco Weblog

Global Warming Sparks Polysilicon Crunch and Opportunity for Investors

My energy guru Scott tells me it is very difficult to buy solar panels. To me this says "chicken on the hill for investors (money)". The article on the next page highlights the problem and the opportunity. If you have additional ideas or would care to promote a stock hit the comments button and "sound off".


By Matt Andrejczak
MarketWatch

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Global warming is juicing the price of a key ingredient used to make solar panels, raising questions about what the longer-term impact of the current shortage will be.

Polysilicon is an essential raw material in the production of solar cells for panels that convert sunlight to electricity for homes, businesses and farms.

Since 2004, average contract prices for securing long-term supplies of polysilicon have skyrocketed, more than doubling to $70 per kilogram.

Not lucky enough to have a long-term contract? Spot-market prices for polysilicon are daunting: Expect to pay $200 per kilogram on the spot market, compared with the $150 paid in 2006, according to industry watchers.

The supply crunch has thrust the polysilicon business -- once the all but exclusive territory of semiconductor makers -- into high gear. Novel financing deals and new partnerships are afoot, with solar-module makers scrambling to secure long-term deals and chemical manufacturers scrambling to boost factory output by 2008 and beyond.

JA Solar Holdings (JASO) Last: 27.13

SunTech Power Holdings (STP) Last: 38.82

Canadian Solar Inc. (CSIQ) Last: 11.50

The situation is more acute for some solar companies than others.

Faced with escalating prices and tight supplies, two companies have swapped equity for polysilicon in pacts to help future sales. Those deals have raised eyebrows.
South Korea-based DC Chemical Co. acquired a 15% stake in Massachusetts-based Evergreen Solar Inc. (ESLR) Last: 9.55

In another deal, China-based SunTech Power inked a 10-year supply pact with MEMC Electronics Materials Inc. (MEMC) Last: 60.88

The Evergreen-DC Chemical deal, in particular, carried a "steep price to pay for polysilicon supply," said Jeff Osborne, an analyst at CIBC World Markets, which has helped take a number of solar companies public.

In mid-April, Evergreen agreed to issue 4.5 million shares of restricted common stock and 625 shares of restricted preferred stock to DC Chemical, which bought 3 million shares of Evergreen at $12.07 each. Under the supply deal, Evergreen is to receive enough polysilicon to make roughly one gigawatt of photovoltaic solar panels through 2014.

Supply crunch

The supply crunch is exerting collatetal pressure on the semiconductor industry, which has long been the primary buyer of polysilicon, the chief material used to make the wafers onto which microchips are stamped.

"Global warming is not good for the semiconductor industry. The solar industry is growing very rapidly. ... It's really created demand in past several years that wasn't there before," said Tom Linton, who negotiates polysilicon deals for Freescale Semiconductor, one of the world's larger chip manufacturers.

Before the solar companies came onto the scene in a big way, chip firms usually inked three- to six-month supply contracts with polysilicon producers. Now "you've started to see that elongate towards one- or multi-year contracts," said CIBC's Osborne.

The solar market's big polysilicon push came in 2006. For the first time ever, solar-panel makers consumed as much polysilicon as did the chip manufacturers, purchasing more than 50% of the silicon wafers produced in 2006 -- up from 10% in 2000, according to industry sources.

Polysilicon prices weigh more heavily on solar-panel makers, with the raw material making up 40% to 45% of the cost of goods per solar cell, compared with just 3% to 7% for a microchip. For that reason, solar-panel makers typically seek six- to 10-year supply contracts, Osborne reported.

On the solar horizon

The polysilicon shortage has stunted the growth of the solar industry, keeping it from expanding faster than the 20% pace it set in 2006, based on the number of installations worldwide. Yet a long-running supply-demand imbalance cannot be assumed, with forecasting polysilicon-market dynamics tricky and growing trickier.

For solar-panel manufacturers, future needs hinge on a number of questions:
How fast will solar take off in the U.S., Spain and other countries beyond Germany and Japan, the world's two biggest solar-installation markets?

How fast will solar-panel prices drop versus the price of electricity?

Will other solar technologies challenge the primacy of polysilicon?

"You have some questions there," said Jesse Pichel, an analyst at Piper Jaffray, which has helped raise money for solar-panel makers. "No one is really sure how it will play out."

Such factors and others make it "difficult to accurately estimate polysilicon demand for photovoltaic production," agreed Gartner Inc. analyst Takashi Ogawa, who forecasts worldwide polysilicon demand.

Alternatives in alternative energy

MEMC, Hemlock Semiconductor, Renewable Energy Corp. and DC Chemical are all building or expanding manufacturing sites in a bid to relieve supply pressure. Meanwhile, new entrants are also moving into the market, as 88% of the polysilicon supply is currently controlled by five players.

It takes at least two years to construct a polysilicon factory, which cost between $500 million and $1 billion. "The reality is [that] some of these plants may be significantly delayed, and some of the polysilicon makers maybe overstating their plans," Pichel said.

By 2010, global polysilicon available for sale is expected to reach 99,500 metric tons, up from 35,400 metric tons in 2006, according to CIBC's latest forecast, issued in late April, which estimates 25% more polysilicon will be available in 2010 than its prior projection.

CIBC estimated an "acute shortage" through 2008. Relief could come in 2009 at the earliest, in CIBC's view.

But the supply shortage has inspired exploration of alternative solar technologies that don't rely on polysilicon, such as thin-film panels. Whether such alternatives demonstrate efficacy and whether the most ambitious polysilicon-capacity buildouts come to fruition will ultimately have a great deal to do with whether the polysilicon crunch tightens or turns into a glut.

Matt Andrejczak is a reporter for MarketWatch in San Francisco.

MEMC, Hemlock Semiconductor, Renewable Energy Corp. and DC Chemical

Global warming sparks polysilicon crunch

Global warming