An employee walking along a thermal pipe at the Kamojang geothermal
power plant near Garut, West Java, on March 18. State utility provider
 Perusahaan Listrik Negara is targeting an additional 135 megawatts of
electricity from three new geothermal plants. (Reuters Photo/Beawiharta)
 

"Update on Current Events" – Jul 23, 2011 (Kryon channelled by Lee Carroll) - (Subjects: God, Gaia, Shift of Human Consciousness, 2012, Benevolent Design, Financial Institutes (Recession, System to Change ...), Water Cycle (Heat up, Mini Ice Ace, Oceans, Fish, Earthquakes ..), Nuclear Power Revealed, Geothermal Power, Hydro Power, Drinking Water from Seawater, No need for Oil as Much, Middle East in Peace, Persia/Iran Uprising, Muhammad, Israel, DNA, Two Dictators to fall soon, Africa, China, (Old) Souls, Species to go, Whales to Humans, Global Unity,.. etc.)
"A Summary" – Apr 2, 2011 (Kryon channeled by Lee Carroll) (Subjects: Religion, Shift of Human Consciousness, 2012, Intelligent/Benevolent Design, EU, South America, 5 Currencies, Water Cycle (Heat up, Mini Ice Ace, Oceans, Fish, Earthquakes ..), Middle East, Internet, Israel, Dictators, Palestine, US, Japan (Quake/Tsunami Disasters , People, Society ...), Nuclear Power Revealed, Hydro Power, Geothermal Power, Moon, Financial Institutes (Recession, Realign integrity values ..) , China, North Korea, Global Unity,..... etc.) - (Text version)

“.. Nuclear Power Revealed

So let me tell you what else they did. They just showed you what's wrong with nuclear power. "Safe to the maximum," they said. "Our devices are strong and cannot fail." But they did. They are no match for Gaia.

It seems that for more than 20 years, every single time we sit in the chair and speak of electric power, we tell you that hundreds of thousands of tons of push/pull energy on a regular schedule is available to you. It is moon-driven, forever. It can make all of the electricity for all of the cities on your planet, no matter how much you use. There's no environmental impact at all. Use the power of the tides, the oceans, the waves in clever ways. Use them in a bigger way than any designer has ever put together yet, to power your cities. The largest cities on your planet are on the coasts, and that's where the power source is. Hydro is the answer. It's not dangerous. You've ignored it because it seems harder to engineer and it's not in a controlled environment. Yet, you've chosen to build one of the most complex and dangerous steam engines on Earth - nuclear power.

We also have indicated that all you have to do is dig down deep enough and the planet will give you heat. It's right below the surface, not too far away all the time. You'll have a Gaia steam engine that way, too. There's no danger at all and you don't have to dig that far. All you have to do is heat fluid, and there are some fluids that boil far faster than water. So we say it again and again. Maybe this will show you what's wrong with what you've been doing, and this will turn the attitudes of your science to create something so beautiful and so powerful for your grandchildren. Why do you think you were given the moon? Now you know.

This benevolent Universe gave you an astral body that allows the waters in your ocean to push and pull and push on the most regular schedule of anything you know of. Yet there you sit enjoying just looking at it instead of using it. It could be enormous, free energy forever, ready to be converted when you design the methods of capturing it. It's time. …”

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Energy-efficient stoves clear Pakistan’s air

RNW, 24 June 2011, by Johan van Slooten


(Photo by AKPBS)

Families in northern Pakistan’s Hindu Kush mountains – subjected to long, harsh winters – have found a better way to heat their homes and cook their meals: A new, simple but efficient cooking stove. It rids the homes of deadly fumes, reduces respiratory illness and even cuts deforestation.

It wasn't long ago that the people in the region were heating their homes with simple wood fires, filling the homes with almost permanent clouds of smoke.

“Later they began to use simple stoves, but they weren’t very efficient either,” says Hadi Hosseini of Pakistan’s Aga Khan Planning and Building Service (AKPBS), a division of the Aga Khan Development Network which aims to improve the lives of people in rural Pakistan.

Illnesses

“You simply couldn’t see across the room because of the smoke. People just didn’t know how to channel the smoke out. This lead to many respiratory illnesses among villagers, especially children, including cancer and asthma. Something had to be done.”

After seeing similar situations in Nepal, the AKPBS designed a new cooking stove. It contains two main elements – one to cook meals on and one to heat the room. It can also be connected to a water tank to heat and cook water faster than was previously possible.

Cold winters

“Women used to go down to the rivers to do their laundry,” says AKPBS’s Qayum Ali Shah, who comes from the region. “Especially during the cold winters, this was particularly dangerous, as they had to bring their young children with them."

"You can imagine what it was like to do your laundry in ice cold circumstances with a baby in tow. The women don’t have to do that anymore. They can now simply wash their clothes at home, using the heated water.”

The improvements also included a heat-efficient chimney and an opening in the roof which can be opened or closed to control airflow.

Traditions

While the design and the benefits of the cooking stove seem obvious, it took AKPBS a while to convince the people to actually use it. “This is a very traditional population,” says Mr Hosseini. “Traditions, even domestic ones, go back centuries. To change them, you have to convince people that the new techniques will improve their lives.”

Mr Hosseini and Mr Shah achieved that by simply travelling around the region, demonstrating the stoves' benefits.

“We’ve engaged the women, we’re working with local entrepreneurs, and we’ve been at roadshows. And the people that we managed to convince have subsequently come along with us to tell others. It’s been a word of mouth promotion.”

Benefits

The benefits of the project go beyond the domestic improvements in people’s homes, Mr Hosseini notes.

“People use wood as fuel. Communities were gathering wood three to four times a week, which lead to massive deforestation in the region, which ultimately leads to a high risk of flooding. Using our stove, people have reduced their fuel wood consumption by 50 to 60 percent. So this simple stove is helping to improve their lives AND the environment.”

It’s this element that was noticed by the prestigious Ashden Awards in the UK, which gives an annual award to small scale sustainable energy projects. The AKPBS received an award earlier this month for improving homes and cutting the use of wood for fuel.

Recognition

“It’s good to get this recognition,” says Mr Hosseini. “We go in with a multi-input program: health, education, rural development. The people there are getting a whole package of improvements. That's not delivered by many stand-alone organizations who only focus on one thing. I think that’s our benefit.”

“We’re offering simple and effective solutions which could also be used elsewhere, even in Western homes. Why not take a step back in our electronic and manufactured approach of cooking? People everywhere could learn a lot from these things.”

Friday, June 24, 2011

'Super sand' to help clean up dirty drinking water

BBC News, 24 June 2011

The technology could help improve access to clean water in
developing countries

Related Stories 

Contaminated water can be cleaned much more effectively using a novel, cheap material, say researchers.

Dubbed "super sand", it could become a low-cost way to purify water in the developing world.

The technology involves coating grains of sand in an oxide of a widely available material called graphite - commonly used as lead in pencils.

The team describes the work in the American Chemical Society journal Applied Materials and Interfaces.

In many countries around the world, access to clean drinking water and sanitation facilities is still limited.

The World Health Organization states that "just 60% of the population in Sub-Saharan African and 50% of the population in Oceania [islands in the tropical Pacific Ocean] use improved sources of drinking-water."

The graphite-coated sand grains might be a solution - especially as people have already used sand to purify water since ancient times.

Coating the sand

But with ordinary sand, filtering techniques can be tricky.

Dr Wei Gao from Rice university in Texas, US, told BBC News that regular coarse sand was a lot less effective than fine sand when water was contaminated with pathogens, organic contaminants and heavy metal ions.

While fine sand is slightly better, water drains through it very slowly.

"Our product combines coarse sand with functional carbon material that could offer higher retention for those pollutants, and at the same time gives good throughput," explained Dr Gao.

She said that the technique the team has developed to make the sand involves dispersing graphite oxide into water and mixing it with regular sand.

"We then heat the whole mixture up to 105C for a couple of hours to evaporate the water, and use the final product - 'coated sand' - to purify polluted water."

Cost-efficient 

"Super sand" is made using regular sand - and
it could become a low-cost way to purify water
The lead scientist of the study, Professor Pulickel Ajayan, said it was possible to modify the graphite oxide in order to make it more selective and sensitive to certain pollutants - such as organic contaminants or specific metals in dirty water.

Another team member, Dr Mainak Majumder from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, said it had another advantage - it was cheap.

"This material demonstrates comparable performance to some commercially available activated carbon materials," he said.

"But given that this can be synthesized using room temperature processes and also from cheap graphite sources, it is likely to be cost-efficient."

He pointed out that in Australia many mining companies extract graphite and they produce a lot of graphite-rich waste.

"This waste can be harnessed for water purification," he said.

30% of Indonesians Do Not Use Toilets: First Lady

Jakarta Globe, June 24, 2011

First Lady Ani Yudhoyono on Friday said that she was very concerned with the low levels of sanitation in Indonesia, citing a survey that states that 30 percent of Indonesian people still do not use toilets to defecate.

“Currently, 30 percent of our people are still doing BAB [defecate] in all the wrong places because of the lack of access to toilets,” Ani said in a speech in front of the participants at 2011 Santitation Jamboree in Jakarta on Friday, as quoted by news portal Detik.com.

According to the National Statistics Bureau (BPS), Indonesia population is more than 237 million,  therefore more than 71 million people in the country still do not use toilets.

She said there were regions in Indonesia who were not providing good sanitation.

“If only all regional heads were committed [in providing good sanitation], God Willing, our lives would be more prosperous,” Ani said, adding that it was difficult to find clean water and good sanitation in the suburbs.

“In the suburbs, there are many [people] who defecate in the river,” she said.

Based on the survey, she said, 50 percent of Indonesian people still do not have access to clean water.

“The rest use risky water,” Ani said.

The government is striving to sanitation conditions by focusing on three programs, she said.

The first program is for Indonesian children to use toilets to defecate. The second, more access to clean water for people and the third, to clear water from waste.

“If the river is polluted, all people are at risk of contracting diseases,” she said.

Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Helping homeowners harness the sun (Google / SolarCity)

Google Blog, 6/14/11
(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog)

Imagine sitting on your patio watching the sun’s rays pass overhead, knowing that they power your home with clean energy—at a cost that’s less that what you would have paid using just the grid. That’s what my colleague, engineer Michael Flaster, has been doing at his home in Menlo Park, Calif. since March of this year. He did it with the help of a company called SolarCity, which enables homeowners and businesses to begin using solar energy to power their homes and buildings.

Today, we’re announcing that we’ve investing $280 million to create a fund that will help SolarCity finance more solar installations across the country. This is our largest clean energy project investment to date and brings our total invested in the clean energy sector to more than $680 million. We’ve also launched a partnership to offer SolarCity services to Googlers at a discount.





In SolarCity’s innovative financing model, the company covers installation and maintenance of the system over the life of the lease. You can prepay, or pay nothing upfront after which you make monthly solar lease payments. All told, Michael will save $100 per month on his energy bills this year, and more than $16,000 over his 15 year lease, after factoring in his lease payment and lower energy bills.



We believe the world needs a wide range of clean energy options in the future, each serving different needs. We’ve already invested in several large-scale renewable energy projects, so we’re excited that this new partnership with SolarCity helps people power their homes directly with solar energy, too. We think “distributed” renewable energy (generated and used right at home) is a smart way to use solar photovoltaic (PV) technology to improve our power system since it helps avoid or alleviate distribution constraints on the traditional electricity grid.

Our investment is a quadruple-win for Google, SolarCity, its new customers and the environment. We continue to look for other renewable energy investments that make business sense and help develop and deploy cleaner sources of energy. Whether harnessing the sun on rooftops like Michael’s or in the desert sands of the Mojave, it’s all part of building a clean energy future.

Saturday, June 4, 2011

512 companies awarded for ‘zero accidents’

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta | Sat, 06/04/2011

The Manpower and Transmigration Ministry has awarded 512 companies in the country for recording “zero accidents” in their operations this year.

That figure is an increase from the 287 companies that received similar awards last year.

“This indicates improved awareness among employers and workers on applying K3 [safety precautions] in their work environments,” Manpower and Transmigration Minister Muhaimin Iskandar said in a press statement released on Saturday.

Applying K3, he said, helped minimize possible accidents at the workplace, most of which occurred in construction, transportation and mining sectors.

Muhaimin said K3 needed to be continually campaigned on to further reduce work accidents.

“It is part of efforts to draw investment and support national economic development,” he added.