Disqus - Friends of Chriswaterguy

Re: Entrepreneurship Is an Art Not a Job

Ralph Haygood — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 19:42:28 -0000

I'm an entrepreneur, and all that "methodology" doesn't mean much to me. My approach to most things about being an entrepreneur is empirical: I try things and see what happens. My sources of inspiration for things to try are many and varied, and I do pay attention to other people's experiences, but I don't assume what worked for somebody else will necessarily work for me. And I regard my current ways of doing things as working hypotheses, subject to change in light of experience. Entrepreneurship as I live it isn't formulaic; it demands continual attention to the particulars of your situation.

Re: Global Military Dominance Through Health Care And Solar Panels

Ralph Haygood — Fri, 06 May 2011 23:28:17 -0000

Ah, those Navy and Marine officers - what a bunch of impractical idealists!

Seriously, the wisdom of these recommendations is rather obvious. What has largely prevented and, I confidently predict, will largely prevent them from ever being implemented is the relentless greed of the moneyed interests that now have a near stranglehold on the U.S. government. To put it bluntly, what's in these proposals for the likes of Charles and David Koch? Or Lloyd Blankfein? Or Jeffrey Immelt? If, as I suspect, the answer is, "Not much," then the prognosis is, "Ain't gonna happen."

Re: The Onion's Digital Director Baratunde Thurston: News is Absurd

Ralph Haygood — Tue, 14 Jun 2011 17:11:08 -0000

"Stoned slackers," eh? Let's see now. I love the Daily Show, the Colbert Report, and, absolutely, the Onion - keep up the fantastic work, Thurston and company. I'm also an entrepreneur currently working 60+ hours a week launching a business. And, oh yeah, I have a Ph.D. from the University of California and a long list of papers in scientific journals. And I've never been stoned in my life (a deficiency I mean to rectify at some point). So I guess "stoned slackers" is about as accurate as any of the other shit Bill-O the Clown spews.

Thurston is exactly right: you need to have a clue what's going on in the world in order to appreciate Stewart, Colbert, or the Onion. That's why when clueless people read the Onion, unintended hilarity ensues.

Re: Obama's Twitter Townhall, AP To Open N. Korea Bureau, N. Korea To Open Photo Exhibit In NYC

Ralph Haygood — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 11:02:20 -0000

As a commenter on the post at the Financial Times points out, this "huge flaw" in Google+ really isn't much of a flaw. If you share something with people using the web, there's practically no way you can prevent them from passing it on if they want to. That personal photo you're so worried about? All they have to do is control-click it and choose "Save image as...", and they've got a copy they can email, tweet, etc. ad lib. And I suspect, after all these years, most web users are aware of this possibility.

If you're sharing with people you can't trust to respect your privacy when they can violate it with Google+, what makes you think you can trust them with control-click plus email, Twitter, etc.? And by the way, why are you sharing with such people? If you're especially concerned about a particular item, share it with an explicit request not to pass it on. If you can't trust people to honor such a request, I think you shouldn't be sharing with them.

No, I don't work for Google, nor do I own Google stock, nor do I otherwise feel any compulsion to defend them. I just find it silly to call this a "huge flaw."

Re: Exclusive Look At The Prototype of World's First 3-D Printed Car

Ralph Haygood — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 16:10:21 -0000

About once a year, I learn of a technological achievement that genuinely impresses me. This is one of them. The car looks great. Moreover, if the technology is up to making a car, it's surely up to making a lot of other useful stuff that's currently manufactured and distributed in environmentally and socially unfriendly ways.

Re: Eve Blossom Is Building A Beautiful Supply Chain

Ralph Haygood — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 19:24:36 -0000

Interesting! However, I wish the post said more about what Ms. Blossom would like technology to do that it isn't doing. (I'm a technologist, so my curiosity isn't necessarily idle.)

Re: Why In-Person Socializing Is A Mandatory To-Do Item

Ralph Haygood — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 21:22:54 -0000

All true, and well said. Virtual social networking could, however, do more to facilitate face-to-face socializing. I'm working on that, and I encourage others to do so too.

Re: Akermin post-combustion capture technology

Sean McClowry — Sat, 26 Oct 2013 06:48:33 -0000

Testing on a saturday night, yippee!

Re: A saga in the making for the newest subsidiary body

Sean McClowry — Sat, 26 Oct 2013 06:56:19 -0000

Testing another

Re: Global Status of CCS Report highlights modest policy developments over past year

Sean McClowry — Wed, 30 Oct 2013 20:11:35 -0000

testing this again

Re: 8 small countries providing big climate change solutions

Sean McClowry — Tue, 24 Jun 2014 00:11:38 -0000

Hi Walter - yes, we're seeing lots of great things happening. Brian's weekly decarboni.se 5 always gets me motivated that we're solving climate issues.

Re: 8 small countries providing big climate change solutions

Sean McClowry — Thu, 26 Jun 2014 20:37:11 -0000

@Louise Sauls - I definitely haven't forgotten South Africa! I just didn't consider it a "small country'. I've got an upcoming post on Africa overall structured like this one and South Africa is definitely on the list. @Victor_Velo - you are correct that over time the sun's output has varied but the great majority of scientists are not attributing this to the current temperate increases - they are saying it the result of the dramatically increasing concentration of greenhouses gases in the atmosphere.

Re: 5 African countries leading the way in climate change solutions

Sean McClowry — Mon, 30 Jun 2014 22:14:07 -0000

Hi - I have made a slight edit to this post. As its a long article we split it into multiple pages but that might not have been clear and people weren't seeing the pages on countries and their projects, so I moved the first two paragraphs to the last page. So click "READ on" or the numbers at the bottom to go to the next page. Thanks

Re: The top 10 PV Solar power stations in the world

Sean McClowry — Thu, 03 Jul 2014 22:02:07 -0000

Sajid - check our Brian's post this week on Decarboni.se 5 - the project in Pakistan has made the list - thanks for letting us know! http://decarboni.se/insight...

Re: 5 African countries leading the way in climate change solutions

Sean McClowry — Sat, 05 Jul 2014 21:12:23 -0000

Hi - glad you like to see the progress in Africa. In terms of overall context, I've used some data from the World Bank but I really recommending exploring their whole data sharing site - its excellent: http://data.worldbank.org/t.... I also recommend checking out the work from the IEA http://www.worldenergyoutlo... You will also find some good reports on specific solutions on our site that often set the context for the problem, such as:
http://decarboni.se/publica...

As you'll see most African countries have very low emissions but as I mention on the last page of this post things can change quickly as countries develop their energy systems. Things are also changing quickly in terms of projects - even in writing this post I was pointed to some key projects we weren't aware of in Ethiopia. Hope that helps.

Re: 8 small countries providing big climate change solutions

Sean McClowry — Thu, 24 Jul 2014 04:30:46 -0000

Johann - we weren't aware of this project so thanks for letting us know - looks good. I've been reading about this technology generally - we can feature this in one of our decarbonise5 updates

Re: 5 African countries leading the way in climate change solutions

Sean McClowry — Tue, 29 Jul 2014 04:20:35 -0000

@Chris Watkins - thanks! I have fixed the data for In Salah to 2004

Re: Top 6 ways we'll beat climate change (number 1 will surprise you!)

Sean McClowry — Tue, 29 Jul 2014 22:25:17 -0000

Ron - there is a very large amount of analysis on this subject from the scientific / academic community. Its quite easy to track where CO2 comes from (I recommend checking out some work from the IEA and quite an established scientific view on what the effects will be. Our site is more focused on project and policy work taking as opposed to making the case for action, but here is a recent summary.
http://decarboni.se/insight... - I recommend checking out some of the links in the post

Re: Top 6 ways we'll beat climate change (number 1 will surprise you!)

Sean McClowry — Mon, 04 Aug 2014 06:54:57 -0000

Ron - there are many articles and books written on this subject in terms of the effect of CO2 and what will happen with a 6 degree C temperature rise (roughly 11F). Here is a news story from today on a recently published book:
http://www.independent.co.u...

I suggest reading the excerpt under "6C rise: The consequences"

Re: 5 ways to capture carbon – and use it!

Sean McClowry — Mon, 11 Aug 2014 03:53:20 -0000

Hi Kevin - BECCS (Bioenergy with CCS) works by storing CO2 deep underground in a compressed form. Check out this page for a good overview on the approach: http://decarboni.se/publica...

Re: Top 6 ways we'll beat climate change (number 1 will surprise you!)

Sean McClowry — Tue, 26 Aug 2014 22:15:00 -0000

I agree with dag - population growth's impact is important but it will have a lower impact than the increasing per capita energy demand. China has, for example, 1.4 billion, India 1.1 and Africa 1 billion - together, this is about half the world's population.

You can see their emissions here (African countries need to be looked at individually)
http://data.worldbank.org/i...

From this chart you can see emissions per country - China is 1/3rd, India 1/10th and Africa about 1/20th of the US on a per capita basis. Overall, we need big emitters like the US to come down and growing economies to stop going up in terms of emissions or we'll never stay within our "carbon budget".

A bit more on that here:
http://decarboni.se/insight...
http://decarboni.se/insight...

Re: How does a country like Norway build a full-scale CCS plant?

Sean McClowry — Wed, 27 Aug 2014 01:37:44 -0000

Hi Sid - thanks for your comment. There is definitely some good reuse of CO2 happening for CCUS projects (we often use the term CCUS at the Global CCS Institute). The post is here: http://decarboni.se/insight... - check out some of the good work being done by companies to turn co2 into useful products. It references a few reports - this on in particular is great. http://decarboni.se/publica...

Re: 5 technologies that will disrupt climate change

Sean McClowry — Thu, 11 Sep 2014 19:51:10 -0000

Allen and Szandi - the most recent IPCC report on the correlation between human activity and climate change is summarised here:
http://www.theguardian.com/.... As you can see the view is stronger than ever that there is a causal link between human activity and climate change.

The IPCC involves thousands of scientists reviewing published research on a voluntary basis. I can't think of a better model for being able to do reliable analysis we can trust. You can read more about them here: http://www.ipcc.ch/

Re: 6 clean energy mega projects

Sean McClowry — Fri, 19 Sep 2014 01:37:21 -0000

I have positive views on nuclear but I'm optimistic on disruptive technologies coming into the energy space and don't think we should bank on a single technology to reduce emission. Solar and energy storage advances have been significant over the past few years and CCS is really the only solution for large scale emissions from industrial sources.

Re: 6 clean energy mega projects

Sean McClowry — Fri, 19 Sep 2014 01:43:09 -0000

Szandi - none of the links you have posted work. Here is the data from the EPA that shows a breakdown of where emissions come from over time which you can see if a huge increase over the past 114 years
http://www.epa.gov/climatec...