If you remember in Part 1, I set the table and server up the hors d’oeuvres, appetizer plates, and salads of harnessing Herricanes (If you don’t remember, STOP!  Go back and read Part 1 before continuing).  Now I will serve up heaps of real meat and continue the anger management presentation. (more…)

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Kathryn Siranosian published a blog entry about Hurricane Rick and she got me to thinking.  While I believe it should be named Himmicane Rick and that has nothing to do with this article, hurricanes could be good for the energy business.

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The mysterious Baghdad Battery is arguably mankind’s very first device to produce usable levels of electricity, similar to a battery. But it’s true, an inefficient battery.

While many believe Benjamin Franklin to be the father of electricity, history goes back more than two thousand years when Ancient Greeks discovered that rubbing fur on amber causes an attraction between the two.

But did humans actually discovered electricity long before history books tell us?

Probably created in Mesopotamia during the Parthian or Sassanid period (around 200 – 250BC), the Baghdad Battery is comprised from a number of artifacts that include a five-inch-long (13 cm) clay jar with a copper cylinder that encases an iron rod.

All shrouded in myth, the Baghdad Battery is actually an odd thing, an enigma.

However there is a hypothesis that when the jar is filled with water that contains a common acidic agent like lemon juice or vinegar to surround the iron rod, it would form an electrochemical pair and the acidic agent could help produce an electric current. But a very weak electric current.

Actually, speculations have it that a priest or a healer sensed the electrical tingle, didn’t understood it but still used it for electro-acupuncture. And also for religious purposes, because it was discovered that when linked in series, the cells indeed had sufficient power to electroplate a small token.

So could that be the first sign to electricity?

China does a pretty lousy job of getting the most from its coal. The country uses about 3.3 tons of raw material to produce one ton of coal while at the same time the U.S. uses about 1.25 tons to get the same result. Other countries that get about an 80% return are Australia, Germany and Canada.

The “Red Panda” is going to raise the recovery rate from its current 30% to at least 50% by 2010. Less we get all excited, China had hoped to be at 40% by last year. Still, if there is no goal they most definitely will hit nothing. Ten points for trying, eh?

China also hopes to reduce energy consumption per unit of GDP by 20% and cut the emission of major pollutants by 10% within the next five years. For what is worth, China’s stated owned mines have a mining recovery rate of 44% compared to just 10% for small and private coal mines. China gets about 80% of its electricity from coal. The better they get at it, the better for all of us, no?

Source: Xinhuanet

Image courtesy of robertg6n1

The “Energy (R)evolution: A Sustainable World Energy Outlook” says that two-thirds of Asia’s electricity needs can be met by renewable energy sources by 2050. If so, the aggressive investment could create an annual $360 billion industry worldwide and save $18 trillion in future fuel costs.

I wonder if the men and women punched their calculators to determine how many people depending on the fossil fuel industry will LOSE their jobs.

“With renewable energy growing four-fold not only in the electricity sector, but also in the heating and transport sectors, we can still cut the average carbon emissions per person from today’s four tons to around one ton by 2050,” said Philippines Campaign Manager for Greenpeace Southeast Asia.

“The global market for renewable energy can grow at double digit rates until 2050, and overtake the size of today’s fossil fuel industry. Currently, the renewable energy market is worth 70 billion dollars and doubling in size every three years,” said the Policy Director of the European Renewable Energy Council.

Well, for all I know, if Greenpeace said it, there’s got to be something wrong with the figuring. Still, we can dream, can’t we?

Source: Xinhuanet Image: myuiibe