Learning with the Fang

UPDATE:

Simon Hackett’s electric car (see example 3 below) finally on the road for the first (and limited) time. Have fun Simon, I’m sure when people see your car and tell the story that minds will be changed wrto electric vehicles (EV). UPDATE 2, Nov 2009 – Simon has just published the results of his trip from Darwin to Adelaide in his Tesla EV:

“How would you like your car to achieve the equivalent of 1.6 Litres per 100 km (US 150 MPG)?

Would you like to do that while paying between AUS$69 and AUS$126 for your energy costs (including a surcharge to buy 100% GreenPower), to take you 3147 kilometres from the top of Australia to the bottom?

(or to put it another way: between 2.2 and 4 cents per km over that entire distance using GreenPower)?

We’ve just demonstrated that its possible – if the car is a pure electric vehicle.”

Those of you who follow my twitter will have noticed a lot of tweets starting with (or containing only) Hmmm…

Since losing the ability to listen to hours and hours of podcasts each day, in those precious times when I do listen to something long and complex which makes me think, I tend to emit the ‘Hmmm…’. You see, I can feel myself getting dumber each day on my diet of sound bites and things short enough to read in-between work duties. And, as you will see from the complex and cryptic nature of this post, I now have even less time to try and articulate my thoughts and share them with you.

I love Proof of Concept projects (or PoCs) – they remind me of the old addage ‘to prove that unicorns exist, you only have to find one’. On severaly occasions I have experienced the joy of projects which show that some of my crazy ideas might just work. This week I listened to several podcasts that really got me thinking about my views on a range of issues from climate change, urban development, junk science to alternative energy. I can’t help thinking that I have been hoodwinked into a dumbed-down view of the world and reckon that a hand full of Proof of Concept projects could snap me (and us all) out of that.

The first was this podcast of Clive Hamilton speaking on the dirty politics of climate change for the University of Sydney. Clive points out some interesting links between the dirty ‘FUD’ tactics out of the tobacco industry in years gone by and the coal industry in more recent times – including some facinating narrative on the very term ‘junk science’ and the practice of ‘astro-turfing’ way before blogs.

The second ‘Fast Reactor Radio‘ came to me courtesy of Professor Barry Brook and his most excellent BraveNewClimate blog. I had absolutely no idea about the existence (let alone the potential value of) technologies like ‘Integral Fast Reactor’ nuclear power or ‘plasma re-cycling’. Yet I could relate to the frustration of efforts to build Proof of Concept installations of each – city council politics thwarting an early plasma recycling plant, the hurdles to jump before the Obama administration can build a new generation power plant (incorporating some of the principles deployed by the Russians in the 1970’s).

Here are just three examples of things I did not know about (and have been hoodwinked into thinking could not exist):

1. Just one plasma re-cycling plant

These things sound way cool – once a few city councils get these things up and running we will all be able to find out how cool they are. Made me think of throwing some garbage into the stream of my mate Rick’s plasma cutter in his MecArt workshop (what do you think Roy?) Sure, they take a lot of energy, but that’s where number 2. comes in.

2. Just one integral fast reactor

Listen to the podcast for details but if I heard correctly these puppies re-process ’spent fuel’ in such a way as to dramatically increase output and leave us with a much more manageable waste product. (and did Tom say that we could power the earth for 50,000 years by re-processing uranium we have already dug up? – shhh dont tell the mining industry).

3. Simon Hackett’s electric car

Bit of a tangent but I think Simon Hackett will make many people think twice about electric cars once he is able to start driving around Adelaide in his new Tesla roadster – a sports beast that is quicker than your average hoon car [It accelerates from 0-100 km/h in less than four seconds, has a top speed of 200 km/h and can travel about 400 kilometres on a single charge].

Fang – Mike Seyfang

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