getting yourself out of the plane of impact
Here's a Smart Car for you.
Posted on 05/23/2009 5:09:48 AM PDT by ovrtaxt
getting yourself out of the plane of impact
Here's a Smart Car for you.
LOL, you must believe in the ten day magic wand. Given time all that will change.
You'll be spending the savings on a higher heating bill because inefficient incandescent lights help heat a home in winter. Most energy waste is heat. LEDs make more economic sense in hot climates.
Exactly. You can engineer a LED chip to produce no infrared radiation. Makes a huge difference in A/C costs. CFLs are similar, but you can’t achieve the lumens/watt that an LED can.
Right now the push is in scaling up the wattage while maintaining the high lumen output.
From their website:
Rocky Mountain Institute® (RMI) is an independent, entrepreneurial, nonprofit think-and-do tank™. We envisage a world thriving, verdant, and secure, for all, for ever. To that end, our mission is to drive the efficient and restorative use of resources.
RMI’s style is nonadversarial and transideological, emphasizing integrative design, advanced technologies, and mindful markets.
We work extensively with the private sector, as well as with civil society and government, to create abundance by design and to apply the framework of Natural Capitalism.
Natural Capitalism? What the hell is that?
Natural Capitalism
Companies Can Profit From the Principles of Natural Capitalism
The previously mentioned core principles form the backdrop for Natural Capitalism, a new and rapidly spreading business model that harnesses environmental performance as an engine of competitive advantage. Our activities are increasingly based on this thesis, detailed in the book Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution (www.naturalcapitalism.org).
Here’s the thesis.
Previous industrial revolutions made people vastly more productive when low per-capita output was limiting progress in exploiting a seemingly boundless natural world. Today we face a different pattern of scarcity: abundant people and labor-saving machines, but diminishing natural capital.
Natural Capital refers to the earth’s natural resources and the ecological systems that provide vital life-support services to society and all living things. These services are of immense economic value; some are literally priceless, since they have no known substitutes. Yet current business practices typically fail to take into account the value of these assets — which is rising with their scarcity. As a result, natural capital is being degraded and liquidated by the very wasteful use of resources such as energy, materials, water, fiber, and topsoil.
The next industrial revolution, like the previous ones, will be a response to changing patterns of scarcity. It will create upheaval, but more importantly, it will create opportunities.
Natural Capitalism is a new business model that enables companies to fully realize these opportunities. The journey to natural capitalism involves four major shifts in business practices, all vitally interlinked.
The Four Principles of Natural Capitalism
Radically Increase the Productivity of Natural Resources.
Through fundamental changes in both production design and technology, farsighted companies are developing ways to make natural resources — energy, minerals, water, forests — stretch five, ten, even 100 times further than they do today. The resulting savings in operational costs, capital investment, and time can help natural capitalists implement the other three principles.
Shift to Biologically Inspired Production Models and Materials.
Natural capitalism seeks not merely to reduce waste but to eliminate the very concept of waste. In closed-loop production systems, modeled on nature’s designs, every output either is returned harmlessly to the ecosystem as a nutrient, like compost, or becomes an input for another manufacturing process. Industrial processes that emulate the benign chemistry of nature reduce dependence on nonrenewable inputs, make possible often phenomenally more efficient production, and can result in elegantly simple products that rival anything man-made.
Move to a “Service-and-Flow” Business Model.
The business model of traditional manufacturing rests on the sale of goods. In the new model, value is instead delivered as a continuous flow of services—such as providing illumination rather than selling light bulbs. This aligns the interests of providers and customers in ways that reward them for resource productivity.
Reinvest in Natural Capital.
Capital begets more capital; a company that depletes its own capital is eroding the basis of its future prosperity. Pressures on business to restore, sustain, and expand natural capital are mounting as human needs expand, the costs of deteriorating ecosystems rise, and the environmental awareness of consumers increases. Fortunately, these pressures all create business opportunity.
The Next Industrial Revolution
The next Industrial Revolution is already being led by companies that are learning to profit and gain competitive advantage from these four principles. Not only that, their leaders and employees are feeling better about what they do.
Shortages of work and hope, of satisfaction and security, are not mere isolated pathologies, but result from clear linkages between the waste of resources, money, and people. The solutions are intertwined and synergistic: firms that downsize their unproductive tons, gallons, and kilowatt-hours can keep more people, who will foster the innovation that drives future success.
“Shortages of work and hope”?
Nope. Not buying into their new age junk. Not this crap. They are in the tank for the whole Obama socialist crap.
I think NASA used the area surrounding the plant to test their Mars rover, since nothing grows there.
Battery tech is a whole other subject. Recently, there have been breakthroughs in silver-zinc batteries, but the silver market might have something to say about the reality of that.
As for the thrust of this article, look at http://www.fiberforge.com/ Pretty neat stuff.
People talking about government mandates, and everyone have to do what the government tells them?
My goodness... what has happened to our Republic?!
A lighter Tahoe as noted in a previous post wouldn't cause troubles, but you aren't going to get 35MPG in anything the size of a Tahoe.
Such glorified golf carts might be fine in cities, but out here in flyover country where a 40 mile trip might be required to get groceries and a 20 mph wind is a light breeze, they would be wholly impractical. I would also like to see how one of these glorified golf carts performs when temperatures are below zero with 3" of snow on the road.
It has to do with mass. Until they can solve the real problem that two different sized masses react differently to forces, then this is just BS. First we have to get Obama to, by Executive Order, recind the laws of physics, then we can study the safety of the kiddie cars. First things first.
Now all I need is a large, $175K carbon-fiber car...and a job to pay for it.
Isn’t it OBVIOUS that a large car built with advanced materials can be safe? And isn’t it OBVIOUS that a car built like that will cost out the yahoo?
I saw that line too. No one drives more aggressively than I did in my 1975 Honda Civic (1800 lbs, 53 HP). In my 50s, I have a Mazda Miata, and I don’t exactly drive it like I’m a scared rabbit.
But in the end, if a car hits a person at 25 mph, I don’t care if it weights 1800 lbs or 3600 lbs...the person is going to lose.
“Whether the stone hits the pitcher, or the pitcher hits the stone, it is going to be bad for the pitcher.”
What happened to drill, baby, drill? While working toward fuel efficiency, we need to be drilling like crazy--it would dig CA out of its financial mess, help the economy overall, and get us out of being at the mercies of foreign oil.
Global warming is a great hoax for the purpose of regulation and taxing of the people, and the making of more elite multi-millioinaires like Gore.
When are we the sheeple going to demand some sanity and responsibility of our self appointed masters?
vaudine
When the abortionist in chief mandates that his wife and chilren can only be driven in, and escorted by a Prius, then I’ll believe he is serious about his concern about the environment.
Can’t wait to see the boyz in the hood pimping their shoebox vehicles.
Here is a simpilar thread posted on FR yesterday with the WSJ being the source.
Obambi wants to kill as many Americans as possible, so the terrorists won’t have to use so much ammo when they cut loose.
I'm wondering what the results would be if the same amount of time, effort and money was spent in developing accident avoidance as is spent on accident survival?
Heck, most everyone knows that an egg can be packaged to survive a drop from atop a building but how much effort has been made to eliminate the need to drop the egg in the first place? ;-)
Not true -- Zero will not be able to eliminate work trucks, delivery trucks, and semi's. And when our paper mache toy cars meets one of those, well, let's just say it will all be over quickly.
They are in Texas too. Everyone is getting one before they go the way of the Edsel per bambi's declaration.
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