Showing posts with label energy crisis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label energy crisis. Show all posts

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Global 'suicide'


Al Gore has just made an inspiring speech, calling again and again to stop and think over the reality of what we are facing not only as a nation, but as a member of this Earth. 'Wake up from slumber and do something!' is his message. Can we appreciate his call and act upon it?! Or are we just going to sit there, self-oblivious and lethargically suicidal, and watch it all happen... Will the Earth slip into a fireball, like Venus and Mars?

A portion of his speech:
On July 16, 1969, the United States of America was finally ready to meet President Kennedy’s challenge of landing Americans on the moon. I will never forget standing beside my father a few miles from the launch site, waiting for the giant Saturn 5 rocket to lift Apollo 11 into the sky. I was a young man, 21 years old, who had graduated from college a month before and was enlisting in the United States Army three weeks later.
I will never forget the inspiration of those minutes. The power and the vibration of the giant rocket’s engines shook my entire body. As I watched the rocket rise, slowly at first and then with great speed, the sound was deafening. We craned our necks to follow its path until we were looking straight up into the air. And then four days later, I watched along with hundreds of millions of others around the world as Neil Armstrong took one small step to the surface of the moon and changed the history of the human race.
We must now lift our nation to reach another goal that will change history. Our entire civilization depends upon us now embarking on a new journey of exploration and discovery. Our success depends on our willingness as a people to undertake this journey and to complete it within 10 years. Once again, we have an opportunity to take a giant leap for humankind.


For the full speech here.

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Solar power and thermonuclear energy


Scientists in Russia are pressed to develop the idea of "Tokamak" to harness the solar power. (here) The idea was first flirted with by Andrei Sakharov in the 1950s when working on creation of the hydrogen bomb. Today when the humankind is confronted with the energy crisis, it has become paramount to learn more the about process of the thermonuclear synthesis. Many accounts suggest that scientists in China and Iran are already succesful in this area. However, there is no record that any country has been able to really light up the solar star. The project ITER in Europe is developing an international thermonuclear reactor, experiments for which will not begin until 2015. Russia is among the countries and is planning to build its solar station by 2030. The plan is also to develop hydrogen as the ideal form of energy with no emissions. Concerted efforts of the international community, however, are required in speeding up these plans, because global warming is not slowing down...