Comments | livingbyfiction: Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air (David MacKay)

livingbyfiction

Sustainable Energy - Without the Hot Air (David MacKay) - 4*

Aug 09, 2009 21:23

Tasty crunchy numbers! The Economist describes this book as "geek heaven"; the author says he's just trying to cut UK's emissions of twaddle. David MacKay, a Cambridge physicist, wades into the data with a calculator and a touch of snark.

"Every big helps," he says, and he takes the reader on a fact-based hunt to find the places where "big" can ( Read more... )

nonfiction, future book club, books, green

Comments 11

livingbyfiction August 9 2009, 18:43:30 UTC

P.S. The book is written for a UK audience, so take a few things with a grain of salt. For example, when MacKay finds that there's not enough wind/solar capacity to run the country, that's because Britain is freakishly temperate in every way. In the US, we've known for over a decade that the windy plains of the Texas/North Dakota corridor could power the entire country 5 times over. And we've got 250 sunny days per year in the Southwest. We're rich, baby ( ... )

texile August 10 2009, 00:54:32 UTC

That's a disturbingly sexy car. It's like the offspring of a Corvette and a Mercedes SL, but electric. [wolf whistle].

kevito666 August 10 2009, 12:13:12 UTC

It's a love child between Tesla motors and Lotus. Lotus makes some fantastic small cars that ultra-light and have smaller power-plants (usually Honda or Toyota 4-cylinder) are quite energy efficient for being powered by petrol.

The strange thing about it is that it has only one gear, so its neither automatic or manual. Flat torque across all rpm, tho. A very nice car to have.

livingbyfiction August 10 2009, 12:45:08 UTC

I don't even know how to drive, but I want a red one.

This one could kill the internal combustion engine.

Thread 10

kevito666 August 10 2009, 12:23:29 UTC

It makes me very angry that jet engines are so inefficient. They can be made so much more efficient with some serious design changes, but I suppose it will be a long time till those designs see the light of day. Everyone is content with super fat and slow jets since there is no real direct repercussions (other than price) for using them or are there any real alternatives available (maybe mass driver systems? low orbit rockets?).

Although Honda is experimenting with jets that are fast and that use much less fuel. Check out the HondaJet... http://hondajet.honda.com