Step-by-step instructions. More tutorials can be found here, here and here.
Miracle biofuels
“If you grow jatropha in marginal conditions, you can expect marginal yields” & “The best outcome might be to slow down the jatropha steamroller and let science sort out whether it can be grown on a mass scale in ways that
make it preferable to food-based biofuels”. Read. Related: Leave the algae alone.
Steam engine galleries
Locomobiel Stoommachine is a Dutch site, but it is worth clicking around because of the quantity and the quality of pictures and drawings of all possible steam engines and their applications. (note 02/2011: site has been moved and renamed).
Man versus nature
“The object of the present volume is: to indicate the character and, approximately, the extent of the changes produced by human action in the physical conditions of the globe we inhabit; to point out the dangers of imprudence and the necessity of caution in all operations which, on a large scale, interfere with the spontaneous arrangements of the organic or the inorganic world; to suggest the possibility and the importance of the restoration of disturbed harmonies and the material improvement of waste and exhausted regions; and, incidentally, to illustrate the doctrine, that man is, in both kind and degree, a power of a higher order than any of the other forms of animated life, which, like him, are nourished at the table of bounteous nature.”
Quoted from: Man and nature – physical geography as modified by human action (1864). Full text online.
Found at: The evolution of the conservation movement, 1850-1920.
Kicking the habit: the Oil Depletion Protocol
“By agreeing to reduce oil imports and exports by a specified amount each year, about 2.6 percent, signatory nations will help mitigate the negative consequences of an over-reliance on cheap oil and help prepare for a global decline in the world’s oil supply.
The premise of the Protocol is inherently straightforward: oil importing nations would agree to reduce their imports by an agreed-upon yearly percentage, referred to as the World Oil Depletion Rate, while oil producing nations would agree to reduce their rate of production by their National Depletion Rate.
This simple and sensible formula will produce, in effect, a global rationing system. If the entire world adopted the Protocol, global consumption of oil would decline by almost 3 percent per annum, thus stabilizing prices, preserving the resource base, and reducing competition for remaining supplies.”
