The other day me and my good friend Mathias Rabinovitch went to a presentation at the New York Academy of Science. There were 2 speakers each with their own little presentation.
The first speaker was an economist and spoke about the "McKinsey Report" which is a report that basically gives instructions on how our government can change us to a very green country with the little price of $3 trillion without having to change our lifestyle. This presentation examined how the government would only have to spend 3 trillion instead of 6 trillion dollars if they did this slow, incremental switch to a whole bunch of green energy producing techniques. The presentator used the term "we won't find a silver bullet" very often to describe how we were going to need to get our energy from a wide variety of sources. The presentations sometimes got complicated by going into economic intricacies but thats pretty much the main gist of the first presentation.
The second speaker was a scientist from Columbia University and he described his discoveries and this machine he made that made CO2 into something valuable. This presentation involved a whole lot of big words and chemistry terms that I was unfamiliar with so it was very difficult to follow, but what i got out of it was very interesting. This man found a way to take CO2 and turn it into a valuable substance. not only that but he was able to make this machine of his to convert the CO2 self sustainable. So he explained the process by which he did this with a bunch of charts and graphs and pictures. I am not sure how useful this invention of his is in terms of the product what it can be used for, but it was very interesting.
Me and Matt then went to the food gathering afterwards and after a little while of social awkwardness, people started talking to us and we got into some interesting discussions with people, that always ended up going to politics, but it was on overall a great experience and the building was absolutely amazing with a beautiful view of NYC.
http://www.nyas.org/events/eventDetail.asp?eventID=10429&date=3/19/2008%206:00:00%20PM
I posted a link with info about the presentation, I didn't read the website yet but it seems to sum up pretty much what was happening.Also if you want some like in depth notes talk to Matt because he copied some diagrams and took some really good notes of what was going on.
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I didn't read the full presentation, but I read the abstract from Castaldi's presentation (Columbia University).
Castaldi presented introducing biomass into fuels as a way to reduce CO2 emissions in the future. I haven't really heard people talk about this possibility very much, but he seems to cover a lot of ground with it. He begins by acknowledging the issues surrounding pollution and decreasing CO2 emissions in a very comprehensive way. He addressed the issue as a matter of finding ways to lower our CO2 emissions without mitigating the increase in energy use. I thought that was very interesting, because most reports I have read dealt with both issues--decreasing energy consumption AND lowering CO2 emissions. None of those reports seemed too promising, so Castaldi's analysis seemed out of place and optimistic. However, he supported his statements well and seemed to deal with many possible problems or counterarguments that could arise, which leads me to wonder why we are so keen on tackling both issues at once, when it may just be easier to deal with them one at a time, especially if we can survive comfortably in doing so. I feel like it is too daunting a task for us to try and lower CO2 emissions and energy consumption at the same time, especially since many people are heavily reliant on both and afraid of change. If we can deal with one issue at a time, as Castaldi implies is wholly acceptable, then why wouldn't we? We could probably have more success if we focus on each issue independently and focus on coming up with real, thorough solutions rather than coming up with blanketing legislations meant to deal with everything in a very general way.
Castaldi talked a lot about biomass and trying to switch our fuel consumption over more to biomass. He acknowledges that the combustion of biomass fuels yeilds high amounts of corrosive ash, but also says that if you include CO2 in the reaction, these gases can be minimized. This seems to deal with the problem from two directions--not only does it reduce fossil fuel consumption, but it also allows us to decrease CO2 in the atmosphere in fuel combustion. This idea is interesting and sounds very promising, although I am still skeptical of its validity or practicality, as I have not heard much about it before and I feel like it would receive more attention than it has if it were truly a feasible possibility. In addition, Castaldi did not really touch on prices of such a process, which could prove to be a major issue.
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