H2Orbit.com - It's About Sustainability

Removing cost obsticles getting to orbit

2011-10-23T03:39:00.000-04:00

Historically major construction projects in orbit have been limited due to launch costs associated with the various vehicles used to date. So, is there a better way? Yup, you bet'cha. They're called "space elevators" and what will allow them is something called 'carbon nanotubes'.

Wow! Ok, what would mankind do with such a capability? Well, we have an idea and it is in A message for the next President of the United States.

H2Orbit.com - It's About Sustainability

Solving the global energy issue

2011-10-21T20:33:00.000-04:00

The global energy issue spans national boundaries and ecosystems. Fundamentally this is an issue affecting the entire biosphere of Earth. What is needed is a global approach and one that is fundamentally driven by business - and not - national governments.

A message for the next President of the United States.

H2Orbit.com - It's About Sustainability

A message for the next President of the United States.

2011-10-21T11:50:00.001-04:00

There are issues with the energy needs of civilization that simply defy the petty positioning of politicians. The SolREI company is working toward a plan we hope to announce at a later date and it isn't drill baby drill.

It's fly baby, fly.

SolREI, a strategic sustainability corporation, has been founded to establish an enduring and sustainable biosphere by 2100. While we have only just begun, that's a step, and we are a far from finished. We can see clearly now and while our vision may be high it is grounded in sustainability for our biosphere. If you have the fortitude to contemplate big bold ideas then help us communicate this page to everyone you know.

What would the next President say announcing such an endeavor? We have a few thoughts on that too, and we have told every President (and many in Congress) these words every year since 2006. Get your copy today from SolREI Publishing. Two things you can do right now to help.

Order a copy of One Pilgrim's Wish for Earth for yourself and
Order a copy and have it "drop shipped" to your elected official with a special message from you that they need to support this effort.
Ask everyone you know to review this web page.

One thing is certain. You'll never look at your airport in the same way ever again.

H2Orbit.com - It's About Sustainability

Surface area life space matters!

2011-10-20T10:23:00.002-04:00

Ocean Acidification

The oceans power to create life, affect our climate are rivaled only by human ignorance that can destroy it. Are you aware of how CO2 has changed the pH levels of the entire ocean?

While this problem is huge there are things we can do, that is anyone and everyone, can participate. One small step is supporting Reef Balls. Not just any Reef Ball, but one made out of calcium carbonate. Check out our other post on Reef Balls: a means to an end. Strategic Sustainability.

H2Orbit.com - It's About Sustainability

Life Space Matters® is a registered trademark of SolREI, Inc.

Reef Balls: A means to an end. Strategic Sustainability

2011-10-20T10:06:00.001-04:00

Arguably climate change issues are about as complex a topic as any human would ever want to contemplate. Climate change has at its heart two "problems"; Global Warming, and Ocean Acidification. Both are caused by high parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere. While there are many contributors to atmospheric CO2 when it rains out over the oceans; the rainwater falling through the sky absorbs the CO2 taking it into Earth's oceans, where it forms a weak carbonic acid. A carbonic acid that is killing coral reefs around the world. As you read this greater than 20% of coral reefs are already dead. Not dying. Dead.

So what do we do about this? Energy production from traditional sources burns various fossil fuels. We can trap the CO2 at the site of combustion and combine it with the "fly ash" (a by product) to form calcium carbonate. Calcium carbonate can be used to make Reef Balls. Reef Balls, have a direct benefit for all the reasons cited in the video report above. Made in this particular manner they have an additional benefit of helping to restore the pH levels of the water they come into contact with. They restore the acidity of the water to counteract ocean acidification. Billions of tons of "fly ash" and waste carbon dioxide are squandered every year by energy producers. Those producers have an opportunity here to create a new product that helps restore reefs, aids the restoration of the pH balance, enhances biodiversity of Earth's oceans, protects the bottom of the food chain, and helps to secure a sustainable future for Earth's biosphere.

Not just any reef ball. Reef balls made out of calcium carbonate. Byproducts of the energy production civilization needs. Opportunity and new markets abound. These represent an opportunity for individuals to become involved. This is something anyone with a desire to make something positive happen to engage the economy and the ecosystem at the same time. This spells jobs and economic growth with a positive environmental impact with clear recognition of and that life space matters®.

H2Orbit.com - It's About Sustainability

H2Orbit Applauds XoGen's Efforts & Innovation

2011-10-20T09:30:00.000-04:00

Effective use of HHO gas can solve many problems. It is however, volatile and must be consumed where produced and at the time of production. It isn't something to store as it is prone to spontaneous combustion.

Jewelers have been using this gas for decades. Some know it as "brown's gas". Others as 'oxyhydro gas'. The gas is simply disassociated water molecules. The challenge is that the disassociation happens to be in the perfect stochiometric ratio for recombination back into water. Unfortunately that is a violent process and great care must be used to implement any instrumentality associated with this gas. H2Orbit applauds XoGen's efforts to harness this resource.

H2Orbit.com - It's About Sustainability

Global Energy Use per capita

2011-09-26T20:17:00.000-04:00

It isn't that the per capita rate remains essentially stable. It's just that the population is increasing so there are more of us consuming at these ever so incrementally increasing rates.

What we need is a global energy solution. See H2Orbit.com - It's About Sustainability

Energy use to jump 53%, driven by developing world -- report - Sep. 19, 2011

2011-09-26T20:08:00.000-04:00

Energy use to jump 53%, driven by developing world -- report - Sep. 19, 2011

The Many Forms of Hydrogen

2011-04-19T03:00:00.003-04:00

Remember back in high school setting up an electrolysis experiments? Remember that there was sort of an H shaped set of tubes filled with water and an electrolyte, with the top part of the H longer than the bottom part, and there were electrodes in corks at the bottom and just corks at the top? There may have been a release valve at the top of each leg connected to a tube so you could draw off gas. Anyway you hooked up a DC current to this contraption and the oxygen would bubble up in to one tube and hydrogen would bubble up in the other. Then you could do experiments with each gas. Your teacher probably bubbled a bunch of hydrogen into soapy water and lit it with an open flame to create a big boom. Likely to catch your attention as to the volatility of the material. That's why the contraption you built had those two tubes separated by the cross connector. That way the oxygen which was attracted in one direction would stay in that tube and the hydrogen would do the same, but in the other tube.

HHO gas, or Brown's gas, is essentially the same thing with one notable exception. The gas is not separated into its components. One spark inside that mix and the same thing will happen as when your teacher tried to scare the pants off you. Except on a larger scale, depending on how much gas was ignited. All the elements it needs for combustion are present in the gas. Consequently it burns just great. Sometimes whether you want it to or not. Quite a few people have come up with a novel idea. What if you didn't keep the gas around very long? What happens if you use it almost at the same time as it's created? What if you mix this with gasoline, can you burn it in your car and get better performance? The answer is absolutely you can.

So what kinds of things can you do with such technologies? Here's an example:

Xogen Technologies, Inc. has been working for a number of years to bring viable, stable, and enduring technologies using this concept to market. They are based in Toronto, Canada and have been recognized for their leadership and innovative approaches to solving problems.

You can google "HHO Gas" yourself and find an array of people trying all kinds of experiments. However, be warned, the gas is not just combustible, its volatile and instantaneous. When you burn gasoline inside your car engine, or any other engine for that matter, the combustion process is relatively slow taking some number of milliseconds to burn completely. Hydrogen combining with Oxygen does so exceedingly fast. So fast that it is is almost instantaneous. That presents a bit of a challenge trying to utilize this gas for anything productive. Remember earlier when I said that all the components necessary for combustion were present in the mixture? Yup, there's a small problem here. Once you ignite it at one end of a tube, if you don't know what you're doing the flame can shoot all the way back to the source of the gas, and it will do so almost instantaneously. There will be no delay in your demise.

Having scared the bedookies out of you (I hope), there are ways to stop the ignited gas from traveling back. One way is to bubble it through a water trap. Any combustion traveling upstream will stop at the surface of the water and extinguish before the next bubble pops up to the surface (hopefully). Usually such traps have an over pressure relief valve to release the explosive results and then it returns to doing what it was designed to do. There was so much buzz about all of this that the Mythbusters guys did an episode about this sometime back.

Well, for whatever reason the Mythbusters didn't want to promote the idea. I'm thinking their lawyers were squeezing them where the sun doesn't shine. There are indeed VERY CRUDE instructions on how to construct one of these gizmos in your garage on the internet. Here's only one example.

If you poke around on the internet you will find scads of people who, despite the Mythbusters, are in fact running their cars on this gas. Jewelers have been using Brown's gas for many decades because of its high temperatures and properties. Here is a news story on one such commercial application for this amazing gas.

We need to pause for a second and correct some of the language the folks above have used in their descriptions of these HHO generators. Some called them "fuel cells". They aren't fuel cells. A hydrogen fuel cell works completely different from an HHO generator, which if not built correctly will explode. Hydrogen fuel cells have been used on the Space Shuttles to deliver all of the on board power while they are in space. The automotive industry has been searching for ways to reduce the costs associated with constructing these fuel cells so they can be used by mere mortals. Here's a video on how those work.

When you stop to think about it, you have to ask yourself; why in the heck are all of the automotive companies following this latter path to develop 'real' fuel cells when joe average garage tinkerer can build an HHO generator in his garage. Well, one reason is they can't make money from that, because you'll do it cheaper than they can. There is another, significantly more important reason. Hydrogen burns at much hotter temperatures than does gasoline and, as discussed earlier, it burns significantly faster. So much faster that you have to change the timing on your engine, or the gas will have burned before the pistons reach the top of the compression stroke. Engines don't like that very much. The other reason is what happens after HHO gas has burned. Remember what the videos showed? Yup. Plain ole, clean water is created, and that's not a problem. Is it? Actually, it is a problem. Your engine is made out of steel. Know what happens you combine high temperatures, water and steel? Yup. You get rust. Your engine life just got markedly cut down to size. There are folks trying to create ceramic coatings for the combustion surfaces to eliminate this little detail, but they've not had a great deal of success as yet. And these and a few others are the reasons that the car companies are following in the footsteps of NASA. Go figure. Who'd a thunk it.

Having said all that and as interesting as all of these various endeavors might be, they are not what holds my interest. What holds my attention on this topic is aircraft. See the fuel cell system is interesting if you have rocket's under your butt and you're going into space. What about just a hop over to the next state in a general aviation aircraft? Well the problems then get back to the weight of the components and fuel cells simply weigh too much and then on top of that you have add the weight of the electric motor providing the propulsive energy to the propeller. There has to be another way. Right? The answer is absolutely, there is another way. It's called a hydrogen powered gas turbine.

So there are people playing around in their garages and at schools trying to tackle exactly the same issues with hydrogen, but they are applying their talents to aircraft engines. And I'm sure you're sitting their thinking wow, this is really cool, neat, new, stuff. Well, before we all go patting ourselves on the back about our innovative talents, we probably ought to take a look at history and ask "Has anyone done this before? The answer is absolutely, they've already been there done that and yes it works just fine.

This book describes Lockheed's Hydrogen Program over 11 years of work. It covers not just the technology needed but all of the handling, storage, use, distribution, and the engines. It also points out a guy who converted his Grumman Cheeta to burn liquid hydrogen and he flew around the Fort Lauderdale Executive Airport, in the pattern for an hour and forty minutes. His fuel tanks were filled with 23 pounds of liquid hydrogen. Having work on airplanes for awhile I can tell you that is a significant accomplishment. Want to be really amazed? Guess when he did that? Last year? 2005? How about 1998. Nope. How about 1988. That's right. DECADES ago.

So, why aren't we using hydrogen? Simple. The issue is money. Not how much it's going to cost you or how much it's going to cost to develop. The issue is how much revenue those businesses, and your city government, and your county government, and your state government and the federal government are going to loose on fuel taxes. The economy is centered on all those little grocery stores dotting the landscape that sell gasoline because in rural areas it's where you need to go to get things. All those things are taxed. However, if you no longer have to go there to get fuel, well then things change. Some 22% of tax revenues in most counties comes from fuel taxes. All of that would go away if suddenly people were making their own fuel from the rain, or the local lake. Floridians would be in high cotton, being surrounded by water as they are. They would, of course, have to filter it. But that's cheaper than $5 per gallon for gasoline. So the real issues aren't even where you might think to look. They aren't in your car at all. They are where you go to fill it up... and what happens after you do.

That said, things change. Always. Every city, county and state; needs to look at the services they have, and that they want to keep, and just say: "Ok, we aren't getting revenue from 'a' anymore, so we need to get it from 'b' and if we do that in a very, very transparent manner everyone should be happy." Ok, ok, I'll pull the turnip greens out of my pockets and wake up from just being born yesterday. This is going to be a slug fest and no one is going to agree on any of it. And that's why it hasn't been done yet.... It just sucks, that's all.

Very deep sigh.

The Illuminated Communications Path

2011-04-17T16:27:00.010-04:00

It has been said that there is a difference between 'seeing the path' and 'walking the path'. Not to mention that there are probably interlopers along the way as well we must deal with and you must be ready when they appear. Effectiveness requires communications and that requires skills with others. Communicating requires comprehension and not just talking. These days anyone can pick up a communications device of one sort or another and talk to someone on the other side of the planet. However, even if they happen to speak the same language it does not assure that the two parties communicate.

This comedy routine is a classic and has been mimicked many times in an array of venues by just as diverse acts. It exemplifies the difficulty of communications even when both parties understand the same language. Communications requires a deeper understanding of situations that are being talked about. When one party or the other begins to deliberately obfuscate the discussions to distract the conversation so they may erect a 'barrier to entry' in order to protect their agenda; well things get exceedingly more complicated. Often too, they become heated debates. Back through history, some of these scenarios lead to war.

The reality is that we live in this world, not the next. Literally true as a statement that might be, it is also metaphorically true. The consequence of that reality is that we must deal with the issues presented. Some people cannot fathom large volumes of anything, much less issues. Some don't like confrontation and others thrive on it. Extremists will do anything to promote their agenda. Others plod along working their particular influence zones. You see every human being has a 'zone of influence'. These are people they interact with and influence in one manner or another. Businesses place employees usually based on their comfort zone so they can leverage their skill sets in as natural an environment as possible. This makes it easier on management as much as on the employee and everyone is happier. Enter the realm of business entities and the issues become a bit more complex. As I stated earlier there are two types of "entities" in the world; natural entities (people) and business entities (corporations). Corporations are treated legally as people in terms of their responsibilities and behaviors, except they outlive people and (if they are successful) to endure a long time. The world has become a complex place and the intermix of agendas, capabilities, and behaviors are spanning age groups, generation gaps, social structures, cultures and national boundaries. Those with the capital available to invest in such things are tracking and measuring their success in a variety of ways. One such method is called an "Influence Map".

Influence maps depict the effectiveness or success of a given endeavor over time. Bigger splotches of color mean that particular agenda, or program, or person, has a more powerful 'zone of influence'. These depictions can be parsed and presented in a variety of ways, none of which is germane to the point here. What is relevant is the capability to perform this function at all. Now imagine who gets to see the results? Are those results, transparent or are they considered proprietary information? Businesses would consider it proprietary since they don't want their competition to know how effective or weak they are in any given area. Information systems have changed the world over the last ten decades.

There is a gap in these systems. It is something I call the "Knowledge Gap". Business Intelligence firms, software companies, throw around the word 'knowledge' so often as to make it trite. Here's the brutal cold hard truth. Knowledge, except in exceedingly rare instances, does not exist outside of a sentient mind capable of acting independently in unanticipated scenarios. Data is just a collection of facts. Information graduates data into the realm of context. Data in context is information. Information is something that knowledgeable people can use. I use the phrase 'knowledgeable people' here loosely to mean people who understand the context of the scenario. It doesn't mean, by any stretch, that people who are not familiar with that same context are not "knowledgeable" in general, nor are they stupid. They are simply not informed about that particular set of circumstances. Business Intelligence software then is intended to collect circumstances and as much data as possible about issues and then to turn that into useful information. The process cannot stop there though, because that isn't what entities want. What they want is that information inside the brains of their employees and that requires establishing a means to communicate that information to those employees. In short, it means an ability to educate. One such software company, I happen to be familiar with and who does a good job developing such systems is SAS. The name of their company is an acronym standing for Statistical Analysis Systems and it should give you an idea about how they approach things.

Now here's a thought that should scare the living daylights out of any individual. Corporations are wielding this power to achieve their agendas. That shouldn't surprise anyone. What should give people, all people, pause, is that there is no capability for the people to leverage such systems in a transparent manner to assure the integrity of the society they wish to live in. Having such a system is clearly an idealistic notion. Firstly our society is dynamic and people change their minds all the time. Secondly, some people are pathological liars. I'll refrain from stereotyping any group. I'll leave that bit to your own imaginations.

Suppose though that every law passed was required to be represented on an influence map and business intelligence data gathered against it's success and then presented in an effective manner not just to lawyers, judges and people elected to office of one sort or another, but to everyone in a transparent manner. Now I certainly, was not born yesterday, and I do not think such a system is anywhere in the near future. Way too many politicians would be crushed by such a system because it would demonstrate where the political power was and what was being affected. The people might not like that very much. What if legislation was required not only to spell out a law as they do today, but to declare the intent of the law in succinct language. Anyone could then compare behavior against two criteria: the statute and its intent. Some would argue the intent is clear as a function of reading a given law. However, society has produced a number of legislators that purposefully, obfuscate the language of statutes. Florida for example has an anti-gun law that says it is illegal to possess a firearm within 1000 feet of certain types of institutions. As interesting as it may be on paper, that legislation is arcane and impractical. If you are a law abiding citizen, with all the proper permits (regardless of what they are) and you are in your vehicle driving from point A to point B; and you happen to drive past one of these institutions, technically speaking you violated the law. The sad part is that the legislators knew this would be the case when they passed the statute. They expected law enforcement to "exercise good judgment". The problem with expectation is that isn't how our system is set up. It is not the job of the police to exercise judgment of that nature. Their job is to exercise decisions based on whether or not someone did or did not violate a given statute and let the judicial system make those determinations.

Any particular specific example I might cite here comes under the heading of politics and that isn't the point here. The point is clarity of effective communications and attaining the results the people expected.

I will also disclose that I worked for IBM for over 24 years, so my biases are out on the table. And, yes, I worked with the people at Lotus in Cambridge on several projects. For about five years I was the go to guy for knowledge management for the marketing profession worldwide. Having said that any given information system is worthless unless you can get the information into the people responsible for using it. That is just as true for a business as it is for a nation of citizens. The challenge nations have is that they often have enemies with powerful weapons and so there too are challenges to keep the world a safe place to live. Some places in the world do not celebrate individual entrepreneurial enterprise and innovation. As a general rule those places tend to perceive that as a function of power and power is centrally collected. Knowledge (to me) does not necessarily represent power. An ability to effectively share it and inculcate it in others does.

Analogies and metaphors are powerful communicators of ideas and concepts. These are tools common to military leaders throughout history. One such successful military leader was Sun Tzu who lived about 2,800 years ago. We know of him because he wrote a book that has been passed down through history entitled The Art of War. Successful leaders of all sorts, at some point in their careers will more than likely read that book. Not so they will become great military minds, but to apply the same concepts in their own realms. Realms like business.

The point of this blog post is that if you are innocent of such concepts and technologies, to make you aware of them. Make you aware so that your situational awareness is improved as you encounter commercials on television. Consider proposals. Engage those around you. Make sure you are open minded but resilient in your resolve. The constancy of your action will focus your action along your path.

My hope is that our collective path illuminates an enduring sustainable future for all life on this planet and celebrates the innovative entrepreneurial spirit of the individual. To do that we must all both see and walk the path.

The Color of Our Glasses

2011-04-17T13:09:00.008-04:00

Did your parents, or someone you trust, ever say to you "You're wearing rose colored glasses", or "No body ever promised you a rose garden". What they were implying with their allegedly witty comment was that your expectations were a bit more optimistic than you should expect to find in the real world. Back then as a child and more than likely, you simply did not understand the circumstances of the situation you were looking at. Today, your perspective has likely changed a bit.

Everyone living in geopolitical systems nurturing freely democratic societies is in business, in one form or another. And in that context, everyone is familiar with competition. Even if it's only in a sports venue. The free market economy, in theory, leverages competition in business to drive prices lower for the ultimate consumer. There is another, often not just not discussed but conversationally averted, concept in business; namely 'barrier to entry'. A "barrier to entry" is a business tactic that makes it harder for your competition to win against you. Anyone reading this probably can think of several examples right away. The larger a business becomes, the smarter they get about employing these devices. The motivation for businesses to create barriers to entry is preservation of profit revenue.

Regardless of the economic sector examined these same principles apply. So all markets trend toward monopolistic practices to some degree or another. People who start businesses and become successful, tend to want to maintain that success. Go figure. Duh. At a certain point they are going to have capital around and they use that capital to acquire their competitors business. That's one way to 'grow a business'. There are others, many others. The point is that companies generally trend towards monopolistic practices.

There are any number of examples of this in practice around the world. Invariably the consuming public is increasingly isolated as these barriers to competition go up. As it becomes harder for businesses, which after all collections of people, to compete - innovation becomes compartmentalized. Innovation becomes polarized in the social conscience. A common joke about 1990 was "Q: How many Microsoft engineers does it take to change a lightbulb? A: None, Bill Gates will simply redefine darkness as the new standard." The joke epitomizes both consumer frustration and the tactics employed by all sorts of enterprises. The consuming public does have tools to communicate their frustrations. Some have gone to great lengths to alleviate their frustrations.

As humorous as some might think videos like this are, there is a serious side to all of this. The guy in the video above took his frustrations out on a device, and not just filmed it but published the film in a public place. That film has been viewed millions of times. I'm reasonably certain the manufacturer saw the video. Not that they did anything about it, but someone in that corporation saw that video. How, they internalized the content is up to them. Individuals internalize these stresses in different ways. Recognizing those stresses brings out the nurturing in others and they try to rid others of these metaphorical pathogens.

There is an interesting social issue that arises out of all of this. First, is that individual knowledge density is finite. That is to say no one can know everything. It just isn't possible, even if you wanted too, you can't. You couldn't absorb it all and even if you could there isn't enough time to get at it before your lifespan runs out. Consequently, individuals must trust one another. In countries like the United States, people came together and created a crucible to burn away the chaff and make a reasonable attempt to get at the truth of a circumstance so reasonable people can render reasonable judgments about the circumstance. The challenge has become that the world is populated by two types of entities. Natural entities are simple to identify. They roam around in your back yard. People are natural entities. The other kind is not so easily identified. The world has defined a particular legal construct as an entity. That structure is called the "Corporation". It is treated by the courts as if it were an entity, separate from the people who work there. There are a host of reasons this is a good thing and there are aspects that warrant a tight legislative grip by the populous. Because that yen and yang exists, we have corporations like; BAR Associations, Boards of Realtors, National Associations of this type of broker or that type of agent. These structures are imbued with the public trust. That means they're supposed to look out for you. Sometimes even they get caught up with themselves and that's why the governmental congress has the final oversight responsibilities. However, if the population is not paying attention to what congress is doing, then things can get out of hand. Only when the people wake up and recognize issues do they rectify the situation by voting out their representatives and look for new blood to put into those slots. Those people are called representatives for a reason. That's what they are supposed to do. They are not their for their own edification they are there to represent the ENTITIES in their district. Did you catch that? Yup, they represent all of the entities in their district, natural and otherwise. Only the natural kind can vote however. Issues can become so complex that they easily exceed the natural and reasonable expectation of knowledge density in those that can vote. And there are those that will exploit that gap to their own advantage and agenda. Enter, smart people who care and try to explain the reasons voters should care:

As complicated as this all sounds, these issues are corrected by the electoral process. That is to say the representatives that the people don't like get voted out of office and others who know how to do the right thing take their place. In theory that's what happens. Cynics would say that process is corrupt, but generally they don't have a better solution. The bottom line is that everyone must take part in their own civics issues and they need to try to understand differing points of view.

Then there are those non-natural entities. What happens when those run afoul of the people? Well the people go back to those same representatives, along with I might add the other non-natural entities, and communicate their desires and issues. While the representatives know who can keep them in office, they also know where the money comes from. The result of all this grinding are bills passed into legislative bodies that are voted on to become laws the people have to follow. When all of this becomes completely paralyzed, like with topics on "Global Warming", we see entrenched pundits reaching into their very deep pockets and spending loads of cash to convince the public that their side is right. Voters, on the other hand, generally only have their wit to fall back on and some of those people get very creative.

We all live on the same planet, drink the same water, breath the same air. As humans we have the same basic requirements to live. All of us need to take a step back and ask ourselves, "what color are the glasses we wear? Do we expect to see a rose garden everywhere we look?" The other questions are introspective questions. They are hard questions and I'm pretty sure you know what they are, so I'm not going to belabor the point by listing any of them here.

Our fate, as humans, is in our own hands. No one else is going to act as stewards of our domain except us mere mortals. There are any number of euphemisms and metaphors I could write but you get the point. At the end of the day, it's up to us.

H2Orbit -- Its About Sustainability

2006-09-01T14:10:00.003-04:00

H2Orbit.com - It's About Sustainability, was created in 2001 as a place on the web where people could explore strategic resolutions to some of humanity's broadest problems. Far from beating the drums of doom, the site positions the problems as challenges to solve. After all they were created by us in the first place, so we ought to be able to clean up after ourselves.

Entrenched pundits work, at every corner, to protect their vested interest in the status quo, as is their right to do so. While there are many debatable issues, one corner of these issues is not open for debate. That of ocean acidification. The pH levels of the oceans has been known for a very long time and we have collected data over that amount of time. The evidence is clear and the oceans are in fact becoming more acidic and we know what is causing the problem.

Before I propose any specific resolution for those pundits to attack, it should be recognized that the problem took a long time to build. Resolving it will take time too. Large as the problem may seem to some, it can be fixed. As large as the Earth seems to others, we can poison it. We know we can because we can see it in action in the form of ocean acidification, amongst other methods. The good news is that there are also methods of correcting the acidification. It won't happen easily, nor quickly, but it can be done.

There are thousands of issues and many demographic sectors of the populations want to argue this position or that position. In the mean time, our oceans are dying and humanity is taking no action. Many are attempting to cozy up to the powerful in the status quo to curry favor. More than several politicians fall into that particular niche.

Over the coming months and years I hope to expand this blog and illuminate the strategic path forward so together, we might build an enduring and sustainable future for our collective progeny.