THE MOON WAS HUMONGOUS

SuperMoon arrived at 1:32 AM over Honolulu.  How humongous was it?   Well, I couldn't tell the difference, although astronomers report that it was 12% larger and 30% brighter.  If you fell asleep or got clouded over, the slowly diminishing view can be seen tonight through Tuesday night.

What is a SuperMoon?  I can go into perigee, apogee and other astrophysical terms, but let me just say that the orbit of the Moon around our Earth is not a circle, but an ellipse (oval).  

So, a supermoon is merely the closest approach of these celestial bodies at full moon.  While there is a full moon every 27 days, this proximity only happens once per year.  Similarly, there is a time when the Moon is furthest away when full, and this happened in January (and will next occur this coming January):

The relative size difference is shown above.  It turns out that the Moon-Earth relationship is unique, for our Moon has the skinniest ellipse in our solar system of any other moon around its planet.   The next SuperMoon will occur in August of 2014.

Of course there is a SuperSun, sort of, every year, and the next one will occur in 12 days, 5July13.  

However, we are so far away in our swing around the Sun (called perihelion--the furthest is called aphelion) that the contrast is hardly worth your attention.  Plus, be careful about staring at the Sun.

Click here to see the supermoon next to recognizable structures around the world.  Just posted, watch Michelle Fowler of NASA summarizing the whole thing, and everything else you might have wanted to know about our Moon, including from where it came.

I spent much of the night and morning trying to keep out of the rain to view this SuperMoon, from sunset to SuperMoonset:

The above photos were taken with my new SONY Cybershot HX50V:  20.4 megapixels, clear image zoom 60x and optical zoom 30x.  It is unfortunately somewhat weighty, smaller than the NEX-5, but double the weight of my assortment of cigarette sized Cybershots.  I need to learn how to get clearer moonshots.

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There is a newly formed tropical depression in the East Pacific which looms to become a hurricane, but will fizzle before getting anywhere close to Hawaii:

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MY CHOICE FOR THE ABSOLUTE BEST SCOTCH

A week ago I began a three  part series on scotch.  Here is part 3 with a punch line at the end on the best scotch sold today. 

Let me start with really old elixirs, mostly from The Good Life of Cigar Aficionado.  The rarest and oldest Islay Single Malt is Bowmore's 1957 54 year old, bottled in a hand-blown platinum encrusted decanter and sold for $160,000 to an American.  Proceeds went to five Scottish charities.  Eleven bottles are left.

I have a 25 year old standard Bowmore:  12 years old, but purchased 13 years ago.  The price of a new 12 year old bottle is around $46.  A 25 year old today sells for $317.

The oldest whisky being sold is the 70 year old Mortlach, which can be purchased for a mere $5,269.  But, ah, a 64 year old Macallan raised $460,000 at an auction, and holds the Guinness record:

My favorite scotch is Lagavulin, which begins sales at 16 years old because it comes from a colder part of Scotland and needs more time to mature.  It costs around $60, but the 30 year old can be found for $1683.  I've had a 16 year old bottle of Lagavulin for at least 14 years, so....

Most don't realize that White Horse, a "cheap" scotch (you'll note that there is no age indicated), first blended in 1890, includes Lagavulin.  They're both from the same company.  White Horse has that hint of smokey peat, and a bottle costs $14.  In terms of value, I believe White Horse is the best scotch made.

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A REALLY GOOD ITALIAN RESTAURANT IN HONOLULU FOR LUNCH

As I travel the world, I tend to splurge on lunches at Michelin 3-Star and Pellegrino Best 100 restaurants.  I can report on a real discovery in Honolulu:  Mimasuya Italiano from Kyoto.  The site in Uraku Tower, though, has been toxic in the past, as previous enterprises have included Elua, Sapori and Padovani, all reasonably classy, within the past three years.  I hope this latest venture makes it, for Mimasuya epitomizes the essence of Italian restaurants from Japan (and the original is, indeed, from Kyoto):  authentically Italian, upscale and a touch of fusion.  I understand that parking is free in the building.

Most diners come for the $13 three course luncheon.  I am not exaggerating when I say that this combination is a hundred times better than the $13 garlic ahi I had at the Ala Wai Golf Course yesterday.  Granted, this is not much of a fair comparison.  Click on the YELP posting to read what customers have said about their salad, appetizer and main dish package, which comes with focaccia bread and olive oil/balsamic, for I chose the more adventuresome $23 special.

My lunch featured three appetizers, salad, a pasta and a main entrée.  As the appetizers seemed to be infused with crustaceans, which I am allergic to, I asked if they could instead replace all three with just a plate of spaghetti bolognese.  They were accommodating, here with their salad and a glass of Bendolio Pinot Grigio:

While the bolognese was not as delicious as what was prepared for me at The Dining Room of the Four Seasons at Koele on Lanai last week, the spaghetti here was more perfectly al dente, and it was nice of them to allow me to make this adjustment.

My second course included salmon with vegetables and gorgonzola/mushrooms risotto, plus a glass of Joel Gott 815 Cabernet Sauvignon, and in a Riedel glass:

I would say that this was the best Italian meal I've had since my spectacular white truffles risotto at La Terrazza dell'Eden in Rome three years ago.  Wines included, the Mimasuya bill was about one-tenth what I paid in Italy.

On my way out there was a line waiting to thank me for coming--Shintaro Yano (General Manager), Mark Rogers (waiter) and Toshiya Umeda (Executive Chef):

Yes, I can very highly recommend Mimasuya Italiano of Kyoto.

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WHAT ARE THE OPTIONS FOR SUSTAINABLE AVIATION?

To follow-on from my posting yesterday on sustainable ground transport, I coincidentally received an e-mail this week from another colleague on biojetfuel.  You might want to watch the 30April 2012 presentation of Chad Haynes from the Advanced Research Projects Agency--Energy (ARPA-E), for he provides a new paradigm in transformational energy research.  In short, he is directing for the U.S. Department of Energy a pioneering bio-effort for next generation green fuels.  He had a slide on using macroalgae to produce isobutanol, of relevance because when you link three of these molecules, you get jet fuel.  Blue Revolution Hawaii reported on these prospects in 2011.    Click on Chad's updated PowerPoint.

 This was my response to the person who sent me this information:

Dear Michael:

Good work!  Maybe you have stumbled onto your possible legacy regarding Hawaii, for the future of aviation remains our greatest challenge.  Renewable electricity is slowly happening, for this is where 95% of the effort is being expended.  But two-thirds of our energy requirements are non-electricity, especially to bring tourists to Hawaii, which, unfortunately, remains our dominant economic problem.

I watched the whole ARPA-E presentation and, finally, at least one organization is beginning to look at this biojetfuel need.  However, while the funding allocated for biomass to jetfuel remains minuscule, at least there is now some progress.  I'm fixated on a billion dollars, but this is the sum necessary to make a difference.  Unfortunately for this field in general, as researchers and companies begin to get involved, they mostly then gravitate toward higher value products, for that is where the profits can be made.  Energy remains, still, too cheap.  But this is okay, for there is always a transitional need to better develop the science and engineering.  At some point in the future, who knows what will become the price of oil when Israel bombs Iran, and the Middle East becomes an inferno.  Without a catastrophic political stimulant, though, I suspect it will be slow business as usual until it is too late.

By the way, I noticed that there was a comment to the Blue Revolution Hawaii article on marine biofuel, so I responded.  You might want to click on that link.  Keep up your efforts in this area.

Aloha.

To summarize, there are two primary pathways for next generation aviation:

  1.  A sustainable and clean replacement for jetful.

  2.  A completely new flight technology, most probably with hydrogen as the fuel of choice.

Why hydrogen?  It is the lightest fuel with high impulse, which is why space launches use liquid hydrogen.  What is wrong with hydrogen?  It is too expensive.

Some history about hydrogen-fueled aircraft:

  1.  In 1979 I joined the staff of U.S Senator Spark Matsunaga, and was asked to create some legislation for hydrogen.  With the assistance of Willis Hawkins (who started Lockheed Missiles and Space Company and served as president) and Dan Brewer (also of Lockheed, who in 1991 published Hydrogen Aircraft Technology--here he is at the age of 93, taken last year), we created some language on hydrogen jetliners.  This bill spurred the development of the National Aerospace Plane.  The resultant Matsunaga Hydrogen Act stimulated a national hydrogen program that began at zero dollars, but at one point in the 2000's had a budget exceeding that of solar technologies in the Department of Energy.

  2.  In 1988 the Russian Tupolev Tu-155 was the first aircraft to operate on liquid hydrogen.

  3.  A NASA program was created for the National Aerospace Plane in the 80's, but was shifted to the Department of Defense, and is now a black (secret) program.

  4.  The European Union did a study called Cryoplane in 2003:

The CRYOPLANE analysis concludes that hydrogen could be a suitable alternative fuel for future aviation. Based on renewable energy sources it offers the chance to continue the long-term growth of aviation without damaging the atmosphere. Importantly no critical barriers to implementation were identified in the study. Further research is needed, but implementation could take place within 15 to 20 years.

  5.  Nearly four years ago I posted an article in the Huffington Post on The Future of Sustainable Aviation.

  6.  Just last month the U.S Navy broke a drone (right) endurance record using hydrogen fuel.

7.  There are various attempts at dirigibles, some powered by hydrogen.  I've discussed with Rinaldo Brutoco prospects for the Hawaiian Hydrogen Clipper (H2C).  Aeros Aeronautical Systems had Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) funding for:

However, there is no commercial hydrogen jetliner nor passenger blimp into the foreseeable future.  DARPA and the Department of Energy, are making tentative efforts to develop clean fuels.  Thus, biojet fuel appears to be the only viable option for near term (within a decade or two) sustainability.  Various airlines have experimented with biofuels and a range of companies is pioneering the effort:

  1.  BioJet Corporation and Great Plains Oil and Exploration (camellia)

  2.  JATRO (jatropha)

  3.  RenewableJetFuels.org (a web site advocating sustainability)
     a.  Lanzatech
     b.  SG Biofuels
     c.  Alt Air
     d.  Solazyme
     e.  Sapphire

The problem with all the above is the cost of biojetfuel.  Jetfuel today costs $2.83/gallon.  Keep in mind that to sell at $2.83/gallon means you will need to produce at the factory for less than $2/gallon, for there are added expenses like transport, profit, taxes, etc.  This partly explains why jetfuel is much cheaper than gasoline, as the applied tax is less than half.   But jetfuel increases in cost proportionally to gasoline, so what can be expected into the future?

Yet, before you get too depressed, note that the Chicago Mercantile Exchange has petroleum at $78.27/barrel in December of 2021!

Most of the current biofuel efforts struggle to reach $18/gallon, and the U.S. Air Force last year paid $59/gallon.  Algae jetfuel?  The Navy laid out $424/gallon.  Cooking oil has been used, and this is relatively cheap, but this is a joke because a few flights would consume all the fuel available.

Thus, nothing competitive looms unless the price of oil skyrockets...which certainly can happen if Israel bombs Iran, igniting a major war in the region.  Discouragingly, even if oil doubles to $200/barrel ($4.76/gallon), how close is industry to producing sustainable substitutes for $3.50/gallon or less?  Just in case, shouldn't we be taking a closer re-look at hydrogen and next generation flight options? Oh, the bottom line to the question posed in the title is that as theoretically ominous as global warming might be, humanity is particularly screwed when it comes to available options for sustainable aviation.

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WHAT IS THE BEST SUSTAINABLE GROUND TRANSPORT OPTION?

My personal sense is that we will begin to phase out internal combustion engines over the next quarter century.  The executive director of the International Energy Agency, Nobuo Tanaka, predicts a disappearance by 2050.   As the lithium battery will probably be the final battery, and a fuel cell can take a vehicle (for the same internal space of the system) five times further, future land transport will most probably be powered by fuel cells.  

Yet, there are near fatal flaws plaguing this technology.  As the person who wrote the initial Senate legislation creating the Matsunaga Hydrogen Act, and in the nineties chaired the U.S. Secretary of Energy's Hydrogen Technical Advisory Panel, while I continue to harbor hopes about the long-term importance of hydrogen, I suspect that we remain many decades away from the Hydrogen Economy.  Fortunately enough, there is methanol, a liquid biofuel capable of directly being utilized by fuel cells.  Ethanol has two carbons and will have difficulty.

While the current practice is to produce ethanol (the alcohol you can also drink) through fermentation, methanol (right) is best manufactured from methane (left), which can be obtained by gasifying biomass.  No matter how you analyze it, methanol is cheaper to produce than ethanol, and, further, does not compete with food options.  One incredible fact is that one gallon of methanol has 1.4 times more accessible hydrogen than a gallon of liquid hydrogen (LH). Amazingly enough, a gallon of each today costs $1.50/gallon.  If they are produced from renewable resources, the price could jump to perhaps $2.50/gallon, still not bad.  The energy content of LH is one-fourth that of gasoline, while methanol is half, or double that of LH.  

As methanol is the only liquid fuel that can reasonably efficiently be directly fed to a fuel cell, and our infrastructure is liquid, not gaseous, why don't we look closer at a possible biomethanol economy?  Alas, our national policy has purposefully ignored this potential.

Given green methanol, you're not going to combust it in an engine, unless you're a drag racer.  The direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) is the obvious pathway.  The problem is that almost no government research has been done on the DMFC.  We are a billion dollars away from real commercialization, with the risk that a DMFC might just not be practical.  However, it is real because Toshiba has been marketing one for portable applications, and a few other companies are trying, also only for electronic devices.

So, today, I responded to a colleague on this subject, who had sent me a link to a Department of Energy web site touting the plug-in electric car.

Dear John:

Sometime soon I was planning to post on this subject, and will.  Your reference should help me be a bit more optimistic, because I was planning to lean in the negative direction, and almost surely still will.

I plugged in the number for Hawaii, and the costs are similar, both around $3.74.  But that is because our electricity rates are three times the national average.  My analysis, which hasn't changed much from when I did this for my book on SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Planet Earth, delves into the added cost of EV's, especially plug-ins (I am favorably disposed towards hybrids), and how you will never make up the difference.  Then, when you add the limited range, the fact that 38% of our electricity still comes from coal and that the lithium battery will be last battery (the periodic table says so), I continue to have reservations.  

Plug-ins are just not selling well, Tesla* is only for the rich and Fisker Karma went bankrupt.  I appreciate that there is a transition period, and the time to build that bridge to the future is now.  Thus, I don't oppose EV's.  I just have a sense that there is too much overblown enthusiasm for a pathway that is questionable.

So what is the future of grand transport?  C.E. Thomas makes a case for fuel cells.  However, he is pushing hydrogen, which I think is as much as a century away.  I've known Sandy for decades and we've had this debate about what is best, on numerous occasions.  I still think the direct methanol fuel cell (DMFC) is this future.  But I can't seem to convince enough important decision-makers.  I wrote in the Huffington Post almost five years ago on:

Is There An Option More Promising Than  the Plug-In Electric Vehicle?

And remain convinced that the DMFC is the way to go.  We need a billion dollars to do this, or prove it won't work.  

The opportunist might turn out to be Qatar.  At least this is what the advised the Emir when I was there.

Aloha.

* Cheapest Tesla costs $60,000, although a third generation is being floated to the media for sale by 2017 for $35,000, with a 200 mile range  and a battery switching operation that should take only a minute.  I'm not optimistic.  For one, Better Place, a company formed to do just this, is now bankrupt.

I thought the above message matched well with my topic of today. In particular, there are excellent links to various elements of this broader subject.  To answer the question of the day...for the third time...the direct methanol fuel cell remains my choice as the best sustainable ground option worthy of development.

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THE FUTURE OF SOLAR THERMAL ENERGY

You are familiar with solar hot water heaters and solar photovoltaics (PV).  You might not be up to date on solar thermal energy, that third option using the sun to heat a fluid, which then passes through the Rankine Cycle to produce electricity.  After all, the Sun is free and there are no serious global climate warming implications, like all renewable alternatives.

A typical system is the Tower of Power above, and the largest such development is soon to go on line at Ivanpah, California, on the border with Nevada.  Each tower is nearly 500 feet tall and there are 173,000 heliostats (tracking mirror). 

Brightsource and Bechtel are responsible for this effort.  There were 45 million separate parts

Covering 4,000 acres (and this is one negative, space), costing $2.2 billion, at peak the facility will produce close to 400 megawatts, slightly less than half the amount of a typical nuclear powerplant.  Of course, the nuclear plant is good for 24 hours / day, while our Sun is only out there for, effectively (clouds, etc.), a third that.  In comparison, then, a 1000 MW nuclear powerplant would actually almost produce ten times the electricity of this specific solar station on 2%  the land.  And I say this even though I am anti-nuclear and pro-solar.  Read my Huffington Post article on:

     Renewable Electricity is Our Only Viable Option

But the point is that this is the most viable future option for utilities, and, over time, if storage is included, should eventually cost less than a similar PV field.  These 392 MWs will bring the world capacity to over 1000 MW.  However, last year 3,300 MW of PV was installed, just in the USA.  Yet, 14,000 MW of these solar thermal farms are said to be globally underway.

Can you believe that environmentalists almost scuttled this effort?  One hundred fifty desert tortoises lived on that site.  A compromise was reached.  A sum of $50 million was set aside to move those creatures.  The project will come to fruition because the Federal Government paid almost three-quarters ($1.6 billion) the total cost and this all sits on public lands.

These estimates vary quite wildly, but here is a California estimate:

LEVELIZED ENERGY (US$/MWh---divide by a thousand for cents/kWh)
Advanced Nuclear     67

Coal                        4–88

Gas                       87–346

Geothermal                67

Hydro power         48–86

Wind power              60

Solar                    116–312

Biomass                 47–117

Fuel Cell                86–111

Wave Power            611

In the longer term, the Middle East should greatly benefit from solar thermal energy, as they are "soon" to run out of oil, and the Sun will be around for billions of years.  Saudi Arabia, for example, dedicated the "largest" solar thermal plant last year. 

The future market for solar thermal is promising.

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THE VOICE FINALS TONIGHT!

Until last night I never bothered to watch The Voice, now in its fourth season, based on The Voice of Holland (yes, from the Netherlands).  There are four coaches (Shakira, Adam Levine, Blake Shelton and Usher, all pretty famous singers), and, if I heard correctly, they started with 40,000 entrants.    The Coaches opened the program:

The finalists all had excellent voices, with The Swon Brothers harmonizing well:

Michelle Chamuel sang fine, if not great, but left me with an unfortunate impression of Groucho Marx:

Then there was Danielle Bradbery, all of 16 years old:

She and the Swon Brothers were coached by Shelton, while Usher was Michelle's tutor.  Look, America voted last night, and the results will not be announced until tonight at 8PM (EST and Hawaii) on NBC, but I give Gidget, no, make that Danielle, a 95% chance of winning.  [FOR THE RECORD, DANIELLE DID, INDEED, PREVAIL!]  Shelton's student last year, Cassadee Pope, was the victor:

Hear her sing Cry.  Nothing to do with Johnny Ray.

Okay, if Danielle will win, why should you watch this 2-hour program tonight?  First, I could be wrong.  Second, Cher will sing "Woman's World," the first single off her first album in 12 years of the same title.  Sure, she's now 67, but she still looks terrific...well, not bad, anyway.

YES, THAT WAS CHER ON THE VOICE.

Plus, performing will also be Bruno Mars, Florida Georgia Line, Nelly, Pitbull and Christina Aguilera.  And, oh, the winner will be announced.  By the way, there will be a Season 5, when Shakira and Usher take sabbaticals, and CeeLo Green and Christina Aquilera will re-unite with Levine and Blake in their red chairs, with Carson Daly (right) continuing as host:

Finally, tonight is night two of America's Got Talent.  There were several highlights last week:

-  Travis Pratt (right), opera singer, who also at the end proposed to his girlfriend, who had coaxed him to compete.

  -  Jonathan Allen (left), who does nothing, said he got kicked out of his home at the age of 18 and is unemployed, but did an incredible Pavarotti.  The surprise factor for both is that you wouldn't have expected those voices from those faces.

  -  My favorite was 10 year old Anna Christine.  The next Jackie Evancho?  No, for she sang "House of the Rising Sun," and also accompanied herself on her electronic keyboard.

At least the odds are high on this survival series that the winner won't sing Country and Western, and could well do magic or boss around dogs.

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