The week of May 21, the U.S. Navy will launch MMOWGI, a massively multiplayer online game for securing the Navy's energy future.
The video above is an introduction to the scenario. You can sign up at
http://portal.mmowgli.nps.edu/
At the end of June, a two-day Great Green Fleet demo has been planned for the Pacific near Hawaii. The nuclear aircraft carrier USS Nimitz will be accompanied by the destroyers USS Chafee and Chung Hoon. The destroyers and the F/A-18 jet aircraft will be powered by a 50/50 blend of traditional oil-based fuels and an alternative fuel made from waste fats and greases and algae. A full Green Fleet deployment is scheduled for 2016 and Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus has said that the service would get half of its energy from sources other than oil by 2020.
At the beginning of May, the House Armed Services Committee voted to cut off the $12 million funding for such experiments, the Committee’s Republican leaders passed an amendment stopping the entire Defense Department from using any alternative fuels, for any purpose, if they’re more expensive than oil, and ordered that the Defense Department be exempt from the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 which forbids federal agencies from buying alternative fuels that are more polluting than conventional ones. This would allow the military to start using the Fischer-Tropsch method of producing liquid fuel out of coal or natural gas, a process that emits more carbon dioxide than refining crude oil and burning the diesel and jet fuels made from it.
Who would you rather see play games with the energy future of the Navy? The Republican members of the House Armed Services Committee or a swarm of multiplayer game geeks that could include you?
More on the House Armed Services Committee's decision at
http://www.wired.com/...
http://www.slate.com/...