I got an email from Southern Illinois that said 30 big rigs had rolled through town yesterday morning. I figure that that is enough for 2 wells. It seems like some drilling company has decided to “go for it”. Which makes sick and disgusting sense. Many of the leases die at the end of April, there have not been test wells drilled so no one knows what is down there and it takes about  7 days to to drill a well and frack it. That would have the wells beginning to come in as the lease expires. This is what I said in print.

Thursday, April 11,2013

Letters to the Editor 4/11/13

Fracking and litter control act

By Letters to the Editor

FRACKING STINKS

I am

writing to argue for a moratorium against fracking in Illinois (SB 1418). Chicago environmentalists argue that “fracking is going to happen anyway.” That is a total capitulation to the industry. The bill that the environmentalists endorse (HB2615) is amazing in the things it does not prevent. It does not force the frackers to recycle their water, allows for methane flaring, allows wells within 300 feet of water sources, allows wells within 500 feet of a house, does not allow adequate testing of produced waters especially for radiation and then allows that waste to be deep well injected and finally allows for the state to overrule counties and municipalities who do not want fracking or more protective measures.

Many states have tried to establish hydraulic fracturing regulations that would allow the industry to drill safely. The problem is regulations do not work. The industry always violates the regulations and when caught pays the fine as part of standard operating procedure. These violations include injecting radioactive water underground, open pit storage of fracking and waste waters even where not permitted, the production of toxic fumes and the sickening of residents, well water contamination and the direct dumping of toxic water into springs and streams. They have gone so far as to sell toxic water to county townships to suppress dust in the summer and to de-ice roads in the winter as if that was safe. Homeowners are duped into selling mineral rights without being told that it will make their houses impossible to sell and wreck their mortgages. In Pennsylvania their violations include:

- 224 violations of “failure to properly store, transport, process or dispose of residual waste.”

- 143 violations of “discharge of pollutional material to the waters of Commonwealth.”

- 140 violations of “pit and tanks not constructed with sufficient capacity to contain pollutional substances.”

This does not include the actual damage that they do to the environment, like damaging the roads where they work, and flaring the natural gas that should be harnessed as a fuel source and the constant noise pollution that the above activities produce. I was visiting a friend in Colorado when such a well was put in and the noise and smell alone were enough to sicken me.

Doug Nicodemus
Riverton
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Go there and read. They did a whole 5 page article on the issue. More later.

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This is so big that I just had to find the original source. Once I got to the source the article did not carry the same headline as the inflammatory piece from Washington Blog but in the last paragraph he does imply phasing out the nukes. He also points out that no upgrades have been ordered in response to Fukushima nor included in the new licenses issue. This IS the insanity of Nuclear Generation of electricity.

http://peakoil.com/alternative-energy/former-u-s-nuclear-chief-american-nuclear-plants-should-be-phased-out-cant-guarantee-against-accident-causing-widespread-land-contamination

But this is what the guy really said.

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/fukushima/AJ201303140050

March 14, 2013

By SHIRO NAMEKATA/ Correspondent

As it is poised to impose strict regulatory measures on the operation of nuclear power plants, the Nuclear Regulation Authority is increasingly met by opposition that it is making the resumption of plants that are currently offline virtually impossible.

In a recent interview with The Asahi Shimbun in Washington, Gregory Jaczko, former chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), said it is crucial for a nuclear watchdog to stay independent from the nuclear industry.

Jaczko, who, unlike his four colleagues, opposed the first new construction and operation of a nuclear plant in the United States since the 1979 Three Mile Island accident, also discussed the future of nuclear energy. Excerpts from the interview follow:

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Go there and read. More next time.

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Well to be fair, they actually think it is going to be natural gas, but at least they mention solar.

http://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Shell-Predicts-that-Natural-Gas-or-Solar-will-Become-the-No.-1-Energy-Source.html

Shell Predicts that Natural Gas or Solar will Become the No. 1 Energy Source

By Charles Kennedy | Sun, 03 March 2013

Royal Dutch Shell (NYSE: RDS.A) has just released new forecasts for its ‘New Lens Scenarios’ program, which aims to predict how current business decision and policies may unfold over time and affect the markets in the future.

Peter Voser, the CEO of Shell, explained that the scenarios “highlight the need for business and government to find ways to collaborate, fostering policies that promote the development and use of cleaner energy and improve energy efficiency.”

The scenarios take two different approaches: one considers the world with a high level of government involvement, and the other looks at the markets when they are given more freedom to develop naturally.

With high government involvement in dictating energy and policies, Shell believes that natural gas will flourish to become the number one energy source in the world over the next couple of decades, overtaking coal and helping to reduce carbon emissions.

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Go there and read. More later.

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Yet when I go to the SJ-Rs Website I can not find the article to share with you. That is a really really bad mistake by a paper that is on its last legs. These guys claim that their digital Product is as good as their print Product, but guess what maybe not. Anyway here is the home page. You go there see if you can find it.

http://www.sj-r.com/

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In the mean time here is an article that I could find discussing or should I say disgusting the issue. This is a real brazen attempt by vested interests to keep a wind farm out of the State Capital. I do not know whether it is the Republican parties hatred of the topic of man caused global warming in general or because of oil and gas interests in the Capital but this is the stupidist thing the County Board has ever done. There are wind farms all over this state and Sangamon County is the only one that has to have “special” zoning codes for them. This after the City Council of Springfield, at no ones request, placed height restrictions on personal wind turbines so as to render them ineffective. This county is completely gross.

http://www.sj-r.com/local/x871170515/County-board-to-debate-new-wind-turbine-proposal

The Sangamon County Board has scheduled a special meeting Monday to look at changes to county wind turbine rules that would increase the minimum distance between a turbine and a house.

The board imposed a moratorium on wind turbines in January so it could revamp its zoning rules. The turbines use wind energy to generate electricity.

The county now requires a large wind turbine to be at least 1,000 feet or three times the diameter of the rotors, whichever is greater, from a house. The setback from the property line must be at least 1,200 feet.

While no wind farm proposals are before the county board, Springfield Project Development, a joint development between American Wind Energy Management and Oak Creek Energy Systems, is planning a wind farm in western Sangamon County.

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I would say, go there and read like I usually do but. More tomorrow.

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This article is both disturbing and self explanatory.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/

How Deadly Is Your Kilowatt? We Rank The Killer Energy Sources

James Conca, Contributor

Everyone’s heard of the carbon footprint of different energy sources, the largest footprint belonging to coal because every kWhr of energy produced emits about 900 grams of CO2. Wind and nuclear have the smallest carbon footprint with only 15 g emitted per kWhr, and that mainly from concrete production, construction, and mining of steel and uranium. Biomass is supposedly carbon neutral as it sucks CO2 out of the atmosphere before it liberates it again later, although production losses are significant depending upon the biomass.  Carbon emissions and physical footprints are known as externalities and are those vague someone-has-to-pay-eventually kind of thing it’s hard to put a value on. Proposed carbon footprint taxes are in the range of $15 to $40/ton of  CO2 emitted, but assigning a physical footprint cost depends on the region, ecosystem sensitivities and importance. A hundred-acre wetlands to be flooded by a new dam is worth more to the planet than a barren hundred-acre strip under a solar array in the Mojave (P. Bickel and R. Friedrich, 2005).

But an energy’s deathprint, as it is called, is rarely discussed. The deathprint is the number of people killed by one kind of energy or another per kWhr produced and, like the carbon footprint, coal is the worst and wind and nuclear are the best. According to the World Health Organization, the Centers for Disease Control, the National Academy of Science and many health studies over the last decade (NAS 2010), the adverse impacts on health become a significant effect for fossil fuel and biofuel/biomass sources (see especially Brian Wang for an excellent synopsis). In fact, the WHO has called biomass burning in developing countries a major global health issue (WHO int). The table below lists the mortality rate of each energy source as deaths per trillion kWhrs produced. The numbers are a combination of actual direct deaths and epidemiological estimates, and are rounded to two significant figures.

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Go there and read. The numbers are disgusting. More tomorrow.

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I hate to say it but it couldn’t happen to a nicer company. For years they have been one of the least tolerant of companies. They resisted any thought of innovation. Stuck to burning coal and nuclear power plants long after it was fashionable. And snickered all the time like an evil teenager. They fought regulation until they were overwhelmed. Bad karma always comes to a bad end.

http://www.suntimes.com/business/15247115-420/comed-rate-hike-issue-delayed-customers-keep-switching.html

ComEd rate-hike issue delayed; customers keep switching

BY SANDRA GUY Business Reporter sguy@suntimes.com September 19, 2012 6:06PM

The Illinois Commerce Commission on Wednesday delayed until Oct. 3 reconsidering a Commonwealth Edison rate-hike request centered on how ComEd accounts for its pension assets.

he ICC previously approved a rate that ComEd claimed was inadequate, ruling that ComEd can’t earn a rate of return on a pension asset that isn’t fully funded.

The commission took up other issues at its meeting Wednesday in Springfield, and didn’t give a reason for the delay.

ComEd had proposed a decrease in its electricity rates totaling $40 million to $50 million, but because of the pension issue, the ICC decided May 29 to cut customers’ rates by four times that for a total of $168.6 million.

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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The unstable weather patterns created by Global Warming means that there will be drought and flooding somewhere in the world, more or less at the same time. So this impending hurricane just pushes the drought out of its way for a while but it will come back.

http://in.reuters.com/article/2012/08/30/us-usa-drought-idINBRE87T0Z620120830

Drought eases in U.S. Midwest, worsens in northern Plains

(Reuters) – The worst U.S. drought in a half century loosened its grip on the Midwest in the past week, helped by rain and cooler temperatures, but the drought grew more dire in the northern Plains, a report from climate experts said on Thursday.

But the improved Midwest weather arrived too late for crops in major farm states such as Kansas, Iowa, Illinois and Indiana, where severe corn and soybean yield losses have already been realized.

The portion of the contiguous United States suffering from at least “severe” drought fell to 42.34 percent from 44.03 percent over the prior week, according to the Drought Monitor, a weekly synthesis representing a consensus climatologists.

The percentage of the Midwest in that category slipped to 49.96 from 51.06 the previous week, with the most notable improvement in Indiana, 64.07 percent of which was under severe drought or worse, down from 81.48 percent a week ago.

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Go there and read. More next week.

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But the damage has already been done. The next question is what about next year. First, the seed corn was a total wash this year so right now they are trying to grow enough in Brazil to even get us going next year. But then the next question is when to plant and where. If anybody was a good enough predictor to get in during or right after the late frost then your corn would be fine and you would be sitting on a gold mine. This is contingent on us getting some moisture over the winter. If we don’t get enough moisture well then next year looks bleak.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/aug/30/iowa-corn-crop-drought-farmers-prices?newsfeed=true

• 
• • Dominic Rushe in Des Moines

Thursday 30 August 2012 10.44 EDT

Flying into Des Moines, the corn fields look surprisingly green. America’s midwest produces half the world’s corn and Iowa its largest harvest, yet amid the worst drought in living memory all the untrained eye can see is the occasional brown mark, like a cigarette burn on the baize of a pool table.

But appearances can be deceptive.

In Boone, Iowa, 30 miles away from the state capital, traffic backs up for miles bringing 200,000 people to Farm Progress, the US’s largest agricultural show one. Here, all the talk is of the drought.

Pam Johnson, first vice-president of the National Corn Growers Association, says she can’t remember one as bad as this in her 40 years of farming. “My parents say you have to go back to the 1930s for anything comparable,” she says. In June, her farm in northern Iowa got an inch and a half of rain. “We usually get that a week. In July we got seven-tenths of an inch, for the month.” Rain may be coming soon, thanks to hurricane Isaac, but it’s too late for America’s corn crop.

The US planted 97m acres of corn for this year’s crop – the most since 1937. If everything had gone according to plan, this year’s harvest would have produced a new record, at close to 15bn bushels of corn (a bushel is 24 million metric tonnes). It’s too early to say what the final tally will be, but the US department of agriculture has slashed its forecast to 10.8bn. Dan Basse, president of AgResources, an independent agriculture analyst, says that figure is likely to come down. “We’ve lost 4bn bushels of corn. That’s the largest loss in history, and we could lose another,” he says. The USDA has declared counties in 38 states to be “disaster areas”. About 72% of cattle areas are experiencing drought.

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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This drought is so severe that it will take more then a hurricane to end it.  Two or three hurricanes maybe, but this one no way.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/tropical-storm-isaac-could-bring-welcome-rain-to-midwest-but-unlikely-to-break-drought/2012/08/28/3066b0a4-f0e0-11e1-b74c-84ed55e0300b_story.html

Tropical Storm Isaac could bring welcome rain to Midwest but unlikely to break drought

Those areas are among those hard hit by the drought that stretches from the West Coast east into Kentucky and Ohio, with pockets in Georgia and Alabama. The rain that falls inland likely will ease but not eliminate drought, because those areas are so dry, said Mark Svoboda, a climatologist with the National Drought Mitigation Center.

Arkansas rancher Don Rodgers said his area is short 17 inches of rain this year. He said even a couple of inches from Isaac would make a significant difference because he would have water for his cattle and might be able to grow some forage for this winter.

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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While I wrote about the higher output temperatures of power plant effluent (water) and the effects on the wild life and the surrounding environment. But the fact is, they have been dropping in production too. I mean if you can cool them, they will melt and for the most part that is a bad thing especially for the nukes. The President of PG&E was crowing about their nuke being cooled by sea water so “as to be not effected” by the drought and climate warming. He may want to rethink that.

http://insideclimatenews.org/news/20120815/nuclear-power-plants-energy-nrc-drought-weather-heat-water

Extreme Heat, Drought Show Vulnerability of Nuclear Power Plants

Reactor shutdown in Connecticut is latest sign that nuclear energy would face challenges from climate change.

Aug 15, 2012

Will 2012 go down as the year that left the idea of nuclear energy expansion in the hot, dry dust?

Nuclear energy might be an important weapon in the battle against climate change, some scientists have argued, because it doesn’t emit greenhouse gases. But separate of all the other issues with nuclear, that big plus would be moot if the plants couldn’t operate, or became too inefficient, because of global warming.

In June, InsideClimate News reported on the findings of Dennis Lettenmaier, a researcher at the University of Washington. His study found that nuclear and other power plants will see a 4 to 16 percent drop in production between 2031 and 2060 due to climate change-induced drought and heat.

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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