Category Archives: burning behavior

Safe Nuclear Reactors – There is no such thing

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There are however safer Nuclear Reactors. But the real drawback is that even France – that spent 600 million Euro son there’s –  gave up their research one 2 years ago.  So Bill Gates may be one of the smartest men on the planet, but for a badly mixed metaphor, he is barking up the wrong tree. Since sodium remains liquid at high temperatures – instead of turning into steam – sodium reactors do not need the heavy pressurized hulls of PWRs. But sodium burns on contact with air and explodes when plunged into water. Like I said “safer” reactor. Then as always, there is the problem with what to do with the fuel.

https://news.yahoo.com/tiny-wyoming-town-bill-gates-051826365.html

In tiny Wyoming town, Bill Gates bets big on nuclear power

BRADY McCOMBS and MEAD GRUVER
·8 min read

KEMMERER, Wyoming (AP) — In this sleepy Wyoming town that has relied on coal for over a century, a company founded by the man who revolutionized personal computing is launching an ambitious project to counter climate change: A nationwide reboot of nuclear energy technology.

Until recently, Kemmerer was little-known for anything except J.C. Penney’s first store and some 55-million-year-old fish fossils in quarries down the road.

Then in November, a company started by Bill Gates, TerraPower, announced it had chosen Kemmerer for a nontraditional, sodium-cooled nuclear reactor that will bring on workers from a local coal-fired power plant scheduled to close soon.

The demonstration project comes as many U.S. states see nuclear emerging as an answer to fill the gap as a transition away from coal, oil and natural gas to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Many residents in Kemmerer, where the population of 2,700 is little-changed since the 1990s, see the TerraPower project as a much-needed economic boost because Rocky Mountain Power’s Naughton power plant will close 2025. The plant employs about 230 and a mine that supplies coal exclusively to the plant — and is also at risk of closing if it can’t find another customer — almost 300.

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Go there and read (pray). More next week.

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When Utility companies Scream Bloody Murder – You know something is going right

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Passed ON. That is what all this ruckus is about. What does the non technical phrase – pass on mean? Large corporations always say things like, “if you tax us we’ll just pass the costs on customers”. Well that assumes the government is going to let you do that. If the government says, “Nope – can’t do that”. Well, like 2 yros, they can cry and pout, but they can also get sent to their collective rooms. Leave it to PG&E and FLP to try to weasel out of the future.

Then who are these environmental groups in the headline, oh media writer? Its one group in California. Towards the bottom of the piece, and I mean the BOTtom – he says MOST environmental groups are “closer to solar’s position”. Great reading if you are stuck inside by a foot of snow and road conditions that are dangerous. Thank you very much.

https://news.yahoo.com/florida-and-california-consider-changes-that-could-decimate-the-rooftop-solar-market-experts-say-100018985.html

Florida and California consider changes that could ‘decimate the rooftop solar market,’ experts say

Ben Adler

·Senior Climate Editor

California and Florida are considering revoking a policy that has encouraged homeowners to install rooftop solar panels — causing fear among solar panel owners and installers, and creating divisions in the environmental community.

Utility companies in the two states, some sympathetic politicians and even some environmental advocacy groups are taking aim at subsidies to purchase and install solar panels because they say those costs are ultimately passed on to other ratepayers.

The crux of the issue is a practice called “net metering,” in which the electricity solar panel owners send back to the grid is removed from their monthly bill. The credits are applied at the same retail rate at which electricity is sold to consumers. That’s a higher rate than the wholesale price at which utilities buy electricity from large-scale producers. For example, if the retail rate is 30 cents per kilowatt hour, the amount a utility would pay a bulk producer — like a commercial wind farm — might be 15 cents per kilowatt hour. The difference covers the costs of building and maintaining the electric grid and the utility’s other overhead costs. (Utilities’ profit margins more typically come from their capital investments.)

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Go there and read as much as you can stomach. More next week.

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Leave It In The Ground – Biden should not tap the Petroleum Reserves

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But he will because he is afraid. Generally I have liked the policies that Biden has enacted and the results. But tapping the Petroleum Reserves is not one of them. He is doing it because he is afraid of the effects of inflation on the mid term elections. But it will not change that. Those effects are already present. “Leave it in the ground”, is a slogan for a reason. Once you let fossil fuels out, they will be used. That Biden doesn’t get this is a sign that he is old. Please! Will some of the younger people around him shake him and wake him up. Like Greta says, Old People talk – blah blah blah but they DO Nothing. Wake up Biden, Wake up. Yes the costs may fall but will it be worth the Price.

https://www.npr.org/2021/11/21/1056835748/u-s-emergency-oil-stockpiles-spr-gas-prices

Energy

The U.S. emergency oil stash is in the spotlight as gas prices surge. What to know

A recent surge in gasoline prices has left President Biden scrambling for options to do something about it.

One that’s getting a lot of attention is the possibility that the Biden administration will release crude oil from the country’s emergency oil stockpile, known as the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Much will depend on oil prices, which have soared over the past year, recovering to their pre-pandemic levels and then some. But after rising to more than $86 a barrel in October, they have since dropped to less than $80.

A lot of factors are affecting prices — including the fact that the White House is now talking about tapping the stockpile.

Here’s an explainer on the country’s oil reserves and whether tapping them would actually be effective.

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We Don’t Need No Stinkin Baseload – What we need is more storage

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By more storage I do not mean Batteries. I mean things like gas and liquid Compression, or liquid transportation. There are other possibilities that are well known like winding springs, etc. The idea of Baseload is in fact obsolete but you can’t tell. She locked into the past when she gushes about building a small Nuke next to an OLD coal plant. She just wants to “substitute” one source for another not write the Future. This administration is so OLD it is frightening. (quick aside – like for the last 100 yrs – how do get rid of the waste?)

https://news.yahoo.com/us-very-bullish-on-new-nuclear-technology-granholm-says-110016617.html

U.S. ‘very bullish’ on new nuclear technology, Granholm says

Ben Adler

·Senior Climate Editor
·6 min read

GLASGOW, Scotland — In an interview at the U.N. Climate Change Conference, Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm told Yahoo News on Friday that the Biden administration is “very bullish” on building new nuclear reactors in the United States.

“We are very bullish on these advanced nuclear reactors,” she said. “We have, in fact, invested a lot of money in the research and development of those. We are very supportive of that.”

Nuclear energy is controversial among environmental activists and experts because while it does not create the greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change, it has the potential to trigger dangerous nuclear meltdowns and creates radioactive nuclear waste.

Most of the Biden administration’s effort to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, and almost all the rhetoric at the climate change conference, also known as COP26, is about promoting other clean forms of energy, such as wind and solar power.

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Go there and scream. I mean read. More next week.

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Global Warming And Primary Education – What shall we tell the little children

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This could become a heated and useless discussion. One that goes back centuries. To be blunt – Are we molly coddling the little beggars. Lets face it, on one level life has improved immeasurably. Life expectancies, just as an example, show how less brutal life is; and total global populations show how plentiful general life support is. I guess the real question here is, do you believe that global warming will make Earth uninhabitable for humans? If the answer is YES to that question, AND something could be done to change that – then you have an obligations to say something. If the answer is No and NO then I guess – Shut Up. But is it that easy?

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/climate-crisis-doom?utm_source=digg

Hannah Ritchie

Ideas

Stop Telling Kids They’ll Die From Climate Change

Many young people feel like their future is in peril. To make progress on climate change, we must move past doomsday scenarios.

Is climate change the biggest threat to humanity? Many people would say so. Young people in particular feel hopeless. A recent survey asked 10,000 16- to 25-year-olds in 10 countries about their attitudes about climate change. The results were damning. More than half said “humanity was doomed”; three-quarters said the future was frightening; 55 percent said they would have less opportunities than their parents; 52 percent said family security would be threatened; and 39 percent were hesitant to have children as a result. These attitudes were consistent across countries rich and poor, big and small: from the United States and the United Kingdom to Brazil, the Philippines, India, and Nigeria.

It’s totally legitimate that young people feel this way. I’ve been there. Today, much of my work focuses on researching, writing, and thinking about climate change. But it’s a field I very nearly walked away from. Fresh out of university with a degree in environmental science and climate change, it was hard to see that I could contribute anything at all. I flipped back and forth between anger and hopelessness. Any effort seemed futile, and I nearly quit. Thankfully my perspective shifted. I’m glad it did. Not only did I continue working on climate, I’m also sure that my work has had many times the positive impact it would have if I’d been stuck in my previous mindset. And that’s why I’m convinced that if we’re to make progress on climate, we need to lift this cloak of pessimism.

Let’s be clear: Climate change is one of the biggest problems we face. It comes with many risks—some certain, some uncertain—and we’re not moving anywhere near fast enough to reduce emissions. But there seems to have been a breakdown in communication of what our future entails. None of the climate scientists I know and trust—who surely know the risks better than almost anyone—are resigned to a future of oblivion. Most of them have children. In fact, they often have several. Young ones, too. Now, having kids is no automatic qualification for rational decision-making. But it signals that those who spend day after day studying climate change are optimistic that their children will have a life worth living.

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Kyrsten Sinema Should Be Staked Out In The Desert – Stripped naked

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and covered in Honey so the Fire Ants come. Again, why do these people call themselves Democrats? She started out in the “Green” party forgodsakes and now she is fronting for Natural Gas. Arizona is one of the first places to feel Global Warming and she dithers. I say, “String her UP”. This from June and things have only gotten worse.

https://apnews.com/article/voting-rights-government-and-politics-04909b913669631abd3c5a3ed99ee2c7

AP NEWS

Biden calls out 2 Democratic lawmakers for blocking agenda

By ALEXANDRA JAFFE June 1, 2021

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden called out two fellow Democrats on Tuesday in explaining why he hasn’t enacted some of the most ambitious elements of his agenda, noting that slim majorities in the House and evenly divided Senate have hamstrung legislative negotiations around key issues like voting rights.

Biden, speaking during an event marking the 100th anniversary of the Tulsa race massacre, responded to critics who question why he hasn’t been able to get a wide-reaching voting rights bill passed.

“Well, because Biden only has a majority of effectively four votes in the House, and a tie in the Senate — with two members of the Senate who voted more with my Republican friends,” he lamented.

It appeared to be a veiled reference to Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, both of whom have frustrated Democrats with their defense of the filibuster — the rule requiring most legislation to win 60 votes to pass, making many of Democrats’ biggest priorities like voting rights and gun control bills dead on arrival in the 50-50 Senate. While Sinema is a sponsor of the voting rights bill that passed the House, known as the For the People Act, Manchin has refused to sign on, calling the measure “too broad.

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Go there and scream in rage. Oh I mean read. More next week.

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Unions And Climate Change – Some of their stances are just bad

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As A HUGE disclaimer, my wife are both union members. Our prents were Union members. My great grandfather was a card carrying Socialist and ran for City Alderman in Chicago as such. So I believe in Unions. But when they get stuck on saving jobs no matter what. They get a little lost and sometimes real lost. These becomes apparent with police unions – though appropo to this topic. They protect bad cops for jobs sake. Well, the IBEW and other unions are no better. Instead of saying, “We will change power plant jobs for better jobs in the green sector”. They say, “We will not lose the jobs we have”. They act like it is heroic when it is pathetic.

https://www.vox.com/2019/5/22/18628299/green-new-deal-labor-union-2020-democrats

The Green New Deal is fracturing a critical base for Democrats: unions

National labor leaders oppose the Green New Deal but some state unions endorse it. That’s a challenge for presidential contenders.

By Umair Irfan Updated

As a statement of principles and goals, the Green New Deal seems to take economic justice and workers’ rights pretty seriously. It calls for a federal jobs guarantee. It says we need workforce retraining, strengthening collective bargaining rights, retirement security, and universal health care.

The resolution decries “antilabor policies” and says it must be fleshed out with input from “frontline and vulnerable communities, labor unions, [and] worker cooperatives,” with the goal of creating “high-quality union jobs.”

Which is why it was so surprising that the leader of the national AFL-CIO — the largest federation of labor unions in the United States, representing more than 12.5 million workers — recently came out against the proposal.

“We weren’t part of the process, so the worker’s interest wasn’t really figured into it,” AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka said in April. “We would want a whole bunch of changes made so that workers and our jobs are protected in the process.”

(Disclosure: I was on the bargaining committee of the Vox Media Union. We organized with Writers Guild of America, East, which is affiliated with the AFL-CIO.)

But this week, Maine Gov. Janet Mills signed her state’s version of a Green New Deal with the backing of labor unions.

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Go there and read. More next week

 

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Seize Their Assets And Put Their Executives In Jail – Big Fossil Fuels have come to the end of their line

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If I have aired this piece before I apologized. But it is important and needs to be said again. Big Oil, Gas and Coal are the big nasty. They shit in our air, they pee in our politicians and they spit on our lawyers. They have know what they were doing pretty much all along. We should seize their assets and put their Executives in jail.

Special thanks to the GUARDIAN for the valuable work they do.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jun/30/climate-crimes-oil-and-gas-environment?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Climate crimesClimate change

Big oil and gas kept a dirty secret for decades. Now they may pay the price

Communities are now demanding the oil conglomerates pay damages and take urgent action to reduce further harm from burning fossil fuels.
Communities are now demanding the oil conglomerates pay damages and take urgent action to reduce further harm from burning fossil fuels. Illustration: Guardian Design/Getty Images

Via an unprecedented wave of lawsuits, America’s petroleum giants face a reckoning for the devastation caused by fossil fuels

Are you a fossil fuel industry insider? We want to hear from you

Supported by
guardian.org

About this content

After a century of wielding extraordinary economic and political power, America’s petroleum giants face a reckoning for driving the greatest existential threat of our lifetimes.

An unprecedented wave of lawsuits, filed by cities and states across the US, aim to hold the oil and gas industry to account for the environmental devastation caused by fossil fuels – and covering up what they knew along the way.

Coastal cities struggling to keep rising sea levels at bay, midwestern states watching “mega-rains” destroy crops and homes, and fishing communities losing catches to warming waters, are now demanding the oil conglomerates pay damages and take urgent action to reduce further harm from burning fossil fuels.

But, even more strikingly, the nearly two dozen lawsuits are underpinned by accusations that the industry severely aggravated the environmental crisis with a decades-long campaign of lies and deceit to suppress warnings from their own scientists about the impact of fossil fuels on the climate a decades-long campaign of lies and deceit to suppress warnings from their own scientists about the impact of fossil fuels on the climate and dupe the American public.

The environmentalist Bill McKibben once characterized the fossil fuel industry’s behavior as “the most consequential cover-up in US history”. And now for the first time in decades, the lawsuits chart a path toward public accountability that climate activists say has the potential to rival big tobacco’s downfall after it concealed the real dangers of smoking.

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Climate Change Started In The 1960s – People spoke up

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Just like CANCER. That was the first thought I had when I read this article. Evidence was gathered 60 years ago. People spoke up, and the oil and gas industry killed any discussion. Now we are stuck with more powerful Hurricanes. We are stuck with the American west being consumed by droughts and fire. The Arctic is gone and the Antarctic going. The world should confiscate their wealth and apply every dime to remediating the effects. Unfortunately the whole world never does anything. I mean the UN could pass a resolution but Pfffhh.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jul/05/sixty-years-of-climate-change-warnings-the-signs-that-were-missed-and-ignored?utm_source=pocket-newtab

Sixty years of climate change warnings: the signs that were missed (and ignored)

The effects of ‘weird weather’ were already being felt in the 1960s, but scientists linking fossil fuels with climate change were dismissed as prophets of doom

by
/
Mon 5 Jul 2021 01.00 EDT
/

In August 1974, the CIA produced a study on “climatological research as it pertains to intelligence problems”. The diagnosis was dramatic. It warned of the emergence of a new era of weird weather, leading to political unrest and mass migration (which, in turn, would cause more unrest). The new era the agency imagined wasn’t necessarily one of hotter temperatures; the CIA had heard from scientists warning of global cooling as well as warming. But the direction in which the thermometer was traveling wasn’t their immediate concern; it was the political impact. They knew that the so-called “little ice age”, a series of cold snaps between, roughly, 1350 and 1850, had brought not only drought and famine, but also war – and so could these new climatic changes.

“The climate change began in 1960,” the report’s first page informs us, “but no one, including the climatologists, recognized it.” Crop failures in the Soviet Union and India in the early 1960s had been attributed to standard unlucky weather. The US shipped grain to India and the Soviets killed off livestock to eat, “and premier Nikita Khrushchev was quietly deposed”.

But, the report argued, the world ignored this warning, as the global population continued to grow and states made massive investments in energy, technology and medicine.

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Chernobyl Awakes – What is going on at mankind’s biggest screw up

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I do not normally post videos. It seems to defeat the purpose of a print blog. But in this case, because some people maybe trying to spread panic, and disinformation. This is a succinct way to show that the Russians have the situation at least somewhat under control.

https://digg.com/video/heres-a-comprehensive-breakdown-of-why-nuclear-reactions-at-chernobyl-are-spiking

It’s only 12 minutes long so it is not a large portion of you life.

Here is a bonus link for you gardeners out there:

https://backyard54.com/p/square-foot-gardening/231

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Go there and listen. sigh. More next week.

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