Category Archives: economics

The Fall Poker Scoot Was Difficult Because Of Bad Weather – But we soldiered on

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The Poker Run for Motor Scooters that CES started for Earth Day in the Spring continued in the Fall. The Weather was bad, the Ridership was low but we still had a good time. The food at Mike Carter’s was really really good. Thanks to the SCOOTER GUYS! Websites first:

http://www.overturfpowersports.com/

http://www.farmandhomesupply.com/

http://www.jiffistop.com/

http://thecornerpubandgrill.com/

http://www.carterswestside.com/index.htm

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Then the Poker Scoot:

We started at GrabAJava like always

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Moved on to Overturfs

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Stopped at the really nice people at Farm and Home

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Then they went for a big ride to Cantral, Salsbury and back to JiffiStop

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We skipped over to the Corner Pub and Grill

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The Scoot ended at the great guys, The Scooter Guys, and great cooks at Carter’s Westside

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Everyone WON because we had 4 brave riders (and we saved some loot for next Spring)

winner2.jpg winner1.jpgwinner3.jpgwinner4.jpg

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Next year we will have a sign up sheet with a minimum number of riders and a backup date.

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Home Of Oil, Also The Home Of Wind – 736 Megs. come on line

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It’s Jam Band Friday – hurray

( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4KmbUCwkyE )

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ioaMTqBpfb3mR-M1Vew-FC32oyqQD9B2FK880

Massive Texas wind farm operating

By JOHN McFARLAND (AP) – 20 hours ago

DALLAS — The world’s largest wind farm officially got up and running Thursday, with all 627 towering wind turbines churning out electricity across 100,000 acres of West Texas farmland.

The Roscoe Wind Complex, which began construction in 2007 and sprawls across four counties near Roscoe, is generating its full capacity of 781.5 megawatts, enough to power 230,000 homes, the German company E.ON Climate and Renewables North America said.

“This is truly sign milestone for us,” said Patrick Woodson, the company’s chief development officer. “In three years to be able to take this project from cotton fields to the biggest wind farm in the world is something we’re very proud of.”

The complex is about 220 miles west of Dallas and 300 miles south of the land where billionaire oilman T. Boone Pickens had planned an even larger wind farm before he scrapped the idea in July.

Texas leads the nation in wind power production, and this wind farm tops the capacity record of 735.5 megawatts set by another West Texas farm southwest of Abilene.

Renewable energy makes up a small fraction of the electricity grid, but the wind and solar sectors were among the fastest growing in the U.S. before the recession. Wind power in Texas has grown again this year but has slowed from the 2008 rate.

“We are expecting ’09 to be a somewhat smaller year overall, but still a fairly solid year,” said Kathy Belyeu of the American Wind Energy Association.

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( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfU6kbgR1SY&NR=1  )

You can tell that wind is here to stay.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601081&sid=aTWyaCoFJz5s

FPL to Buy 3 Wind Power Farms From Babcock & Brown (Update2) 

By Katarzyna Klimasinska

Oct. 1 (Bloomberg) — FPL Group Inc., the biggest U.S. producer of wind and solar power, agreed to buy three wind farms from Babcock & Brown for $352 million.

The turbines, located in Texas, Wisconsin and South Dakota, have combined capacity of 184.5 megawatts, FPL’s NextEra Energy Resources LLC subsidiary said today in a statement. More than 80 percent of the output is sold under long-term contracts.

Juno Beach, Florida-based FPL will need approvals from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the U.S. Justice Department to complete the transaction, which is scheduled to close by the end of this year. The wind farms will add to FPL’s 2010 earnings, according to the statement.

NextEra said the purchase includes a 79.5-megawatt wind farm in Carson County, Texas, northeast of Amarillo; a 54- megawatt development in Dodge County, Wisconsin, northwest of Milwaukee; and a 51-megawatt farm in Jerauld County, South Dakota, south of Wessington Springs.

FPL fell $1.48, or 2.7 percent, to $53.75 in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The stock had climbed 9.7 percent this year before today:}

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( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxGpmp6URuk&feature=related )

I love that quote:

There is plenty of wind out there and plenty of energy to be tapped. It’s just like an oil field that doesn’t run out. Tom Gray, AWEA

Oh sorry I was busy boogying

http://www.seco.cpa.state.tx.us/re_wind.htm

For the past two years, Texas has been the top wind producer in the United States, with over 3,953 wind-generated megawatts (MW) installed. Texas is also the first state to achieve the milestone of one Gigawatt of wind installations in a single year (2007). The demand for additional wind power has grown so rapidly that the Texas electric transmission grid has a critical need for expansion. In July 2007, the Texas Public Utility Commission announced its approval for additional transmission lines that could deliver as much as 25,000 megawatts of wind energy from remote areas in the state to urban centers by 2012, depending on how many wind farms are built. New transmission infrastructure will allow all Texans to access the the state’s vast wind resources.

DOE’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports that wind power is the fastest growing renewable energy technology, growing by 45% in 2006 due to strong demand, investment of private capital, and the support of federal and state governments. Electric utilities have shown an increased interest in wind project ownership, and wind industry sales to power marketers have become more common. Wind power has consistently remained at or below the average price of conventional electricity such as coal, nuclear, and natural gas.

AWEA has determined that two-thirds of the predicted growth of wind energy generation in the U.S. will occur in Texas, as three of the five largest wind farms in the nation are located in Texas. Texas already holds the record for the world’s largest wind farm, Horse Hollow Wind Energy Center, which was completed by FPL Energy, Inc. in late 2006. It also is the site for the nation’s second-largest wind farm, the 504.8-megawatt Sweetwater wind project, the fourth phase of which attained commercial operation in May, 2007.

The Horse Hollow Wind Energy Center in Texas remains the largest wind farm in the world with a total capacity of 735 megawatts (MW) spread across approximately 47,000 acres in Taylor and Nolan counties near Abilene in west central Texas.

The wind plant consists of 291 1.5-MW wind turbines from General Electric and 130 2.3-MW wind turbines from Siemens.

One MW is enough electricity to serve 250 to 300 homes on average each day

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( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=359QibQrD1Q&feature=related )

I  love it when a plan comes together.

http://www.infinitepower.org/projects.htm

Texas Renewable Energy Projects

This page presents information on notable renewable energy projects around the state, representing the major renewable energy technologies.

The following is a list of Texas State Energy Conservation Office (SECO) renewable energy projects:

Wind Power Projects
Delaware Mountain Wind Farm   A photo of wind turbines on a mesa in West Texas.
Owner:   American National Wind Power
Size:     30 MW
Location:    Culberson County, Texas
Installed: 1999
American National Wind Power is a subsidiary of National Wind Power. This wind farm is National Wind Power’s (NWP) first project in Texas and is located in Culberson County, northeast of the town of Van Horn in West Texas. The ranch on which it is built is used for raising cattle and deer and is also the site of the West Texas Wind Farm Power Project, described below.  Given the right legislative environment, NWP plan  to develop it to a full potential of 250MW. The power produced by the Delaware Mountain Wind Farm is purchased by the Lower Colorado River Authority (Austin, Texas) and Reliant Energy HL&P (Houston, Texas) for distribution to their customers.
Texas Wind Power Project

A photo of the LCRA's wind turbines in Delaware County, near Guadalupe peak.
Owner:   General Land Office & Lower Colorado River Authority
Size:     35 MW
Location:    Culberson County, Texas
Installed: 1995
The Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) teamed with the General Land Office GLO) and private industry to develop this commercial wind power plant, the first in Texas.  The Texas Wind Power Project, located in Culberson County in West Texas, has 112 Kenetech 33M-VS wind turbines capable of generating 35 megawatts of electricity — enough to power 12,000 to 15,000 homes.  Since the ribbon-cutting for the Texas Wind Power Project in 1995, the Texas’ Permanent School Fund earned more than $750.000 from it. The project is expected to earn more than $3 million for the PSF and create $300 million in increased economic activity over the 25-year lease period.  For additional information see this GLO web page.

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God bless Texas and Ry Cooder

( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXx0qrasdTE&feature=related )

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China Threatens Fragile Environment To Get At Frozen Gas Hydrates

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China is such a mess. Yet they may also lead the world to a green economy. I guess we stand against the bad they do and applaud them when they do good.

In this case a big BOOOOOOOOOO:

http://chinatibet.people.com.cn/6773590.html

10:15, September 30, 2009

 


Photo shows the gas hydrates. China will likely make a breakthrough in developing gas hydrates, which have been recently discovered on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, according to an expert in geological prospecting. (China Daily Photo)
China will likely make a breakthrough in developing gas hydrates, which have been recently discovered on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, according to an expert in geological prospecting.The hydrate, which is also known as combustible ice, is a solid matter formed by water and natural gas under high-pressure and low-temperature conditions. It is considered the new energy with the largest deposit in the world.

Zhang Hongtao, chief engineer of China’s Ministry of Land and Resources, said that the discovery of gas hydrates is comparable to the discovery of the Daqing Oilfield 50 years ago.

With a combined permafrost area of 2.15 million sq km, China enjoys advantages in gas hydrates deposits.

Scientists estimate that the hydrates can provide the equivalent of 35 billion tons of crude oil in energy, enough for consumption for 90 years in China, whereas the deposits in Qinghai Province alone make up one quarter.

Wen Huaijun, chief engineer of the No.105 Qinghai Coal Geological Prospecting Team, said that the unique geographical and topographic features make Qinghai’s Muli Region China’s first place where gas hydrates have been found.

He said that thanks to the shallow burial of coal deposits and the thin layer of permafrost soil in the region, breakthroughs are likely to be made in developing the gas hydrates.

However, how to protect the fragile ecological environment on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau remains a major challenge in tapping the gas hydrates.

It is estimated that the world’s deposits of gas hydrates are 50 times that of natural gas. The discovery of this new energy has brought hopes to the mankind suffering from energy crisis.

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Mormans, Nuclear Waste and the NBA – What do they all have in common?

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Energy Solutions that’s what.

http://www.energysolutionsarena.com/

Construction of the EnergySolutions Arena began June 11, 1990 after several months of conceptual design meetings and negotiations with potential lenders. Sumitomo Trust and the Redevelopment Agency of Salt Lake City saw the vision of Larry H. Miller and agreed to fund this new multi-purpose home for the Utah Jazz.
While the “normal” construction period for a project of this type is usually 24 to 30 months, only 15 months and 24 days were available for the completion of the EnergySolutions Arena before the Utah Jazz 1991/92 season opener. This ambitious endeavor was achieved through the cooperation and teamwork of hundreds of individual subcontractors and suppliers and literally thousands of workers both on and off the job site.

Sahara Construction of Bountiful, Utah established a joint venture, O.C./Sahara, with Ohbayashi Corporation for the construction of the 743,000 square foot base building. Sahara also acted as General Contractor for the 7.6 acre pedestrian plaza and the interior tenant improvements within the building. Time constraints required that “fast-track design/build” construction techniques be employed. This method dictates that design is completed as construction is on-going. Responsibility for the structural, mechanical, electrical and civil engineering design was undertaken by the General Contractor. Mechanical and electrical systems were designed and constructed by CCI Mechanical and Western States Electric respectively.
FFKR Architecture/Planning/Interior Design of Salt Lake City worked closely with the construction team to provide design drawings and resolve design issues during the construction process. Based on FFKR’s conceptual design drawings, the General Contractor, with help from its major subcontractors, prepared a guaranteed maximum price contract for the Owner.

Excavation of the 170,000 cubic yards of soil began on an around-the-clock basis as design team members worked feverishly to complete the first design package for the footings and foundations. This process was typical throughout the course of the project as 61 separate bid packages were ultimately prepared.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EnergySolutions

EnergySolutions

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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EnergySolutions is one of the world’s largest processors of low level waste (LLW), and is the largest nuclear waste company in the United States. EnergySolutions is a publicly traded company NYSE: ES) based in Salt Lake City, Utah, although it has operations in 40 states. Steve Creamer is the founder and current CEO of the company, which formed from the merger of four waste disposal companies: Envirocare, Scientech D&D, BNG America, and Duratek. The company took over several Magnox atomic plants from British Nuclear Fuels plc in United Kingdom on June 7, 2007.[1]

EnergySolutions owns and operates a licensed landfill to dispose of radioactive waste in Tooele County, Utah and operates another in Barnwell County, South Carolina. The company also possesses technology to convert waste into environmentally safe forms, such as durable glass, and is contracted by the United States Department of Energy to assist in waste conversion efforts.

The company holds the naming rights to EnergySolutions Arena.

Creation of EnergySolutions

Envirocare of Utah purchased the Connecticut-based Scientech D&D division in October 2005.[2] On February 2, 2006, Envirocare announced the $90 million purchase of BNG America a subsidiary of British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) based in Virginia.[3] The merged company would change its name to EnergySolutions, with corporate headquarters based in Salt Lake City, Utah. On February 7, 2006, EnergySolutions announced it would buy Maryland-based Duratek, a publicly-traded company, for $396 million in an all-cash deal.[4] The leveraged buyout was financed by banks led by Citigroup, effectively taking the company private.

After the acquisitions, EnergySolutions has 2,500 employees in 40 states with an annual revenue of $280 million.[5] Additionally, EnergySolutions owns two of the nation’s three commercial low-level nuclear-waste repositories, although its primary competitor, Waste Control Specialists, hopes to build a fourth repository in Texas.

Envirocare

Envirocare was founded by Iranian immigrant Khosrow Semnani in 1988. Semnani served as president of the company until May 1997, when Envirocare’s largest customer—the Department of Energy—requested that he step down in the wake of a bribery scandal.[6] Semnani allegedly bribed Utah’s Division of Radiation Control director, Larry B. Anderson, with $600,000 in cash, gifts, and gold coins over several years. Semnani alleged that he was extorted by Anderson, and the two sued each other in civil court. Semnani agreed to testify against Anderson in a plea bargain forcing him to pay a $100,000 fine for aiding in the preparation of a false tax return.[7] Anderson was convicted to serve 30 months in federal prison on tax charges.

In mid-December 2004, Semnani sold Envirocare for an undisclosed sum. Steve Creamer became the company’s new CEO. The deal was financed by private equity firms, led by Lindsay Goldberg & Bessemer of New York, Creamer Investments, and Peterson Partners both of Salt Lake City. Envirocare management promised to drop plans to bury hotter class B and C nuclear waste in Utah in deference to developing political opposition to the company, which was poised to ban the waste anyway.[8] Envirocare’s management and ownership was retained as it made the acquisitions to become EnergySolutions.

Duratek

Based in Columbia, Maryland, Duratek was founded in 1983. In 1990, the company merged with General Technical Services (GTS); the resulting company was known as GTS Duratek[9]. That year, the company formed a joint venture with another firm — Chem-Nuclear Systems, Inc. — to build a commercial vitrification system.

In 1997, GTS Duratek acquired the Scientific Ecology Group (SEG). In 2000, the company purchased the nuclear services business arm of Waste Management Inc.[10] One year later, the company announced that it was dropping GTS from its name, and was once again known as Duratek.

Duratek was purchased by EnergySolutions at 25.7% premium over the February 7, 2006 stock price when the merger was announced.[4]

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Aww they are soooo green. Watching the basketball team from New Orleans play in the desert got them to think about the environment. The one thing that the Morman’s believe that God will never allow men to harm.

http://www.energysolutions.com/

OUR COMPANY

EnergySolutions, headquartered in Salt Lake City, Utah, is an international nuclear services company with operations throughout the United States and around the world. With over 5,500 world-class professionals, EnergySolutions is a world leader in the safe recycling, processing and disposal of nuclear material. EnergySolutions provides integrated services and solutions to the nuclear industry, the United States Government, the Government of the United Kingdom, hospitals and research facilities.

With an unparalleled safety record, EnergySolutions has implemented a comprehensive “Safety First” approach that provides safety for our workers, the environment and the communities in which we operate.

EnergySolutions offers a full range of services for the decommissioning and remediation of nuclear sites and facilities, management of spent nuclear fuel, the transportation of nuclear material and the environmental cleanup of nuclear legacy sites such as the uranium mill tailings site in Moab, Utah. We own and operate several state-of-the-art facilities including a metal melt facility in Tennessee and a low-level waste disposal facility in Utah.

EnergySolutions is committed to reasserting America’s leadership in the global nuclear industry and to helping the United States achieve energy security, reduce carbon emissions and protect the environment. As a clean, safe and affordable source of energy, nuclear power plays a vital role in solving the world’s energy crisis and meeting the nation’s growing energy demand.

EnergySolutions, we’re part of the solution.

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Wonder if they have been hiring the MAFIA to bury their waste…oh I mean sink boats loaded with their waste at sea? hmmmm

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Overpopulation – We are drownding in ourselves much like flies in a bottle

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This has always been the case but the major religions and the ruling elite don’t care because they imagine they live in a different world from the rest of us:

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/wwiii-population-wars-a-12-bomb-equation-2009-09-29

 

Paul B. Farrell

Paul B. Farrell

Sept. 29, 2009, 12:01 a.m. EDT · Recommend (13) ·

The coming Population Wars: a 12-bomb equation

Can Gates’ Billionaires Club stop these inevitable self-destruct triggers?

ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) — So what’s the biggest time-bomb for Obama, America, capitalism, the world? No, not global warming. Not poverty. Not even peak oil. What is the absolute biggest, one like the trigger mechanism on a nuclear bomb, one that’ll throw a wrench in global economic growth, ending capitalism, even destroying modern civilization?

The one that — if not solved soon — renders all efforts to solve all the other problems in the world, irrelevant, futile and virtually impossible?

News flash: the “Billionaires Club” knows: Bill Gates called billionaire philanthropists to a super-secret meeting in Manhattan last May. Included: Buffett, Rockefeller, Soros, Bloomberg, Turner, Oprah and others meeting at the “home of Sir Paul Nurse, a British Nobel prize biochemist and president of the private Rockefeller University, in Manhattan,” reports John Harlow in the London TimesOnline. During an afternoon session each was “given 15 minutes to present their favorite cause. Over dinner they discussed how they might settle on an ‘umbrella cause’ that could harness their interests.”

The world’s biggest time-bomb? Overpopulation, say the billionaires.

And yet, global governments with their $50 trillion GDP, aren’t even trying to solve the world’s overpopulation problem. G-20 leaders ignore it. So by 2050 the Earth’s population will explode by almost 50%, from 6.6 billion today to 9.3 billion says the United Nations.

And what about those billionaires and their billions? Can they stop the trend? Sadly no. Only a major crisis, a global catastrophe, a collapse beyond anything prior in world history will do it. Here’s why:

Civilizations collapse fast, crises trigger, leaders clueless

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Have a great day….

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This Planet Is About Shot – They argue over climate change cause they do not want you to see the big picture

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What the Industrialists of the world and their Bankers do not want you to see is  that the oceans are depleted, the atmosphere is seriously screwed up (not just with green house gases), and the land has effectively been stripped. Humanity has literally sucked the resources out of this planet, goaded on by religious and political leaders.

http://www.scienceagogo.com/news/20090824001733data_trunc_sys.shtml

24 September 2009
New doomsday map shows planet’s dire state
by Kate Melville

Human activities have already pushed the Earth beyond three of the planet’s biophysical thresholds, with consequences that are detrimental or even catastrophic for large parts of the world, conclude 29 European, Australian and U.S. scientists in an article in Nature. This force has given rise to a new era – Anthropocene – in which human actions have become the main driver of global environmental change.

“On a finite planet, at some point, we will tip the vital resources we rely upon into irreversible decline if our consumption is not balanced with regenerative and sustainable activity,” says report co-author Sander van der Leeuw, of Arizona State University. The report started with a fairly simple question: How much pressure can the Earth system take before it begins to crash? “Until now, the scientific community has not attempted to determine the limits of the Earth system’s stability in so many dimensions and make a proposal such as this. We are sending these ideas out to be vetted by the scientific community at large,” explains van der Leeuw. Nine boundaries were identified in the report, including climate change, stratospheric ozone, land use change, freshwater use, biological diversity, ocean acidification, nitrogen and phosphorus inputs to the biosphere and oceans, aerosol loading and chemical pollution. The study suggests that three of these boundaries -climate change, biological diversity and nitrogen input to the biosphere – may already have been transgressed.

Using an interdisciplinary approach, the researchers looked at the data for each of the nine vital processes in the Earth system and identified a critical control variable. Biodiversity loss, for example, is based on species extinction rate, which is expressed in extinctions per million species per year. They then explored how the boundaries interact. Here, loss of biodiversity impacts carbon storage (climate change), freshwater, nitrogen and phosphorous cycles, and land systems.

The researchers stress that their approach does not offer a complete roadmap for sustainable development, but does provide an important element by identifying critical planetary boundaries. They also propose a bold move: a limit for each boundary that would maintain the conditions for a livable world. For biodiversity, that would be less than 10 extinctions per million species per year. The current status is greater than 100 species per million lost per year, whereas the pre-industrial value was 0.1-1.

“Three of the boundaries we identify – 350 parts per million of atmospheric carbon dioxide, biodiversity extinction rates more than 10 times the background rate, and no more than 35 million tons of nitrogen pollution per year – have already been exceeded with fossil fuel use, land use change, and agricultural pollution, driving us to unsustainable levels that are producing real risks to our survival,” notes report co-author Diana Liverman, of the University of Arizona.

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We are in the midst of a very large extinction event that we are essentially causing…

Mass extinctions require 2 events. In other words the Dinosaurs didn’t evolve into birds because of a single event…the comet strike. What happened was they filled every niche, ate themselves out of house and home. Probably started eating themselves, thus the gigantisism movement AND then the comet struck. Humans are heading for the same fate.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/02/17/mass-extinction-theory.html

Mass Extinctions May Follow One-Two Punch

Michael Reilly, Discovery News

Illustration of Volcanic Eruption

The “Press” | Discovery News Video

 

Feb. 17, 2009 — As agents of extinction, comet and asteroid impacts may be losing their punch.

According to a new theory about how mass dyings work, cosmic collisions generally aren’t enough to cause a major extinction event. To be truly devastating, they must be accompanied by another event that inflicts long-term suffering, like runaway climate change due to massive volcanic eruptions.

In other words, a comet couldn’t have killed the dinosaurs by itself — unless they were already endangered species.

This kind of one-two punch could explain more than the extinction of dinosaurs, Nan Arens of Hobart and William Smith Colleges said. In a recent paper in the journal Paleobiology, she and colleague Ian West argue that there are two types of events that can cause extinctions — “pulses” (quick, deadly shocks, like comets) and “presses” (drawn-out stresses that push ecosystems to the brink but may not kill outright, like million-year-long volcanic eruptions).

The chances of mass dyings go way up when both happen together, argues Arens.

 

eruption

WATCH VIDEO: What constitutes a mass extinction?

Related Content:

But are all mass extinctions created equal? Can researchers come up with a “Grand Unified Theory” of ancient apocalypse?West and Arens think so. They combed the last 300 million years of geologic record, noting impact craters, massive eruptions, periods of ancient climate change, and then comparing them to extinctions. The rate at which species die off spiked dramatically, they found, when a “pulse”-type event occurred within a million years or so of a “press.”The theory fits well for the dinosaurs. Around the time of their demise 65 million years ago, a comet slammed into the Yucatan Peninsula and a huge volcano, the Deccan Traps, was erupting in what is today India.

But other extinctions are problematic. The greatest dying in geologic history, the Permian-Triassic extinction, killed 90 percent of all life on Earth, but there is no record of an impact. Instead, all signs point to a 200,000-year-long volcanic eruption in Siberia as the murder weapon.

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James Howard Kunsler – Say what you like but his writing is pretty good

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OK OK so he got Y@K (oh Y2K) wrong, he is an apoplectic apocalypse dude where everything turns out badly, and he is probably anti-arabic. Nonetheles he writes with a cogent powerful logic. I wish that he had a little bit better appreciation for the power of the Sun however.

This just hot off the presses and then more about him:

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/50173

Energy Bulletin now includes multimedia and other new features

Published Sep 21 2009 by kunstler.com blog, Archived Sep 21 2009

Original Sin

by James Howard Kunstler

In our history, the American nation committed obvious sins against select groups of people, and we’ve paid bitterly for some of that. But now it’s our sins against the land itself that threaten to sink the USA as a viable enterprise.

It’s odd, that in his otherwise excellent blow-by-blow account (“Eight Days,” in the Sept 21 New Yorker Magazine) of the September 2008 Wall Street meltdown that left Lehman dead, and AIG croaking in a ditch, and the banking system in general functionally crippled, reporter James B. Stewart never got around to really describing the cause of it all — namely, the on-the-ground material catastrophe of American suburbia.

It was the worthlessness of the tradable securitized debt associated with all those overpriced (and overvalued) chipboard and vinyl houses, smeared recklessly over the American landscape, that started all the trouble in the first place. And it is our inability to come to grips with that underlying catastrophe that prolongs the resolution of the still-florid banking crisis — since the federal government is doing everything possible to prop up the failed capital equation of terminal suburbia, and to deny the obsolescence of that version of the American Dream and all the mechanisms for delivering it.

The suburban project was not a conspiracy by the likes of Robert Moses, Walt Disney, Frank Lloyd Wright, and President Eisenhower to produce a living arrangement with no future. It was the emergent, self-organizing result of special circumstances in a particular time and place: post World War Two America, with an immense supply of cheap oil, cheap land, and the industrial capacity to churn out all the necessary components for a car-dependent development pattern. Suburbia was spawned out of a couple of persistent themes in American cultural history: 1.) that cities and city life were no good; 2.) and that the romance of settling the wilderness could be reenacted, at great profit, in all that space beyond the towns and cities. It would be silly to deny the appeal of this arrangement at its inception. By the end of WW II, city life in the popular imagination was reduced to one potently awful image: Ralph Kramden’s apartment in “The Honeymooners” TV show.

blog_honeymooners.jpg

There had to be something better than that. Suburbia was engineered as the antidote to the Kramden’s apartment: country-living-for-everybody. The evacuation of the cities to the new outlands proceeded as relentlessly as the landings at Normandy. It wasn’t until the program was well underway that the self-destructive essence of it became obvious — that every new housing subdivision killed the original rural character of the land, with the result that suburban life quickly became a cartoon of country living in a cartoon of a country house in a cartoon of the country. With additional layer-on-layer of, first, the shopping in the form of highway strips, then malls, along with the office “parks,” these places elaborated themselves into a kind of cancer-of-the-landscape, a chronic and expensive condition that Americans had no choice but to live with, because of the monumental investments they had already made in it. The discontents it produced lent it to psychological depression and dark humor, just as chronic illness does. But we were stuck with it.

Meanwhile, all the machinery of culture and politics made it impossible to construct anything differently. The exquisitely fine-tuned planning-and-zoning codes generated by the thousands of town boards mandated a suburban outcome everywhere — with plenty of help from the DOT traffic engineers, the fire marshals, and the even the mandarins of academia who trained all these professionals. As a natural consequence of all this, the disinvestment in cities — especially the older cities of the industrial heartland — continued remorsely until it seemed as if the Second World War had taken place in St. Louis and Cleveland.

This mode of behavior persisted through the first, short-lived oil scarcity tremors of the 1970s. It was so completely embedded in the popular imagination that it had become the baseline American identity. The suburban project caught a second wind in the 1990s, when the last great non-OPEC oil fields of the North Sea, Alaska, and Siberia nullified the grip of the Islamic cartel for while, and sent the price of oil down to $11-a-barrel. Ironically, it was during those years that the warnings of “peak oil” first circulated beyond the geology offices, and it was clear to anyone who reflected on the connections that the project of suburbia was doomed.

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He goes on to point out that there is no economy LEFT in the US anymore. Besides food, which has been corporatized there is nothing left in the US to make money with. The manufacturing  jobs were sent overseas.

For more about Kunsler:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Howard_Kunstler

Background

Kunstler was born in New York City to Jewish parents,[1] who divorced when he was eight.[2] His father was a middleman in the diamond trade.[1] Kunstler spent most of his childhood with his mother and stepfather, a publicist for Broadway shows.[1] While spending summers at a boys’ camp in New Hampshire, he became acquainted with the small town ethos that would later permeate many of his works. In 1966 he graduated from New York City’s High School of Music & Art, and then attended the State University of New York at Brockport where he majored in Theater.

After college Kunstler worked as a reporter and feature writer for a number of newspapers, and finally as a staff writer for Rolling Stone. In 1975, he began writing books and lecturing full-time. He lives in Saratoga Springs, New York and was formerly married to the children’s author Jennifer Armstrong.

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You can find out more than you ever really cared to at:

http://kunstler.com/blog/

Interestingly here is the part that Energy Bulletins left out…I wonder why?

Clusterfuck Nation
Comment on Current Events by the Author of “The Long Emergency”

By James Howard Kunstler
on September 21, 2009 6:34 AM


In our history, the American nation committed obvious sins against select groups of people, and we’ve paid bitterly for some of that. But now it’s our sins against the land itself that threaten to sink the USA as a viable enterprise.
 It’s odd, that in his otherwise excellent blow-by-blow account (“Eight Days,” in the Sept 21 New Yorker Magazine) of the September 2008 Wall Street meltdown that left Lehman dead, and AIG croaking in a ditch, and the banking system in general functionally crippled, reporter James B. Stewart never got around to really describing the cause of it all — namely, the on-the-ground material catastrophe of American suburbia.
It was the worthlessness of the tradable securitized debt associated with all those overpriced (and overvalued) chipboard and vinyl houses, smeared recklessly over the American landscape, that started all the trouble in the first place. And it is our inability to come to grips with that underlying catastrophe that prolongs the resolution of the still-florid banking crisis — since the federal government is doing everything possible to prop up the failed capital equation of terminal suburbia, and to deny the obsolescence of that version of the American Dream and all the mechanisms for delivering it.
The suburban project was not a conspiracy

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Levittown will have killed us..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levittown,_New_York

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When A Cold Wind Blows – It’s too late yah shoulda started months ago

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It’s Jam Band Friday – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GasFKkVkgSI

Weatherize and improvise, renters have very little choice:

http://ask.metafilter.com/25694/Help-us-weatherproof-our-house

Help us weatherproof our house.
October 17, 2005 6:25 PM

I need suggestions for inexpensive weatherproofing on our home.

My husband and I rent a townhome (in Denver) and it is horribly drafty. We can feel cold air coming in through most of our windows. We love our little house–it’s a lot of space for the money–but we have a very uhm, “hands-off” landlord and there’s little to no chance to get them to invest any money in weatherproofing. With energy prices the way they are, I’d love some low-cost suggestions for how to weatherproof our windows along with any other tips for keeping warm while keeping our energy costs down. We’re living on a one-income graduate student budget, so I have to stress the low-cost part. Thank you!1. cheap: Plastic for your windows! You can get it at hardware stores pretty cheaply [whole house of wondows for maybe $20-30 if you shop in bulk at Home Depot or someplace. It’s a bit ugly but basically you tape this plastic over your windows, use a blow dryer on it to shrink the plastic, and voila, you can see out but wind can’t get in. Hair dryers cost a few bucks at a thrift store if you don’t have one. If you have friends, borrow a heat gun if possible.

2. nearly free: make little outlet and light switch gaskets. [instructions]

3. make from common household items: draft stoppers for underneath doors. Get an old pair of nylons and stuff them with rags, old socks, other fabric and some sand/rocks/something heavy. Lay on floors by doors to the outside or colder rooms.

4. worth the $: curtains and rugs and a hassock for your feet so you don’t notice the cold as much. Close curtains at night, open in the morning. An electric mattress pad warmer can heat up the bed before you get in it without you having to sleep under a plugged in appliance all night.

5. also: if it’s a big house shut off a room or two that you don’t use much and cut off the heat to those rooms [if you can] and focus on the parts of the house you actually live in. Cook more meals that take longer to heat up the kitchen. Keeping moving helps you stay warmer.
posted by jessamyn at 6:46 PM on October 17, 2005

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD7GjrlFOPs&feature=PlayList&p=C0DC6B13F2AAAA74&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=10

Check your local utility company’s website. They likely have a list of energy saver tips, household energy guzzlers (so you can prioritize), programs that provide weatherization and/or discounts to low-income households. Call them too. Some util companies are willing to schedule a free onsite energy audit to help you find the worst offenders.

The plastic over the windows trick is good. Just make sure you’re using the right tape. Some can leave a gummy residue or else pull off the paint/wallpaper underneath. Painter’s tape is not transparent, but it’s designed to remove cleanly.

If the landlord is willing to greenlight DIY improvements, $20-30 in materials can buy enough weatherstrip, outlet/switch seals, and door gaskets for a 1 bd apt. All you need is a screwdriver, a pair of scissors, and several hours time. Since weatherstrip just fills in the gaps between door/window and frame, you’ll be able to open & close year-round. Plus in the summer it’ll help keep out whatever bugs normally come in through those same gaps.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xh-sXCTiuXA&feature=PlayList&p=C0DC6B13F2AAAA74&index=8

Here is what I did a couple of years ago (in my case it was mainly to reduce my cooling bills, but they’re still applicable):

  • Install curtains or other air barriers on all windows and sliding-glass doors.
  • If your existing HVAC thermostat is not a programmable “set back” thermostat, replace it with one that is.
  • Replace or install weatherstripping on windows.
  • Replace or install weatherstripping and door sweeps on exterior doors or a door to a garage. Also consider installing weatherstripping and door sweeps on interior doors to less-often used rooms.
  • If you have a little-used room, such as a laundry room, close the heating vent to the room, install a vent cover, and keep the door closed.
  • Caulk cracks (use a good UV & weather-resistant caulk for the exterior and a cheaper paintable caulk for the interior). In particular, check around the roof-line or anywhere something penetrates a wall (such as ceiling beams, vents or pipes). Make sure to seal around any exterior outlets (and consider installing exterior outlet covers).
  • Seal air leaks and other larger gaps with expanding foam. Good places to check are around switch and outlet boxes, places where ceiling beams penetrate interior walls, etc.
  • If your HVAC ducts are accessible, seal any leaks with metal-backed tape or mastic. Also consider applying insulation, if they are uninsulated.
  • Install outlet cover plates on interior outlets in exterior walls.
  • Install foam gaskets inside all interior electric outlet and switch boxes behind the outlet and switch plate covers.
  • If you have a hot water tank, consider installing an exterior tank wrap (make sure it doesn’t warn against using a tank wrap).

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SPogGqCgeM&feature=PlayList&p=C0DC6B13F2AAAA74&index=9

And you can get it all at ACE The Friendly Hardware Place –  A socialist cooperative:

http://www.acehardware.com/info/index.jsp?categoryId=1282811

Weatherproofing Your Home

The average house-even when well-insulated-contains cracks and gaps between building materials that add up to a hole about 14 inches square (see image below). In the winter, those gaps may make the house drafty and chilly. All year long, a leaky house not only wastes energy but can lead to water damage and provide a path for insects.

Inside this document you will find information about:

  • Weatherproofing Basics
  • Types of Caulking
  • Using Caulking
  • Types of Weatherstripping
  • Installing Weatherstripping

WEATHERPROOFING BASICS

  • In all the discussion of insulation and R-values, don’t forget that poor weatherproofing is often a more important source of discomfort, as well as high heating and cooling bills.
  • Some air leakage can be prevented during construction by using housewrap or getting a tight fit between framing members, for example. Once the house is built, however, the remaining gaps must be sealed. Gaps around doors and window sashes should be weatherstripped, and gaps between permanent building materials sealed with caulking.

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Tight is nice

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pfArO24gSNw&feature=PlayList&p=C0DC6B13F2AAAA74&index=15

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Mafia Sinks Nuclear Waste – Some stories defy catergorization

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So I was preparing another post on weatherization and I was searching through Digg and Peak Oil for such stories…probably on window replacement or maybe weather stripping and I came across this WTF story that I just had to post.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/8257912.stm

Mafia ‘sank ships of toxic waste’

By Duncan Kennedy
BBC News, Italy


A shipwreck apparently containing toxic waste is being investigated by authorities in Italy amid claims that it was deliberately sunk by the mafia.

An informant from the Calabrian mafia said the ship was one of a number he blew up as part of an illegal operation to bypass laws on toxic waste disposal.

The sunken vessel has been found 30km (18 miles) off the south-west of Italy.

The informant said it contained “nuclear” material. Officials said it would be tested for radioactivity.

Murky pictures taken by a robot camera show the vessel intact and alongside it are a number of yellow barrels.

Labels on them say the contents are toxic.

The informant said the mafia had muscled in on the lucrative business of radioactive waste disposal.

But he said that instead of getting rid of the material safely, he blew up the vessel out at sea, off the Calabrian coast.

He also says he was responsible for sinking two other ships containing toxic waste.

Experts are now examining samples taken from the wreck.

Other vessels

An official said that if the samples proved to be radioactive then a search for up to 30 other sunken vessels believed scuttled by the mafia would begin immediately.

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Tree Hugger and the New York Times adds this:

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/09/toxic-waste-ship-sunk-mafia-found-italy.php

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calabria coast photo
Somewhere out there are more toxic waste ships waiting to be found. Photo: Peter Rohleder via flickr.

This may sound like a pretty good TV crime show plot, but this is non-fiction: Reuters reports that Italian authorities have discovered a ship containing 180 barrels of toxic waste (some of which may be radioactive), which was purposely sunk by the Mafia, off Italy’s southern coast. What’s more, it’s suspected there are 32 more vessels waiting to be found:

The ship was discovered after a former member of the ‘Ndrangheta organized crime organization tipped off police — the informant was personally responsible for sinking this ship and two others.

The 360′-long vessel is about 18 miles off the coast of Calabria, in 1600′ of water. Based on TV images, at least one barrel has fallen off the ship and it now empty on the sea floor.

Since tighter environmental regulations in the 1980s, illegal dumping of toxic waste has been embraced by the Mafia as another lucrative income stream.

Mafia Has Used Somalia As Dumping Ground for 20 Years
Here’s the broader connection here: Since the 1990s the Mafia have been known to dump toxic waste in the waters off Somalia — where the utter lack of government means it costs one-tenth that of dumping in Europe. In 2004, toxic and radioactive waste washed up on Somali beaches, causing illness in local people. This toxic waste dumping is also cited by local fisherman as contributing to declining fish stocks in the region, thereby pushing people to piracy.

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The New York Times and the Associated Press adds this:

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/09/15/world/AP-EU-Italy-Toxic-Mafia.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=mafia%20sink%20ships&st=cse

Giordano said the former mobster, Francesco Fonti, from the Calabria-based ‘ndrangheta crime syndicate, has claimed the mob sank ”hundreds” of barrels of illegally disposed of waste.

The prosecutor, based in Paola, Calabria, has promised that if analyses do turn up toxic substances, the hunt would be on for more sunken ships.

Fonti claims mobsters made millions of dollars illegally dumping radioactive and other toxic wastes for northern Italian businesses. Fonti has said he himself has been involved in the alleged sinking of three vessels, including the ship the robotic diver is now filming.

In recent interviews, Fonti’s face was blackened out to protect his identity, since he is under state protection.

Fonti claims the ship being filmed was carrying 120 barrels of radioactive waste when he alleged he used explosives to sink it some 20 miles (32 kilombers) off the Calabrian coast in 1992.

Investigators have long looked into claims that Italy’s southern-based crime syndicates, including the Naples-area Camorra and the ‘ndrangheta ran illegal rackets disposing of toxic wastes, including in clandestine land dumps.

The plot of the Italian hit movie ”Gomorrah” revolved around a Camorra racket that dumped toxic refuse in farmland near Naples.

Greenpeace and the Italian environmental group Lega Ambiente have been compiling lists over the last few decades of ships that have disappeared off Italy and Greece as they pursue reports of boats laden with toxic substances being sunk.

A Greenpeace official, Alessandro Gianni, told Associated Press Television News in an interview Tuesday that in the ’90s, his organization tried to learn the fate of ships that might have been involved in toxic dumping.

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So that is the story of Somalian Piracy…Since the various organized crime families are world wide now how much of this has been going on. The Russians sank a Chinese Ship in January. Another Russian Ship went “astray” in July. Has the Mafia turned the high seas into their personal toxic dumping ground? Better question to ask is, did Big Businesses like the Nuclear Power Plants of the world turn to the Mafia to dump their toxic waste…hmmmmm?

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R 60 In The Attic – When I first started talking about this everyone thought I was crazy

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I will be the first one to admit, our attic is finished. I had no control over that. The build out and remodel all took place 50 years ago. Does it make it better that we have a metal roof? When I first started saying PACK YOUR ATTIC with all the insulation you can get your hands on. Everyone said, “How can you say that. There is no payback. There is no room. What if you change your mind” That was of course in an R10 or an R13 world. Then everything changed. Guess what it will change again.

That is because we have all been raised in a “pay as you go” energy system. Have been for generations. But if you think of a world where you pay your energy costs “UP FRONT”. Then you quit worrying about Paybacks and “is it worth it”? You start thinking in terms of how much do I need.

Again for the entire class: You can never lose money by CONSERVING energy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superinsulation

Superinsulation is an approach to building design, construction, and retrofitting. A superinsulated house is intended to be heated predominantly by intrinsic heat sources (waste heat generated by appliances and the body heat of the occupants) with very small amounts of backup heat. This has been demonstrated to work in very cold climates but requires close attention to construction details in addition to the insulation.

Superinsulation is one of the ancestors of the passive house approach. A related approach to efficient building design is zero energy building.

There is no set definition of superinsulation, but superinsulated buildings typically include:

  • Very thick insulation (typically R40 walls and R60 roof)
  • Detailed insulation where walls meet roofs, foundations, and other walls
  • Airtight construction, especially around doors and windows
  • a heat recovery ventilator to provide fresh air
  • No large windows facing any particular direction
  • No conventional heating system, just a small backup heater

Nisson & Dutt (1985) suggest that a house might be described as “superinsulated” if the cost of space heating is lower than the cost of water heating.

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That last is important because what if you are using free solar. Then your costs are both zero. So one of them has to be a negative number…haha

http://www.builditsolar.com/Projects/SolarHomes/constructionps.htm

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On a more serious note, everyone agrees that the standard currently is good for NEW Construction…I say it is good enough for old as well:

http://www.residentialarchitect.com/industry-news.asp?sectionID=275&articleID=886806

massachusetts pilot project explores super insulation for old houses

new construction could also benefit from techniques.
Publication date: February 24, 2009

By Nigel F. Maynard

Alex Cheimets and Cynthia Page live in a duplex that used to consume about 1,400 gallons of heating oil a year. But now their building is one of the most energy-efficient in its Arlington, Mass., neighborhood, thanks to a pilot project that retrofitted the structure with almost $100,000 worth of insulation and other products to increase energy efficiency and lower utility costs.

The so-called Massachusetts Super Insulation Project seeks to determine the benefits and cost-effectiveness of retrofitting old energy-wasting houses with insulation upgrades in key areas. Though the cost for the upgrades in the home were substantial, some of the techniques used—among them proper air-sealing and adequate moisture barriers—are easily applied to new construction at a relatively low cost.

Massachusetts officials are keenly interested in the results of the project, because it dovetails nicely with the state’s efforts to become more energy-efficient. “Our governor, the state House and Senate, and the executive branch are aware that the nation’s energy strategy is not acceptable, and a big part of it is the existing housing stock,” says Philip Giudice, commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources (DER).

“Nationally, buildings account for 40 percent of all energy consumption, and one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions,” says Energy and Environmental Affairs Secretary Ian Bowles, who chairs Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick’s Zero Net Energy Buildings Task Force. “This superinsulation project in Arlington promises to be a model for the type of innovation in the building industry that the Patrick Administration hopes will soon be widespread across Massachusetts.”

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