Category Archives: fossil fuels and the United States’ Future

Praying For A Hurricane – How sad is that

Posted on by
Reply

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

By Associated Press,

OMAHA, Neb. — The remnants of Tropical Storm Isaac could bring welcome rain to some states in the Mississippi River valley this week, but experts say it’s unlikely to break the drought gripping the Midwest.

Along with the deluge of rain expected along the Gulf Coast when Isaac makes landfall, the National Weather Service predicts 2 to 6 inches of rain will fall in eastern Arkansas, southeast Missouri and southern Illinois.

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.

:}

Go there and read. More tomorrow.

:}

The Drought And Ethanol – While the EPA has some control, not as much as some think

Posted on by
Reply

The real problems with all the “stop turning corn into liquid fuel” noise in the press is that the EPA only has the authority to wave some of it. The rest of the authority belongs to the Clean Air Act and in this respect ethanol is one of the best oxygenators for the fuel which cuts smog and ozone. Added to that ethanol is a cheaper oxygenator by about a buck a gallon so I doubt seriously if the gasoline refiners will give it up. Bottom line is it is a great way to pander to growers and livestock people who have been abandoned by the House of Representatives who could not get a Farm Bill passed. But is not going to free up a lot of corn and even then it will be expensive.

http://www.platts.com/RSSFeedDetailedNews/RSSFeed/Oil/6585987

Texas governor asks US waive ethanol mandate on drought impact

Washington (Platts)–24Aug2012/136 pm EDT/1736 GMT

Texas Governor Rick Perry on Friday asked the US Environmental Protection Agency to waive its ethanol mandate as a severe drought shrivels this fall’s expected corn harvest.

His petition marked the fifth state to formally ask EPA to alter the Renewable Fuel Standard’s requirement for blending corn-based ethanol into gasoline supplies for 2012 and 2013.

It comes four years after EPA rejected a similar request by Perry. He said the ramifications of this year’s drought could be worse than the conditions he cited in the 2008 petition.

“The forecasts are dire, as crop yield and overall productions are projected to be lower than anticipated,” Perry said in a letter to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson, adding that ethanol production and the corn market have changed considerably since 2008.

“Requirements for ethanol derived from corn starch have increased more than 60%; meanwhile, domestic corn production in 2012 will be less than in 2008, perhaps substantially so,” he added. “In the past two years, more corn has been devoted to ethanol production than used for feed grain.”

:}

Go there and read. More next week.

:}

Drought And The Mississippi River – How low can you go

Posted on by
Reply

I was going to write a piece today on the stupidity of trying to maintain our addiction to liquid fuels that are not sustainable like ethanol. But then it suddenly dawned on me, if the corn can’t get to the processing plant then there is really nothing to write about. Yup the barges are stacking up in a river that is, in some places down to one lane and in an 11 mile stretch it is closed. They also point out that after the flooding last year they did no dredging cause the rich people won’t pay their taxes. Oh sorry.

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/08/this-years-drought-is-so-severe-you-can-see-its-toll-on-the-mississippi-river-from-space/261428/

This Year’s Drought Is So Severe, You Can See Its Toll on the Mississippi River From Space

Aug 22 2012, 9:42 AM ET

Last year, the Mississippi River flooded. Major storms combined with melting snow brought the waterway more than 56 feet above river stage in May. The Army Corps of Engineers lifted the floodgates of the Morganza Spillway, deliberately inundating some 3,000 square miles of rural Louisiana to spare worse damage in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. In August of last year, NASA’s Landsat 5 satellite took a picture of the swollen river. Here’s what it saw:

(note: I know longer post pictures on this blog for the most part. They take to much time and effort to post.)

 

This year it’s an entirely different story. At the end of last month, more than 60 percent of the lower 48 states were in drought, and the might Mississippi was running low. An 11-mile stretch of river has been closed on and off since August 11, and earlier this week nearly 100 boats lined up near Greenville, Mississippi, waiting to pass. Water levels near Memphis are ranging from 2.4 to 8.3 below river stage, compared with 11.7 feet above at this time last year. To make matters worse, the floods of last year deposited huge amounts of sediment on the river bed, reconfiguring the existing channels.

Again NASA was there to capture the view from space, this time with Landsat 7. Here’s that image:

:}

Go there and see the startlingly different pictures and read. More tomorrow.

:}

Utility Companies Are Struggling Against Global Warming – Since they helped cause it you would think they would have a plan

Posted on by
Reply

But that would mean that monopoly utilities were smart and they are not. Now that the problem has been shoved in their face by the warming up of the sun, they want to talk about it. Great.

http://www.pgecurrents.com/2012/08/07/climate-change-comes-to-the-power-industry/

August 7, 2012
Climate Change Comes to the Power Industry

By Jonathan Marshall

With temperatures setting new records across the country, and over half of the continental United States now experiencing serious drought, global warming is no longer just a prediction of climate scientists. It’s a reality, here and now.

Though every sector of human activity is feeling the impact, electric utilities are feeling them especially keenly, as they struggle to keep up with peak summer demand for air conditioning. At the same time, heat and drought threaten to curb their ability to generate and transmit power in the first place.

As Matthew Wald reported in his Green blog, one power plant in the Midwest was recently curtailed and another shut down altogether because river water levels dropped too low for their cooling intake valves. This was no fluke. A number of Texas power plants reduced their output in 2011 due to water shortages. Three years earlier, many more plants throughout the drought-stricken Southeast came close to shutting down.

:}

Go there and read. More tomorrow.

:}

Global Warming Causes The Illinois Drought – This will probably last until May 2014

Posted on by
Reply

Why do I say that. Because the Sun is finally into its warming phase. The Sun always has 4 cycles: cooling, quietude, warming and maximus. These cycles inhabit an 11 year cycle most probably related to the creation of some of the heavier elements in its core. What does change in no known sequence is which is bigger the cooling cycle or the warming cycle and I suppose some brief time periods of equilibrium. For the last 30 years (almost 3 full cycles) the cooling side of the cycle has been bigger than the heating cycle and the last quietude was almost 2 full years which I believe is the biggest in recorded history. Here is the point. The planet should be cooling but it isn’t. During the cooling we still had some pretty hot years. Why. There is no other thing to blame, but humans. Now that the Sun is heating up and for the next 3 years or so, Watch Out!

http://www.examiner.com/article/drought-affects-nation-s-energy-prices

If you think the drought of summer 2012 is only increasing the prices of the nation’s corn and grain supplies, you’re missing a large part of the picture. Drought reaches into every corner of American pockets, affecting even the cost of driving a car and what we pay for air conditioning.

Current drought conditions

The United States is experiencing the most severe drought, with the highest percentage of land affected by it, in over 60 years, according to the National Climatic Data Center‘s July 17 report. (See August 5 Palmer drought severity map at left. Yellow = moderately dry, orange = severely dry, red = excessively dry.)

Parched conditions have now led to disaster declarations in more than half the counties in the nation–1,584, in 32 states–this growing season. The declarations make these areas eligible for government aid, including low-interest emergency loans to hold the line until farms and ranches recover.

And the ripple effects of this brutal weather will extend farther than the farms in the Midwest, where corn and soybean crops are failing. It will affect meat production nationwide as well because pasture and grazing land has been blighted, forcing farmers and ranchers to seek other–and more expensive–feed for cows and other animals.

In some areas, cattle have to be fed with next year’s grain reserves because local pasture lands have dried up. Almost four million acres of federal conservation land has been opened for haying and grazing. Crop insurers have also begun to provide penalty-free 30-day grace periods on 2012 premiums.

:}

Go there and read. More tomorrow.

:}

Refineries Shut Down All Over The Country – Is this a coincidence

Posted on by
Reply

Come on. 4 refineries in a 4 state region are effected at the same times by “disasters” that would be easy to contrive. In 2 of the biggest markets in the country, the Great Lakes Region and California. Can that be an accident? Looks highly suspicious to me. One thing is for sure everybody is loving those rising gas prices besides the drivers and President Obama. Maybe that is what they are after, defeating Barack Obama and electing one of their own, Mittens Romney.

http://www.ajc.com/news/nation-world/fire-is-latest-pollution-1494592.html

Fire is latest pollution problem at Chevron plant

National / World News 12:06 p.m. Thursday, August 9, 2012

By JASON DEAREN

The Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO — A massive Chevron oil refinery fire that sent hundreds of people rushing to hospitals and is pushing West Coast gas prices higher was just the latest pollution incident at the facility that records show has increasingly violated air quality rules over the past five years.

The refinery is one of three such facilities near San Francisco that rank among the state’s top 10 emitters of toxic chemicals, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxic Release Inventory.

Chevron’s Richmond refinery — the scene of Monday’s fire that shrouded the area in black smoke — has been cited by San Francisco Bay area regulators for violating air regulations 93 times in the past five years.

The number has increased from 15 violations in 2007 to 23 in both 2010 and 2011. The refinery is also the state’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, according to state regulators.

:}

Go there and read. State Fair starts today so I may be gone  for a couple of days. More tomorrow.

:}

Koch Brothers Mouthpiece Changes His Tune – So Global Warming is actually real

Posted on by
Reply

That is the bitch about science. Over time it is always right. The Catholic Church was very slow to get this. RJ Reynolds eventually got it but it cost it billions. All of the asbestos people eventually got it too. But the Koch Brothers were just gona prove them wrong. I do not know whether it is endemic  to capitalism but this “prove them wrong” phase is what the space exploration crowd is experiencing right now. Call it the Buck Rogers phenomena but private companies will fail to develop space much like Climate Change needed to stop 30 years ago.  30 years from now the space people are going to be wondering what happened to their dreams…if any of us are still left alive.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/07/29/koch-funded-climate-scientist-i-was-wrong-humans-are-to-blame/

Koch-funded climate scientist: I was wrong, humans are to blame

By Jonathan Terbush
Sunday, July 29, 2012 14:16 EDT

The founder and director of a climate change study project funded heavily by the Koch brothers, who last year reversed course and said he believed global warming was real, has gone one step further, writing in a weekend op-ed in the New York Times that he is now convinced the phenomenon is caused by humans.

In a piece titled, “The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic,” Richard A. Muller, a University of California, Berkley physicist who founded the Berkley Earth Surface Temperature study (BEST) wrote that his, “total turnaround, in such a short time,” was driven by a new report from the group that concluded for the first time that global warming is a man-made problem. That revelation brings Muller essentially full circle from his stance a few years ago, when he criticized other global warming studies as flawed and questioned whether the Earth was even warming abnormally, dangerously fast at all.

“Science is that narrow realm of knowledge that, in principle, is universally accepted,” Muller wrote. “I embarked on this analysis to answer questions that, to my mind, had not been answered. I hope that the Berkeley Earth analysis will help settle the scientific debate regarding global warming and its human causes.”

The BEST study, he wrote, found that the Earth had warmed by about two and a half degrees over the past 250 years, with the bulk of that spike occurring in the past 50 years. Moreover, he found that, “essentially all of this increase” was likely due to greenhouse gas emissions, a point climate change believers have accepted as fact for years.

:}

Go there and crow. More tomorrow.

:}

The Hottest Year Ever Recorded By Science – I was gona continue the solar meditation

Posted on by
Reply

And in away this is a solar earth issue, just not one that involves pollution free power generation. It has always amazed me how good a source of news Rolling Stone has become. It was the home of Hunter S. Thompson too.

http://digg.com/newsbar/topnews/3_215_high_temperature_records_broken_or_tied_in_the_us

Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math

Three simple numbers that add up to global catastrophe – and that make clear who the real enemy is

July 19, 2012 9:35 AM ET

If the pictures of those towering wildfires in Colorado haven’t convinced you, or the size of your AC bill this summer, here are some hard numbers about climate change: June broke or tied 3,215 high-temperature records across the United States. That followed the warmest May on record for the Northern Hemisphere – the 327th consecutive month in which the temperature of the entire globe exceeded the 20th-century average, the odds of which occurring by simple chance were 3.7 x 10-99, a number considerably larger than the number of stars in the universe.

Meteorologists reported that this spring was the warmest ever recorded for our nation – in fact, it crushed the old record by so much that it represented the “largest temperature departure from average of any season on record.” The same week, Saudi authorities reported that it had rained in Mecca despite a temperature of 109 degrees, the hottest downpour in the planet’s history.

Not that our leaders seemed to notice. Last month the world’s nations, meeting in Rio for the 20th-anniversary reprise of a massive 1992 environmental summit, accomplished nothing. Unlike George H.W. Bush, who flew in for the first conclave, Barack Obama didn’t even attend. It was “a ghost of the glad, confident meeting 20 years ago,” the British journalist George Monbiot wrote; no one paid it much attention, footsteps echoing through the halls “once thronged by multitudes.” Since I wrote one of the first books for a general audience about global warming way back in 1989, and since I’ve spent the intervening decades working ineffectively to slow that warming, I can say with some confidence that we’re losing the fight, badly and quickly – losing it because, most of all, we remain in denial about the peril that human civilization is in.

:}
Go there and read. More next week.
:}

The Keystone XL Pipeline Is A Very Bad Idea – So why is the Springfield Chamber of Commerce backing it

Posted on by
Reply

I have no idea how much Keystone and the Koch brothers gave to the Springfield, IL Chamber but it must have been a bunch because they hired someone to coordinate their support for the project. The first I knew of it was an Editorial published in what is left of the State Journal Register. So this posting and the next are in part my preparation for writing a counter Editorial.

http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/rkistner/a_native_people_fight_a_dantes.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+switchboard_rkistner+%28Switchboard%3A+Rocky+Kistner%27s+Blog%29

Rocky Kistner’s Blog

In Canada’s Tar Sands, a Dante’s Hell Threatens People Nearby and Across the Globe

In Canada’s western province of Alberta, Melina Laboucan-Massimo’s community—the Lubicon Lake Nation—has endured a withering toxic tar sands oil assault, an Armageddon against nature few Americans are fully aware of. Here in the once pristine sub-Arctic, tar sands mining operations level vast swaths of boreal forests near native lands, as pipelines burst and spew corrosive chemical-laced tar sands oil into rivers and lakes.

The Lubicon are used to living in harmony with nature. But tar sands mining has brought a deadly discordance to their environment. Melina has watched family and friends battle unheard of cancers and respiratory ailments; she’s listened to local fishermen and hunters complain about unusual lesions and tumors festering in their catches and prey. She’s reacted in disbelief as her government has sponsored airborne sharpshooters to gun down mighty Canadian wolf packs—a zero sum game that is killing one species to try to save another—as dwindling herds of caribou flee their disappearing forest homes and may be gone forever in the not so distant future.

For members of the Lubicon Lake Nation, it is a nightmare of Kafkaesque proportions. Their verdant land of abundant wildlife is metastasizing into pock-marketed battlefields of a thousand Verduns. Melina and other community leaders have not sat idly by as the environmental carnage unfolds around them. She has testified before Congress, spearheaded Greenpeace protest actions, and worked tirelessly to get the word out about the devastation in her community.

:}

Go there and see the video. Go there and read. More tomorrow.

:}

This Guy Had A Lot Of Guts – But the year is turning out the way he thought

Posted on by
Reply

I love guys that think clearly about the future. So we will end the week with The Energy Collective and Gil Friend. I do not like the fact that they are backed by Siemens but I am something of a purist.

http://theenergycollective.com/node/75727

 

Posted by: Gil Friend

Predicting the Top Sustainability Stories of 2012

Last month I offered my picks for the Top Sustainability Stories of 2011. Here are my predictions for the Top Sustainability Stories of 2012. (It’s a rugged mix of bad news and good.)

Climate heats up and hides out The sheer pressure of the hard-to-escape evidence — more record-breaking temperatures, more disastrous weather events, big supply chain disruptions, ever-rising insurance payments — will drive more businesses to take global warming seriously as a business risk, even as The Economist and others blast the journalistic malpractice that leaves “climate” out of the weather disaster stories, and President Obama takes cover in an “all of the above” energy strategy.

US falls behind in solar China, Germany, Brazil — and California — continue to invest policy and capital in the new economy, while Washington remains lost in ideological shock and awe (as House republicans tell the Pentagon “you have to waste taxpayers money and make the troops less safe so we can continue to ignore both the science and the economics of climate change”). But there are surprises too: “red state” Iowa has decided that exporting $6b/year to buy fossil fuel from unfriendly nations might not be the most “conservative” plan, and is investing government money to reduce that balance of payments deficit!

EPA battle royal The right’s war on the EPA (and on regulation in general) will continue, and in fact heat up as campaign fodder. Little noticed: 191 house votes attacking the EPA in 2011. Expect this battle to continue into 2013 (depending on how the elections turn out). But there’s good news too.

:}

Go there and read. More next week.

:}