Originally started in response to WWI fuel shortages and escalated during WWII for all the obvious reasons …ummm apartheid and the efforts to defeat the ANC and Nelsen Mandella.
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – South Africa’s energy minister said on Thursday the country was still in the grip of a major power crisis despite being able to keep the lights on since a series of blackouts early last year.
Voluntary energy savings had failed to meet the required levels, and the country was risking new power cuts, the Minister of Minerals and Energy, Buyelwa Sonjica said in a statement.
State-owned utility Eskom, which provides 95 percent of the country’s power, has rationed electricity since early last year, but has not cut power since last April.
Sonjica said Africa’s biggest economy was suffering from a perilously low electricity reserve margin or spare capacity.
“The recent lack of blackouts has led to the assumption that our energy situation has been resolved,” Sonjica said.
“Unfortunately this is far from the truth. We are in trouble unless we all begin to take responsibility for our habits of energy wastage.”
Two years ago, Sonjica urged South Africans to save 10 percent of their electricity usage every year for the next five years but so far energy savings were way below that, she said.
Sonjica said a healthy electricity reserve margin was about 17 to 20 percent, to ensure that sudden changes in demand or supply and power-plant maintenance do not cause blackouts.
Eskom said in January the reserve margin was about 8 percent, and has said its long term target is 15 percent.
She said following the success of the Earth Hour over the weekend, and with winter fast approaching, she wanted South Africans to save power to ensure stable electricity supply.
Lights went out in homes across the globe on Saturday for Earth Hour 2009, a global event designed to highlight the threat from climate change.
Sonjica said the Earth Hour initiative would promote awareness that the country still faced a serious energy crisis because South Africa’s record on energy conservation was poor.
“South Africa is one of the least energy efficient nations in the world and the least efficient in Africa,” she said.
“We also hold the number 11 spot on the top 20 greenhouse gas emitters list and are responsible for 42 percent of Africa’s emissions. Every kilowatt of electricity you use produces 1 kg of carbon dioxide; one of the main greenhouse gases.”
Critics say the energy crisis that dented South Africa’s growth and investor-friendly image was caused by the government’s failure to invest in new power generation plants, coupled with surging demand led to the power crisis. Continued…
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I don’t think that sounds so good…SO KEEP TALKING CLEAN COAL BABY…it is a quick way to energy death.
Let us say that you had an operable form of cancer and your doctor offered you chemotherapy. What would you say to him? Let us imagine that you had a torn tendon and your doctor offered you aspirin as your main form of treatment. What would you say? Actually you would probably CHANGE doctors…
Drilling began this week for a carbon dioxide injection well as part of an $84.3 million project beneath Archer Daniels Midland Co. property.Workers have started constructing a well that will reach more than 6,500 feet underground. The drilling of the injection well is expected to be completed in late March or early April.
No objections were filed before a late January deadline for an Illinois Environmental Protection Agency permit approving the process. That clears the way for the drilling equipment to be moved into place, said Sallie Greenberg, Illinois Geological Survey communications coordinator. The project is intended to capture carbon dioxide from ADM’s ethanol plant, convert it into liquid and pump it underground for storage before it’s emitted into the atmosphere. The U.S. Department of Energy expects 1 million tons of carbon dioxide from the plant to be injected over a three-year period, beginning in early 2010. The project is intended to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide that contributes to global warming.
Midwest Geological Sequestration Consortium receives Phase III funding Storage, Feb 21 2008 (Carbon Capture Journal)
– The Midwest Geological Sequestration Consortium (MGSC), and the Illinois State Geological Survey (ISGS) have been awarded a $66.7 million contract from the US DOE.
The funding is to conduct a Phase III large-scale sequestration demonstration project in the Mt. Simon Sandstone.
The MGSC, ISGS, and Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM) will work together on this carbon sequestration project, which will involve the capture and storage of CO2 from ADM’s ethanol plant in Decatur, Illinois.
The $84.3 million project will be funded by $66.7 million from the U.S. Department of Energy over a period of seven years, supplemented by cofunding from ADM, Schlumberger Carbon Services, and other corporate and state resources.
The project is designed to confirm the ability of the Mt. Simon Sandstone, a major regional saline reservoir in Illinois, to accept and store 1 million metric tonnes of CO2 over a period of three years.
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Already they are a year behind..Why does this sound like a replay of NUCLEAR Power. Delays….Cost over runs….Accidents… All to avoid leaving the nasty stuff in the ground in the first place. Even Scientific America gets into the act:
OXYFUEL: In September 2007 the oxyfuel combustion chamber is lifted into place at the Schwarze Pumpe power plant in Germany–one of the first power plants in the world to capture carbon dioxide. Courtesy of Vattenfal
Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of five features on carbon capture and storage, running daily from April 6 to April 10, 2009.
Like all big coal-fired power plants, the 1,600-megawatt-capacity Schwarze Pumpe plant in Spremberg, Germany, is undeniably dirty. Yet a small addition to the facility—a tiny boiler that pipes 30 MW worth of steam to local industrial customers—represents a hope for salvation from the global climate-changing consequences of burning fossil fuel.
To heat that boiler, the damp, crumbly brown coal known as lignite—which is even more polluting than the harder black anthracite variety—burns in the presence of pure oxygen, a process known as oxyfuel, releasing as waste both water vapor and that more notorious greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide (CO2). By condensing the water in a simple pipe, Vattenfall, the Swedish utility that owns the power plant, captures and isolates nearly 95 percent of the CO2 in a 99.7 percent pure form.
That CO2 is then compressed into a liquid and given to another company, Linde, for sale; potential users range from the makers of carbonated beverages, such as Coca-Cola, to oil firms that use it to squeeze more petroleum out of declining deposits. In principle, however, the CO2 could also be pumped deep underground and locked safely away in specific rock formations for millennia.
From the International Energy Agency to the United Nations–sanctioned Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), such carbon capture and storage (CCS), particularly for coal-fired power plants, has been identified as a technology critical to enabling deep, rapid cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. After all, coal burning is responsible for 40 percent of the 30 billion metric tons of CO2 emitted by human activity every year.
“There is the potential for the U.S. and other countries to continue to rely on coal as a source of energy while at the same time protecting the climate from the massive greenhouse gas emissions associated with coal,” says Steve Caldwell, coordinator for regional climate change policy at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, a Washington, D.C. think tank.
Even President Barack Obama has labeled the technology as important for “energy independence” and included $3.4 billion in the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for “clean coal” power.
Today three types of technology can capture CO2 at a power plant. One, as at Schwarze Pumpe, involves the oxyfuel process: burning coal in pure oxygen to produce a stream of CO2-rich emissions. The second uses various forms of chemistry—in the form of amine scrubbers, special membranes or ionic liquids—to pull carbon dioxide out of a more mixed set of exhaust gases. The third is gasification, in which liquid or solid fuels are first turned into synthetic natural gas; CO2 from the conversion of the gas can be siphoned off.
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Then there is this:
ckmapawatt at 10:27 PM on 04/06/09
NO, NO, NO. Carbon Capture and Storage is not the answer! It is treating the symptoms and not the disease.
I recently wrote a blog looking at this same issue:
http://blog.mapawatt.com/2009/03/13/carbon-capture-and-storage/Basically, we can take BILLIONS and spend it on burying something underground, or we can spend that money and put it to good use while taking the same amount of CO2 out of the air.
Carbon Capture is short term decision making and thinking that is mainly being promoted by the Coal Industry. Would you really call Carbon Capture a sustainable practice?
(Disclaimer: the below article is a thought experiment. I’m not suggesting it as a real solution, but rather a way to analyze two different carbon mitigating strategies. Enjoy!)
You might have seen the environmental articles recently related to Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). Basically, all CCS does is take the CO2 that coal plants produce, collect it, and pump it underground. Sounds like a good idea right? Well, on the surface it does, but let’s dig down into the actual numbers a little bit.
In order to better understand the proposed function of CCS, let’s walk through a comparison of a power generation plant with and without CCS. I’m going to look at two options:
Option 1: 500 MW (capacity before CCS) IGCC (type of coal plant) with Carbon Capture and Storage
Option 2: 500 MW IGCC plant with the money that would be used on CCS to be spent on a wind farm
In comparing our two options, pretend you’re the President of Power Generation Company for planet Earth (this is a made up company. The point is you base your decisions on what is best for the planet and the people buying your power. You don’t base your decisions on politics). In both options the 500 MW IGCC plant is already installed, you are just comparing whether to spend money on carbon capture and storage, or take the equivalent amount of money and use it for another purpose that would help the environment, in this case a wind farm.
You may ask: Why do I want to install a wind farm if my goal is to reduce CO2 (even though your real goal is to do what’s best for Earth)? Because you are all powerful, you are going to figure out how much energy the wind farm produces, then find an old dirty coal plant that produces the same amount of energy, and take that coal plant off line. Therefore, reducing the amount of CO2 that enters the atmosphere by enabling the old coal plant to be taken off line, and also helping wind power reach economies of scale.
Installing CCS or a Wind Farm that replaces old Coal:
A recent paper by David and Herzog at MIT estimated the future cost of CCS at $1,145/kw (estimated cost in 2012) of installed power. So, for the 500 MW IGCC plant, it would cost $572.5 million dollars to install CCS technology. Now, you have the option of taking this money and using it to buy a Wind Farm instead. The American Wind Energy Association states that it costs about $ 1 million to install 1 MW of generating capacity for a wind farm. Therefore, $572.5 million will enable you to install 572 MW of installed wind energy (with $500 k left over)!
In order to analyze how much CO2 will be kept out of the atmosphere by taking the old coal plant off line, we have to calculate the yearly power output of the wind farm. To do this, you need what is called a Capacity Factor. Basically, this is just the percentage of time during the year that a power producing facility produces power at its rated capacity. The organization National Wind Watch states that in 2003, the average capacity factor for US wind farms was 26.9%. Therefore, to calculate how much energy the wind farm produces (MWh) during the year:
Yearly Output (MWh) = (installed capacity)*(capacity factor)*(hours in a day)*(days in a year) =
Now we have to use this value to decide how big a coal plant this would replace. Using the wind farm yearly output and the average capacity factor for Coal plants in the US, which is 73.6%, we can use the above Yearly Energy Output equation to back-solve for the “installed capacity” the wind farm would replace:
Installed Capacity (MW) = (yearly output) ÷ (Capacity factor * hours in a day * days in a year) =
(1,347,884) ÷ (.736*24*365) = 209 MW
Therefore, if you use the $527.5 million dollars it would cost to install CCS on a 500 MW IGCC coal plant for a wind farm, the energy the wind farm produces is equivalent to a 209 MW pulverized coal plant!
of the hot garbage they produce, the quicker we get rid of them. Geologic storage is the only hope. I know I am supposed to be posting about gardening…but somethings I just gotta get off my chest..!
for used radioactive fuel rods piling up near power plants
By Michael Hawthorne |Tribune reporter
March 11, 2009
In a pool of water just a football field away from Lake Michigan, about 1,000 tons of highly radioactive fuel from the scuttled Zion Nuclear Power Station is waiting for someplace else to spend a few thousand years.
The wait just got longer.
President Barack Obama‘s proposed budget all but kills the Yucca Mountain project, the controversial site where the U.S. nuclear industry’s spent fuel rods were supposed to end up in permanent storage deep below the Nevada desert. There are no other plans in the works, meaning the waste for now will remain next to Zion and 104 other reactors scattered across the country.
Obama has said too many questions remain about whether storing waste at Yucca Mountain is safe, and his decision fulfills a campaign promise. But it also renews nagging questions about what to do with the radioactive waste steadily accumulating in 35 states.
With seven nuclear plant sites, Illinois relies more heavily on nuclear power and has a larger stockpile of spent fuel than any other state. Besides Zion near Lake Michigan, plants storing waste are sited along the Illinois, Rock and Mississippi Rivers.Customers of ComEd and other nuclear utilities have shelled out $10 billion to develop the Yucca Mountain site in spare-change-size charges tacked on to electric bills. Most of that money will have been wasted, and experts forecast that billions more will be spent on damage suits from utilities that counted on the federal government to come up with a burial ground
The American public has been told for 100 years that prices are controlled by supply and demand. What if that is not true? The implications for how we treat the rich are enormous. Yet the energy market, one of our largest ever, is pointing to the idea that there is no relation between supply and demand.
Glut caused by world slowdown leaves the world awash in crude
NEW YORK – Supertankers that once raced around the world to satisfy an unquenchable thirst for oil are now parked offshore, fully loaded, anchors down, their crews killing time. In the United States, vast storage farms for oil are almost out of room.
As demand for crude has plummeted, the world suddenly finds itself awash in oil that has nowhere to go.
It’s been less than a year since oil prices hit record highs. But now producers and traders are struggling with the new reality: The world wants less oil, not more. And turning off the spigot is about as easy as turning around one of those tankers.
So oil companies and investors are stashing crude, waiting for demand to rise and the bear market to end so they can turn a profit later.
Meanwhile, oil-producing countries such as Iran have pumped millions of barrels of their own crude into idle tankers, effectively taking crude off the market to halt declining prices that are devastating their economies.
Traders have always played a game of store and sell, bringing oil to market when it can fetch the best price. They say this time is different because of how fast the bottom fell out of the oil market.
“Nobody expected this,” said Antoine Halff, an analyst with Newedge. “The majority of people out there thought the market would keep rising to $200, even $250, a barrel. They were tripping over each other to pick a higher forecast.”
Now the strategy is storage. Anyone who can buy cheap oil and store it might be able to sell it at a premium later, when the global economy ramps up again.
The oil tanks that surround Cushing, Okla., in a sprawling network that holds 10 percent of the nation’s oil, have been swelling for months. Exactly how close they are to full is a closely guarded secret, but analysts who cover the industry say Cushing is approaching capacity.
There are other storage tanks in the country with plenty of extra room to take on oil, but Cushing is the delivery point for the oil traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange. So the closer Cushing gets to full, the lower the price of oil goes.
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YET the price of gasoline continues to go up…How is that possible? Prices in Springfield went from $1.75 to current price of $1.99 in a day. This article is a month old BUT:
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Average gasoline prices rose 1.7 cents Friday, according to a daily survey of gas station credit card swipes.
The price of gas rose to a national average of $1.816 a gallon from $1.799 a day earlier, according to motorist group AAA. Prices were higher than the $1.667 a gallon reported a month ago, but lower than the $3.044 a gallon gas was selling for on the same day last year.
Gas prices have risen for the past three days, according to AAA data, and are nearly 20 cents higher than they were on Jan. 1.
Gas prices initially rose last year, following a resurgence in the price of crude oil, gas’s main ingredient. But as concern about falling demand for oil sent crude prices down more than $6 a barrel this week, the drivers may be in for a decline in gas prices as well.
“The American consumer is still staying home,” said Geoff Sundstrom, fuel price analyst at AAA.
“There’s absolutely no reason why the price of gasoline should be as high as it is,” he said.
OK I was wrong. I admit it so there. But I have to admit that I never thought the huge Oil Companies nor the Oil Producers nor the Huge Refiners would ever admit that there is absolutely no relationship between supply and demand either in the price of a barrel of oil, or in the price of gasoline, much less admit that there is no relationship BETWEEN THE TWO of them. But they did. So When I said that Oil would hit 120 or 130 $$$ per barrel next summer my thoughts were mainly on gasoline. Yet in a world finally gone honest for reasons I do not understand…I must change my prediction about Oil and change it to Gasoline. Who knows what the price of Oil will be next Summer but I predict the Price of Gasoline will be over 3$$ a gallon, and easily could be around 4 $$$ a gallon. Boy would I love to be wrong. We should Tax Gasoline out of existence,
Energy market has turned upside-down amid U.S. recession
updated 4:50 p.m. CT,Sun., Feb. 15, 2009
NEW YORK – Crude oil prices have fallen to new lows for this year. So you’d think gas prices would sink right along with them.
Not so.
On Thursday, for example, crude oil closed just under $34 a barrel, its lowest point for 2009. But the national average price of a gallon of gas rose to $1.95 on the same day, its peak for the year. On Friday gas went a penny higher.
To drivers once again grimacing as they tank up, it sounds like a conspiracy. But it has more to do with an energy market turned upside-down that has left gas cut off from its usual economic moorings.
The price of gas is indeed tied to oil. It’s just a matter of which oil.
The benchmark for crude oil prices is West Texas Intermediate, drilled exactly where you would imagine. That’s the price, set at the New York Mercantile Exchange, that you see quoted on business channels and in the morning paper.
Right now, in an unusual market trend, West Texas crude is selling for much less than inferior grades of crude from other places around the world. A severe economic downturn has left U.S. storage facilities brimming with it, sending prices for the premium crude to five-year lows.
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Please read the entire article it is full of great information. If you ignore the idiocy above about “it depends on which oil you buy”, the fact is that oil storage is nearing its capacity because everyone is “saving” their oil “til the markets rise”. Yet at the same time there is this huge glut of oil, there is near scarcity and rising prices in gasoline. That is because the Refiners are not buying oil and restricting gasoline supplies to increase price. You then see the real wizard in the machine, or the magician behind the curtains, because as gas prices rise consumption already at market lows will fall further. The point: They can not raise gasoline prices fast enough to make money while they are concurrently scaring the bejeezes out of gasoline, diesel and kerasene (manly airlines and the airforce) users. Then there is the question of what to do with all that stored oil. More on that later! This in from Texas where they love their oil (that’s earl to you):
The nation’s refiners are cutting back on the supply of gasoline in the market, leading to a steady increase in gasoline prices throughout the country, according to AAA Texas.
Retail prices nationwide are inching back toward the $2 mark. The average price of a gallon of regular gasoline is now at $1.95.
In Texas, the average price of gas is currently $1.83 a gallon, an increase of nearly three cents over a week ago.
In San Antonio, average gas prices are also up three cents this week, to $1.80 a gallon.
“The higher gas prices come at a time when crude oil prices remain very sluggish and the Department of Energy and experts say supplies are abundant,” AAA Texas spokesman Dan Ronan says.
“Oil today has been trading on the NYMEX exchange around $35 a barrel, clearly in the lower range of the $30 to $50 pattern it’s been in for the past several weeks,” he says.
What’s driving higher retail gasoline prices are the reductions in capacity many refiners are taking to address a slow-down in demand for gasoline and the recession, Ronan says.
Americans currently are spending $671 million a day on gasoline. This is down from $1.12 billion spent daily on gasoline during January 2008.
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What set all this market transparency off (hahaha I never thought I would say that about an energy market) you might wonder? Well it has to be the speculators. I have always wondered about this concept “the smartest guys in the room”. Echoed in the earlier movie, Wall Street, where Gecko says “Greed is Good”. Thieves are not very smart. Think about it. How smart do you have to be to take money from the weak and the helpless. I first heard this phrase applied to the “people” at Enron. But their business was just fraud…plain and simple. They did not make any money they just took other people’s money. Even the Rich are starting to notice and they hardly ever do that:
Orange County gas prices have jumped 10 cents in the past week, a reversal of the trend of slower, more gradual increases.
A gallon of regular unleaded goes for $2.17, up 10 cents since last week, and 27 cents higher than a month ago. Last week and the week previous, prices seemed to be leveling off at $2.07, according to the Automobile Club of Southern California and the Oil Price Information Service.
Prices are still 83 cents less than a year ago, and $2.43 cheaper than the June 19 record of $4.60.
In Los Angeles County, gas goes for $2.18, the Auto Club says.
Orangecountygasprices.com says that the cheapest gas in Orange County can be found for $1.98 at the 76 station at 1201 S. State College Blvd at Ball Road in Anaheim. The most expensive gas is at the Chevron at 26988 Ortega Highway at Del Obispo Street in San Juan Capistrano.
The smartest guys in the room got the ball rolling by creating the housing bubble. But when the big money pulled out of the market well before the crash it had to have “somewhere to go”. So the rocket scientists suggested commodities, in particular Oil. That destabilized what had been an incredibly stable market and the chicanery caused the weak regulatory system to collapse. The see-saws whipped the market and exposed the LIE that was the market justification. What are they going to do with all that oil? Pump it back into the ground, but more likely abandon it. Think about that?>! Yet some people want to live in the nicer world of the 1990s
However, he said he would not speculate about the future prices of oil because it could turn into a “guessing game.”
Regular grade unleaded fuel in Amarillo sold for an average of $2.967 per gallon a year ago, according to AAA’s Web site. The same grade of gas was sold Thursday for $1.683 per gallon.
Peter Summers, an assistant professor in the Economics and Geography department, said he thinks most people are taking the increases “in stride.”
“As expensive as oil and gas got last summer, and to see such a huge reversal of that,” Summers said, “not many people were expecting it and maybe people got used to it.”
The increases could be affecting construction around campus, he said, because the increasing prices of petroleum could raise the price of asphalt.
Bolton said he does not feel like lower prices would be a long-term trend, but if prices could stabilize between $2 to $2.50 per gallon, people could afford gas and companies could still profit off gas sales.
The average price for regular grade unleaded fuel was $1.614 in the Austin-San Marcos area and $1.625 in the Dallas area. The national average for regular grade unleaded fuel was $1.762.
In Victoria the temperature has been above 44 degrees all week and they are forecasting another week of 40+ temperatures. Power is failing, trains have stopped running because tracks are buckling under the heat . It’s just scorching. And it seems that the people are not the only ones suffering. Check out these photos of a little Koala which just walked onto a back porch looking for a bit of heat relief. The woman filled up a bucket for it and this is what happened!
Kinda dark but:
Getting better:
About right:
But see this is actually the effects of Global Warming. We are burning the animals and plants off this planet UP.
For those who track their local temperatures using the Celsius scale, 40 degrees is a daunting number. In early February 2009, residents of southeastern Australia were cringing at their weather forecasts, as predictions of temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) meant that a blistering heat wave was continuing.
This map of Australia shows how the land surface temperature from January 25 to February 1 compared to the average mid-summer temperatures the continent experienced between 2000-2008. Places where temperatures were warmer than average are red, places experiencing near-normal temperatures are white, and places where temperatures were cooler than average are blue. The data were collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite. While southern Australia was scorching, a similarly large area of northern and central Australia was several degrees cooler than it was in the previous nine years. The cool anomaly across that region is probably linked to the above-average rainfall the area has received during this year’s wet season.
Land surface temperature is how hot the surface of the Earth would feel to the touch in a particular location. From a satellite’s point of view, the “surface” is whatever it sees when it looks through the atmosphere to the ground. That could be the sand on a beach, the grass on a lawn, the roof of a building, or a paved road. Thus, daytime land surface temperature is often much higher than the air temperature that is included in the daily weather report—a fact that anyone who has walked barefoot across a parking lot on a summer afternoon could verify.
The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) called this heat wave “exceptional,” not only for the high temperatures but for their duration. One-day records were broken in multiple cities, with temperatures in the mid-40s. In Kyancutta, South Australia, the temperature reached 48.2 degrees Celsius (118.8 degrees Fahrenheit). Many places also set records for the number of consecutive days with record-breaking heat.
Years of lawlessness have left us with a situation similar to the 1920s when it was legal to peddle snake oil. EndenPure should have been busted for Advertising Fraud and Consumer Fraud years ago, but because of deregulation they keep getting to peddle their crap.
As heard on thePaul Harvey Radio Show and television features across the nation. The EdenPure TM is a remarkable new advanced portable heater can cut your heating bill up to 50% and pay for itself in a matter of weeks!
A major cause of residential fires in the U.S. is due to portable heaters. The EdenPure TM uses a new advanced quartz infrared heating system that never reaches a temperature that can start a fire.
The outside of the EdenPureTM only gets warm to the touch, never hot… so its safe around children and pets. Children can play on it and pets can actually sleep on it while operating without harm!
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It makes me puke just to put their stuff up. BUYER BEWARE…Here is what actual purchasers had to say.
» left by disapointed from cleve, OH (6 days 19 hours ago.)
My First Edenpure 500 just broke for the second time ! first time in warranty, pain in the butt to send back. Now, out of warranty, and only in my second ‘winter’ season. It was only used for about 4 to 4.5 months the first season, stored nicely, and taken care of…What a rip off. WAY TOO expensive. Cleveland, OH – cheaper to turn the GAS thermostat up for REAL and Quiet heat. Darn expensive lesson.
left by Craig in Washington from Vancouver (5 days 11 hours ago.)
This article has convinced me NOT to purchase one of these.. much less three. I live in the Pacific NW and our power costs are very low compared to other parts of the country so the cost to operate is not the reason for my decision NOT to buy. It would be because overall.. it appears that the reliability is TRASH. Also, it appears the customer service is severly lacking.
Thank you all for exposing this for what it is… a non-performing, HIGH Cost Sham. I feel sorry for those who buy it without looking it up on the web to find out how badly it works in real life. There claims are not truthful. Just read these testimonials… and their ads… “Heats a large room in minutes with even heat wall to wall and floor to ceiling”. WHAT A CROCK!
1/31/2009 – pam of western NY ~ West Almond, USA writes:
I purchased this unit after watching the infomercial, claiming how the unit would reduce my heating bill. We are using this to heat a 15 x 12 bedroom for extra heat only. We have a [] wood stove (best stove out there) to heat the rest of the house (it keeps it at 70 to 75 degrees and its been over 80 also. Keeping it on a low setting (3 bars) to heat the bedroom at 65-68 degrees has made our electric bill jump from $132 to $265 in one month. we even purchased a new [] refrigerator and got rid of my 1985 sub zero refrig the previous month. I would not get one of these for my worst enemy! What a waste of money! I am trying to retun this as I write the review.
Senior Citizens Scammed By Edenpure
1/31/2009 – Lark&Bertha of West Virginia, USA writes:
We purchased 6 Edenpure heaters: 2 for us, 2 for my stepdaughter, and 1 for each of my two other daughters. With the price of oil the way it was, this seemed the way to go for heat and economy. Well, all of our electric bills have more than doubled. My husband abd I are on Soc.Sec. fixed income and on a budget with the elec. company. I know that this winter has been really cold, but the elec. co. said that the Co. that makes Edenpure heaters lies to the public in their ads, that no way will the heaters cut your bills! I’m going to try to return the heaters, but since the 60-day return period is over, I don’t think we will have much success. Scammed? You bet we were. For what we paid for all 6 heaters, we could have bought oil for the winter! I guess the old saying is right: If it seems to be too good to be true, it is! Disappointed and cold in W. Va.
Electri bill tripled
1/29/2009 – Michelle of Mi., USA writes:
Bought the Edenpure Heater in Nov.2007. The electric bill was higher but assumed it was due to sub-zero temps. I had a problem with the heater in Nov.2008, returned item and was shipped a new one. Bill in Nov.$257.00, Bill in Dec. estimated $218.00. Bill in Jan. $593.40. We’ve had some very cold weather. But this was advertised to save on heating costs. It has cost me more. I now have to make payments bi-monthly just to chip away at this outrageous bill. I work, I feel real sorry for people who are in a tight financial bind.
According to the grand daddy of them all, Consumer Reports, IF YOU LOWER YOUR THERMOSTAT 17 DEGREES.
As I have said before it is not even a good space heater. I advise against space heaters. You could heat your own house with your body heat alone if it was properly insulated. But if you insist on buying one the EdenPure ain’t it:
When has it been ok to urinate and defecate in a drinking water source. But Humans world wide do it every day. Some of us purify those byproducts before they actually get to the river or the lake or the aquifer, some of us don’t. When has it ever been OK to put food products let alone industrial products (lets take the buy out of byproduct) in a drinking water source yet we have done it for 200 years. What did we think? That there would be no results?
Yet we go further. We stack our garbage in the most inappropriate places like we are PROUD of it. Heh look our garbage pile is bigger than yours. Like the garbage dump that you can see from SPACE.
Mayor Bloomberg announced the city’s plans to turn the closed Fresh Kills landkill into a park. The Times points out that the landfill is “a garbage dump site that is so large it can be seen from space,” which is why it’s a sensitive and important issue for Staten Islanders…especially Staten Islanders who can vote. Reporter Michel Cooper describes the city’s renderings of a Fresh Kills Park as “Monet using Photoshop” or Andrew Wyeth-like. Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro called the announcement was “the final nail in the heart of Dracula,” as people have been speculating the dump might reopen since it closed in 2001. The Post says the proposal from Field Operations, the landscape company that won the competition to transform Fresh Kills, includes “bird-nesting island, public roads, boardwalks, soccer and baseball fields, bridle paths and a 5,000-seat stadium.
Of course, all of this is also an effort to keep his approval numbers from slipping any further, although at this point, it’d be in the negative territory…people would just claim ignorance when asked about Mayor Bloomberg.
Not so many years ago, if you told people that you were getting up early on Saturday morning to rush over to Fresh Kills on Staten Island, they would have thought you were crazy or a highly-paid union worker. Today, a few savvy folks might peg you for a naturalist.
The world’s largest dump (actually, the world’s largest manmade structure, of sorts, in that it exceeded the volume of the Great Wall of China) is quietly transforming into the city’s second largest park, after PelhamBayPark. You can witness the process yourself by signing up for a free tour now through November through this link. Don’t fret the competition to get a ticket – the tour I joined this weekend wasn’t booked up. Besides, you have, oh, a few more years of chances. The park officially opens in 2036.
(the site has four large ones mounds, ranging between 140? and 200? tall)
At the moment the trash is being digested by microbes, which will actually cause the mounds to shrink a bit. But not before they’ve earned their keep! The methane (“natural gas” in daily parlance), organic chemicals, and carbon dioxide produced are tapped via long pipe networks (see the methane taps in the foreground of the above photo by Emmanuel). The natural gas is purified and sold to Keyspan (now part of National Grid), which in turn sells it to heat up to 10,000 homes at a time. I can imagine a “green” dry cleaner using the CO2 to spiff up designer suits for the local gentry.
Less immediately marketable is the leachate goo that landfills produce when water jazzes up microbial and fungal activity. That’s dried and shipped out to another landfill in West Virginia. As a side note, the five boroughs now send trash to Pennsylvania, Virginia, and South Carolina. Remember, the primary insight of environmentalism is that when things are thrown away, there is no “away.”
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Please read both articles if you have a strong stomach.
T he first “why” that struck me on seeing Why Evolution is True was why do we need yet another book on evolution? There are lots of good ones out there already and nothing less than a mountain of evidence to support the reality of evolution by natural selection.
But we do need another, insists Jerry Coyne, a professor of evolutionary genetics at the University of Chicago, because creationism is spreading.
And he’s right – creationism is all over the place, not just in the US, where it often gains huge amounts of publicity. In December, a UK poll found that 29% of science teachers thought that creationism should be taught in science classes alongside evolution; a state of affairs that Richard Dawkins called “a national disgrace”. It is also on the rise in Islamic countries.
Careful persuasion
Creationism, Coyne tells us in this wide-ranging, beautifully written account, is like a roly-poly clown that pops back up when you punch it. But he resists the temptation to punch. He seeks to persuade, by carefully leading the reader through the overwhelming evidence, that evolution is a fact.
The audience is those who are uncertain about explanations of life’s diversity. The book is not aimed at people who hold faith-based positions – Coyne considers them to be lost causes – but you have to wonder how many people who are “uncertain” will be won over.
Coyne describes, for example, giving a talk on evolution versus intelligent design/creationism to a group of rich Chicago businessmen. You would think that people in the business world might think that evidence for something is worth taking into account, but this was the response Coyne got from one audience member after his lecture: “I found your evidence for evolution very convincing – but I still don’t believe it”.
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So you would think that Archer Daniels Midland will evolve in this new Green World and “get it” that polluting the environment needs to stop. That their by-products as they call them must be put to a use. Like growing algae for a fuel source or making cement. But NO, they want to pump it underground. Like that’s not polluting. Why don’t they quit? Because as the man above said, “They don’t believe.”
illinois environmental protection agency
1021 north grand avenue east, P.O. Box 19276, springfield, illinois 62794-9276 -( 217) 782-3397 james R. thompson center, 100 west randolph, suite 11 -300, chicago, IL 60601 – (312) 814-6026
rod R. blagojevich, governordouglas P. scott, director
UNDERGROUND INJECTION CONTROL (UIC) FINAL PERMIT DECISION
The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency provides notice pursuant to 35 111. Admin. Code 705.201(c) that a final UIC permit was issued to Archer Daniels Midland Company of Decatur, Illinois on December 23, 2008. The Agency’s response to comments, the Response Summary and Attachment 1, are available at the Illinois EPA web site at the following link: http://www.epa.state.il.us/public-notices/general-notices.html (Scroll l/3 of the way down the page to select documents posted concerning the Archer Daniels Midland project.)
Specific information must be submitted to the Agency as either permit modification requests or as supplemental information for review and approval prior to ADM’s use of the injection well. Please review the lists of these data requirements on page 2 of the Response Summary.
The applicant may petition the Illinois Pollution Control Board to contest this permit decision pursuant to 35 111. Adm. Code 705.212. Third parties also have appeal rights pursuant to 35 111. Adm. Code 705.212. Appeals must be filed within 35 days of the decision date. The deadline to appeal the Illinois EPA permit decision is January 27, 2009. For additional information on the permit appeal process, please contact the Illinois Pollution Control Board (312-814-3620).
To receive a paper copy of the final UIC permit for ADM or the Illinois EPA Response Summary and Attachment 1, please contact:
Mara McGinnis
Illinois Environmental Protection Agency 1021 North Grand Avenue East Springfield, Illinois 62704-9276
Mara.McGinnis@illinois.gov 217/524-3288
rockford – 4302 North Main Street, Rockford, IL61103 -(815)987-7760•des PLAINES-9511 W. Harrison St., Des Plaines, IL 60016 – (847) 294-4000
elgin – 595 South State, Elgin, IL 60123 – (847) 608-3131•PEORIA-5415 N. University St., Peoria, IL 61614 – (309) 693-5463
bureau of land- peoria-7620 N. University St., Peoria, IL 61614 – (309) 693-5462•champaign – 2125 South First Street, Champaign, IL 61820-(217) 278-5800 springfield – 4500 S. Sixth Street Rd., Springfield, IL 62706-(217) 786-6892•collinsville – 2009 Mall Street, Collinsvilie, IL 62234-(618) 346-5120
marion – 2309 W. Main St., Suite 116, Marion, IL 62959 – (618) 993-7200
printed on recycled paper
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Guess What? There isn’t a single environmental group in Illinois that is going to protest it.
First, all over the world, temperatures have been dropping in a way wholly unpredicted by all those computer models which have been used as the main drivers of the scare. Last winter, as temperatures plummeted, many parts of the world had snowfalls on a scale not seen for decades. This winter, with the whole of Canada and half the US under snow, looks likely to be even worse. After several years flatlining, global temperatures have dropped sharply enough to cancel out much of their net rise in the 20th century.
But this time of the year you normally have the whole of Canada and half the US under snow. Look at the graph below from the Rutgers Global Snow Lab. If you move your mouse over it, it will show current snow cover. Not much different, is it?
Despite a strong La Nina this year, 2008 was nowhere near as cold as the years at the start of the 20th century.
So what’s the second part of Booker’s disproof of AGW?
Secondly, 2008 was the year when any pretence that there was a “scientific consensus” in favour of man-made global warming collapsed. At long last, as in the Manhattan Declaration last March, hundreds of proper scientists, including many of the world’s most eminent climate experts, have been rallying to pour scorn on that “consensus” which was only a politically engineered artefact, based on ever more blatantly manipulated data and computer models programmed to produce no more than convenient fictions.
OK, lets look at the list of “climate experts” who signed the Manhattan declaration. I don’t see many eminent climate scientists there. Of the 619 authors of the IPCC AR4 WG1, precisely zero signed the Manhattan declaration. There are a couple of eminent climate scientists there: Reid Bryson and Bill Gray, but the vast majority are not climate scientists at all, and the list includes entries like this:
John McLean, Climate Data Analyst, Post-graduate Diploma of Computer Studies, B. Arch., Climate Data Analyst, Computer scientist, Melbourne, Australia
Even if you repeat it, “Climate Data Analyst” is just a title he made up. Study the graphs above of climatic data. Congratulations! You’re analyzing climate data, so you can call yourself a Climate Data Analyst as well.
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But Booker is a serious author right? Here is one of his little triumphs:
I must end this year by again paying tribute to my readers for the wonderful generosity with which they came to the aid of two causes. First their donations made it possible for the latest “metric martyr”, the east London market trader Janet Devers, to fight Hackney council’s vindictive decision to prosecute her on 13 criminal charges, ranging from selling in pounds and ounces to selling produce “by the bowl” (to avoid using weights her customers dislike and don’t understand). The embarrassment caused by this historic battle has thrown the forced metrication policy of both our governments, in London and Brussels, into total disarray.
Since Hackney backed out of allowing four criminal charges against Janet to go before a jury next month, all that remains is for her to win her appeal in February against eight convictions which now look quite absurd (including those for selling veg by the bowl, as thousands of other London market traders do every day). The final goal, as Neil Herron of the Metric Martyrs Defence Fund insists, must then be a pardon for the late Steve Thoburn and the four other original “martyrs” who were found guilty in 2002 – after a legal battle also made possible by this column’s readers – of breaking laws so ridiculous that the EU Commission has even denied they existed (but which are still on the statute book).
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The EVIL METRIC people must be defeated….HAHAHAHAHAHA
