Category Archives: gaia

Local Food Lobbying Day – What a lot of work

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Sorry this post is so late but I had to go to lobby today. It was fun. Exciting in some cases and I got to attend a hearing on the Fraking Bill in the Ag Committee. But it makes this post way late. Anyway here was the deal:

http://www.ilstewards.org/blog

Posted 2/11/2011 5:09pm by Lindsay Record.

On April 6th, local foodies, farmers, and citizens from across the state will come together in Springfield to encourage their legislators to support local food and farms. Illinois Stewardship Alliance invites you to join us for our 2nd annual local food and farm lobby day in Springfield on April 6th, from 10a.m. – 3p.m. at the Pasfield House and IL State Capitol Complex in Springfield.

Local Food Awareness Day will consist of a legislative update, orientation, lobbying 101 training, and lunch at the Pasfield House. Following lunch we will descend upon the capitol to educate legislators about the importance of local food systems and advocate for positive policy solutions that promote and support local food systems in Illinois.

Cost: $15 (FREE for members) – includes lobbying training, orientation and lunch at the Pasfield House

*Additionally you may become a member now for $25 (1 year membership) which will allow you to attend lobby day for free.

Registration: To register for the 2011 Local Food Awareness Day @ the Captiol click here. Registration deadline is March 30th.

Payment can be made by sending a check to Illinois Stewrdship Alliance, 401 W. Jackson Parkway, Springfield IL, 62704 (Please make sure you register at the link above before sending a check) or by calling the ISA office at 217-528-1563 (ask for Dee). Or use paypal online by clicking here.

For more information contact ISA’s Policy coordinator, Wes King at wes@ilstewards.org

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And

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Posted 2/3/2011 6:06pm by Lindsay Record.

Removing Barriers to Local Food Entrepreneurship

We are excited to announce that Senator David Koehler (D-Peoria) is introducing and sponsoring the Illinois Local Food Entrepreneur and Cottage Food Operation Act. The legislation removes prohibitively burdensome barriers to aspiring entrepreneurs producing non-potentially hazardous food and enables preparation in home kitchens for sale at farmers markets for Illinois.  The legislation is in line with at least 17 other states that have similar cottage food laws allowing the production of non-potentially hazardous food items in home kitchens for sale at farmers markets; including most of Illinois fellow Midwestern states.

The cottage food operation bill is one step in an on-going effort to create food rules and regulations that encourage and support local food producers and entrepreneurs by applying scale and risk appropriate regulations. The Illinois Local Food Entrepreneur and Cottage Food Operation Act creates a stepping stone for potential local food entrepreneurs to experiment with recipes and business models by eliminating the costly barrier of constructing or accessing a certified kitchen as the current regulations require.

The proposed legislation will allow entrepreneurs to produce non-potentially hazardous food in their home kitchen to be sold at farmers markets provided certain conditions are met:

  • Products are labeled to include: the name and address of the producer, the common or usual name of the product, the ingredients of the food product, the date the product was processed and the following phrase: “This product is homemade and no subject to state inspection.”
  • Gross receipts from the sale of products does not exceed $25,000 in a calendar year.
  • The name and residence of the person preparing and selling products as a cottage food operation is registered with the Department of Public Health and the Department of Agriculture.
  • The person preparing and selling products as a cottage food operation has an approved Food Service Sanitation Management Certificate.

ISA is a small non-profit so if we are going to make the Illinois Local Food Entrepreneur & Cottage Food Operation Act a reality in Illinois we are going to need your help spreading the word and lobbying your elected officials to support our efforts. Please keep your eyes peeled for more information about this legislation coming soon!

You can access the legislation by clicking here.  View a factsheet about the legislation here. If you are interested in supporting or learning more about the Illinois Local Food Entrepreneur & Cottage Food Operation Act contact ISA’s policy coordinator

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More tomorrow.

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Ann Coulter Says Radiation Is Safe – Many reasons why rightwing fundamentalist christions should stay away from science

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Mainly they should stay away because they are no good at it and because it always proves them wrong. Why? Because they are being used by the wealthy, and the industrialists to front their causes. They learned in the 70s and 80s, from happenings in Europe that their way of life could be dramatically altered if the facts of what they were doing were unveiled and acted upon. They knew that this could only be thwarted if they appealed to the least educated and most emotional volatile amongst us. But here is what happens when the truth wills out. Via:

http://www.alternet.org/newsandviews/article/546941/koch-funded_climate_skeptic%27s_own_data_confirms_warming/

and

http://www.treehugger.com/files/2011/04/koch-funded-climate-skeptic-data-confirms-warming.php

From the original source:

http://www.good.is/post/scientist-beloved-by-climate-deniers-pulls-rug-out-from-their-argument/

Scientist Beloved by Climate Deniers Pulls Rug Out from Their Argument

Today, there was a climate science hearing in the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology. Of the six “expert” witnesses, only three were scientists. The others were an economist, a lawyer, and a professor of marketing.

One of the scientists was Richard Muller from University of California, Berkeley. Muller has been working on an independent project to better estimate the planet’s surface temperatures over time. Because he is willing to say publicly that he has some doubts about the accuracy of the temperature stations that most climate models are based on, he has been embraced by the science denying crowd. A Koch brothers charity, for example, has donated nearly 25 percent of the financial support provided to Muller’s project.

Skeptics of climate science have been licking their lips waiting for his latest research, which they hoped would undermine the data behind basic theories of anthropogenic climate change. At the hearing today, however, Muller threw them for a loop with this graph:

richard muller, berkley earth project, global warming, climate change, climate, climate science, house of representatives
You don’t have to be a Berkeley PhD to see that Muller’s data (black line) tracks pretty well with the three established data sets. This is just an initial sampling of Muller’s data—just 2 percent of the 1.6 billion records he’s working with—but these early findings are incredibly consistent with the previous findings. In his testimony, Muller made these points (emphasis mine):

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More tomorrow.

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I Was Looking For A Joke – What I got was this

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I typed in “best way to avert a nuclear disaster” thinking that I might get a joke or something other then Japan’s smoking nukes. I was wrong but this guy is pretty insightful.

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/Article26916.html

Nuclear Power Industry Praying Japan Will Avert a Nuclear Disaster

Stock-Markets / Nuclear Power Mar 14, 2011 – 10:59 AM

By: Martin_D_Weiss

Explosions and meltdowns at nuclear reactors in Japan this past weekend will forever change the world of energy.

Authorities have already scheduled widespread power outages starting today — and they could continue the planned outages for weeks or even months.

Nuclear power plant explosion in Fukushima, Japan, on Saturday, following that nation's strongest earthquake in history.
Nuclear power plant explosion in Fukushima, Japan, on Saturday, following that nation’s strongest earthquake in history.

But that’s just a metaphor for the sustained global energy shortages that are likely, as the safety and long-term viability of nuclear power comes under more intense scrutiny than at any time in history.

How do we know that’s the likely outcome?

Because prior nuclear disasters, such as Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, had a major long-term impact on nuclear plant construction.

Moreover, those two disasters were ultimately written off to antiquated facilities or poor safety precautions. In contrast, the Japanese nuclear industry prides itself on safety, and the plants struck by the earthquake had far better staff training and equipment, including multiple back-up systems, all of which failed.

Some nuclear experts will counter that newer and safer technologies now exist or can be developed. But given the history of similar promises in the past, those are bound to fall on deaf ears.

The public will now ask …

Is there a fundamental incompatibility between the potential dangers of nuclear energy and the unpredictable wrath of Mother Nature?

That question defies any quick answer and could take years to resolve. Until then, further growth in nuclear power production could be drastically reduced, with potentially far-reaching consequences:

  • Chronic global energy shortages, especially in countries that were counting on new nuclear energy for a large portion of their electric power.
  • Massive, long-term upward pressure on crude oil prices as producers, consumers, and investors upwardly revise their forecasts of fossil fuel demand.
  • Vast sums of investor money diverted from nuclear power plant construction to other alternative energy sources, such as wind, solar, and bio-fuels.

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Still battling viruses. So hopefully more tomorrow.

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Inproved Solar Panels By Transphorm – What is in an element

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Gallium nitride makes the DC to AC conversion process much more effective.

http://solar.calfinder.com/blog/solar-research/google-transphorms-solar-efficiency/

Google Startup ‘Transphorms’ Solar Efficiency

google transphorm energy efficiency

The name of the company is Transphorm, and since its inception in 2007 it has been busy transforming the very nature of energy.

No bumps on solar cells, no cars that run on jellied jellyfish. Transphorm, emerging at the head of the class after three years of sitting in the back row, has discovered a technology that could ultimately capture some of the power lost in converting from alternating current (AC) to direct current (DC).

This is done by your regional electric utility, which transmits electricity in DC and delivers power to the plug-ins in your home as AC. Why? It’s cheaper, for one thing. It’s also safer, and the amount of power lost to heat during transmission is minimal.

dot dot dot as they say

Increasing energy efficiency is one of the best ways of achieving that  “green energy” economy we all want and need. Waste not, want not, as my mother used to say, and this particular waste-not strategy benefits not only large power users (factories and control centers, for example) but also the smallest user, which means you and I. This is because the cost of lost power is built into the cost per kilowatt-hour charged by the utility.

Transphorm’s secret weapon? Gallium nitride, a material that has to be fabricated, making it initially more expensive but consistently more efficient than silicon. It is, according to CEO Umesh Mishra, “a miracle material.”

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for more on that see:

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

Gallium nitride (GaN) is a binary III/V direct bandgap semiconductor commonly used in bright light-emitting diodes since the 1990s. The compound is a very hard material that has a Wurtzite crystal structure. Its wide band gap of 3.4 eV affords it special properties for applications in optoelectronic, high-power and high-frequency devices. For example, GaN is the substrate which makes violet (405 nm) laser diodes possible, without use of nonlinear optical frequency-doubling.

Its sensitivity to ionizing radiation is low (like other group III nitrides), making it a suitable material for solar cell arrays for satellites. Because GaN transistors can operate at much hotter temperatures and work at much higher voltages than gallium arsenide (GaAs) transistors, they make ideal power amplifiers at microwave frequencies.

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More tomorrow.

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The Nuclear Industry In Japan Is ____ – Well you pick the word

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Stupid, Criminal, Out of control. Whatever. But first some sensible facts. The reactors SCRAMMED. OK 3 Mile Island was operator error that involved an online reactor. You know where fission is occurring.  Chernobyl was an operating plant with no containment where fission was occurring. There is no fission at Fukushima. So while they may irradiate 2 -300 miles of Japan, which is a bad bad thing. There will be no China Syndrom. There will be no massive explosion. Things will just get hot. And think about what they faced.

http://gizmodo.com/#!5781566/this-is-the-scariest-first+person-video-of-the-japan-tsunami-yet

Gizmodo
856,940 views, Mar 13, 2011 10:58 PM

This Is the Scariest First-Person Video of the Japan Tsunami Yet

Jesus Diaz — This Is the Scariest First-Person Video of the Japan Tsunami Yet This first-person view is the most terrifying and astonishing video I’ve seen of the Japan tsunami. Initially everything seems ok, just a mild wave coming towards the camera. But keep watching—the sea goes Godzilla and destroys everything.

By the end of it, the raging water is taking entire buildings off the streets of Kesennuma, in the Miyagi Prefecture, Japan. It’s horrible. Almost unreal. This is the exact point where this video was taken, before the catastrophe.

To watch more first person videos of the tsunami, click here.

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More tomorrow.

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I Am Tired – Of being ripped off by the North American wealthy elite and

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I am tired of the death and destruction in Japan. So today it is kids fun.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/kids/energy.cfm?page=riddles

Q: How did Benjamin Franklin feel when he discovered electricity?

A: Answer

Image of a man fishing.

A: Goes fission.

Cartoon image of a baseball batter. 

Q: How is energy conservation like a baseball team?

A: Answer

Image of a light switch.

A: They can both use a switch hitter.

image of a half moon and a car 

Q: What is burned by cars driven late at night?

A: Answer

image of a clock and oil can

A: Midnight oil.

Image of a beach. 

Q: How are renewable power plants like people who enjoy going to the beach?

A: Answer

Image of sun, wind, and water.

A: They all like sun, wind, and water.

Image of a criminal behind bars. 

Q: In which part of the jail are energy criminals kept?

A: Answer

Image of a fuel cell diagram behind bars.

A: The fuel cells.

Image of a school. 

Q: What is a renewable energy source that is used every day at your school?

A: Answer

Image of gears inside profile of a head.

A: Brain power!

image of a cloud with a face 

Q: What did the solar cells say to their cloudy boss?

A: Answer

Image of sun and a solar cell.

A: We need rays!

image of a man of a ladder 

Q: How many energy students does it take to change a light bulb?

A: Answer

image of fluorescent light bulb

A: None! They’re smart enough to use energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs, which rarely need to be replaced.

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More yucks tomorrow.

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Greening UP In Springfield – LLCC pitches in

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Like I said yesterday, I am not going to post about high gasoline prices and the middle east unrest because they are both concoctions. Muammar is just being the despicable killer that he always has been. Gas prices have nothing to do with market conditions. The head of the National Association of Oil and Gas Producers said today, the problem is not supply. There is plenty of oil available today, it is the money (speculators) flooding the market that is driving price. So the next time you complain about gas prices and someone says, well it is because we are so dependent on foreign oil. Tell them they are full of it. In the mean time.

http://www.illinoistimes.com/Springfield/article-8406-the-greening-of-springfield.html

Thursday, March 3,2011

The greening of Springfield

LLCC leads the way to renewable energy

By Karen Fitzgerald


Welcome to the most eco-friendly home in Springfield. You’d never guess the carpeting is made of recycled plastic grocery bags, or the bathroom countertops come from recycled cardboard and paper. The speckled rubber flooring of a workroom consists of recycled tires, and the simulated wood deck is actually recycled plastic soda bottles. The place simply appears to be the beautifully designed home of affluent owners. The only clue to their commitment to the environment are the solar panels on the roof.

The three-year-old house on Spaulding Orchard Road has a passive solar design with a thermal wall rising above gorgeous dark cherry flooring of (hybrid) eucalyptus and other sustainable woods. It was the highlight of a tour given by Bob Croteau for a recent Lincoln Land Community College workshop on renewable energy. An energy auditor with City Water Light and Power who has been involved with solar power since the 1970s, Croteau believes the season has finally arrived for green technology in Springfield. “I used to be able to keep track of all the renewables, but so many are springing up everywhere now, I can’t keep track of them all.”

The tour included a stop at the Southwind Park visitors center, the first building in Springfield to be LEED-certified at the highest platinum level (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design). When it received certification in December, Erin’s Pavilion, as it is known, was one of only 209 nonresidential buildings in the world with platinum status in the new construction category. It will soon add a wind generator to its solar panels and 15 geothermal heat pump systems. The Capital Area Career Center has an array of solar panels that track the sun throughout the day as well as throughout the season. At 12 kW, it was the largest solar installation in Springfield until a year ago when a 14 kW array went up on the Fit Club South.

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This a really long article so go to the IT and read it. More tomorrow.

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Kites And Big Boats – Cargill returns to sailboats

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I first read this here:

http://www.greenbiz.com/news/2011/02/28/cargill-cuts-co2-emissions-worlds-largest-kite-powered-ship

But it is just a lift from Cargill’s website.

http://www.cargill.com/news-center/news-releases/2011/NA3040908.jsp

Cargill propels shipping forward with largest kite-powered vessel

Date: 28 February 2011

Contacts:

Cargill:
Francis De Rosa, +44 1932 861174, francis_derosa@cargill.com
Corinne Holtshausen, +44 1932 861174, corinne_holtshausen@cargill.com

SkySails:

Anne Staack, +49 40 702 99 444, anne.staack@skysails.de

GENEVA, SWITZERLAND — 28 February 2011 — Cargill has signed an agreement with SkySails GmbH & Co. KG (SkySails) to use wind power technology to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the shipping industry. SkySails, based in Hamburg, has developed innovative, patented technology that uses a kite which flies ahead of the vessel and generates enough propulsion to reduce consumption of bunker fuel by up to 35 percent in ideal sailing conditions.

Next December Cargill will install the 320m2 kite on a handysize vessel of between 25,000 and 30,000 deadweight tonnes, which the company has on long-term charter, making it the largest vessel propelled by a kite in the world. Cargill and SkySails aim to have the system fully operational in the first quarter of 2012. Cargill is currently helping SkySails develop and test the technology and has identified a ship-owner – supportive of environmental stewardship in the industry – with whom it will partner on the project.

The SkySails kite will be connected to the ship by rope and is computer-controlled by an automatic pod to maximise the wind benefits. The kite functions at a height of between 100 to 420 metres and flies in a figure of eight formation. The SkySails system is automated and requires only minimal action by the crew. An automatic control system steers the kite and adjusts its flight path. All information related to the system’s operation is displayed on the monitor of the SkySails’ workstation on the ship’s bridge.

“For some time, we have been searching for a project that can help drive environmental best practice within the shipping industry and see this as a meaningful first step”, said G.J. van den Akker, head of Cargill’s ocean transportation business. “The shipping industry currently supports 90 percent of the world’s international physical trade. In a world of finite resources, environmental stewardship makes good business sense. As one of the world’s largest charterers of dry bulk freight, we take this commitment extremely seriously. In addition to lowering greenhouse gas emissions, the SkySails technology aims to significantly reduce fuel consumption and costs. We are very impressed with the technology and see its installation on one of our chartered ships as the first part of an ongoing, long-term partnership.”

“We are delighted that Cargill is the first company to embrace our technology on a vessel this large as part of its commitment to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the shipping industry”, said Stephan Wrage, managing director of SkySails. “We are excited that our technology will shortly be used on a handysize vessel for the first time and see great potential to incorporate it on larger ships in the future.”

According to a United Nations (International Maritime Organisation) study, up to 100 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) could be saved every year by the broad application of the SkySails’ technology on the world merchant fleet.1 This figure would equate to 11 percent of the CO2 emissions of Germany.

Cargill is a significant global transporter of agricultural, energy and industrial commodities. Although the company does not today own or operate ships, its ocean transportation business ships more than 185 million tonnes of commodities each year, in the process connecting supply from areas of surplus with demand in areas of deficit.

Photos are available for download at http://www.skysails.info/english/information-center/press-lounge/photos-graphics/

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More tomorrow.

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Food That Is Genetically Modified – Yuck on a stick

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OK, so I am the first one to admit that humans have tinkered with animal’s and plant’s genetics for a 100,000 years before we even knew what genes were. The most famous was the creation or the domestication of wolfs. If you feed them and they did not bite you they got to stay. If they bit you, you killed it and got another one. Made sense when a friendly wolf bred with another friendly wolf, the puppies would be more friendlier. Same with cattle. Breed a big cow with another bigger cow and you get bigger stronger cows. But this process many times took 100s of years and you had time to figure out whether it was safe or not. This is now happening in a single year’s time. There is no telling what we could be unleashing on ourselves. Worse yet, the big players in this area are some of the worst players on the planet. Monsanto, Dow, BSF. Companies known to be rapists of the planet.

http://www.good.is/post/feast-your-eyes-the-atlas-of-genetically-modified-crops1/

Feast Your Eyes: The Atlas of Genetically Modified Crops


Yesterday, the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications, a nonprofit organization funded in large part by the biotech industry, issued a new report on the status of genetically modified crops around the world.

The Economist has used ISAAA’s data to make a map showing where in the world GM crops are grown. As you can see, the United States is by far the leader in the field, with 165 million acres (66.8 million hectares) of GM crops under cultivation, an increase of nearly 7 million acres on 2009 levels.

Clive James, ISAAA’s director and founder, told the BBC that more than 15 million farmers grow GM crops, and that, “during 2010, the accumulated commercial biotech plantation exceeded one billion hectares [2.47 billion acres]— that’s an area larger than the U.S. or China,” and equivalent to 10 percent of the world’s arable land.

Meanwhile, The Economist pointed out an interesting trend:

Developing countries are planting GM crops at a more rapid rate than rich countries. Brazil has added some 10m hectares [24.7 million acres] since 2008 and overtook Argentina as the second-biggest grower in 2010. India, too, increased its area by over 10 percent last year. The most popular crop is soya, while the most common modification is tolerance to herbicides.

With the European Union having just voted to allow animal feed imports containing up to 0.1 percent GM seeds (previously shipments found to contain any trace of non-approved biotech crops were turned away upon arrival at port), it does indeed seem—for better or for worse—as though GM crops are here to stay.

Chart via The Economist.

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Wind Offshore When – Maybe soon, maybe manana

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This has an interesting storage system however so read the rest of the article.

http://www.green-energy-news.com/arch/nrgs2011/20110012.html

February 13, 2011 – Vol.15 No.48

OFFSHORE WIND ENERGY MEETS OFFSHORE WIND ENERGY STORAGE.
by Bruce Mulliken, Green Energy News

Eventually the United States will get its first offshore wind farm. No one is taking bets as to when it will go online. There have been many proposals, but so far resistance onshore has kept those projects from being built.

Still, wind resources are much better offshore than on and those windy resources are often near heavily populated areas that will be able and willing to consume electricity generated by those reliable ocean breezes.

As with many relatively expensive technologies it’s not such a bad thing to be a late adopter. Early adopters make and have to correct mistakes at a high cost. Early adopters too have only earliest versions of the technology to work with. Late adopters, on the other hand, learn from the mistakes of early adopters and need not repeat them. Late adopters also get to use newer, more sophisticated versions of the technology in question.

Offshore wind is one of those relatively expensive technologies that it’s OK to be a late adopter.

When U.S. offshore wind builders finally get around to planting the first turbine in the ocean bottom (or perhaps floating turbines in deep water over the horizon) they’ll have a better idea of the costs, know exactly how to install them and they’ll have access to far more powerful turbines than those used in the first offshore wind farms in Europe. The U.S. will benefit by being slow to adopt offshore wind, but the time has come to embrace the technology; wind developers know this, so does the U.S. government.

Even as dollars are being pinched in Washington, the Department of Energy has put aside $50.5 million for projects that support offshore wind energy development. The Department of the Interior too, in its Smart for the Start program, has given a hand to offshore wind development by designating four areas along the Mid-Atlantic coast to be on the fast track for regulatory approval.

The funding being offered by DOE can be used for the development of innovative wind turbine design tools and hardware to provide the foundation for a cost-competitive and world-class offshore wind industry in the United States (up to $25 million over 5 years); for baseline studies and targeted environmental research to characterize key industry sectors and factors limiting the deployment of offshore wind ( up to $18 million over 3 years); and for the development and refinement of next-generation designs for wind turbine drivetrains (up to $7.5 million over 3 years).

The Department of the Interior has chosen areas on the Outer Continental Shelf offshore Delaware (122 square nautical miles), Maryland (207), New Jersey (417), and Virginia (165) to receive early environmental reviews that will help to lessen the time required for review, leasing and approval of offshore wind turbine facilities.

Government isn’t alone in seeking to develop offshore wind.

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More manana.

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