Category Archives: global warming

We Needlessly Burn 150 Billion Cubic Meters Of Natural Gas Every Year

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That’s right. On almost every large drilling rig producing large amounts of oil there is a continuously burning flare of natural gas. This is a hold over from the days when natural gas was seen as a nuisance rather than a fuel source. BUT that was over 100 years ago. How long does it take to change the rules.

http://www.stoptheflares.org/

Stop the Flares

Together we will Stop Methane Flaring
The first and only organization working solely on the elimination of natural gas flares and venting! Stop the flares is organized to stop flaring by elevating awareness, increasing research and implementing proven solutions to get results. Stop the Flares will eliminate all flares worldwide by the 2020.

What are flares?

What is natural gas?

Why is methane flaring bad for you?

How does Flaring Methane affect the price of energy?

What could be done with the Flared Gas in Nigeria?

How can you help?

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Why is methane flaring bad for you?
According to the World Bank, flares waste 150,000,000,000 cubic meters of natural gas (methane) each year. This is the equivalent to the energy in 60,000,000,000 gallons of gasoline (estimate).
Wasting fuel increases the cost of energy for everyone!

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More tomorrow.

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New Way To Be Fuel Efficient – Computer program from U of I

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Flash! This just in from Website mavin Carol Kneedler who owns and operates www.o3internet.com. As a plug please call her if you have any website work you need done.

http://csl.illinois.edu/news/green-gps-calculates-most-fuel-efficient-route

Green GPS calculates most fuel-efficient route

by Kim Gudeman, CSL Green GPS technology May 3, 2011 – 3:14pm

A new software interface reduces energy consumption in transportation systems.

Green GPS, developed by computer scientists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, works like general GPS navigation, except that in addition to calculating the shortest and fastest routes, it also projects the most fuel-efficient route.

“Currently at least 30 percent of total energy in the United States is spent on cars,” said Principal Investigator Tarek Abdelzaher, associate professor of computer science and researcher in the Coordinated Science Laboratory. “By saving even 5 percent of that cost, we can save the same amount of total energy spent on the nation’s entire information technology infrastructure.”

The technology runs on cell phones, which links to a car’s computer using an inexpensive, off-the-shelf wireless adapter that works in all cars manufactured since 1996. The car’s onboard diagnostics system uploads information about engine performance and fuel efficiency to the phone, which uses the data to compute the greenest route.

A grant through the National Science Foundation to Abdelzaher and Robin Kravets, also a member of Illinois’ computer science faculty, is funding a large-scale deployment of the service via the University of Illinois’ car fleet. The Office of Naval Research is funding research related to the technology’s networking component. Researchers — including Dr. Omid Fatemieh, graduate student Hossein Ahmadi and research associate Hongyan Wang — also are collaborating with IBM through its “Smarter Planet” initiative.

Pete Varney, who oversees some of the approximately 500 vehicles used by the Urbana-Champaign campus, hopes research will help maximize fuel efficiency for the fleet. The units will be installed on up to 200 vehicles, including full-size vans that could be carrying 1,000 pounds or more in tools and equipment.

“The less money we can spend on fuel, the more money we can direct toward maintaining other things on campus,” said Varney, director of Transportation & Automotive Services.

In addition, researchers are developing a social network of drivers who can share information about their cars. In the future,

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For more see the rest of the article. More Tomorrow.

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10 Commandments Of The Environment – God issues new list

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1. Respect mother Earth and all her creatures.

2. Make no laws that contradict this.

3. Thou shall not pollute.

4. Thou shall give a hoot.

5. Waste nothing nothing not even the squeal of a pig

6. Buy nothing you need not.

7. Plant a garden and eat from it

8. Create a compost heap.

9. Walk or ride your bike as much as you are able.

10. Respect your fellow humans with replacement rate birthings.

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More next week.

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I Renew My Vows – To save the environment from mankind

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This is so beautiful, you must see it to appreciate it.

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/05/04/incredibly-impossibly-beautiful-time-lapse-video/

Incredibly, impossibly beautiful time lapse video

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I’ve been posting a lot of time lapse videos lately, and they’re so amazing I keep thinking they can’t possibly get any more beautiful.

I keep thinking wrong.

“El Cielo de Canarias” (Canary Sky) is simply, unbelievably breathtaking.

Wow. I mean, wow. Daniel López is a gifted photographer. While looking at his photographs, my jaw literally dropped. They are that extraordinary.

Many years ago I visited La Palma, one of the Canary Islands, for a meeting. In the distance we could sometimes see the very top of Mt. Teide, seen in this video, poking over the clouds. It was so unearthly and captivating, and López has captured that feeling here. This video has everything! The fluid motion of the clouds, a double rainbow (yes, yes, I know), a corona around the Sun (not the Sun’s atmosphere, but a lovely optical effect from water droplets in the clouds), standing-wave lenticular clouds, even a Green Flash! Watch the stars as they wheel across the view; can you spot the Pleiades, the Andromeda Galaxy?

As many of these videos as I have seen, I’m still looking forward to more from Sr. López. This one is absolutely stunning.

Tip o’ the lens cap to Felipe Gallego.

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Could not get the video to go up but go to the website and see. More tomorrow.

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Power Plant Rewarded For Doing The Right Thing

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Povse, Nadel, and the entire press room have disappeared from my newspaper. But they still have one of their best writers left. Tim Landis wrote this article and it is pretty good.

http://www.sj-r.com/top-stories/x1225333763/Company-head-lauds-power-plant-upgrade

Company head lauds power plant upgrade

Posted Apr 19, 2011 @ 11:00 PM
Last update Apr 20, 2011 @ 06:25 AM
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COFFEEN — The head of the Montgomery County Economic Development Corp. welcomes the creation of 400 temporary construction jobs during a major upgrade of the Coffeen Power Station.

The fact that owner Ameren Energy Resources announced this week it would upgrade a nearly 40-year-old, coal-fired boiler at the plant is even better news for the long term, Heather Hampton-Knodle said.
“They are one of our largest private employers,” Knodle said. “It’s a good sign of their ongoing commitment to that plant.”
The Coffeen facility is about 60 miles southeast of Springfield.
Even as state and national unemployment has fallen, Montgomery County joblessness has remained high. The 13.9 percent rate in February compared with 8.9 percent statewide and nationally, and 8.1 percent in Sangamon County.
Much like neighboring Macoupin County, where the February unemployment rate was 11.4 percent, Montgomery County has been hurt by job losses in manufacturing and the coal industry in the past decade.
Crews at Coffeen Power Station are replacing 14 “cyclones” used to pulverize coal for the Unit 2 boiler, said Ameren spokeswoman Susan Gallagher. She added that the 400 contract jobs are in addition to a regular work force of nearly 180.
Gallagher said the company has not put a timetable on completion of the work or how long the contract workers would be on the job.
“They are working around-the-clock, I’m told,” she said.

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More tomorrow.

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Mercury Is Good For Us – Just like the other coal pollution

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There are times when I wonder WHY is this a story? I have been leery about running articles about the environment because the state of it is so bad that any comments would be dreary. What with the Gulf Spew, Russia catching on fire and the nuclear accident in Japan, is there anything left to say? I saw this article earlier this morning and I thought, Ok this is a little different and I love Albatrosses. They are such  magnificent birds. Then I read the article and could not grasp the point of it. The headline seems pretty clear, but the body of the article seems not to support it. Read the whole thing at the site below:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13121088

18 April 2011 Last updated at 17:07 ET

Feathers tell century-plus tale of mercury pollution

Richard Black By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News

Albatross feathers from museum specimens have allowed scientists to construct a record of mercury pollution dating back more than 100 years.

The feathers, from the black-footed albatross, contain traces of mercury that the birds picked up when they fed.

The species is endangered; and although fishing is the main cause, the team suggests mercury levels may have been high enough to impair breeding.

The study is published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The team analysed feathers from 54 birds kept in museums at Harvard University and the University of Washington in Seattle, US.

The oldest samples are 120 years old.

There was no trend in overall mercury concentrations over time.

But the level of methylmercury – a toxic form of the metal, formed often by bacteria, did show a rise.

Methylmercury is easily absorbed by marine lifeforms such as small fish; and predators of those lifeforms, such as birds, can end up with big concentrations in their tissue.

It can cause developmental defects in humans, and there is evidence that it can damage reproduction in birds and fish.

“People have looked at mercury levels using museum specimens before, but mostly in the Atlantic,” said Scott Edwards, a biology professor at Harvard who also curates the university museum’s ornithology collection.

“Ours is one of the first to look at patterns in the Pacific basin; this has the largest number of seabird colonies, has the most endangered colonies, and is under severe threat from mercury emissions from Asia.”

“They’re fantastic birds, and a very tractable species to study” Scott Edwards Harvard University

About half of the mercury going into the atmosphere comes from natural sources such as volcanoes.

Of the other half, the biggest source is coal-burning, with mercury ocurring as a trace element in many coal deposits.

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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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Howard Dean And Energy Policy – This is an old piece

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But it doesn’t matter because Howard is pretty left. He is actually kind of the beginning of the left in the world but in the US that is pretty leftwing. I am only going to put up so much of this interview because it is really long.

http://www.issues2000.org/2004/Howard_Dean_Energy_+_Oil.htm

Howard Dean on Energy & Oil

Former VT Governor; Former Democratic Candidate for President

Raise CAFE standard from 27.5 mpg to 37.5, including SUVs

Q: Would you increase the required automobile fleet average of 27.5 mpg; and SUVs and pickups averaging 20.7 mpg?

A: I support an across-the-board corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standard of 37.5 mpg by 2015. This would apply to all passenger vehicles, and would require a closing of the SUV loophole.

Source: Associated Press policy Q&A, “Fuel Efficiency” Jan 25, 2004

Global warming is most important enviro problem we face

Q: As Governor you signed a regional pact to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Should the nation adopt the same goals?

A: We should find a way to sign Kyoto. It is not perfect and we must include the developing nations, such as Brazil & China, and require them to reduce greenhouse gasses as well. But in the end global warming is the most important environmental problem we face. We can’t follow the head-in-the-sand view of the Bush administration on global warming. We have to deal with it.

Source: Concord Monitor / WashingtonPost.com on-line Q&A Nov 6, 2003

No new nuclear plants until waste disposal is safe

Q: Should we build more nuclear power plants?

A: We can not build any new nuclear power plants until we have a satisfactory way of disposing of the waste. At present, significant questions have been raised about the safety of Yucca Mountain, the disposal site in Nevada. Unless those safety questions are resolved Yucca cannot be opened and new plants must not be built.

Source: Concord Monitor / WashingtonPost.com on-line Q&A Nov 6, 2003

Help developing countries reduce greenhouse gases

Instead of rejecting the Kyoto agreement, renegotiate it so China and other developing countries have more time to reduce greenhouse gases or enlist the G-8 countries to help with the costs of environmental cleanup. Source: New America Foundation/Atlantic Monthly Public Policy Forum Jan 14, 2003

Our energy policy is one of our biggest security threats

One of our biggest security threats is our energy policy. The money which helped finance Osama bin Laden’s attacks was our money. Because of our dependence on Middle East oil, the US sent money to Saudi Arabia, which was used in part to fund the fundamentalist Islamic schools in Pakistan and elsewhere which teach hatred of Christians, Jews and Americans. These schools have become fertile recruiting territory for Al Qaeda.

In Vermont, we have the highest rate of energy conservation in the US America needs an energy policy which stresses conservation and renewables, including wind, biomass, ethanol and solar. Not only is renewable energy good for the environment, it is a core pice of a smarter foreign policy.

Source: Campaign web site, DeanForAmerica.com, “On the Issues” Nov 30, 2002

Voluntary partnerships reduce greenhouse gases economically.

Dean adopted the National Governors Association policy:

    Considering the evidence and the risks of both overreaction and underreaction, the Governors recommend that the federal government continue its climate research, including regional climate research, to improve scientific understanding of global climate change. The Governors also recommend taking steps that are cost-effective and offer other social and economic benefits beyond reducing greenhouse gas emissions. In particular, the Governors support voluntary partnerships to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while achieving other economic and environmental goals.
  • The Governors are committed to working in partnership with the federal government, businesses, environmental groups, and others to develop and implement voluntary programs that reduce greenhouse gas emissions in conjunction with conserving energy, protecting the environment, and strengthening the economy.
  • The Governors urge that those who have successfully achieved reductions of greenhouse emissions receive appropriate credit for their early actions. The Governors strongly encourage these kinds of voluntary efforts.
  • The Governors believe that federally required implementation of any treaty provisions, including those that mandate limits or reductions of greenhouse gas emissions, must not occur before the U.S. Senate ratifies an international agreement and Congress passes enabling legislation.
  • The Governors support continued federal funding for research and development technology in this area. They also believe it is essential to engage the private sector by fostering technology partnerships between industry and government. Public-private partnerships serve to achieve desired environmental goals, speed the introduction of new technologies to the marketplace, and meet consumer needs and product affordability goals, while avoiding market distortions and job losses.

Source: NGA policy NR-11, Global Climate Change Domestic Policy 00-NGA3 on Aug 15, 2000

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More tomorrow.

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Cynthia Tucker And Energy Policy – Nukes are too expensive

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This was supposed to be a post about Rick Sanchez. I have been using a list of “leftie” journalists and Sanchez’s was the next name on the list. But he poses an interesting problem, he spent most of his time on television so I could find nothing about him in print. He does have a book out but I do not have a copy of it and could find no one who actually quoted extensively from it on any subject. I even tried Youtube and Bing hoping to get video of him talking about the environment. After an hour and 1/2 I gave up. So here is Cynthia Tucker whom I like alot.

http://blogs.ajc.com/cynthia-tucker/2010/02/23/why-do-savannah-nuke-plants-deserve-taxpayer-money/

Why do Augusta nuke plants deserve taxpayer money?

12:44 pm February 23, 2010, by ctucker

UPDATE: As some of you have pointed out, the nuke plants are near Augusta. Thanks for the correction.

Johnny Isakson and Saxby Chambliss were happy to claim credit for the Obama administration’s announcement that it was guaranteeing loans that would help build nuclear reactors on Georgia’s coast. But it’s an odd thing for the two Republicans, who usually argue that the government ought to stay out of private industry.

In fact, economists might argue that the huge government subsidies are little different from the bank bail-outs and bail-outs for the automotive industry.Liberals and conservatives have argued against the federal guarantees. From the WaPo:

Nuclear power plants “are simply not economically competitive now, and therefore they can’t be privately financed,” said Peter Bradford, an adjunct professor at Vermont Law School and a former member of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. “There are many cheaper ways to displace carbon, and there are many cheaper ways to provide for electric power supply.”

Jack Spencer, a fellow at the Heritage Foundation and a supporter of nuclear power, warned: “Loan guarantees do not a nuclear renaissance make.” He said the guarantees would “perpetuate the problems that have plagued nuclear energy for 30 years: the regulatory structure and nuclear waste [disposal] and too much government dependence.”

William O’Keefe, who heads a science-related think tank in Washington, doesn’t think the loans are such a good idea. From the WaPo:

If private companies are unwilling to risk their capital on new nuclear plants, why should the taxpayer take on part of that risk? The answer is: We shouldn’t.

The U.S. taxpayer has been subsidizing nuclear power since its inception, and it has yet to achieve its potential. Some of this is the fault of government policy, but some of it is just plain economics. The cost of a new nuclear plant has been estimated to be on the order of $4 billion, with some estimates being over $10 billion when cost overruns are taken into account. That makes the cost of nuclear-produced electricity very high.

The Obama administration is promoting nuclear power because it does not involve CO2 emissions. But that is only one criterion, and it should be judged on a cost-benefit basis. How much would new plants coming online over the next two decades reduce the climate change risk? And are there more-cost-effective alternatives for reducing that risk? There is growing evidence that the risk of climate change has been exaggerated, and that certainly weakens the case of the administration.

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More tomorrow

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Hendrik Hertzberg And Energy Policy – Seems pretty neutral to me

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What struck me the most about the posts and the material the right wing columnists produced was how consistently it was industry biased and really right wing sentiment. What is striking about the left wingers is how balanced they appear. Of course as far as I am concerned Ted Rall is the biggest lefty around in print and he made NEITHER list that I have been using. Never actually heard of this guy but then I don’t get out much.

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2010/03/22/100322taco_talk_hertzberg

Some Nukes

by Hendrik Hertzberg March 22, 2010

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There has always been something intuitively disproportionate about nuclear power plants, which, like coal-fired ones, use steam turbines to generate electricity. Converting mass to energy by atomic fission in order to achieve temperatures normally found only on the surface of stars like the sun and then using that extraterrestrial heat to boil water—well, it smacks of (to borrow a term from the nuclear dark side) overkill. To be fair, boiling water by burning black rocks made of petrified vegetable matter from the age of the dinosaurs is a little strange, too. And nuclear power plants have one great advantage over the fossil-fuel kind: they do not emit carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that is hastening the world toward climatic disruption and disaster.

President Obama, in his State of the Union address, after talking up innovations in battery technology and solar panels, said, “To create more of these clean-energy jobs we need more production, more efficiency, more incentives. And that means building a new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country.” Last month, he backed that up with a federal loan guarantee of $8.3 billion to build two new reactors near Waynesboro, Georgia. And in his budget request for 2011 he has asked for $46 billion more. The applause

for his State of the Union line was louder on the Republican side of the aisle than on the Democratic, and his words and actions have prompted loud grumbling from environmental organizations. But global warming has punched some holes in the green wall. Such founding fathers of the environmental movement as Stewart Brand, the creator of the Whole Earth Catalog, and Patrick Moore, an early stalwart of Greenpeace, now support nukes. James Hansen, the head of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and a climate-change prophet, favors the so-called fourth-generation nuclear systems, which would substantially reduce the amount of nuclear waste. Hans Blix, the former U.N. chief weapons inspector, is another supporter. So, within limits, are liberal senators like John Kerry and Barbara Boxer. And so is President Obama.

“We were hopeful last year—he was saying all the right things,” Erich Pica, the president of Friends of the Earth, said after Obama’s loan-guarantee announcement. “But now he has become a full-blown nuclear-power proponent—a startling change over the past few months.” Actually, Obama has been a nuclear-power proponent ever since he was a state legislator, but in the context of an energy regime that underwrites conservation, promotes renewables like wind and solar, and, crucially, puts a price on carbon. Nuclear power plants are unbelievably expensive to build, but once they are up and running the electricity they generate is cheap to produce. In the United States, coal plants (there are six hundred of them, as against a hundred nuclear ones) get a kind of subsidy, too, and it’s huge: the right to dispose of their most dangerous waste by sending it up the chimney, free of charge.
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Please see the rest of article for a great summary of the past and a largely noncommital ending. More tomorrow.

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