From the beginning to the End, drilling, refining, selling and using petroleum products was, is and will be bad for the planet. So then the real question is why is he number 4 on the list? Well hmmm I don’t know but then why are some who come after.. after? The world is just full of planet destroyers. It looks bad ma, it looks bad.
Meet the 17 polluters and deniers who are derailing efforts to curb global warming
TIM DICKINSONPosted Jan 06, 2010 8:00 AM
Burning Man
Rex Tillerson
CEO, ExxonMobil
Tillerson, who oversees the world’s biggest oil company, concedes that “greenhouse-gas emissions are one of the factors affecting climate change.” But that doesn’t mean that America’s largest carbon polluter plans to stop killing the climate. Exxon is responsible for 397 million tons of CO2 emissions annually — more than twice those of the nation’s dirtiest electric utility — accounting for 6.5 percent of America’s climate-warming pollution. As part of its campaign to defeat climate legislation, which Tillerson claims will “cap economic growth,” Exxon spent $29 million on lobbying in 2008 — second only to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. And despite vowing to stop its funding of climate denial, it continues to foot the bill for bogus research by right-wing outfits like the Heritage Foundation, which asserts that “growing scientific evidence casts doubt on whether global warming constitutes such a threat.”
In a disingenuous attempt to appear serious about the threat of climate change, Tillerson has recently begun to advocate a tax on carbon pollution — a measure he knows has absolutely no chance of passing.
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Please read both articles they are really really really important.
We have so much coastline that we could use for this. But nooooo, the drill here drill now crowd would rather put drilling rigs there. First I have to say:
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The licences could see the installation of hundreds of new turbines
Contracts have been awarded for a major expansion of offshore wind power in the seas around Scotland.
Moray Offshore Renewables and SeaGreen Wind Energy will develop offshore wind power in the Moray Firth and the Firth of Forth.
The energy companies have been awarded the contracts by the Crown Estate, a UK government agency.
The energy companies have been awarded the contracts by the Crown Estate, a UK government agency.
It is believed the development could lead to 1,000 new turbines generating nearly five giga watts of power.
Jobs could also be created in manufacturing, research, engineering, installation, operation and services.
The move comes just days after the Scottish government’s approval of the controversial upgrade to the Beauly to Denny transmission line of pylons from the Highlands to central Scotland.
We hold a competitive advantage in developing offshore renewables, including as much as a quarter of Europe’s offshore wind energy potential and a world-class scientific capacity and skills base
Alex Salmond
First Minister
First Minister Alex Salmond said: “The announcement by the Crown Estate is excellent news for Scotland.
“We hold a competitive advantage in developing offshore renewables, including as much as a quarter of Europe’s offshore wind energy potential and a world-class scientific capacity and skills base.”
Scottish Secretary Jim Murphy said Scotland was the windiest country in Europe and the conditions were being created for the energy industry to invest in harnessing it.
He added: “This is one of the strongest signals yet that Scotland is right at the heart of the UK’s commitment to a low carbon, energy secure, prosperous future.
“But it’s also great news for the manufacturing industry and supply chain in Scotland.”
‘Great opportunity’
The Crown Estate is the owner of the UK’s coastal seabeds and this third round of grants covers the Moray Firth zone, which will be developed by a partnership involving the Portuguese company, EDP Renewables and SeaEnergy.
Wind power in Scotland is an area of considerable activity, with 1550 MW of installed capacity as at October 2008.[1]Wind power is the fastest growing of the renewable energy technologies in Scotland and the world’s largest wind turbine generator (5 MW) is currently undergoing testing in the North Sea, 15 miles off the east coast. There are numerous large wind farms as well as a number, both planned and operating, which are in community ownership. The siting of turbines is sometimes an issue, but surveys have shown high levels of community acceptance for wind power in Scotland. There is further potential for expansion, especially offshore, given the high average wind speeds.
The Scottish government has a target of generating 31% of Scotland’s electricity from renewable energy by 2011 and 50% by 2020. The majority of this is likely to come from wind power.[2]
Yes Yes I know….if you look to the left you will see that it is the 27th and fully 2 days after Christmas. I have all kinds of excuses…My brother from Florida came in on Thursday and wanted to spend the day with me.
Then on Friday after wrapping presents all the night before, we got up and drove through a bad snow storm to the hills outside of Mason City to have our first Christmas with Cate’s family.
Then we went into Mason City and dropped off our presents at my parents house. We had decided with great regret that we could not stay much passed dark because of the weather. Dinner was not until 6, we left at 5:30 :-{
We battled back through the wind, the snow and slick roads and settled in for our Christmas night alone…You would say – well that was perfect time to post BUT we watched Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince which I had gotten for Cate for Christmas…after that we went to bed.
The next day I thought “shoot” I failed to post but quickly things like calling people I know to wish them a merry Christmas and to find out if anyone had already read the books that I gave as gifts. I was 28 to 1 in that one. I helped set up Cate’s puzzle folding table and she puzzled all day while I did laundry and such. Posting completely slipped my mind.
So today I woke up (we had to watch the Harry Potter Movie again because it was so confusing) and said “Damn it, I am going to post. So after a hearty breakfast I did. Merry Christmas to all and to all a….well end of the weekend.
Things have gone pretty dismally in Copenhagen. The Developed Countries tried to bully the Developing Countries. The Newly Industrializing Countries sniffed at the DeIndustrializing Countries. The US yelled at China and China yelled back and jingled the coins in its pockets. After all that excitement I must say:
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Community Energy Systems is a nonprofit 501c3 organization chartered in Illinois in Sangamon County. As such we are dependent on public donations for our continued existence. We also use Adsense as a fundraiser. Please click on the ads that you see on this page, on our main page and on our Bulletin Board (Refrigerator Magnets) and you will be raising money for CES. We say a heartfelt THANK YOU to all who do.
Gruel is a food preparation consisting of some type of cereal— oat, wheat or rye flour, or also rice— boiled in water or milk. It is a thinner version of porridge that may be more often drunk than eaten and need not even be cooked. Historically, gruel, often made from millet or barley, or in hard times of chestnut flour and even the less tannic acorns of some oaks, has been the staple of the human diet, especially that of the peasantry. The importance of gruel as a form of sustenance is especially noted for invalids[1] and recently weaned children.
Gruel consumption has traditionally been associated with poverty. Gruel is a colloquial expression of any slop that is of unknown character, e.g. pea soup; soup is derived from sop, the slice of bread which was soaked with broth or thin gruel.[2
Copenhagen climate change summit – final day live blog
World leaders are still trying to thrash out a last minute compromise climate deal. These are the final day’s main developments:
• In a disappointing speech Obama admitted that the talks are in the balance.
• Leaked documents showed a draft agreement is extremely weak.
• Obama held two crucial talks with the Chinese premier Wen Jiabao.
4.43pm:
Greenpeace has expressed its disgust at the draft Copenhagen accord currently doing the rounds.
Its climate campaigner Joss Garman said:
This latest draft is so weak as to be meaningless. It’s more like a G8 communique than the legally binding agreement we need. It doesn’t even include a timeline to give it legal standing or an explicit temperature target. It’s hard to imagine our leaders will try to present this document to the world and keep a straight face.
All this haggling is going to get us right where the top 500 POLLUTERS want us, sucking up their soot and poisons:
4.57pm:
A third draft of the climate is agreement being considered by world leaders, according to AP. But they are some way off the pace, according to our environment editor John Vidal – he’s looking at sixth version.
For what its worth the third version reinstates targets omitted from earlier ones. It says rich countries should reduce their greenhouse emissions by at least 80% by the year 2050.
It adds that developing countries’ emissions should be 15-30% below “business as usual”.
Stay tuned for more details on that later version.
5.28pm:
Tim Jones climate policy officer from World Development Movement, joins the chorus of disgust.
This summit has been in complete disarray from start to finish, and now appears to be culminating in a shameful and monumental failure that will condemn millions of people around the world to untold suffering. The leaders of rich countries have refused to lead and instead sought to bribe and bully developing nations to sign up to the equivalent of a death warrant. The best outcome now is no deal. Leaders of rich countries should go home and adopt new year resolutions to become low carbon economies and pay their climate debt. Then we may have a chance of a properly just and effective agreement in 2010.
WASHINGTON — The White House complex and the federal government are going green — and not just with Christmas trees and holly.
As President Obama meets with world leaders at the United Nations climate conference in Copenhagen today, the government he runs at home is quietly engaged in an unprecedented effort to reduce its carbon footprint, increase energy efficiency, conserve water, cut waste and more.
In the complex that includes the White House, that means more efficient heating and cooling systems as well as organic paint, low-flow toilets and lights that turn off by themselves. Even the 800 Christmas ornaments adorning the 18-foot tree in the White House Blue Room were recycled from previous administrations in a nod to the environment and the bad economy.
In many of the federal government’s other 500,000 buildings, the effort to go green includes cutting the amount of garbage produced in half and installing more efficient lights.
“This is a big leap forward for the federal government,” says Nancy Sutley, chairwoman of Obama’s White House Council on Environmental Quality. And the effort will be “sustainable itself beyond this president.”
Sutley says the federal government is the country’s single largest energy consumer, using 1.6% of all the power used nationwide, so reducing energy consumption will mean big savings.
The nation is the world’s second-largest producer of greenhouse gases, behind China, and the cuts could help there, as well, environmentalists say.
Erich Pica of Friends of the Earth says, “There are many economies of scale that President Obama can achieve by forcing the federal government to rethink its energy habits.Dot Dot Dot (as they say)
Environmental groups say Obama’s efforts go far beyond what’s been done before. “There’s real substance behind the rhetoric,” says Joel Makower, editor of GreenBiz.com, which reports on the greening of mainstream business.
Under a 15-page executive order Obama signed in October, government agencies must implement a host of changes, Sutley says. Among the requirements:
• Agencies must reduce waste by 50% by 2015.
• Agencies must show a 26% improvement in water efficiency by 2020.
• All new buildings and any major renovations to existing buildings must be eligible for LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification given by the U.S. Green Building Council to environmentally responsible buildings. In and around Washington, the Pentagon and the ornate 121-year-old Eisenhower Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House are in the process of becoming LEED-certified.
• The government’s 600,000 vehicles must operate with 30% less petroleum by 2020.
Pentagon officials, Sutley says, are “thinking about how they can power their vehicles in different ways, so they don’t have to transport as much fuel,” a change that would save money and improve safety for servicemembers.
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So Copenhagen was pretty much a bust but it’s Christmas so let’s rock out!
OK now that I have everybody’s attention. The people who do not accept Man Caused Global Atmospheric Destabilization (some people call it Global Warming I don’t) are insane or delusional. They just don’t want people to notice the obvious. They try to draw the arguement so far back into the clouds because if they admit MANKIND is contributing to the mess then the rest of their rhetorical walls begin to tumble. But to ignore this is pretty hard to do.
SYDNEY (AFP) – Australian authorities Friday issued a shipping alert over a gigantic iceberg that is gradually approaching the country’s southwest coast.
The Bureau of Meteorology said the once-in-a-century cliff of ice, which dislodged from Antarctica about a decade ago before drifting north, was being monitored using satellites.
“Mariners are advised that at 1200 GMT on December 9, an iceberg approximately 1,700 kilometres (1,054 miles) south-southwest of the West Australian coast was observed,” it said, giving the iceberg’s coordinates.
“The iceberg is 140 square kilometres in area — 19 kilometres long by eight kilometres wide.”
Experts believe the iceberg — known as B17B — is likely to break up as it enters warmer waters nearer Australia, creating hundreds of smaller icebergs in a hazard to passing ships.
“It’s still 1,700 kilometres away, so it’s quite a long way away, it’s not really on our doorstep yet but it’s been heading steadily towards us,” glaciologist Neal Young said Thursday.
This satellite image shows several icebergs breaking off the Antarctic ice shelf in 2000. The iceberg B17B on the left has been spotted 1,700 kilometres from Australia. (Australian Antarctic Division/Associated Press)
Scientists say that ice shelf calvings such as the one in 2000 happen about once every 30 years.
Wish they would make up there minds…is this a once every 30 years experience or once every 100 year event…but in a way it is so monumental that it is amazing that there is a Climate Summit going on and the deniers have everyone talking about stolen emails and NOT this. Cover your ears and go lalalalalalala.
Strewth! An iceberg passes under Sydney Harbour Bridge. Photograph: Dennis Degnan/Corbis
A crowd of suntanned Australians stand at Sydney harbour. As is traditional, they are having a barbecue. Someone has set up a cricket wicket in the middle of the road. The mood is a happy one. Then, all of a sudden, the light disappears from the sky. Men and women alike turn round to find a 50bn-tonne iceberg where the sun once was. This is B17B, the superberg, and it’s headed right for them, bringing with it a nightmare microclimate: cyclones filled with swirling tinnies, raining wombats and vicious blizzards (to enable the title).
The latest Guardian/film/films production – working title: The Blizzard of Oz – promises to take the disaster movie where it’s never been before. Australia. Inspired by latest events, we plan to tell a tale of ecological disaster that will keep you on the edge of your seat for pushing three hours and guarantees a flying CGI kangaroo every 15 minutes.
To clarify: the latest news seem to suggest that B17B, a 140 sq km block of ice that has broken free from the Antarctic ice shelf, looks set to miss Australia altogether. What’s more, it was heading for the west coast, not the east, so featuring Sydney would be a stretch, too. But this is the movies; rules get bent. Which is how we came to cast Stefan Dennis in the lead role.
Community Energy Systems is a nonprofit 501c3 organization chartered in Illinois in Sangamon County. As such we are dependent on public donations for our continued existence. We also use Adsense as a fundraiser. Please click on the ads that you see on this page, on our main page and on our Bulletin Board (Refrigerator Magnets) and you will be raising money for CES. We say a heartfelt THANK YOU to all who do.
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( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7olsf7IlRI )
It seems like everyone has lists of green blogs. There is list for babies, mothers, products and even the media gets into the act:
GREENBUILD 2009– The Empire State Building plans to trim 38 percent from its monumental 11 million dollar annual energy bill with an energy efficiency retrofit. This month we hear from a person who’s
Fisker Karma – Click above for high-res image gallery
What does Joe Biden have to do with Fisker Automotive? On the surface, the answer would seem to be nothing at all.. or at least it did until the Vice President himself revealed the startup automaker’s plans to introduce a new series of electric vehicles under the Project Nina banner. Not only that, Fisker just so happens to have decided to build cars in Biden’s home state of Delaware. Coincidence?
According to Fisker spokesman Russel Datz, coincidence is exactly what it is. There were a number of good reasons to choose the former GM plant in Wilmington, Deleware, and the fact that it’s Biden’s home state is not one of them. First, the plant is relatively new and hasn’t been shuttered for a long period of time, meaning that it’s in good shape.
Second, the plant is about the size Fisker was looking for. Further, the plant is already set up to install GM’s 2.0-liter Ecotec engine, which is what will be installed in the Karma sedan and convertible. Moving along, GM had recently upgraded the plant’s paint shop, leading to the quality kind of paint jobs that Fisker is looking for. Finally, the plant has easy access to shipping lanes and a UAW workforce that will require very little training.
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People come and go, and so do websites. With Biopact, we have tried to promote bioenergy in Africa as a way to help small farmers make a better living. We did so by pointing at possible strategies to use natural resources in as intelligent a manner as possible, and by connecting initiatives dealing with agriculture, forestry and bioenergy. We hinted at the role Europe could play by re-writing trade rules, farm subsidies and international development policies.
The small group of dedicated people who wrote for Biopact have learned a lot during these past few years. We learned, for example, that large-scale biofuel production may do a lot of harm, while small-scale, locally rooted bioenergy initiatives may change lives for the better. We gained an insight into new farming techniques, like biochar, which may help tackle key problems in the developing world. We changed perspectives when it became clear that the interrelated threats of climate change and energy insecurity require far more action on the part of individuals, communities and governments. And above all, we came to think that the few patches of untouched nature we have left on this planet, need to be conserved.
The most vocal organizations around the University of East Anglia hacked email story (aka. “climategate”) have been involved in a decade-plus campaign to delay action on climate change.
The goal of this campaign, which began around the time of the first Kyoto Protocol negotiations, was to assemble a group of like-minded “free-market” think tanks and pseudo-experts that would bring into question the scientific realities of climate change, create doubt with the public and politicians and effectively delay the introduction of clean energy policy in the United States.
It’s no coincidence that the groups pushing this story the hardest have a long history of taking money from oil and coal companies to attack the conclusions made by climate scientists.
What I wouldn’t do to have a few of these organizations private emails over the years!
Here’s a few of the groups I’m talking about and a very brief background on their previous activities, as well as funding sources:
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Until I realized that all the capitol involved for social investments the size of a nuclear powerplant or a huge wind farm of the same megawattage was controlled by people who had a vested interest in one or the other. The simple way to put this is that which Energy Infrastructure we have is a political decision. That means that we will never have an Earth Friendly Economy until we have Earth Friendly governments. Don’t get me wrong people can make a difference. They can try to stop some of the damage being done. They can change themselves and their children to adopt Earth Friendly behaviors. I do not believe that they should have to give up mowing their grass, or back yard barbeques however because it is the big polluters that are causing the problems. But let’s look at the literature:
I know I know the New York Times is hardly literature and the “difficulty” of changing behavior is well understood by anyone who has ever tried to get someone to quit sucking their thumb or give up their bankey. But it is helpful to show some examples:
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How Understanding the Human Mind Might Save the World From CO2
What will solve climate change? Will it be technology? Policy? A growing number of researchers and activists say it’s what’s behind it all: people. And understanding them is vital to addressing climate change.The problem is that people don’t understand people very well, research shows.
In the 1970s, a researcher at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University named Scott Geller and colleagues conducted a workshop in residential energy efficiency and then measured its impacts. A newspaper advertisement recruited 40 participants on a first-come-first-served basis, and the workshop lasted three hours. Before and after the workshop, subjects took surveys measuring how much they knew and cared about energy efficiency. The change was significant — participants significantly knew and cared more about the issues after the workshop than before.
But when the researchers looked at the actual actions that people took afterward, the results were discouraging. One person lowered the temperature on the hot water heater. Two additional people had installed insulating blankets around their hot water heaters — but they had done it before the workshop. Eight people did install low-flow shower heads — after all 40 participants had been given the low-flow shower heads at the workshop.
If these were people who cared enough about energy efficiency to attend a three-hour workshop, what hope was there for people who didn’t?
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Of course since this talk is being given by famous environmentalist Doug McKenzie-Mohr who believes that social marketing is the answer to the question, “how do you change people’s behavior”, I will put up a few more cuts from this article because some of it is intriguing . But infrastructure and public policy are controlled by the moneyed elites and the government officials. Good luck with the social marketing scheme with them.
While the study, spurred by the last energy crisis, was conducted in the 1970s, its lessons about human nature still apply today, said McKenzie-Mohr, a professor of psychology at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick, and author of the book “Fostering Sustainable Behavior: An Introduction to Community-based Social Marketing.”
dot dot dot
“Social psychologists have now known for four decades that the relationship between people’s attitudes and knowledge and behavior is scant at best,” said McKenzie-Mohr. Yet campaigns remain heavily focused on brochures, flyers and other means of disseminating information. “I could just as easily call this presentation ‘beyond brochures,'” he said.
dot dot dot
Bridging the gap between attitudes and action
To bridge the gap between attitudes and action, people must first address the barriers that stand in the way of action, McKenzie-Mohr said.
dot dot dot
As the U.S. Senate debates sweeping climate legislation and leaders express increasing doubts that next month’s Copenhagen climate negotiations will lead to a treaty, a poll conducted in October by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press showed that only 57 percent of Americans believe that climate change is happening. Only 36 percent believe humans are the cause.
Individual behaviors can achieve fast, immediate impacts on greenhouse gas emissions, if they are implemented, presenters said. But Anthony Leiserowitz, director of the Yale Project on Climate Change and a leading expert on public opinion on climate change, said that what will have the most far-reaching effect is policy changes. And for that, public opinion is critical.
As I said before…they always get around to the politicians and public policy WITHOUT talking about the moneyed elites that hide behind their hedgerow.
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McKenzie-Mohr gave an example of a town’s efforts to reduce idling at schools. After learning that air quality was something residents cared about, leaders of the effort placed signs by where parents parked to pick up their children from school. The signs had no effect. But when, instead, a person dressed as a public health official spoke to parents personally as they waited, the frequency of idling dropped by 32 percent, while the average length of idling dropped by 72 percent.
dot dot dot
Ultimately, McKenzie-Mohr, Leiserowitz and other speakers said, what the climate movement needs is vision — which it currently lacks.
“I think we have become very, very good at describing that we’re against. … We’re terrible at describing what we’re for. We’re against climate change, we’re against biodiversity extinction, we’re against land-use change, etc., we’re against pesticides … but what are we for?” Leiserowitz said.
Other approaches have been tried but they always “start from the bottom”…why because they are afraid of the “top” that’s why. More on this Monday. Have a good weekend.
Research to understand the psychological, cultural, and institutional context within which energy-related decisions are made and how these factors influence energy consumption. Applying these insights to help public agencies design and implement more effective energy-saving policies and programs.
The “pee bale” is only in use out of visitor hours
Gardeners at a National Trust property in Cambridgeshire are urging people to relieve themselves outdoors to help gardens grow greener.
A three-metre long “pee bale” has been installed at Wimpole Hall.
Head gardener Philip Whaites is urging his male colleagues to pee on the straw bale to activate the composting process on the estate’s compost heap.
He said the “pee bale” is only in use out of visitor hours, since “we don’t want to scare the public”.
He said: “For eight weeks now, male members of our garden and estate teams have been using the outdoor straw bale when nature calls.
“The pee bale is excellent matter to add to our compost heap to stimulate the composting process; and with over 400 acres of gardens and parkland to utilise compost, we need all the help we can get.
“There are obvious logistical benefits to limiting it to male members of the team, but also male pee is preferable to women’s, as the male stuff is apparently less acidic.”
By the end of the year, it was calculated that the 10 men from the 70-strong garden and estates team will make more 1,000 individual trips to the pee bale, contributing towards the compost for the estate.
The estate said it will have saved up to 30% of its daily water use by not having to flush the loo so many times.
People like to talk about it too. GardenWeb a huge web site devoted to all things about gardening has a question and answer section. A person posted “To Pee Or Not To Pee” question and go hundreds of answers. I can not give you a true sense of the size of the post. You must go see it. But it was started on April 5th 2008 and stretttttched all the way to September 21, 2009! Some of the responses:
right, you’ve heard of the carbon to nitrogen ratio, i’m sure.
it’s controversial but most of the time it’s listed as 30 parts carbon to one part nitrogen.a lot of poeple do not make a big fuss about the proper ratio, they just mix until it heats up the way they like it.
why don’t you try mixing the grass clippings into a larger amount of shredded dead leaves, staw, or even sawdust.
As for the morals….you’re recycling, saving water, lightening septic stress, and helping your yard or garden out all in the same by using urine.
one word of advice…..if you make a hot compost pile out of urine, make sure your friend doesn’t try to touch it after you tell him about how warm the pile gets……(yes my friend came over and almost did, i was like whoa whoa!!!)
I pee in a bottle that I keep in a room which i have seedlings started in, and the next day i take it outside and pour it into the center of my pile, the thing i like about using pee is that you’re also helping to keep the pile moist as you add nitrogen, and it does work.
I keep a kitchen compost barrel outside the back door. It gets kitchen waste and shredded office paper. I give it a golden shower (at night when the wife is asleep) to keep it moist. Happily, the compost bin has no aroma at all. It seem that the office paper absorbs the moisture and puts it to work immediately.Today’s brainstorm; I have a 40 gal. tub sunk into the ground for the ducks to take a dip in. They ‘fertilize’ the water and algae starts to grow. It finally occurred to me that the algae makes an ideal ‘green’ for compost.
Agatha Christie said in her autobiography that her grandmother had the most beautiful roses in the neighborhood;
she used the “nightwater” (this must have been in about the 1890’s, when people had chamber pots under the beds) on them!
Unless you have something like a bladder infection or leptospirosis, urine tends to be sterile.For all the people who say “Eeeeewww!”, just keep in mind that septic and sewer systems are mostly ‘eyewash’. The fact that a couple of gallons of good clean drinking water are used to flush away half a cup of urine so it’s out of your sight and out of your mind isn’t exactly being environmentally responsible.All that nitrogen that is produce doesn’t just evaporate, you know. Like DDT, it all goes somewhere, either into the groundwater or into the ocean. Have you ever gone down to your favorite little creek and wondered where all that green algae came from? Have you passed by the marsh on your way to the ocean and it didn’t smell so great and had quite a lot of algae growing there? Between ‘modern’ farming methods and ‘modern’ waste dumping, we’re contaminating a lot of the world.Sue
Urine specimens are not sterile. Moreover, even sterile urine will grow bacteria at room temperature. I have examined results of urine tests, thousands and thousands of them, in my professional life, for 30 years. I do this as part of my anesthesia evaluation prior to anesthetizing people for surgery.As I said above, the only way to obtain a sterile urine specimen is sterile catheterization of the bladder or clean catch technique. I doubt that most of you are following these techniques in obtaining urine for your compost or garden.Karen
My old house was in the city. I’m positive that rats, and other animals got into the compost pile. Can I safely assume they have been exposed to E coli? Can I assume that my own urine is more sterile than the rats and other animals that dig, poop, and pee in the pile?
You are at a greater risk of exposure every time you use a public restroom. How confident are you that the last person that touched the door knob, phone, elevator button properly washed their hands after going to the bathroom? What about the fridge at work? How many people touch it? How many of those people properly wash? Are you sure they didn’t touch your food? What about the water cooler? Did the last person that used it pick his nose before he held the water open?
Judging from comments and our web statistics you people out there love discussing poo. So it’s about time that we move on to pee. Why waste your perfectly good urine? Indeed, both Ghandi and Jim Morrison drank their own urine for it’s reputed health benefits. But we ain’t gonna go there.
Our suggestion for the day is to save that piss for your plants. Urine is a fantastic source of nitrogen and it’s estimated that we all produce enough urine to fertilize all the wheat and corn that we as individuals consume. And urine is sterile and safe unless you’ve got a bladder infection.
Urine should be diluted before applying directly to plants since salts in your pee can build up in the soil. Dilution should be at least 10 parts water to one part urine. Peeing directly on plants can burn them as anyone who owns a dog already knows about. Urine is easiest to apply to non-food crops, though it’s perfectly safe to use on fruit trees and bushes. Applying it to root crops is more controversial, and frankly seems like a practice best left to hippies, so if you try this at least cease application at a respectable interval before harvesting.
There is even a book called Liquid Gold on the subject of pee as fertilizer and the ever more resourceful Europeans have developed a number of urine diverting flush toilets similar to the one we profiled earlier to take the labor out of urine saving.
I know, I know…I keep this post going because it is hysterical, I get to keep posting great Paul Butterfield tunes and because I can..Still everything good must come to end:
Q. I’ve heard that urinating on a compost heap helps, is this true, or is it a joke?
A. Urine contains nitrogen that will help feed the microbes and speed up their break-down of the brown carbon-rich material. Also, the water content will help keep the heap moist. I regularly pee on my compost heap – but only when no-ones looking.
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Everybody does it when no one is looking or at night…why not pee in a pitcher, keep it cold (and well labeled) in the fridge and just dump it when you have the time? HAHAHAHA
This is a perfect example of an Oil and Gas shill. Actually at this point I guess I should call him a Carbon front man. Ever notice how it’s always a man? He ignores the subsidies paid to the Oil and Gas business right now, which are huge. He ignores the impact of the pollution (externalities you know). He ignores the fact that, as predicted, we are starting to use oil shale and oil sands which are marginal materials because we are running out of resources. Not because of “magical” new technologies. He ignores the simple fact that if everyone in the world heated their water using geothermal or solar we could cut consumption in half….
I loved the true story of the Nigerian energy worker who, having received a pay check for $900, amended the figure to read $9,000. As the reporter wittily put it, “The check fraud proved entirely successful … right up to the point where he attempted to cash it.” That’s kind of how I feel about the renewable energy revolution. It will prove entirely successful in the eyes of the public and media — right up to the point where the lights start going out. And those lights will soon start going out, according to a new report.
I fully understand the romantic attraction of the clean energy revolution and the rush to replace ‘dirty’ fossil fuels. In the light of the war on carbon it’s a no brainer, right? Which is precisely why, just as diminishing EU and UK subsidies are prompting an industry exodus westward, the British renewables industry may be about to be given an unexpected investment shot in the arm from some of the world’s biggest multinational companies in one of the biggest analogs to the adage “I gave at the church,” in this case the environmentalism church. Companies, it seems, in their rush to appear politically correct are oblivious to how that renewable revolution is ushering in a new dark age in Britain.
Why the multinationals?
Speaking at a UK Confederation of British Industries (CBI) conference in October, the Bank of America’s head of power and utilities, John Lynch, named companies like Google, Microsoft, Wal-Mart and IKEA (the Swedish home goods company) as being potential new investors for Britain’s offshore wind industry. “This is the technology that the UK is leading in, and these companies are looking at ways to get involved,” Lynch told his CBI audience, “because it meets their own corporate social responsibility objectives.” Enthusing over the prospect of a massive new injection of funds for British industry, Lynch noted how the Crown Estate (which owns the UK seabed) had launched the offshore program specifically to enable Britain to meet its target of 80 percent cuts in carbon emissions by 2050 compared with 1990 levels. Clearly nobody had told Lynch that in recent weeks the leaders of Britain’s biggest energy companies privately warned the government that its climate targets, contingent upon renewable sources replacing hydrocarbon fuels, are “illusory” and “delusional.
as we say in the editing business … or dot dot dot
Put bluntly, Tucker shows that industrial scale renewable energy is, realistically and mathematically, an economic non-starter.
Ironically, just as UK and European subsidy opportunities are dwindling and the revolution faltering, the retail multinationals may be about to reinvigorate the flagging UK program. And as the economic cost of renewables is being counted across Europe, Britain’s energy-climate policy is likely to be touted increasingly as the blueprint for others to follow. A rash of UK studies continue to sound alarm bells over the government’s current energy direction and, one of these, just published, should do the same well beyond UK shores.
Does it really take an Einstein?
In October, the UK energy regulator, Ofgem (The Office of Gas and Electricity Markets), warned that Britain was facing 1970s style power blackouts within just four years – a much shorter timescale than previously thought. Project Discovery cited the British government’s failure to renovate its “crumbling power infrastructure” due to compliance with new EU rules that will force the closure of a quarter of the country’s power stations by 2015. In a typically British understatement, Alistair Buchanan, Ofgem’s chief executive warned, “There could be a potential shortfall in the period 2013-18 … Life might be pretty cold.” Buchanan’s assessment is that only an “involuntary curtailment of demand” – power cuts – can conserve household supplies, unless the government acts urgently to upgrade its nuclear plants. Jeremy Nicholson, of the Energy Intensive Users Group, representing some of Britain’s biggest manufacturers, said that power cuts that hit UK business first would present a “material threat to heavy industry.” Nicholson also warned that once the crisis hit the 60 percent hike in British energy bills currently being acknowledged by the government will, more realistically, hit the 120 percent mark.
Bottom line? If Einstein’s E=mc2 as it applies to renewable energy doesn’t cut the intellectual ice for prospective investors and foreign governments alike, perhaps another will. Try this:
UK energy-climate policy, circa 2009 = a blueprint for black-outs.
See what I mean about a fraudulent check being entirely successful right up to the point
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But here is where his analysis shows his paradigm. He says industrial users have to have “so in so” amount of power. I say great. Let the industries that need it generate it in such a way that they generate no pollution. Thank you very much and usins in the residential market, well we will keep our alternative energies. Come on you ARE the smartest guys in the world right? oh..OR maybe not?
We hold a competitive advantage in developing offshore renewables, including as much as a quarter of Europe’s offshore wind energy potential and a world-class scientific capacity and skills base 
The most vocal organizations around the University of East Anglia 
