Peak Oil I Love YOU…Leanan does an amazing job

Posted on April 16, 2009 by Doug Nicodemus

It is rare well at least medium rare that I give credit where credit is due but the Peak Oil folks and Leanan in particular deserve so much credit. Day in and Day out..NO MATTER what the price of oil or gasoline…they still believe that we are running out of the stuff. That is great because WE ARE:

http://www.peakoil.com/

From the paranoid:

http://www.peakoil.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=47647

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0415/p13s01-wmgn.html

Economic slump provides

tinder for global conflicts

With more people pushed into poverty,

the probability of armed rebellions increases around the world.

By David R. Francis | Columnist

The new director of the National Intelligence Agency caused something of a stir last month when he warned Congress: “The primary near-term security concern of the United States is the global economic crisis and its geopolitical implications.”

On that theme, Hampshire College professor Michael Klare sees the world economic meltdown as already prompting “economic brush fires” around the world and worries whether these could prove “too virulent to contain.”

It seems as if the lyrics “trouble, trouble, trouble” from Meredith Willson’s “The Music Man” have become too real in today’s world.

Last November Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank Group, noted that the global financial crisis would hit hardest the “poorest and most vulnerable” in the developing world. At that time, Mr. Zoellick calculated another 100 million people around the world had been driven into poverty as a result of soaring food and oil prices. These prices have eased. Nonetheless, hundreds of millions in poor nations must try to balance household budgets on incomes of $2 a day or less.

Now he’s forecasting the world economy will shrink by 1 to 2 percent this year, with difficulties possibly extending into next year. That’s much worse than the bank group’s forecast last year. It will be the first time world output has actually declined since World War II. And each 1 percent decline

in developing-country growth rates pushes an additional 20 million people into poverty, Zoellick reckons.

“The political ramifications [of rising poverty] will be great … though hard to predict,” says John Sewell, a senior scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center for Scholars in Washington. Before the election last fall, he assembled a group of experts who urged the incoming president to streamline the nation’s development tools. These are now spread among 12 government departments, 25 government agencies, and almost 60 government offices. “No one is in charge,” the group held.

Powerful droughts around the world could cause food shortages, reversing a dramatic drop in global poverty that the economic crisis recently halted, worries Mr. Klare, an expert on peace and world security.

In Africa and in East Asia, population growth also adds to economic pressures.

As for brush fires, the driest tinder lies in eastern European states such as Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania, and Bulgaria, he says. There, the people in fragile democracies had the notion that rising prosperity in the 1990s and up to 2006 would continue forever. Now the money from the West has dried up and gone home, leading to an economic bust.

“That is what is driving them to rage,” says Klare. “The promises have been taken away.”

To the paradoxical:

http://www.peakoil.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=47644

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30240000/

Renewable energy’s environmental paradox

Wind and solar projects may carry costs for wildlife

Sandy Seth, via Friends of the Bosque del Apache via AP

Sandhill Cranes fly in formation into the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge near Socorro, N.M., last year. Environmentalists have raised concerns that the birds’ habitats could be affected by a planned sun and wind power transmission line.

WASHINGTON – The SunZia transmission line that would link sun and wind power from central New Mexico with cities in Arizona is just the sort of energy project an environmentalist could love — or hate. And it is just the sort of line the Interior Department has been tasked with promoting — or guarding against.

If built, the 460-mile line would carry about 3,000 megawatts of power, enough to avoid the need for a handful of coal-fired plants and to help utilities meet mandated targets for use of renewable fuel. “We have to connect the sun of the deserts and the winds of the plains to places where people live,” Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said recently.

But the line would also cross grasslands, skirt two national wildlife refuges and traverse the Rio Grande, all habitat areas rich in wildlife. The graceful sandhill crane, for example, makes its winter home in the wetlands of New Mexico’s Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, right next to the path of the proposed power line. And much of the area falls under the protection of the Interior Department’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM).

To the pusillanimously positive:

http://www.peakoil.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=47643

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2009/04/action-plan-for-50-how-solar-thermal-can-supply-europes-energy

April 15, 2009

Action Plan for 50%:

How Solar Thermal Can Supply Europe’s Energy

The solar thermal sector’s strategy to reach a 50% contribution

to Europe’s space and water heating requirements by 2050.

by David Appleyard, Associate Editor

London, UK [Renewable Energy World Magazine]

The research efforts and infrastructure needed to supply 50% of the energy for space and water heating and cooling across Europe using solar thermal energy has been set out under the aegis of the European Solar Thermal Technology Platform (ESTTP). Published in late December 2008, more than 100 experts developed the Strategic Research Agenda (SRA), which includes a deployment roadmap showing the non-technological framework conditions that will enable this ambitious goal to be reached by 2050.

A strategy for achieving a vision of widespread low-temperature solar thermal installations was first explored by ESTTP in 2006, but since then the SRA has identified key areas for rapid growth. These focus points include

the development of active solar buildings, active solar renovation, solar heat for industrial processes and solar heat for district heating and cooling. Meanwhile, amongst the main research challenges is the development of compact long-term efficient heat storage technology. Once available, they would make it possible to store heat from the summer for use in winter in a cost-effective way.

The ESTTP’s main objective is to create the right conditions in order to fully exploit solar thermal’s potential for heating and cooling in Europe and worldwide.

As a first step for the development of the deployment roadmap and of the Strategic Research Agenda, ESTTP developed a vision for solar thermal in 2030. Its key elements are to establish the Active Solar Building – covering 100% of their heating and cooling demand with solar energy – as a standard for new buildings by 2030; establish the Active Solar Renovation as a standard for the refurbishment of existing buildings by 2030 (Active Solar renovated buildings cover at least 50% of their heating and cooling demand with solar thermal energy); supply a substantial share of the industrial process heat demand up to 250°C, including heating and cooling, desalination and water treatment; and achieve broad use of solar energy in district heating and cooling.

They got it covered. My hat’s off to you.

Power Shift 09 – Well somebody gets it

Posted on February 20, 2009 by Doug Nicodemus

I was reading Peak OIL of all things, when this popped up:

http://www.peakoil.com/article46361.htm

http://www.e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2124

19 Feb 2009: Opinion

Why I’ll Get Arrested To Stop the Burning of Coal

On March 2, environmentalist Bill McKibben will join

demonstrators who plan to march on a coal-fired power plant in Washington D.C. In this article for Yale Environment 360, he explains why he’s ready to go to jail to protest the continued burning of coal.

by bill mckibben

It may seem odd timing that many of us are heading to the nation’s capital early next month for a major act of civil disobedience at a coal-fired power plant, the first big protest of its kind against global warming in this country.

After all, Barack Obama’s in power. He’s appointed scientific advisers who actually believe in… science, and he’s done more in a few weeks to deal with climate change than all the presidents of the last 20 years combined. Stalwarts like John Kerry, Henry Waxman, and Ed Markey are chairing the relevant congressional committees. The auto companies, humbled, are promising to build rational vehicles if only we give them some cash. What’s to protest? Why not just give the good guys a break?

If you think about it a little longer, though, you realize this is just the moment to up the ante. For one thing, it would have done no good in the past: you think Dick Cheney was going to pay attention?

More importantly, we need a powerful and active movement not to force the administration and the Democrats in Congress to do something they don’t want to, but to give them the political space they need to act on their convictions. Barack Obama was a community organizer — he understands that major change only comes when it’s demanded, when there’s some force noisy enough to drown out the eternal hum of business as usual, of vested interest, of inertia…

Australia Feeling The Effects Of Global Warming – There is a reason they call it downunder

Posted on February 6, 2009 by Doug Nicodemus

In Victoria the temperature has been above 44 degrees all week and they are forecasting another week of 40+ temperatures. Power is failing, trains have stopped running because tracks are buckling under the heat . It’s just scorching. And it seems that the people are not the only ones suffering.

Check out these photos of a little Koala which just walked onto a back porch looking for a bit of heat relief. The woman filled up a bucket for it and this is what happened!

Kinda dark but:

Getting better:

About right:

But see this is actually the effects of Global Warming. We are burning the animals and plants off this planet UP.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=36900

For those who track their local temperatures using the Celsius scale, 40 degrees is a daunting number. In early February 2009, residents of southeastern Australia were cringing at their weather forecasts, as predictions of temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) meant that a blistering heat wave was continuing.

This map of Australia shows how the land surface temperature from January 25 to February 1 compared to the average mid-summer temperatures the continent experienced between 2000-2008. Places where temperatures were warmer than average are red, places experiencing near-normal temperatures are white, and places where temperatures were cooler than average are blue. The data were collected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite. While southern Australia was scorching, a similarly large area of northern and central Australia was several degrees cooler than it was in the previous nine years. The cool anomaly across that region is probably linked to the above-average rainfall the area has received during this year’s wet season.

Land surface temperature is how hot the surface of the Earth would feel to the touch in a particular location. From a satellite’s point of view, the “surface” is whatever it sees when it looks through the atmosphere to the ground. That could be the sand on a beach, the grass on a lawn, the roof of a building, or a paved road. Thus, daytime land surface temperature is often much higher than the air temperature that is included in the daily weather report—a fact that anyone who has walked barefoot across a parking lot on a summer afternoon could verify.

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) called this heat wave “exceptional,” not only for the high temperatures but for their duration. One-day records were broken in multiple cities, with temperatures in the mid-40s. In Kyancutta, South Australia, the temperature reached 48.2 degrees Celsius (118.8 degrees Fahrenheit). Many places also set records for the number of consecutive days with record-breaking heat.

It will only get worse.

Why Are We Doing All This Home Improvement Anyway – Well to save money of course but..

Posted on January 22, 2009 by Doug Nicodemus

To save our grandchildren as well..

http://www.livescience.com/environment/090121-antarctica-warming.html#comments

Antarctica Is Warming:

Climate Picture Clears Up

By Andrea Thompson, Senior Writer

posted: 21 January 2009 01:04 pm ET

: This illustration depicts the warming that scientists have determined has occurred in West Antarctica during the last 50 years, with the dark red showing the area that has warmed the most. Credit: NASA

The frozen desert interior of Antarctica was thought to be the lone holdout resisting the man-made warming affecting the rest of the globe, with some areas even showing signs of cooling.

Some global warming contrarians liked to point to inner Antarctica as a counter-example. But climate researchers have now turned this notion on its head, with the first study to show that the entire continent is warming, and has been for the past 50 years.

“Antarctica is warming, and it’s warming at the same rate as the rest of the planet,” said study co-author Michael Mann of Penn State University.

This finding, detailed in the Jan. 21 issue of the journal Nature, has implications for estimating ice melt and sea level rise from the continent, which is almost entirely covered by ice that averages about a mile (1.6 kilometers) thick. The revelation also undermines the common use of Antarctica as an argument against global warming by contrarians, Mann said.

For more see the rest of this article and:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/4307829/Antarctica-is-warming-faster-according-to-scientists.html

http://www.reuters.com/article/environmentNews/idUSTRE50I4G520090120?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0

Never mind this:

http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2009/01/21_seasons.shtml

Summer peak,

winter low temperatures now arrive 2 days earlier

By Robert Sanders, Media Relations | 21 January 2009

BERKELEY — Not only has the average global temperature increased in the past 50 years, but the hottest day of the year has shifted nearly two days earlier, according to a new study by scientists from the University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard University.

July
Map of average distribution of global temperatures for July Febuary
The average distribution of global temperatures for July and February. Because the sun is further north in July, the warm bulge of high temperatures is shifted into the northern hemisphere in that month. In the Northern Hemisphere, warm temperatures extend farther north on land than over ocean in the summer and cold temperatures extend farther south on land than on the ocean in the winter. (Image by Alexander R. Stine/UC Berkeley; data from the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia )

Just as human-generated greenhouse gases appear to the be the cause of global warming, human activity may also be the cause of the shift in the cycle of seasons, according to Alexander R. Stine, a graduate student in UC Berkeley’s Department of Earth and Planetary Science and first author of the report.”We see 100 years where there is a very natural pattern of variability, and then we see a large departure from that pattern at the same time as global mean temperatures start increasing, which makes us suspect that there’s a human role here,” he said.

Although the cause of this seasonal shift – which has occurred over land, but not the ocean – is unclear, the researchers say the shift appears to be related, in part, to a particular pattern of winds that also has been changing over the same time period. This pattern of atmospheric circulation, known as the Northern Annular Mode, is the most important wind pattern for controlling why one winter in the Northern Hemisphere is different from another. The researchers found that the mode also is important in controlling the arrival of the seasons each year.

Whatever the cause, Stine said, current Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) models do not predict this phase shift in the annual temperature cycle.

Details are published in the Jan. 22 issue of the journal Nature.

Now The Environmentalists Have Discovered There Is No Clean In Coal – I am shocked

Posted on December 15, 2008 by Doug Nicodemus

I believe in carbon sequestration because I believe that carbon and other elements in smokestack effluent can be recycled. That is they can be used for feedstock for algae or concrete. Injecting it into the ground however is not an option. I have said that for 10 years while everyone else was sucking up to the power companies.

http://www.newsweek.com/id/173086?GT1=43002

Blowing Smoke

Is clean coal technology fact or fiction?

By Daniel Stone | Newsweek Web Exclusive

Dec 9, 2008 | Updated: 8:08 a.m. ET Dec 9, 2008

A single power plant in western Pennsylvania is one of the 12 biggest carbon dioxide polluting power plants in the U.S. emitting 17.4 million tons annually.

In the elusive search for the reliable energy source of the future, the prospect of clean coal is creating a lot of buzz. But while the concept—to scrub coal clean before burning, then capture and store harmful gases deep underground—may seem promising, a coalition of environment and climate groups argue in a new media campaign that the technology simply doesn’t exist.

The Alliance for Climate Protection and several other prominent organizations—including the Sierra Club and National Resources Defense Council—launched a multipronged campaign to “debrand” the clean part of clean coal, pointing out that there’s no conclusive evidence to confirm the entire process would work the way it’s being marketed. In the campaign’s TV ad, a technician sarcastically enters the door of a clean coal production plant, only to find there’s nothing on the other side. “Take a good long look,” he says, standing in a barren desert, “this is today’s clean coal technology.”

The campaign was designed to combat the well-funded coal industry, which formed a trade association in April to promote the idea of clean coal. Joe Lucas, a vice president for the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, says that the technology does exist, although it’s still in early development stages. “With the current research being done, we think we can get the technology up and running within 10 to 15 years,” he says. Activists like Brian Hardwick, chief spokesman for the Alliance for Climate Protection, aren’t so sure. Hardwick spoke to NEWSWEEK’s Daniel Stone about why the idea of clean coal shouldn’t be considered a solution.

And it makes for great TV:

http://www.thisisreality.org/#/?p=canary

Of course up till now they have been peddling other “stuff”:

http://science.howstuffworks.com/clean-coal.htm

What is clean coal technology?

by Sarah Dowdey

Coal is the dirtiest of all fossil fuels. When burned, it produces emissions that contribute to global warming, create acid rain and pollute water. With all of the hoopla surrounding nuclear energy, hydropower and biofuels, you might be forgiven for thinking that grimy coal is finally on its way out.

But coal is no sooty remnant of the Industrial Revolution — it generates half of the electricity in the United States and will likely continue to do so as long as it’s cheap and plentiful [source: Energy Information Administration]. Clean coal technology seeks to reduce harsh environmental effects by using multiple technologies to clean coal and contain its emissions.

When coal burns, it releases carbon dioxide and other emissions in flue gas, the billowing clouds you see pouring out of smoke stacks. Some clean coal technologies purify the coal before it burns. One type of coal preparation, coal washing, removes unwanted minerals by mixing crushed coal with a liquid and allowing the impurities to separate and settle.

Other systems control the coal burn to minimize emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulates. Wet scrubbers, or flue gas desulfurization systems, remove sulfur dioxide, a major cause of acid rain, by spraying flue gas with limestone and water. The mixture reacts with the sulfur dioxide to form synthetic gypsum, a component of drywall.

Low-NOx (nitrogen oxide) burners reduce the creation of nitrogen oxides, a cause of ground-level ozone, by restricting oxygen and manipulating the combustion process. Electrostatic precipitators remove particulates that aggravate asthma and cause respiratory ailments by charging particles with an electrical field and then capturing them on collection plates.

Where do the emissions go?

Carbon capture and storage — perhaps the most promising clean coal technology — catches and sequesters carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from stationary sources like power plants. Since CO2 contributes to global warming, reducing its release into the atmosphere has become a major international concern. In order to discover the most efficient and economical means of carbon capture, researchers have developed several technologies.

Coal isn't going anywhere soon -- it generates half of the U.S. power supply.
Aaron Cobbett/Stone/Getty Images
Coal isn’t going anywhere soon — it generates half of the U.S. power supply.

Flue-gas separation removes CO2 with a solvent, strips off the CO2 with steam, and condenses the steam into a concentrated stream. Flue gas separation renders commercially usable CO2, which helps offset its price. Another process, oxy-fuel combustion, burns the fuel in pure or enriched oxygen to create a flue gas composed primarily of CO2 and water — this sidesteps the energy-intensive process of separating the CO2 from other flue gasses. A third technology, pre-combustion capture, removes the CO2 before it’s burned as a part of a gasification process.

Here is where the bullshit starts, “Why would they have to do anything after sequestration?”

After capture, secure containers sequester the collected CO2 to prevent or stall its reentry into the atmosphere. The two storage options, geologic and oceanic, must contain the CO2 until peak emissions subside hundreds of years from now. Geologic storage involves injecting CO2 into the earth. Depleted oil or gas fields and deep saline aquifers safely contain CO2 while unminable coal seams absorb it. A process called enhanced oil recovery already uses CO2 to maintain pressure and improve extraction in oil reservoirs.

Community Energy Systems

Censys.org

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