Abraham Lincoln’s Favorite Energy And Green Blogs – Imagine things like “mulepoop.com”,

Posted on February 12, 2009 by Doug Nicodemus

maybe “waterwheelsforprofit.net”, or “womensworkisneverdone.org”. So today we look at more blogs present and not that talk about energy and the environment. Here is one that has not been updated since 2006, but I like the phrase “After the Goo”.

http://postpetroleum.blogspot.com/

to oil.

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

After the Goo

It is now imperative that we move to new sources of transportion fuels.

Even George Bush admits that we are addicted to oil.

This one is cute, funny and current:

7 Megawatts, Not for the Faint of HAWT

WRI (World Resources Institute) estimates that there would be 30,100 jobs and $450 million/yr energy savings created with every $1billion invested in green recovery. And, even the U.S. Department of Energy during the WPE error conducted a study that has recommended that a major source of investment in the near term be wind power.

This one is also cute, funny and up-to-date. Tyler Hamilton is a hunk too.

http://tyler.blogware.com/

LNG lobby’s “truth” about CO2 emissions smells fishy

February 11th, 2009 So, a Washington-based lobby group called the Center for Liquefied Natural Gas has come out with a study that analyses the lifecycle emissions of LNG versus coal. The aim of the study is to make sure U.S. legislators “know the truth” about clean-burning LNG as they consider climate-change legislation. Their conclusion — surprise, surprise – is that LNG for power generation contributes, on an apples-to-apples basis, about 70 per cent less greenhouse-gas emissions compared to even the cleanest coal technologies. Put another way, they say that an existing coal power plant in the United States produces two and a half times more greenhouse gas emissions than a comparable LNG power plant.

That sounds, well…. completely unbelievable. Read the rest of this entry »

But that is nothing compared to what the typical nasty industry player spends on the web. Just look at this disgusting site. You would think that the Canadians would be smarter than that:

http://www.coal.ca/content/

Home

We wish to acknowledge the generous support of our 2008 Canadian Conference on Coal Sponsors:

Headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, The Coal Association of Canada represents companies engaged in the exploration, development, use and transportation of coal. Its members include major coal producers and coal-using utilities, the railroads and ports that ship coal, industry suppliers of goods and services, and municipalities that have an interest in furthering the objectives of the Coal Association.

47th Canadian Conference on Coal

The Coal Association of Canada would like to thank sponsors, delegates, guests and all others involved in making the 47th Canadian Conference on Coal, ‘Coal Renaissance: Affirming its Role Today, Determining it for the Future’, our most successful conference to date.

So to end on a less odious note, here is a practical, nonstudly, inyourownhome site:

http://www.energyboomer.typepad.com/

HOW TO ADD WINDOW INSULATION TO SAVE MONEY

Here are some inexpensive ways for you to add insulation to you existing windows that will save you money on your next heating or air conditioning bill.

Add clear shrink wrap on the inside

You can add a layer of clear plastic to the inside of the window. This seals off any air leaks and traps a layer of insulating air at the window. Being clear it still lets in light and lets you see out. I highly recommend the 3M Scotch Brand materials for cutting the energy waste at your windows.

It is easy. First sit down and read everything printed on the box. Remember, “if all else fails, read the directions.” The directions are an easy read and the illustrations are very helpful.

The first step of the job is to put their special two-sided sticky tape all around the window frame. What is special is that it sticks good, but you can peel it off easily too. If you put it on crooked, like I do, you can fix it without throwing it away and starting over.

Alternative Energy Blogs And Green Blogs – As we slide towards the softer side of Sears

Posted on February 11, 2009 by Doug Nicodemus

No offense meant but anybody including yours truely can have a blog. This first Blog was kind of interesting but apparently it died in 2005. What was it about 2005? Everyone thought, “Heh i could have had a Blog”? Then it turned out to be tougher than they thought. People died? What?

http://www.thebrigg.net/

The Greenhouse Effect

Filed under: Energy and Science — Administrator @ 10:14 am

There is a tremendous amount of misinformation about the greenhouse being spread, in large part by PACs (Political Action COmmittees) funded by the oil, coal, and gas industries, such as the “Greening Earth Society” . So, what’s the reality? First, it’s important to understand how it relates to something of increasing concern – hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico. The increasing frequency of strong hurricanes is also giving yet another conformation of the models. (more…)

This Blog is current and while listed as a Green Blog it deals with Energy quite a bit:

http://www.greenr.com/blog/

Google Gets Behind Smart Meters & Monitoring

Posted by davidwfox on 10 Feb 2009 | Tagged as: energy efficiency, my-new-house

Smart meters and energy monitors have been around for years, but Google wants to bring this empowering technology to a much larger audience. Count me in!

Google’s mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” and we believe consumers have a right to detailed information about their home electricity use. We’re tackling the challenge on several fronts, from policy advocacy to developing consumer tools, and even investing in smart grid companies.

Continued at The Official Google Blog…

I guess quitting a Blog and giving it up is not as bad as what happened to this blog…Hope it doesn’t happen to CES.

http://alteng.blogspot.com/

Blog has been removed

Sorry, the blog at alteng.blogspot.com has been removed. This address is not available for new blogs.

Did you expect to see your blog here? See: ‘I can’t find my blog on the Web, where is it?‘

owch…In the same vane, it’s hard to tell whether this site is alive or dead. The last post on the home page is December 2008.

http://www.thewatt.com/

Recent Podcast

theWatt Podcast 79

Submitted by ben on Mon, 05/19/2008 – 22:21.

download:

tWP79: Building a Wind Farm (11MB, 28min)

Mike Jablonicky from Canadian Hydro Developers is on the show giving us the inside scoop on building a $410 million, 198MW wind farm.

26 comments

There is even a fasinating look at “Conservation Psychology” on their BB..

http://www.thewatt.com/node/191

Conservation psychology – What’s it gonna take?

Submitted by C Robb on Thu, 04/24/2008 – 11:37.

On the recent Watt podcast panel discussion the group touched on conservation psychology a couple of times. Here is a paper I’m working on relating to conservation psychology and off grid RE systems.

The convergence of peak oil, topsoil depletion, freshwater shortages, and climate change require massive societal change in a short time. Can we make the necessary adjustments to our lifestyles in advance in order to learn to thrive with less but also possibly head off the worst effects of these converging challenges? If we accept that these threats are real then we have less than a decade to drastically cut levels of greenhouse gas emissions.

“…… the global output per head should be reduced to 0.537t by 2050. The UK currently produces 9.6 tonnes per head and the US 23.6t. Reducing these figures to 0.537t means a 94.4% cut in the UK and a 97.7% cut in the US. But the world population will rise in the same period. If we assume a population of 9bn in 2050, the cuts rise to 95.9% in the UK and 98.3% in the US.” (Monbiot 04/12/2007)

But it is 24 weeks and 5 days (days?) old. It looks like they veered off into Twitter and Podcasts. Maybe the Cutting Edge got them.

http://twitter.com/benkenney

http://www.thewatt.com/node/195

But I am too old for such things so if a Commenter could explain this that would be great. Finally, you could be like this Blogger and post every 6 months or so….what a luxury:

http://www.energyhack.com/

Recycle water from your morning shower

December 1, 2008 at 10:47 pm · Filed under Green Tech, Ecology, DIY Projects

I just came across this Canadian invention that lets you reuse the thermal energy from your shower. The great thing about is that is so simple and it is has no moving parts meaning no energy consumption. The downside is that it has to be build in with your drain. This is on my list for my future house. Check it out at http://www.ecodrain.ca/

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.

Water Conservation And The Purpose Of These Posts – Americans have gotten complacent about water

Posted on January 27, 2009 by Doug Nicodemus

Most people in the US assume and expect when they turn on a facet or flush a toilet that water will magically appear. When it doesn’t they have no idea what to do. The point being that global warming could change all that.

http://ag.arizona.edu/AZWATER/awr/dec99/Feature2.htm

Global Water Shortage

Looms In New Century

When most U.S. citizens think about water shortages — if they think about them at all — they think about a local problem, possibly in their town or city, maybe their state or region. We don’t usually regard such problems as particularly worrisome, sharing confidence that the situation will be readily handled by investment in infrastructure, conservation, or other management strategies. Whatever water feuds arise, e.g., between Arizona and California, we expect to be resolved through negotiations or in the courtroom.

But shift from a local to a global water perspective, and the terms dramatically change. The World Bank reports that 80 countries now have water shortages that threaten health and economies while 40 percent of the world — more than 2 billion people — have no access to clean water or sanitation. In this context, we cannot expect water conflicts to always be amenably resolved.

Consider: More than a dozen nations receive most of their water from rivers that cross borders of neighboring countries viewed as hostile. These include Botswana, Bulgaria, Cambodia, the Congo, Gambia, the Sudan, and Syria, all of whom receive 75 percent or more of their fresh water from the river flow of often hostile upstream neighbors.

In the Middle East, a region marked by hostility between nations, obtaining adequate water supplies is a high political priority. For example, water has been a contentious issue in recent negotiations between Israel and Syria. In recent years, Iraq, Syria and Turkey have exchanged verbal threats over their use of shared rivers. (It should come as no surprise to learn that the words “river” and “rival” share the same Latin root; a rival is “someone who shares the same stream.”)

More frequently water is being likened to another resource that quickened global tensions when its supplies were threatened. A story in The Financial Times of London began: “Water, like energy in the late 1970s, will probably become the most critical natural resource issue facing most parts of the world by the start of the next century.” This analogy is also reflected in the oft-repeated observation that water will likely replace oil as a future cause of war between nations.

Water Cisterns – Once you have done the little stuff there is so much you can do

Posted on January 26, 2009 by Doug Nicodemus

LowFlow Showerheads are mandatory but once you start there is serious stuff you can do to save water. Cisterns. It used to be that everyone had them. Some were as simple as a hole in the ground covered with screening. Sometimes they were even built as part of the house. Sort of your own personal water tower. But with the advent of modern drinking water systems they fell by the wayside.

http://www.harvesth2o.com/plumbing_codes.shtml

History

Cisterns are an ancient technology. In the Middle East in 2000 B.C., typical middle-class dwellings stored rainwater in cisterns for use as a domestic supply as well as private- bathing facilities for the wealthy.

The world’s largest cistern may be the Yerebatan Sarayi. On the European side of Istanbul in Turkey, it was constructed under Caesar Justinian (A.D. 527-565) and measures 140 by 70 meters. It can store 80,000 m³ water. The underground structure is based on intersecting vaults. Today, it is a tourist attraction which is visited by boat, drifting through a forest of columns. Another cistern in Istanbul is called Binbirdik, believed by some sources to have been constructed under Caesar Constantine (A.D. 329-337), with a capacity of 50,000 m³. Each cistern served as centralized storage for water collected from roofs and paved streets and featured a sophisticated system of filters that assured clean water.

These municipal underground cisterns may be the only examples of urban centralized rainwater harvesting of their kind. This technique was likely abandoned for two primary reasons: 1) the construction of underground cisterns is considerably more expensive than the construction of dams; 2) there is a danger of accidental pollution through human excrement in dense urban areas and a corresponding risk of epidemics.

Water Classifications

Harvested rainwater is shrouded in confusion. Some jurisdictions consider it reclaimed water and others refer to it as gray water. Actually, it is neither. To clarify, UPC offers the following definitions.

• Black water is toilet waste.

• Gray water is untreated wastewater that has had no contact with toilet waste such as used water from bathtubs, showers, lavatories and water from washing machines. It does not include wastewater from kitchen sinks or dishwashers.

• Reclaimed water is water which, as a result of tertiary treatment of domestic wastewater by a public agency, is suitable for controlled use. The controlled use can be the supply of reclaimed water-to-water closets, urinals and trap seal primers for floor drains and floor sinks. In areas under the jurisdiction of the UPC this system is usually called a “purple pipe” system because the reclaimed water is conveyed in pipe that is purple.

• Harvested rainwater is storm water that is conveyed from a building roof, stored in a cistern and disinfected and filtered before being used for toilet flushing. It can also be used for landscape irrigation.

As noted, Appendix J of the UPC describes reclaimed water, but according to the above definition, rainwater harvesting is not reclaimed water. Plumbing officials who do not know how to classify rainwater-harvesting systems consider them reclaimed water systems and therefore require plumbing engineers to design systems that conform to Appendix J of the UPC. This is because of the lack of guidance in the code. Since these systems are becoming more prevalent in the U.S., both the UPC and the IPC must include a section dedicated to rainwater harvesting.

Rainwater Harvesting Basics

The components of the rainwater-harvesting system include:

Roof. Rainwater should only be collected from a roof and stored in a cistern. Rainwater runoff from parking areas and other outdoor surfaces typically contain harsh chemicals and other contaminants that are undesirable in a rainwater catchment system.

Rainwater conductors. Leaders and gutters or an internally piped roof drainage system that conveys the storm water from the roof to the cistern.

Cistern. A storage tank that allows large particulate matter to settle out of the water.

Overflow from cistern. A pipe that takes overflow from the cistern to the storm drainage system.

Pumping system. Provides the pressure required at the fixture most distant from the tank.

Disinfection system. Various filtration and disinfection systems can be used.

Potable water makeup. Makeup water provided to the tank during dry seasons. Appropriate backflow prevention is required.

But this is to CODE which may or may not apply…First you have to figure out where you are going to put the water.

http://www.braewater.com/index.php?/solutions/

Rainwater Harvesting

As much as 60,000 gallons of precipitation falls on a 2,000 square foot roof in Mid-Atlantic States each year. BRAE distributes Complete rainwater harvesting system solutions to put this water to beneficial use. Rainwater harvesting systems offset demands on municipal and private water supplies for outdoor watering while conserving valuable drinking water resources.

The concept of collecting and using rainwater is not new.

In addition to the advantages that rainwater is free of charge, it doesn’t have to be treated nor transported over long distances, the two most important arguments supporting the utilization of rainwater are:

1. Supplement drinking water resources
-with the benefit of saving precious potable water
2. protecting water quality by reducing impacts of stormwater runoff
-with the benefit of limiting flooding and degradation of streams and lakes

Thanks to its characteristics the use of rainwater also has positive advantages:
-Ideal for plant growth
-Better washing efficiency -up to 50% less detergent required when compared with hard water
-No calcification of fixtures and washing machines

All projects are not created equal and thus rainwater systems do not conform to a “one size fits all” sales format. There are different systems for two primary types of rainwater systems residential and commercial. Use the following resources to design and select the right system for your project.

Residential systems generally supply rainwater to toilets, washing machines, garden irrigation and hosebibs (ie car washing)

http://www.braewater.com/index.php?/products/tanks_cisterns/

Tanks/Cisterns

Water storage is the most critical component of a rainwater system. In selecting a water storage tank or cistern, there are several important questions you should ask before selecting the right tank for your project.Ask yourself…

Will I store the water above ground or below ground?
How much storage do I need?
Are there space limitations that restrict the size of water tank I may chose?
What appearance do I want for my tank?
Will the neighbors care?
Are there restrictions regarding water storage tanks?
Is my site accessible or hard to reach with a delivery truck?

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.

Industrial Waste is Huge But Household Waste Ain’t Small Exactly – If you get waste conscious at home

Posted on January 15, 2009 by Doug Nicodemus

Then You Can take It To Work

There are only 2 of us in our household, a man and a woman. We recycle like crazy. Because the County and the City recycle different things we sometimes have to take our recyclables to town. For some reason Riverton will not recycle corrugated cardboard so we take that to Springfield. Everyone has a problem with colored glass so we have started saving it. Springfield does colored glass drops periodically. All of our “hazardous” waste goes to the State of Illinois at the Fairgrounds or the IDOT building. Our Electronics goes to BLH. Our light bulbs go to Springfield Electric. Our plastic bags and many soft plastics goes to Schnucks grocery stores. AND close your eyes…a small part of it we burn. After composting (we have two large piles) there is a small bit of what I call promiscuous paper and other stuff (about a cubic foot or less – ie. a small trash can full every 2 weeks). We then toss those ashes on the vegetable garden. In the end we toss out about 1 small sometimes barely filled cheap garbage bag. In it are mainly cigarette butts, food stuffs we can’t recycle, and some soft plastics. Sometimes we are so emberrassed we don’t even put it out by the curb to pick up because it’s not worth their time or gas to stop.

This does not take into account our own dodo and caca, however that will take a huge shift in infrastructure and agriculture to do. Nor does that take care of both of our car exhausts. Again this a huge infrastructure problem in ground transportation. Still it feels real good to minimize our waste.

Here is a really reall real rea re r really cool site to help out.

http://www.astc.org/exhibitions/rotten/rthome.htm

The Rotten Truth web site was created in 1998 by the Association of Science-Technology Centers Incorporated and the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service. All rights reserved.
Disclaimer: Rotten Truth (About Garbage) links to a number of activities and resources provided by institutions other than ASTC and SITES. Every effort has been made to ensure that these links are accurate, but because neither ASTC nor SITES controls the content of these web sites, outside links are not guaranteed to be correct or active. Neither ASTC nor SITES shall be liable in the event of incidental or consequential damages connected with, or arising out of, providing the information offered here. External sites are not endorsed by ASTC or the Smithsonian Institution.

I put this up because I wanted them to know that I know that they know that I know….SO THERE

Rotten Truth (About Garbage) takes an in-depth look at the complex issues surrounding municipal solid waste. This on-line exhibition is organized into four major sections.

What Is Garbage? looks at how we define garbage, and why it consists of more than what we throw away.
There’s No “Away” explores how burying, burning, and recycling garbage doesn’t really get rid of it, and that reducing what we use is the only real solution to the garbage problem.
Nature Recycles shows how the natural process of decay makes new life possible by recycling the limited number of nutrients present in the environment.
Finally, Making Choices provides some helpful hints on how we can all create less garbage.

Throughout the exhibition, you can:

Read about people who have made a difference in how we think about municipal solid waste today;
Try a variety of activities at home or school; and

You can also consult an extensive resource list to find out more about garbage and what you can do about it.
For exhibit developers or those who work in museums:
Visit the section for exhibit developers to learn how Rotten Truth (About Garbage) was created. Find out how lead exhibit developer Kathy McLean became interested in the subject of garbage, or learn some tips on how to create environmentally-conscious exhibitions.

Who created this exhibition?
This exhibition was researched and developed with the help and expertise of many individuals and organizations.

Finding your way through the exhibition:
By following the icon, you can sequentially visit each exhibit area. (Clicking on the icon will enable you to return to the previous page.) Please note that several activities, resources, and profiles are located at other web sites. After visiting them, click on your web browser’s “back” button to return to your place in the exhibition. Finally, if at any time you want to visit a different exhibit area, return to this page by clicking on the “home” garbage bag icon, and selecting the desired exhibit area below. Enjoy your visit!

START :}

So get started now!

Oil Speculators At It Again – This time instead of fooling with contracts they are actually fooling with the tankers themselves.

Posted on January 14, 2009 by Doug Nicodemus

Is there no end to the criminal ingenuity of Wall Street. It’s not enough that they destroy the mortgage market or sell all our jobs over seas, they just have to squeeze every dollar out of their grandmother’s social security check.

http://www.peakoil.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=45530

http://marketplace.publicradio.org//display/web/2009/01/09/pm_contango/?refid=0

Investment banks hoarding oil

Fifty million barrels of oil are just sitting around on supertankers. They’re not getting unloaded because investors are waiting for the price of oil to go up. Mitchell Hartman explains.

TEXT OF STORY

Bob Moon: Now here are some millions that haven’t raised the ire of Congress — 50 million… Barrels of oil. They’re sloshing around on huge supertankers right now. They’re not going into port, not getting unloaded. They’re just waiting, for the price of oil to go up. It’s a financial play known as “contango.” A lot of investors are getting into the act. Marketplace’s Mitchell Hartman explains.

Mitchell Hartman: “Contango” refers to a market condition in which the future price of a commodity is higher than the cost of buying it today. Right now, investors can lock in oil futures contracts to get paid $46 a barrel in March. They can fill a supertanker right now for just $41 and change. It’s pretty cheap to keep the tanker floating around in the ocean. When it unloads in the spring, the investors make a tidy profit: more than $3 a barrel.Daniel Yergin is author of the Pulitzer-winning book, “The Prize.” He says there’s a glut of oil right now, caused by the global recession. But futures prices are going higher, because OPEC has promised to cut production. And, says Yergin, oil traders are reading something else in the economic tea leaves.>Daniel Yergin: There’s a bet here that all of the stimulus, new economic programs, are going to work, and that by the second half of the year, we’re going to move out of recession, back into economic recovery, and that demand will start rising for oil again.

:}
For more please go to the PBS site and listen to the report. For a different point of view:

http://www.supplyexcellence.com/blog/2009/01/13/oil-price-fundamentals-contango-opec/

Oil Price Fundamentals: Don’t believe the hype

January 13th, 2009 · by Bob Zieger ·

Last week, Marketplace had an interesting report on the growing trend of “contango” in the oil industry. For those of you who are not familiar with the practice, contango occurs when investors sit on a commodity because the future price is higher than the spot price. In this case, that results in full oil tankers sitting offshore, waiting for the price to rise before they unload their 50 million barrels onto the market. So a quick buck is made by those holding the inventory on the high seas, but what happens when those barrels eventually reach a port ? We’ve got a glut of material again, which forces prices down. This type of profit-taking merely adds to the volatility of the market, but has little influence on macroeconomic fundamentals.

Frankly, it seems as though the oil/energy sector has the most interesting bag of tricks when it comes to speculation, rhetoric, and other market manipulation. But all the headline grabbing stories aside, oil is just like other commodities in that pricing is governed by supply and demand. While contango, Somali pirates, and accounting tricks can be a source of market volatility, these games don’t have a long term impact on pricing.

The POINT for us is that they are “messing around” like mice worrying at a hole. Practicing. If someone doesn’t hit them with a broom, sooner or later they will succeed.

For more on Cantango and other disgusting practices:

http://www.investopedia.com/articles/07/contango_backwardation.asp

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2009/01/super_contango.html

http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2008/11/11/crudes-credit-contango/

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/47633

Please note Goldman Sachs says oil will hit 102$$ per barrel by the end of the year and I have said that oil will hit 130$$ a barrel by next summer. I wonder whose right?

Why Call Them Landfills? They are dumps, eyesores, middens and disgraces.

Posted on January 13, 2009 by Doug Nicodemus

When has it been ok to urinate and defecate in a drinking water source. But Humans world wide do it every day. Some of us purify those byproducts before they actually get to the river or the lake or the aquifer, some of us don’t. When has it ever been OK to put food products let alone industrial products (lets take the buy out of byproduct) in a drinking water source yet we have done it for 200 years. What did we think? That there would be no results?

Yet we go further. We stack our garbage in the most inappropriate places like we are PROUD of it. Heh look our garbage pile is bigger than yours. Like the garbage dump that you can see from SPACE.

http://gothamist.com/2003/09/30/fresh_killpark.php

Fresh Kill…Park?

Mayor Bloomberg announced the city’s plans to turn the closed Fresh Kills landkill into a park. The Times points out that the landfill is “a garbage dump site that is so large it can be seen from space,” which is why it’s a sensitive and important issue for Staten Islanders…especially Staten Islanders who can vote. Reporter Michel Cooper describes the city’s renderings of a Fresh Kills Park as “Monet using Photoshop” or Andrew Wyeth-like. Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro called the announcement was “the final nail in the heart of Dracula,” as people have been speculating the dump might reopen since it closed in 2001. The Post says the proposal from Field Operations, the landscape company that won the competition to transform Fresh Kills, includes “bird-nesting island, public roads, boardwalks, soccer and baseball fields, bridle paths and a 5,000-seat stadium.

Of course, all of this is also an effort to keep his approval numbers from slipping any further, although at this point, it’d be in the negative territory…people would just claim ignorance when asked about Mayor Bloomberg.

More information about Fresh Kills.

What the heck have we ever been thinking?

http://naturecalendar.wordpress.com/2008/05/27/fresh-kills-earning-back-its-name

by Erik Baard

Not so many years ago, if you told people that you were getting up early on Saturday morning to rush over to Fresh Kills on Staten Island, they would have thought you were crazy or a highly-paid union worker. Today, a few savvy folks might peg you for a naturalist.

The world’s largest dump (actually, the world’s largest manmade structure, of sorts, in that it exceeded the volume of the Great Wall of China) is quietly transforming into the city’s second largest park, after Pelham Bay Park. You can witness the process yourself by signing up for a free tour now through November through this link. Don’t fret the competition to get a ticket – the tour I joined this weekend wasn’t booked up. Besides, you have, oh, a few more years of chances. The park officially opens in 2036.

(the site has four large ones mounds, ranging between 140? and 200? tall)

At the moment the trash is being digested by microbes, which will actually cause the mounds to shrink a bit. But not before they’ve earned their keep! The methane (“natural gas” in daily parlance), organic chemicals, and carbon dioxide produced are tapped via long pipe networks (see the methane taps in the foreground of the above photo by Emmanuel). The natural gas is purified and sold to Keyspan (now part of National Grid), which in turn sells it to heat up to 10,000 homes at a time. I can imagine a “green” dry cleaner using the CO2 to spiff up designer suits for the local gentry.

Less immediately marketable is the leachate goo that landfills produce when water jazzes up microbial and fungal activity. That’s dried and shipped out to another landfill in West Virginia. As a side note, the five boroughs now send trash to Pennsylvania, Virginia, and South Carolina. Remember, the primary insight of environmentalism is that when things are thrown away, there is no “away.”

Please read both articles if you have a strong stomach.

Why We Throw Things Away? Everything has value.

Posted on January 12, 2009 by Doug Nicodemus

Isn’t throwing things away basically throwing money on the ground and walking away? Some people assert that discarding behavior originates in our time, historically, spent in the trees. In other words a primate swinging in the trees with no pockets throws everything away, even if its valuable sometimes. In fact if it is valuable and it lands on the ground and there is a predator around it could be lost forever.

Other people say that our discarding behavior is based in our hunting techniques. Once we figured out that we could kill other meat sources by throwing rocks and sticks then it was a simple step to throw other things away as well. But middens are an archaeological constant.

Still other people have pointed out that discarding behavior was probably a fact of our nomadic lives. They argue that for us to retain “things” we would have had to carry them. So there would be a point where a thing, like a broken spear, or a pot would no longer possess enough value that would make it worth carrying on to the next campsite.

But will that explain all of this:

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

Landfill

A landfill, also known as a dump (and historically as a midden), is a site for the disposal of waste materials by burial and is the oldest form of waste treatment. Historically, landfills have been the most common methods of organized waste disposal and remain so in many places around the world.

Landfills may include internal waste disposal sites (where a producer of waste carries out their own waste disposal at the place of production) as well as sites used by many producers. Many landfills are also used for other waste management purposes, such as the temporary storage, consolidation and transfer, or processing of waste material (sorting, treatment, or recycling).

A landfill also may refer to ground that has been filled in with soil and rocks instead of waste materials, so that it can be used for a specific purpose, such as for building houses. Unless they are stabilized, these areas may experience severe shaking or liquefaction of the ground in a large earthquake.

That hill is a garbage dump on an island in Florida. Or is this worth it?:

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/the-worlds-rubbish-dump-a-garbage-tip-that-stretches-from-hawaii-to-japan-778016.html

The world’s rubbish dump:

a garbage tip that stretches from Hawaii to Japan

By Kathy Marks, Asia-Pacific Correspondent, and Daniel Howden
Tuesday, 5 February 2008

INDEPENDENT GRAPHICS

enlarge

A “plastic soup” of waste floating in the Pacific Ocean is growing at an alarming rate and now covers an area twice the size of the continental United States, scientists have said.

The vast expanse of debris – in effect the world’s largest rubbish dump – is held in place by swirling underwater currents. This drifting “soup” stretches from about 500 nautical miles off the Californian coast, across the northern Pacific, past Hawaii and almost as far as Japan.

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Please see this article…it is really really really scary.

Community Energy Systems

Censys.org

Category Archives: over population