Category Archives: self inflicted wounds

What A Difference A Month Makes – The mouth piece for the rich was bitchin about all the “money” we spend on alternatives

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Oh I meant the Wall Street Journal, sorry….I bet this article wouldn’t see the light of day today. Wait till oil hits 200$$ a barrel and we shall see what they say then.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121055427930584069.html?mod=opinion_main

REVIEW & OUTLOOK

Wind ($23.37) v. Gas (25 Cents)
May 12, 2008; Page A14

Congress seems ready to spend billions on a new “Manhattan Project” for green energy, or at least the political class really, really likes talking about one. But maybe we should look at what our energy subsidy dollars are buying now.

Some clarity comes from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), an independent federal agency that tried to quantify government spending on energy production in 2007. The agency reports that the total taxpayer bill was $16.6 billion in direct subsidies, tax breaks, loan guarantees and the like. That’s double in real dollars from eight years earlier, as you’d expect given all the money Congress is throwing at “renewables.” Even more subsidies are set to pass this year.

An even better way to tell the story is by how much taxpayer money is dispensed per unit of energy, so the costs are standardized. For electricity generation, the EIA concludes that solar energy is subsidized to the tune of $24.34 per megawatt hour, wind $23.37 and “clean coal” $29.81. By contrast, normal coal receives 44 cents, natural gas a mere quarter, hydroelectric about 67 cents and nuclear power $1.59.

The wind and solar lobbies are currently moaning that they don’t get their fair share of the subsidy pie. They also argue that subsidies per unit of energy are always higher at an early stage of development, before innovation makes large-scale production possible. But wind and solar have been on the subsidy take for years, and they still account for less than 1% of total net electricity generation. Would it make any difference if the federal subsidy for wind were $50 per megawatt hour, or even $100? Almost certainly not without a technological breakthrough.

By contrast, nuclear power provides 20% of U.S. base electricity production, yet it is subsidized about 15 times less than wind. We prefer an energy policy that lets markets determine which energy source dominates. But if you believe in subsidies, then nuclear power gets a lot more power for the buck than other “alternatives.”

The same study also looked at federal subsidies for non-electrical energy production, such as for fuel. It found that ethanol and biofuels receive $5.72 per British thermal unit of energy produced. That compares to $2.82 for solar and $1.35 for refined coal, but only three cents per BTU for natural gas and other petroleum liquids.

All of this shows that there is a reason fossil fuels continue to dominate American energy production: They are extremely cost-effective. That’s a reality to keep in mind the next time you hear a politician talk about creating millions of “green jobs.” Those jobs won’t come cheap, and you’ll be paying for them.

Farming And Growing Food After The Oil Runs Out – We Shall Survive

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People have been brainwashed to believe that our world will come to a crashing end without oil. The Peak Oil people in particular have a saying “back to the olduvai valley” because they believe that our civilization will crumble like the Egyptions, Greeks and other GREAT civilizations. Olduvai was the valley where they found the homonid Lucy’s bones.

Admittedly some of those societal “downs” caused famine and pestilence, but in others it merely led to lots of people going back to farming. As silly as it may sound, you can generate electricity with a bicycle and charge a battery to run a computer. Us modern humans have run on excess energy  for so long it might not hurt us or the planet to take a break and set some priorities.

So anyway from where I live in Riverton IL in the USA, I would just go back to farming and let a few yard birds run. Others are not so lucky. I have said with no malice or cruelty that a lot of people are going to die. But I think we will do what humanity has done for 1000’s of years…we hang together.

Here is what other people say:

http://www.forumforthefuture.org.uk/greenfutures/articles/602540

Farming without fossils

In a world on the cusp of fuel shortages, one enterprising collection of British farmers have come up with a solution they claim is practical, profitable – and close to home. They’re growing their own. Trevor Lawson reports

Barton reckons that the Goodwood estate’s tenant farmers could produce enough biofuel to supply the estate and themselves, and still have a surplus for sale. The key, he argues, is keep it local. “There’s no point in producing seed here, sending it miles for processing and then bringing the fuel all the way back. It’s too inefficient.” So Barton is looking at a combined rape press and refinery system that will produce 2,000 litres of fuel an hour, round the clock, for as long as there is rape seed to supply it. He’s also got plans for the pressed ‘cake’ that’s left over. “You can make it into dense briquettes for a superb solid fuel, burning more slowly than wood but at a higher temperature. So it can be used to feed boilers to generate heat and electricity.” Barton’s logic seems inescapable, and it’s finding allies in Whitehall, too. Nick Cooper manages the Farming Without Fossil Fuels project at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

http://globalpublicmedia.com/stephen_decater_on_farming_without_oil

 Stephen Decater speaks with Els Cooperrider of The Party’s Over on KZYX about biodynamic farming in Round Valley of Mendocino county. Stephen talks about draft horses, their history, and how he uses them. He also talks about the Live Power Community Farm, which is a community-based agriculture (CSA) project, and how this arrangement differs from a market-based relationship. They are looking for apprentices now. Contact info: livepower@igc.org and (707) 983 8196.

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The above is a cool site complete with Post Carbon Institute and Energy Farming sections

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Then there are the back to the earth types:

 http://www.soilassociation.org/peakoil

Peak Oil: the threat to our food security

Peak oil refers to the point when the maximum amount of oil that can be extracted globally is reached. Thereafter, production will tail off as remaining reserves become more difficult and more expensive to harvest. Many of the services that we currently take for granted – cheap flights, cheap imports and global distribution of food – will be radically curtailed.
 One of the greatest impacts will be on how and where our food is produced. The dominant models of intensive agriculture and the global food trade depend on vast inputs of oil. In a post peak oil world, the combination of higher transport costs, climate change and increased conflict will necessitate us all relying far more on re-localised food supplies. Even though it requires far lower amounts of oil, organic farming is not exempt from the need to adapt.

You can find out more in our information sheets on peak oil and climate change and agriculture.

Over the last 20 years, the Soil Association has established organic farming as the most sustainable method of production and helped grow a burgeoning market for organic food. Now we must refine our focus if we are to adapt to the changing external circumstances which will touch all our lives very soon. The phrase that comes to mind is that we are ‘building the ark of sustainable agriculture’ for the new era ahead.

The challenge is immediate, but fear should not be the driver. The Soil Association is optimistic that we have the vision and means to create a new, localised food culture that will deliver long-term quality of life in place of the old dynamic of unrestrained globalisation and short-termist exploitation.

http://transitionculture.org/2006/12/20/applying-energy-descent-plans-to-food-and-farming-an-article-in-living-earth-magazine/ 

Applying Energy Descent Plans to Food and Farming – an article in Living Earth magazine.

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The Soil Association is the UK’s organic certification body, and they are making peak oil and the relocalisation of food the focal point of their 60th Anniversary conference in Cardiff in February. I am editing a report that will accompany the conference, which explores this deeper, and to introduce this, I recently wrote an article that appears in Living Earth Magazine, the organisation’s publication. It suggests that the concept of Energy Descent Plans could be applied to food and farming in the UK, an idea that will be explored in more depth in the report. Here is the article followed by some additions from within the Soil Association.

Energy scarcity is an opportunity for a better world, says Rob Hopkins

I used to think that one day the world would literally run out of oil. A driver in Leicestershire would use the last drop and that would be that, similar to the felling of the last Truffula Tree in Dr Seuss’s The Lorax. It turns out that scarcity kicks in earlier than that. It’s not the last drop that is the problem but the mid-point of production, when all the oil that is easy and cheap to extract has been used up. It looks as if we are reaching that point soon.

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Where folks have “farmable” or “growable” land, all of us will have to plant Victory Gardens and raise rabbits and chickens. We will have to buy and sell local. For those that do not… well that is something we all should be planning for now. There are probably 2 billion people in harms way. What about the economy? Well what about it? Aren’t WE the economy. Money may be worrthless…but so what. That is only gona matter to people that gots a lot of it.

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Gasoline Hits $100 A Gallon – The world ends

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Well actually it doesn’t. But it will definitely change our lifestyles and our foodchain. But not really the way either the right or the left think or at least want you to believe. Believe me I am not being callous when I simply say that lots of people will die. There is no denying that and if we let it CHAOS could insue. But I don’t it will happen that way. One way or another we will either very quickly get a lot more renewable energy sources in place or we as a nation will be forced to return to a small farm society. The Saudi’s know for sure what is coming because they just anounced another huge solar project. Something like this:

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&res=9D07E1D71639F932A35752C1A965948260

TWO years ago, this village of 3,000 people, only 20 miles from Riyadh, the capital of this kingdom, had no electricity. Today, villagers proudly display their televisions, toasters and other accouterments of an electrified society.

But when Saudis here turn their lights on at night, they are using energy generated not by their country’s vast oil reserves, but by the sun.

This village and two others nearby are the first in the kingdom, or anywhere, to be powered continuously and primarily by solar power.

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I realize that yesterday I gave sort of a short shift to the Peak Oil people. I kinda acted like everyone in the audience would know what that is. So here are some of their more promenant sites:

http://www.theoildrum.com/

http://www.peakoil.com/

Energy Sites
 wakeuptosolars.gif

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Please note the bell shaped curve above. That is their arguement in a nutshell. In other words demand has exceeded the ability of the oil producers to provide oil. That ability to produce will eventually “fall off” as the supply ends and prices will go through the roof (read: become prohibitive). So what does that mean for the now Industrialized Foodchain?

In Michael Pollan’s 2006 book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, he lays out huge problems with our corporate food chain:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Omnivore’s_Dilemma

 Industrial

Pollan begins with an exploration of the food-production system from which the vast majority of American meals are derived. This industrial food chain is largely based on corn, whether it is eaten directly, fed to livestock, or processed into chemicals such as glucose and ethanol. Pollan discusses how the humble corn plant came to dominate the American diet through a combination of biological, cultural, and political factors. The role of petroleum in the cultivation and transportation of the American food supply is also discussed.

A fast food meal is used to illustrate the end result of the industrial food chain.

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In fact a scientist said that if humanity quit using nitrogen fertilizer it would be like taking EVERY automobile in the WORLD off the road.

However its interesting that he actually fails in what he sets out to do. His goal was actually to grow throught the progression of Industrial—> Small Farm—> Vegan—>Make my own meal. He wanted to make the point that Vegatarion was the way to go to save the planet from us humans. His thought being that he would make up a giant tofu salad at the end of the book. It did not go that way, because he quickly discovered that going meatless is tougher than he thought AND that it would take MORE energy inputs than we currently use to take the whole USA vegatarian. In other words we omnivores by DESIGN (duh) and we can’t change that by wishing it to be so. In the end he makes his meal and includes fish in it to show that heh you can “eat locally”.  Hunting animals is a lot tougher  than fishing. But heh he does not say how long it took to catch the one he shared.

Next – On to King Corn.
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Food And Oil – We are all gona die

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Since the Peak Oil people have managed to scare the begeezus out of the whole world. I though that it was time to engage in a meditation on the Relationship between Food and Energy. Having sat through similar meditations on Religion and Energy Conservation (18 posts) and Energy Policy and the Presidential Candidates (17 posts) I can assure you this will not take more than 3 or 4 posts and will probably include Weird Bird Friday.

But let’s start with  Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Delimma and a film, King Corn, by Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, to take an initial pass at the problem.

http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/kingcorn/

http://www.michaelpollan.com/omnivore.php

But before we do let’s do a little thought experiment because King Corn and the Omnivore’s Dilemma both ultimately fail in what they hope to accomplish.  In fact, I think that the high price of oil right now is being manipulated by the producers, the futures market and the refiners and it will come down. But as I have said to the Peak Oil people all along, we are maybe at the “oil Plateau”, but we are not at the “decline” part of the curve. It WILL COME. Thus, it is good to think about the situation to see what may happen.

As an aside here for another second. I have actually thought about farming for alot of my life because I believe that the world is warming because of our release of greenhouse gases, and that warming will destabalize our weather. That in effect would disrupt the farmers and thus the food supply. Under the “Peak Oil” senario what would happen is that all of the energy inputs into our industrial linear monocultural food chain would be withdrawn. This means no fertilizers, and no transportation for the food grown. Or maybe foods that can travel less distances. But eventually this would leaves us with no fuel to drive the tractors to plant the seeds and a loss of refrigeration. Or at least the type of refrigeration we are used to. If you believe their worst case senarios this could happen rather quickly. Think, as one of their leading bloggers recently said, about the impact of gasoline that costs 100$$ a gallon. I live about 6 or 7 miles from Springfield and I can tell you I would be walking to town at that point.

Still would we all die? If you mean ALL as Humanity, yes many of us would die if the worldwide food chain were disrupted. But think about it in another way, food would become trapped in the producing and exporting nations. So those countries would be awash in the foods that they produce. As we have seen in this last round of oil price increases the poorer countries of the world would face food riots, mass starvation, disease and death. In a moral cataclysm, the question for the 3rd world would be what to do with the bodies. Burying them would be dumb, burning them even worse…but should we recycle dead humans? Maybe we need to think about that.

In much of the world and even in parts of the third world what would happen is that we all would have to become hunters and gathers again. I am not saying that lives would not be lost, and that tremendous tumult would not result but at least initially we all would have to become small plot croppers like we did during WWII. When I mention Victory Gardens to the PO (peak oil) folks they go ballistic. They jump up and down and shout, “It’s the population stupid.”

 

So if the ALL in We Are All Going To Die is we folks in the US of A then let’s look at it. In 1940 there were 133 million people in the US, now there are roughly 280 million people. So a simple analysis could say that 150 million people here would die. That is to die back to the point where Victory Gardens were effective. But I have my doubts about that. Looking at the worst disaster to hit this country, the Flu Pandemic of 1918 the US suffered a net loss of population of 60 thousand people. That was .06% of the population.

 

I also am intellectually opposed to “science fiction” posturings where the rich rule the world and the poor eat Solent Green. Nonetheless I am not naïve enough to assume that millions won’t die here. The Pandemic actually wiped out a birth rate producing 1.5 million people a year before it “went negative”. Would we survive as a capitalist democracy? That is a much bigger question. It would be imperative in that first farming year that fuel prices spiked that every scrap of food grown is preserved. Capitalists might not be willing to pay the cost of that. Would many of us end up eating field corn or something made out of it. Heck yes. Would our livestock have to get by on grass? Oh yah. Would the megacities empty. I don’t know, but again the problem is corporate land ownership. That land would have to be expropriated to put small producers on it. Is democracy up for the test? It may have no choice.

 

Would I survive as a country boy living in the middle of Illinois? Yes, I believe I would. Country Boys Will Survive. God, I have always wanted to say that.

Georgia Power and The Southern Companies Make A Huge Mistake – Nuclear power is expensive

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I feel sorry for the electric customers in Georgia. While everyone else in the nation is busy implementing the new Carbonless Economy or going green; Georgia Power is going (pick a color, say) BLACK. With estimated cost ranges of 4 – 8 billion $$, are they, what (?), shocked they got no bids. You can see the future in your little 8 Ball…Let’s see, cost overruns, construction delays, and by the time it comes to fuel it – no uranium. Alberta just banned the mining of it. Australia is on its way to doing the same. Australia has seen the future and it is Hot Rocks. Drilling down to the Earth’s core. Not putting hot rocks in a reactor.

 http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/stories/2008/05/05/daily56.html?ana=from_rss

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Georgia Power nuclear proposal rolls along

Atlanta Business Chronicle

eorgia Power reported Wednesday it has garnered no bids from its 2016-2017 base load capacity request for proposals.

Two weeks ago, it signed an engineering, procurement and construction contract with Westinghouse Electric Co. and The Shaw Group Inc.‘s Power Group. At that time, Georgia Power said it would submit a nuclear self-build option for consideration. Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) rules require market bids to be compared with self-build proposals, but no market bids were received, Georgia Power said.

Georgia Power, a unit of Atlanta-based Southern Co. (NYSE: SO), said the self-build nuclear proposal will be reviewed by the Georgia PSC’s independent evaluator before the company submits a final recommendation to the Georgia PSC on Aug. 1 for approval. A final certification decision is expected in March 2009.

If certified by the Georgia PSC and licensed by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the two Westinghouse AP1000 units, with a capacity of 1,100 megawatts each, would be built at the Vogtle Electric Generating Plant site near Waynesboro, Ga., and would be placed in service in 2016 and 2017.

“Demand for electricity continues to grow in the Southeast and in Georgia,” said Mike Garrett, Georgia Power president and CEO. “While we will continue to increase our emphasis on energy efficiency and renewable energy sources, we must also add large-scale base load generation to meet growing energy needs. While nuclear power plants cost more to build, they now have lower fuel and operating costs than fossil fuel plants. Nuclear energy would add needed diversity to Georgia Power’s fuel mix at a time when fossil fuel prices are increasing significantly.”


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Once you decide to be bad, I guess you might as well be very bad:

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http://www.cleanenergy.org/takeAction/detail.cfm?ID=65

WHY THE GEORGIA PSC SHOULD REQUIRE GEORGIA POWER TO PUT ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND RENEWABLE ENERGY AS A TOP PRIORITY:

  • Energy efficiency and renewable energy protect against increasing fossil fuel and natural gas prices
  • Hedge against energy supply shortages and disruptions
  • Avoid a growing dependence on natural gas
  • Reduce harmful air pollution and excessive water usage
  • Create local energy markets and increase employment
  • Avoid the high costs of building new conventional electric supplies.

Our Energy Security and Reliability is at Stake.

Currently, most of the energy used to power our homes and businesses comes from outside Georgia and the Southeast. There are no petroleum, natural gas, or uranium mines and reserves in the Southeast. According to the Energy Information Administration, Georgia’s electric power sector spent approximately $1.5 billion buying out of state coal and natural gas in 2003.(1)

Businesses and the Public Pay the Heavy Price.

Georgia and its utilities lag behind much of the country in investments in energy efficiency.  There is a lot of wasted energy that all utility customers must pay for when the utility builds more transmission lines and power plants than are necessary.  As fuel costs increase, consumers pay even more for this wasted energy.

Air Quality and Human Health Suffer.

Our current energy supply causes a great deal of damage to our health. Here are a few examples of the effects:

  • Soot and smog-forming nitrogen oxides are created from fossil fuel plants and engines.  These can harm children’s lung development and lead to asthma attacks, heart attacks and stroke.
  • Coal fired power plants release air-borne mercury that ends up in lakes, rivers and streams.  Neurological damage is linked with eating mercury-laden fish.
  • Tritium, a radioactive isotope of hydrogen that is produced at all nuclear reactors, acts like water in the body and can pass across the placenta to affect a developing fetus.

Water for Coal and Nuclear Plants Competes with Cities, Businesses and Farms.

Coal and nuclear power plants are heavy water users.  In 2001 nuclear Plant Vogtle used approximately 64 million gallons of water a day from the Savannah River and only returned 21 million gallons per day.  Coal plant Scherer withdrew 59 million gallons of water a day from Lake Juliette (2).  These and other fossil fuel and nuclear plants compete with local industries—from the carpet industries of Dalton to the peach growers in Tifton—for much needed water.  The burden that our energy system places on the state’s water supplies will become even more severe if Georgia Power’s proposed plans for new power plants are carried out.

GEORGIA’S UTILITY REVIEW PROCESS:

Georgia law requires that Georgia Power submit an Integrated Resource Plan (IRP) to the Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) every three years for approval. The PSC is charged to review the company’s plan and to approve it or require revisions.

The centerpiece of the Georgia Power plan:

  • Build new nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle near Augusta which would divert massive amounts of water away from the Savannah River, competing with other needs, as well as create more radioactive waste that cannot be disposed of safely; 
  • Expand and upgrade its transmission lines to support several new power plants and increased electricity demand;
  • Build a new gas pipeline through properties from Union City to Smyrna.

The secondary part of the plan includes:

  • Minimal energy efficiency measures through “pilot programs” with limited investment;
  • Develop only about 200 MW of new renewable energy that amounts to less than 1% of Georgia Power’s current energy capacity (most of the company’s “green power” is currently landfill gas).

To view Georgia Power’s proposed plan and responses by independent experts, go to http://www.psc.state.ga.us/ (enter #24505 in the docket search box, and view documents filed on Jan. 31, 2007 by the company and documents filed by other parties on May 4 and May 7). 

Then There Is What We Do To The Soldiers

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http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=TUC20061029&articleId=3620

Depleted Uranium Death Toll among US War Veterans Tops 11,000

Nationwide Media Blackout Keeps U.S. Public Ignorant About This Important Story

by James P. Tucker Jr.

Global Research, October 29, 2006

American Free Press

The death toll from the highly toxic weapons component known as depleted uranium (DU) has reached 11,000 soldiers and the growing scandal may be the reason behind Anthony Principi’s departure as secretary of the Veterans Affairs Department.

This view was expressed by Arthur Bernklau, executive director of Veterans for Constitutional Law in New York, writing in Preventive Psychiatry E-Newsletter.

“The real reason for Mr. Principi’s departure was really never given,” Bernklau said. “However, a special report published by eminent scientist Leuren Moret naming depleted uranium as the definitive cause of ‘Gulf War Syndrome’ has fed a growing scandal about the continued use of uranium munitions by the U.S. military.”

The “malady [from DU] that thousands of our military have suffered and died from has finally been identified as the cause of this sickness, eliminating the guessing. . . . The terrible truth is now being revealed,” Bernklau said.

Of the 580,400 soldiers who served in Gulf War I, 11,000 are now dead, he said. By the year 2000, there were 325,000 on permanent medical disability. More than a decade later, more than half (56 percent) who served in Gulf War I have permanent medical problems. The disability rate for veterans of the world wars of the last century was 5 percent, rising to 10 percent in Vietnam.

“The VA secretary was aware of this fact as far back as 2000,” Bernklau said. “He and the Bush administration have been hiding these facts, but now, thanks to Moret’s report, it is far too big to hide or to cover up.”

Terry Johnson, public affairs specialist at the VA, recently reported that veterans of both Persian Gulf wars now on disability total 518,739, Bernklau said.

“The long-term effect of DU is a virtual death sentence,” Bernklau said. “Marion Fulk, a nuclear chemist, who retired from the Lawrence Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab, and was also involved in the Manhattan Project, interprets the new and rapid malignancies in the soldiers [from the second war] as ‘spectacular’—and a matter of concern.’ ”

While this important story appeared in a Washington newspaper and the wire services, it did not receive national exposure—a compelling sign that the American public is being kept in the dark about the terrible effects of this toxic weapon. (Veterans for Constitutional Law can be reached at (516) 474-4261.)
 Global Research Articles by James P. Tucker Jr.