Category Archives: stimulating intercourse

Greening UP In Springfield – LLCC pitches in

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Like I said yesterday, I am not going to post about high gasoline prices and the middle east unrest because they are both concoctions. Muammar is just being the despicable killer that he always has been. Gas prices have nothing to do with market conditions. The head of the National Association of Oil and Gas Producers said today, the problem is not supply. There is plenty of oil available today, it is the money (speculators) flooding the market that is driving price. So the next time you complain about gas prices and someone says, well it is because we are so dependent on foreign oil. Tell them they are full of it. In the mean time.

http://www.illinoistimes.com/Springfield/article-8406-the-greening-of-springfield.html

Thursday, March 3,2011

The greening of Springfield

LLCC leads the way to renewable energy

By Karen Fitzgerald


Welcome to the most eco-friendly home in Springfield. You’d never guess the carpeting is made of recycled plastic grocery bags, or the bathroom countertops come from recycled cardboard and paper. The speckled rubber flooring of a workroom consists of recycled tires, and the simulated wood deck is actually recycled plastic soda bottles. The place simply appears to be the beautifully designed home of affluent owners. The only clue to their commitment to the environment are the solar panels on the roof.

The three-year-old house on Spaulding Orchard Road has a passive solar design with a thermal wall rising above gorgeous dark cherry flooring of (hybrid) eucalyptus and other sustainable woods. It was the highlight of a tour given by Bob Croteau for a recent Lincoln Land Community College workshop on renewable energy. An energy auditor with City Water Light and Power who has been involved with solar power since the 1970s, Croteau believes the season has finally arrived for green technology in Springfield. “I used to be able to keep track of all the renewables, but so many are springing up everywhere now, I can’t keep track of them all.”

The tour included a stop at the Southwind Park visitors center, the first building in Springfield to be LEED-certified at the highest platinum level (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design). When it received certification in December, Erin’s Pavilion, as it is known, was one of only 209 nonresidential buildings in the world with platinum status in the new construction category. It will soon add a wind generator to its solar panels and 15 geothermal heat pump systems. The Capital Area Career Center has an array of solar panels that track the sun throughout the day as well as throughout the season. At 12 kW, it was the largest solar installation in Springfield until a year ago when a 14 kW array went up on the Fit Club South.

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This a really long article so go to the IT and read it. More tomorrow.

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Christiane Amanpour Chats With A General – Candidly or not

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This speaks for itself, but is this leftist?

http://videocafe.crooksandliars.com/heather/gen-hugh-shelton-bush-administration-offic

October 25, 2010 03:00 AM

Gen. Hugh Shelton: Bush Administration Officials Pushed to Go to War With Iraq ‘Almost to the Point of Insubordination’

This Week’s Christiane Amanpour talked to former Joint Chief Chair Gen. Hugh Shelton about the rush to invade Iraq by members of the Bush administration which he described as “almost to the point of insubordination.” Color any of us that were paying attention at the time not surprised by this latest revelation. The PNAC crowd surrounding him in the White House were pushing to invade Iraq long before Bush was selected by our Supreme Court to be president or becoming members of his Cabinet.

AMANPOUR: Let’s go back to when you were Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and even slightly afterwards, when President Bush decided to go to war in Iraq. You talk about it was based on faulty intelligence and indeed on lies and deceit, but you also say something about insubordination. You say, for instance, during meetings, “some people were kept on after Bush had tendered his opinion and issued an instruction based on that opinion. Yet certain strong-willed individuals seemed to disregard him and forge ahead with their own agendas, almost to the point of insubordination.” That’s a very strong indictment.

SHELTON: Well, there was a very strong push in those days for us to go into Iraq, and there was absolutely no intelligence, zero, that pointed toward — pointed toward the Iraqis. It was all Al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden. And yet there was an element there that was — that was pushing to go into Iraq at the same time.

AMANPOUR: But what do you mean by insubordination?

SHELTON: The fact that the president says himself, we’re not going to do that right now, let’s focus on Afghanistan, the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Yet below the surface, we still had the sentiment that said, let’s keep planning for Iraq just in case we can convince him that we can go.

AMANPOUR: And you think they could have convinced him?

SHELTON: Not at that time. I think that, as President Bush told me at Camp David, you know, I just don’t see it. You know, we may go get Saddam and take him out, but it will be at a time and place of our choosing. It won’t be as a part of the Afghanistan operation. He got it from day one. When he was briefed by the CIA…

AMANPOUR: So you’re saying he was pushed into it?

SHELTON: I think eventually that that same drumbeat continued, and Afghanistan, remember, was going very, very well. The drumbeat back here in Washington was still pushing, coming out of the Pentagon, let’s go to Iraq, let’s get — take him out. And he finally said, let’s go. We walked out on the limb before we could build a coalition of the — either the United Nations or NATO, one of the two.

AMANPOUR: You’re very — you have some harsh words about then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Is he part of the group that you are targeting here?

SHELTON: Well, I personally like Secretary Rumsfeld, but he was part of the group, he and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz, that continued to push to go into Iraq. And I think that’s been documented on a number of occasions.

And making me wonder how much this interview was edited, I transcribed the portion of the video above. It’s not included in ABC’s transcript. The portion below however, is in ABC’s transcript but missing from the video.

AMANPOUR: But you also say that in terms of dealing with defense secretaries that Secretary Rumsfeld was more in the (INAUDIBLE) mold, which you said was, you know, based more on sort of heavy pushing and on those kinds of relationships.

SHELTON: And those were my observations. I’ve had the opportunity to work for a number of secretaries of defense while I was in Pentagon. And, for example, Secretary Bill Cohen, great team-builders, tremendous leader, (INAUDIBLE), made you want to do things because they were the right things to do and because we all pulled together to get it done.

But the leadership that Secretary Rumsfeld brought was totally different.

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More tomorrow.

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Energy Saving Myths – Well not exactly

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What this person is arguing is that the biggest ways to save energy are the most costly thus the least likely. However, anytime you save energy you save money. Same with water, same with food and the same with transportation. Collectively those savings can pay for the bigger ticket efforts.

http://environment.change.org/blog/view/the_biggest_energy_saving_myth

The Biggest Energy Saving Myth

by Jess Leber August 16, 2010

Lots of households have experienced their own turning point on energy. That moment when one more backbreaking utility bill or that 38th sweltering summer day transforms a run-of-the-mill conscientious mother, spouse, or roommate into a certified member of the energy Gestapo. Not a stone, or a light, or a thermostat will henceforth be left unturned as the rest of the household sweats-out what they hope is a passing phase.

Yet according to a new survey, when it comes to saving energy, even the most well-intentioned of watt pinchers often get it wrong.

As The Daily Climate reports, most Americans (40 percent of survey respondents) mistakenly believe the best way to save energy is to turn off the lights or raise the thermostat. Essentially, people think the best option is to change their behavior and cut the waste from their lives. But while these actions may indeed be the easiest and cheapest way to save energy, they are certainly not the most effective. Experts have long-known that it’s long-term investments in energy efficiency — whether in home insulation, washing machines or cars — that best do the trick. Unfortunately, only about 10 percent of survey respondents identified such measures as the single most effective action they could take.

There’s one big barrier to these huge energy-savings: the upfront cost. A homeowner must take a fairly long-term view to realize the payoff of home weatherization investments, for example. In the realm of home mortgages, car loans, and college degrees, people are used to the idea of delayed gratification. But for saving energy? It seems not quite yet.

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Go read the rest of the article and sign the petitions to the right. It is well worth your time. More tomorrow.

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Cancun And Trains – I keep trying to focus on the residential market

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But stuff just keeps coming up that is too wild or too woolly to not at least post it.  I mean why in the world would you turn down money for high speed rail? The upgrades and new crossings and crossing guards are worth it.

http://www.forconstructionpros.com/online/article.jsp?siteSection=25&id=18770

Calif., Fla. Big Winners as U.S. Redistributes Rejected Grants

Jason Plautz, E&E reporter, E&E News PM

California and Florida were big winners as the Obama administration announced the redistribution today of more than $1 billion in high-speed rail grants abandoned by incoming governors in Wisconsin and Ohio.

Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood officially killed projects in those states after a monthlong dispute with the two Republican governors-elect, Wisconsin’s Scott Walker and Ohio’s John Kasich.

Both Republicans campaigned against the rail projects, saying they would leave their states on the hook for operating costs and take away road-repair money. And both requested permission to redistribute the funds to other transportation projects.

But the Obama administration insisted the states’ stimulus grants be spent on high-speed rail, sparking protests by Wisconsin manufacturers that had been banking on the rail project and jockeying among states seeking fresh cash.

The administration has now reshuffled $1.195 billion — $810 million from Wisconsin and $385 million from Ohio — and is sending it to 14 states. The biggest grant, $624 million, will go to California, while $342.3 million will go to Florida and $161.5 million to Washington state.

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Then there is all the mucking around in an alleged Climate Change Conference. Here is what the Climate Change disbelievers have to say. But really for all they are accomplishing couldn’t they teleconference?

http://dailycaller.com/2010/12/10/hypocrisy-alive-and-well-at-cancun-climate-conference/

Hypocrisy alive and well at Cancun climate conference
By Amanda Carey – The Daily Caller

From November 29 to December 10, delegates from 194 countries gathered in sunny Cancun, Mexico to “lay the ghost of Copenhagen to rest,” as one dignitary put it. After last year’s chaotic, disastrous and worthless climate change conference in Copenhagen, the goal this year was simple: avoid further embarrassment.

The focus has been on hashing out details for a global climate fund, extending the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012, and establishing an official agreement among developed countries to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions by about 40 percent by 2020.

But in the middle of all the global-warming demagoguery and calls for developed nations to shell out $100 billion per year by 2020 in climate reparations to help less-developed countries cope with the unfair burden of climate change, one thing has very obviously not changed: the hypocrisy.

Yes, hypocrisy was present in Cancun just as it was in Copenhagen in 2009, Ponzan in 2008, Bali in 2007, and the many other climate change summit cities before them. As hundreds of officials travel in gas-guzzling jets and carbon-dioxide emitting cars to the conference site and stay in luxurious, high electricity-consuming resorts, the carbon footprint of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is ironic, to say the least.

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More next week

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Cool Interactive Sketch Of A House – I do not know if I can get it up

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This is a first for me. I found this cool house done by Georgia State University’s Physics Department. I do not know if the Interactive part of it will hold because my HTML skills are nonexistent, but if not please go to the site below and play with it.

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http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/thermo/houseenergy.html

Household Energy Use

This is an active graphic. Click on any energy use for details. When the need to conserve energy in your house is considered, then the focus should be mainly on heating and cooling processes. They are the major uses of energy. Hot water heating is also a sizable use of energy, as is the cooking process with surface unit and oven. The use of energy by a refrigerator is significant, and the lighting process for a whole house becomes a significant energy use. Electronic appliances on the whole use a small amount of energy, and are not a major part of energy conservation initiatives.
Comment on energy cost Energy units
Table of insulation R-values
Index

Heat transfer concepts

Heat transfer examples
HyperPhysics***** Thermodynamics R Nave
Go Back

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More tomorrow.

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Utilities Around The World Are Real Rip Off Artists – Big suprise

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It doesn’t matter what country you are in.

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-articles/leading-article-this-is-no-time-to-tread-softly-around-the-energy-companies-2132865.html

Leading article: This is no time to tread softly around the energy companies

Saturday, 13 November 2010

The great energy rip-off continues. The wholesale price of gas has risen in recent months so the large household energy suppliers are raising their consumer prices.

British Gas has become the latest to do so, announcing a 7 per cent increase yesterday. This comes after a similar price hike by Scottish & Southern Energy last month. And the rest of the “big six” UK energy suppliers are expected to follow soon.

The problem is that the energy sector is only selectively responsive to fluctuations in market prices. Wholesale energy prices are 50 per cent below their peak in 2008, yet consumer bills have fallen by just 10 per cent in that time. It is a familiar story: consumer prices are sticky on the way down, but well lubricated on the way up.

But the fact that we are used to these gouging tactics by energy firms does not make them any more acceptable. This represents a market failure. Competition should hold down consumer prices. But the number of household power suppliers has fallen from 20 to six since privatisation in the 1990s. A competent regulator would not have allowed this situation to develop. But Ofgem, which supposedly oversees the industry, has repeatedly shown itself to be unwilling to bring the energy giants into line. The result is an energy sector that is uncomfortably similar to a cartel.

And the Coalition has, so far, been no more willing than the previous administration to address this problem. The Energy Secretary, Chris Huhne, has warned firms to give customers ample warning of price rises. But he has not indicated a desire to force structural reform. And the Coalition’s decision to abolish the Consumer Focus watchdog, transferring its function to the Citizens Advice Bureau, will only make it more difficult for consumers to resist the excesses of the energy giants.

The suspicion is that ministers are treading softly around these firms because they are relying on them to invest some £200bn in low-carbon energy infrastructure over the next decade. Yet a failure to tackle the vested interests of the energy sector would represent a strategic mistake by the Government. Consumer energy prices will inevitably need to rise over the medium term as firms make investments, under Government pressure, to decarbonise our energy supplies. Massive investment in wind, wave and nuclear power is necessary if Britain is to meet its target of generating 20 per cent of our energy from renewable by 2020.

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More tomorrow.

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The Atlantic And Christian Science Monitor Both Run Major Energy Articles

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First up the Christian Science Monitor.

http://www.csmonitor.com/Environment/2010/1108/New-energy-climate-change-and-sustainability-shape-a-new-era

New energy: climate change and sustainability shape a new era

A new energy revolution – similar to shifts from wood to coal to oil – is inevitable as climate change and oil scarcity drive a global search for sustainability in power production. But even the promise of renewable energy holds drawbacks.

New energy: climate change and sustainability will shape a new era in which renewable sources such as solar power will ultimately replace oil. A solarplant near Seville, Spain uses mirrors to concentrate the sun’s rays onto towers where they produce steam to drive a turbine, producing electricity.

Marcelo del Poso/Reuters

“Tonight I want to have an unpleasant talk with you,” a somber President Jimmy Carter said gravely into a television camera on an April night in 1977.


A series of oil embargoes and OPEC price hikes had hit the nation hard. Gasoline prices had tripled. Auto-dependent Americans had sometimes waited hours in line to buy the gasoline needed to get to work. The president, in an iconic fireside chat – in a beige cardigan – two months earlier had congenially urged Americans to turn thermostats down to 65 degrees F. by day, 55 by night.

But on this night, he ratcheted up his tone: Warning of an imminent “national catastrophe” and scolding Americans for selfish wastefulness, the president declared it time for Americans to curb consumption of oil, which he said had doubled in the 1950s and again in the ’60s – time to end their dependence on imports.

“This difficult effort will be the moral equivalent of war,” he said.

Mr. Carter created the Department of Energy. He called for energy conservation and increased production of coal and solar power. He installed solar panels on the White House.

But his vision – to push America and the world into a new energy era as significant as the shift from wood to coal that fueled the Industrial Revolution – never materialized.

Gasoline prices plummeted in the 1980s, removing the incentive to end oil imports. Driving returned to precrisis levels. Carter’s successor, Ronald Reagan, withdrew funding for renewable energies. And the White House solar panels were torn down.

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More tomorrow.

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The ANWR Is Nothing But One Giant Dry Hole

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Oil People are nothing but proven liars. There is always “oil down there” they tell investors. But only 10 or 20 of the holes they drill actually produce any oil, so is it any wonder that they are unprepared when they come in? Especially in the case of the Gulf Spew if they come in violently.

http://www.fcnp.com/commentary/national/7696-the-peak-oil-crisis-the-leading-edge.html

The Peak Oil Crisis: The Leading Edge

By Tom Whipple
Wednesday, November 03 2010 01:01:22 PM

Do you remember the furor over drilling for oil in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge a few years back? The whole country was up in arms. At various times some 50 to 60 percent of Americans favored drilling in the area as they were told this would result in lower gas prices.

Last week the USGS lowered its estimate of the amount of oil that could be extracted from the region all the way from 10 billion barrels down to less than one billion, making drilling in the area uneconomical. By the way, the amount of crude being pumped down the Alaskan pipeline now has fallen from 2 million barrels a day (b/d) when the pipeline first opened back in the 1970’s to about 600,000 b/d in recent weeks. The trouble is that when the flow of oil falls below a quantity estimated to be 200-300,000 b/d (some say 500,000) the line will have to be closed as there will simply not be enough hot oil being sent down the pipeline to keep it from freezing in winter.

Last week an organization in California, The Post Carbon Institute, released a new book, “The Post Carbon Reader,” which draws a much broader picture of the serious issues facing mankind. With 30 authors, each specializing in some aspect of the multiple troubles we face, the scope of the book touches on nearly every aspect of our civilization that is out of balance, unsustainable, and headed for a fall. The basic proposition of the book is that the world has reached the limits of growth in terms of its population, economic activity, and the ability of the atmosphere to absorb more carbon emissions. Either the world’s peoples must transform themselves into a sustainable number living in a sustainable manner or there will be many dire consequences right up to the possibility that the human race itself could become extinct. Clearly, this is serious stuff.

As long as a problem is perceived as being decades, or even a few years away, it is not a concern.

Some hold that our sustainability problem started when we first started planting crops and domesticating animals 10,000 years ago. This thesis says if we had stuck with hunting and gathering as a race we would have been able to sustain our act indefinitely, but then we would never have had enough surplus energy to learn reading & writing, and to build cities, the Internet and space ships. Our immediate problem, however, started in earnest with the industrial revolution about 200 years ago when we first started digging up prodigious quantities of coal and feeding it into steam engines. It wasn’t long before we struck oil and the rest is history. The world’s population went from an estimated 5 or 10 million when we first started farming, to a billion when we started serious coal digging, to about 7 billion today. We also got incredibly richer in terms of material goods and could sure get around much faster.

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More tomorrow.

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Global Resource Depletion OR Recycling A Waste Of Time – Which is it

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shhh It’s Jam Band Friday – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hntXAO_Rq7c

OK so which is it, are we running out of stuff or not? Is 6 Billion people too many or not? Have we cut down way too may trees or not? I believe these answers are knowable. Are the Ocean’s fished out or not?  Is Global Warming happening? The issue seems to be Price. If Global Warming were happening then carbon would be expensive. But what if price isn’t the issue when capitalists and nations treat resources as if they were “free”.

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http://www.planetthoughts.org/?pg=pt/Whole&qid=3267

Blog item: Recycling? What A Waste.

By Jim Fedako

This fall, school kids across the country will again be taught a chief doctrine in the civic religion: recycle, not only because you fear the police but also because you love the planet. They come home well prepared to be the enforcers of the creed against parents who might inadvertently drop a foil ball into the glass bin or overlook a plastic wrapper in the aluminum bin.

Oh, I used to believe in recycling, and I still believe in the other two R’s: reducing and reusing. However, recycling is a waste of time, money, and ever-scarce resources. What John Tierney wrote in the New York Times nearly 10 years ago is still true: “Recycling may be the most wasteful activity in modern America.”

Reducing and reusing make sense. With no investment in resources, I can place the plastic grocery bag in the bathroom garbage can and save a penny or so for some more-pressing need. Reducing and reusing are free market activities that are profitable investments of time and labor.

Any astute entrepreneur will see the benefit of conserving factors of production. Today, builders construct houses using less wood than similar houses built just 20 years ago. In addition, these houses are built sturdier; for the most part anyway.

The Green’s love for trees did not reduce the amount of wood used in construction; the reduction was simply a reaction to the increasing cost for wood products. Using less wood makes financial sense, and any entrepreneur worth his profit will change his recipe to conserve wood through better design or by substituting less dear materials for wood products.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pojL_35QlSI&feature=related

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http://www.energybulletin.net/stories/2010-10-20/global-resource-depletion

Published Oct 20 2010 by The Oil Drum: Europe, Archived Oct 20 2010

Global resource depletion

by Ugo Bardi

André Diederen’s recent book on resource depletion

I have been thinking, sometimes, that I could reserve a shelf of my library for those books which have that elusive quality that I could call “modern wisdom”. Books that go beyond the buzz of the media news, the shallowness of politicians’ speech, the hyper-specialization of technical texts. That shelf would contain, first of all, “The Limits to Growth” by Meadows and others; then the books by Jared Diamond, James Lovelock, Konrad Lorenz, Richard Dawkins, Peter Ward and several others that have affected the way I see the world.

I think I’ll never set up such a shelf, I have too many books and too few shelves; many are packed full with three rows of books. But, if I ever were to put these books together, I think that the recent book by André Diederen “Global Resource Depletion” would make a nice addition to the lot.

The subject of resource depletion, of course, is well known to readers of “The Oil Drum”. So well known that it is difficult to think of a book that says something new. Diederen, indeed, succeeds in the task not so much in reason of the details on the availability of mineral commodities that he provides, but for the innovative way he describes our relation to the subject. In other words, Diederen’s book is not a boring list of data; it is a lively discussion on how to deal with the implications of these data. It is a book on the future and how we can prepare for it.

To give you some idea of the flavor of the book, just a quote:

(p. 43) “… it isn’t enough to have large absolute quantities (“the Earth’s crust is so big”) and to have all the technology in place. (p. 33) … we have plenty of water in the Mediterranean or Atlantic Ocean and we have ample proven technologies to desalinate and pipe the water to the desert, so, why isn’t the Sahara desert green yet?”

This is, of course, the crucial point of resource depletion: what counts is cost, not amounts (I plan to use this example in my next talk!). Diederen is an unconventional thinker and he goes deeply into matters that, in some circles would be thought to be unspeakable; for instance (p. 41)

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Price? Really. More next week.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3a9mx1IVZzU&feature=related

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Residential Geothermal Is The Way To Go – Damn the cost…full speed ahead

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One of the best purveyors of geothermal in the country and it is right next door in Fort Wayne.

Save energy with water furnace, geothermal, or geoexchange systems.

Choosing a Residential WaterFurnace Comfort System Is Simply Smarter

WaterFurnace manufactures and sells more geothermal systems for homes than anyone else in the business. Why? Because we offer a wide variety of residential geothermal products. Our dealers and installers are the most highly trained in the industry. And we are wholeheartedly committed to customer support. All that makes us the first—and smartest—choice for a residential WaterFurnace system: the system that’s “Smarter from the Ground Up.”

Geothermal vs. Ground Water vs. Water Furnace
Geothermal energy has been used to heat and air condition buildings for several decades, and, during that time, these geothermal systems have been called many different things. Some of the more popular variations include geo-thermal, geoexchange, ground-water, ground-water assisted, ground-water-source, water-to-water, and even our company name, water furnace heating and cooling.

All of these terms, though, convey the same thought: use of geothermal heat pump technology to tap the energy in the earth’s surface and drive a heating and air conditioning system for both residential and commercial uses. The result is a green or natural heat pump that saves energy and benefits the environment.

For more information on geothermal technology, go to How it works.

Geothermal Heat Pumps
Cleanest, Safest, Most Reliable choice.
Savings Calculator
Keep more of what you earn.
Literature
Product Brochures & Technical Literature

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More tomorrow

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