Category Archives: waste

The Hottest Year Ever Recorded By Science – I was gona continue the solar meditation

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And in away this is a solar earth issue, just not one that involves pollution free power generation. It has always amazed me how good a source of news Rolling Stone has become. It was the home of Hunter S. Thompson too.

http://digg.com/newsbar/topnews/3_215_high_temperature_records_broken_or_tied_in_the_us

Global Warming’s Terrifying New Math

Three simple numbers that add up to global catastrophe – and that make clear who the real enemy is

July 19, 2012 9:35 AM ET

If the pictures of those towering wildfires in Colorado haven’t convinced you, or the size of your AC bill this summer, here are some hard numbers about climate change: June broke or tied 3,215 high-temperature records across the United States. That followed the warmest May on record for the Northern Hemisphere – the 327th consecutive month in which the temperature of the entire globe exceeded the 20th-century average, the odds of which occurring by simple chance were 3.7 x 10-99, a number considerably larger than the number of stars in the universe.

Meteorologists reported that this spring was the warmest ever recorded for our nation – in fact, it crushed the old record by so much that it represented the “largest temperature departure from average of any season on record.” The same week, Saudi authorities reported that it had rained in Mecca despite a temperature of 109 degrees, the hottest downpour in the planet’s history.

Not that our leaders seemed to notice. Last month the world’s nations, meeting in Rio for the 20th-anniversary reprise of a massive 1992 environmental summit, accomplished nothing. Unlike George H.W. Bush, who flew in for the first conclave, Barack Obama didn’t even attend. It was “a ghost of the glad, confident meeting 20 years ago,” the British journalist George Monbiot wrote; no one paid it much attention, footsteps echoing through the halls “once thronged by multitudes.” Since I wrote one of the first books for a general audience about global warming way back in 1989, and since I’ve spent the intervening decades working ineffectively to slow that warming, I can say with some confidence that we’re losing the fight, badly and quickly – losing it because, most of all, we remain in denial about the peril that human civilization is in.

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Go there and read. More next week.
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The Keystone XL Pipeline Is A Very Bad Idea – So why is the Springfield Chamber of Commerce backing it

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I have no idea how much Keystone and the Koch brothers gave to the Springfield, IL Chamber but it must have been a bunch because they hired someone to coordinate their support for the project. The first I knew of it was an Editorial published in what is left of the State Journal Register. So this posting and the next are in part my preparation for writing a counter Editorial.

http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/rkistner/a_native_people_fight_a_dantes.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+switchboard_rkistner+%28Switchboard%3A+Rocky+Kistner%27s+Blog%29

Rocky Kistner’s Blog

In Canada’s Tar Sands, a Dante’s Hell Threatens People Nearby and Across the Globe

In Canada’s western province of Alberta, Melina Laboucan-Massimo’s community—the Lubicon Lake Nation—has endured a withering toxic tar sands oil assault, an Armageddon against nature few Americans are fully aware of. Here in the once pristine sub-Arctic, tar sands mining operations level vast swaths of boreal forests near native lands, as pipelines burst and spew corrosive chemical-laced tar sands oil into rivers and lakes.

The Lubicon are used to living in harmony with nature. But tar sands mining has brought a deadly discordance to their environment. Melina has watched family and friends battle unheard of cancers and respiratory ailments; she’s listened to local fishermen and hunters complain about unusual lesions and tumors festering in their catches and prey. She’s reacted in disbelief as her government has sponsored airborne sharpshooters to gun down mighty Canadian wolf packs—a zero sum game that is killing one species to try to save another—as dwindling herds of caribou flee their disappearing forest homes and may be gone forever in the not so distant future.

For members of the Lubicon Lake Nation, it is a nightmare of Kafkaesque proportions. Their verdant land of abundant wildlife is metastasizing into pock-marketed battlefields of a thousand Verduns. Melina and other community leaders have not sat idly by as the environmental carnage unfolds around them. She has testified before Congress, spearheaded Greenpeace protest actions, and worked tirelessly to get the word out about the devastation in her community.

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Go there and see the video. Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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Smart Grid Efforts Breed Parasites – Blame monopoly capitalism

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If the utility companies were smart they would have been in the forefront of this effort, but years of being monopolies have sucked their brains out of their ears. So now we are going to have parasites festering all over the new grid. This can not be good. That is obviously not how this author sees it.

http://gigaom.com/cleantech/a-startup-emerges-to-help-time-shift-energy-use/

A startup emerges to help time shift energy use

By Jul. 5, 2012, 12:00am PT

Dialing down your home’s energy consumption during times of peak power grid use in exchange for compensation is an emerging service. Picture it’s a hot day and you agree not to jack up your air conditioner in exchange for a discount on your utility bill. Startups like new-comer Smart Grid Billing are developing applications to help manage this process, and later this month Smart Grid Billing plans to launch a field trial of its service at a golf course.

Founded in 2009, Smart Grid Billing is testing its combination of energy-monitoring wireless-connected plugs and software that collect and crunch energy consumption data. The service stores the data in a central server and can determine which appliance or equipment has the potential to reduce or cut its electricity use in real time.

This block of unused power can be sold to a local grid operator. Smart Grid Billing shares the revenue from that sale to its customers, and the plugs are programmed to restore the electricity flow back to the equipment at a later time.

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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Longterm Storage Is Not An Issue – It never has been for renewable energy

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This is actually part of a lecture that I give to college students called the Myths of Global Warming. The point of it is that Global Warming is indeed happening and at an accelerated pace. The point is that there have been myths erected like barricades that defend the use of fossil fuels. Here is a high tech version.

http://theenergycollective.com/node/75535

Posted by: Joseph Romm

Lauren Simenauer is a former intern with Science Progress, and Sean Pool is Assistant Editor of Science Progress. This piece was originally published at Science Progress.

Super Hot Salt: The Newest Energy Storage Innovation?

Policymakers and energy industry experts often talk about clean energy as though it isn’t reliable. In fact, while an MIT study recently found the existing grid would probably be up to the challenge of absorbing clean energy, intermittency does present a real challenge that renewables must address to get to high levels of penetration.

But BrightSource Energy, a major player in the market for concentrating solar power, or CSP, recently announced the installation of new thermal energy storage technology at three of its planned power plants in California. This thermal energy storage technology will go a long way toward solving the intermittency problem for concentrating solar power. BrightSource’s announcement demonstrates that we can in fact get reliable baseload power from the sun [or, even better, load-following power].

The thermal energy storage systems, built using SolarPLUS technology, work by using hundreds of parabolic mirrors to concentrate the rays of the sun on a tank of molten salts, heating the salts to several hundred degrees above the boiling point of water. The superheated salt is then stored in a giant insulated container until the power plant needs to add additional output, at which point it can use the heat stored in the molten salt to boil water to create steam to drive its turbines.

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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The World Is Ending – Well right after it doesn’t

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Well really the guys point is that there will have to be fast and furious changes from a growth model economy to a static or sustainable economy for humans to survive in the civilized manner that we have gotten accustomed to. Still the world has suffered severe trauma before and humans are still here. Plus I believe the subtext of his piece is that the rest of the planet will never notice that mankind ran out of oil or even very much that the climate was destabilized by climate change. It is a really really long article so I will give you a little bit here.

http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/node/1124

Can We Avoid the Perfect Storm?
…

It is quite possible that by the year 2100 human life will have become extinct or will be confined to a few residential areas that have escaped the devastating effects of nuclear holocaust or global warming.
—Brian Barry1

Evolution equipped us to deal with threats from dependably loathsome enemies and fearsome creatures, but not with the opaque and cumulative long-term consequences of our own technological and demographic success. As cartoonist Walt Kelly once put it, “We’ve met the enemy, and he is us.”

Deforestation, agriculture, and the combustion of fossil fuels have committed the world to a substantial and possibly rapid warming that will last for hundreds or thousands of years. Rising temperatures, whether gradual or sudden, will progressively destabilize the global climate system, causing massive droughts, more frequent storms, rising sea level, loss of many species, and shifting ecologies, but in ways that are difficult to predict with precision in a nonlinear system. These changes will likely result in scarcities of food, energy, and resources, undermining political, social, and economic stability and amplifying the effects of terrorism and conflicts between and within nations, failed states, and regions.

Action to head off the worst of what could occur is difficult because of the complexity of nonlinear systems, with large delays between cause and effect, and because of the political and economic power of fossil fuel industries to prevent corrective action that would jeopardize their profitability. Political leadership has been absent in large part because no government is presently organized to deal with the permanent emergency of climate destabilization. The effects of procrastination will fall with increasing weight on coming generations, making our role as the primary cause of worsening climate destabilization the largest moral lapse in history.

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

 

 

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Carbon Sequestration The Way It Should Be Done – I am not a huge fan of this but

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The method they are using here is preferable to simply drilling a well anywhere and trying to bury it in the ground. The oil in spent fields never will get out and there was plenty of pressure, so this at least seems safe.

http://www.cbs19.tv/story/18856255/doe-notice-advances-development-of-indiana-gasifications-co2-pipeline

DOE Notice Advances Development of Indiana Gasification’s CO2 Pipeline

Information contained on this page is provided by companies via press release distributed through PR Newswire, an independent third-party content provider. PR Newswire, WorldNow and this Station make no warranties or representations in connection therewith.

SOURCE Indiana Gasification

Transporting CO2 to Gulf States Could Boost U.S. Oil Production by 20 Million Barrels a Year

ROCKPORT, Ind., June 22, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — Indiana Gasification welcomed today’s Federal Register publication by the U.S. Department of Energy of an amended notice of intent (NOI) to include an approximately 440 mile CO2 pipeline in the environmental impact statement (EIS) required for DOE financial backing of IG’s state-of-the-art clean fuels facility.

The DOE publication marks the most recent regulatory development in support of the plant, which will be the cleanest coal-fired facility ever built in the United States. In the last two months, the Indiana Department of Environmental Management has filed a proposed clean air permit with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and issued a draft Clean Water Act permit.

In the Notice of Intent, the Department of Energy acknowledges that the proposed project with the CO2 pipeline qualifies for financing under the 2008 appropriations act providing authority for industrial gasification activities. Further, the DOE has determined that the project meets two goals of the Title XVII Loan Guarantee Program, encouraging the commercial use of new or significantly improved technology and achieving substantial environmental benefits.

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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Will We Ever Live On The Moon – Humans prepare to trash the Solar System

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When I posted on the transit of Venus, I said that environmentalists are concerned about the environment and that does not end at the Earth’s atmosphere or the heliosphere of even our galaxy. Human’s track record ain’t great so far. We tend to just throw stuff out there because we can. We have fired rockets willy nilly at planets some of which landed successfully but will be on those planets forever. The ones that didn’t go so well are smashed all over the place. We trashed the moon and anyone flying by the Earth would just go EWWWWWW. Look at that mess. So now what is proposed – Mining and Manufacturing. Environmentally things we do just the bestest. This is not good. Double billing here. This guy:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/06/14/will-we-ever-live-on-the-moon/

wrote the op/ed piece here:

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20120613-will-we-ever-live-on-the-moon

This is not an attack on the writer by the way.

Will we ever… live on the Moon?

14 June 2012

by PHIL PLAIT

Will mankind once again walk on the lunar surface? I wouldn’t even hesitate to say “yes”, because the future is long, and who in the early 1950s would have dared to predict that we would even land a craft on the Moon within 20 years? But in this case, the answer probably isn’t as interesting as the question itself – more specifically, when, and why, and how will we do it?

I can think of many possible scenarios that could lead to us colonising the Moon: an extended economic boom that allows us to fund ambitious space exploration; a breakthrough in launch costs which makes them drastically cheaper; or the discovery of some vital natural resource on the Moon. But I don’t like betting on breakthroughs.

A better question is then: “What is a likely way we’ll end up with a human presence on the Moon?” Given what we know today and extrapolating from there, I have a thought on how this could happen.

Looking into the abyss

Before we talk about settling down on our rocky neighbour, we have to ask why we should head there in the first place.

Looking back on nearly 60 years of space exploration, the answer is obvious. Satellite communication. Weather prediction. Understanding of climate change. Instantaneous broadcasting of radio and television. Global positioning technology. Detailed mapping of the Earth. Environmental monitoring. Government intelligence gathering (which has prevented far more conflict than people credit it for). Disaster warning.

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Go there and read. More next week.

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Coal Is Going Down Down Down – It couldn’t happen to a nicer industry

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Lets see they lie, cheat and steal. But they also pollute the heck out of the environment and they get people killed. I am going to miss these guys.

 

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/story/2012-06-12/coal-to-gas-project-denied/55557114/1

U.S. coal use falling fast as utilities switch to gas

By Jonathan Fahey, Associated Press

NEW YORK – America is shoveling coal to the sidelines.

The fuel that powered the U.S. from the industrial revolution into the iPhone era is being pushed aside as utilities switch to cleaner and cheaper alternatives.

The share of U.S. electricity that comes from coal is forecast to fall below 40% for the year, its lowest level since World War II. Four years ago, it was 50%. By the end of this decade, it is likely to be near 30%.

“The peak has passed,” says Jone-Lin Wang, head of Global Power for the energy research firm IHS CERA.

Utilities are aggressively ditching coal in favor of natural gas, which has become cheaper as supplies grow. Natural gas has other advantages over coal: It produces far fewer emissions of toxic chemicals and gases that contribute to climate change, key attributes as tougher environmental rules go into effect.

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Go there and laugh, I mean read. More tomorrow.

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Rocky Mountain Flats Sucked Then – And it still sucks now

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All they did really was put out the fires and bury the remains. It sits there moldering to this day. They cleaned up the first 3 ft. of soil and tore down the buldings. The buildings and other materials were shipped to New Mexico and Nevada for storage. See first, the history of Rocky Flats:

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

The Rocky Flats Plant was a United States nuclear weapons production facility near Denver, Colorado that operated from 1952 to 1992. It was under the control of the United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) until 1977, when it was replaced by the Department of Energy (DOE).

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Then see her book:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/28/books/book-review-full-body-burden-by-kristen-iversen.html?_r=0

Publication Date: June 5, 2012

Full Body Burden is a haunting work of narrative nonfiction about a young woman, Kristen Iversen, growing up in a small Colorado town close to Rocky Flats, a secret nuclear weapons plant once designated “the most contaminated site in America.” It’s the story of a childhood and adolescence in the shadow of the Cold War, in a landscape at once startlingly beautiful and–unknown to those who lived there–tainted with invisible yet deadly particles of plutonium.

It’s also a book about the destructive power of secrets–both family and government. Her father’s hidden liquor bottles, the strange cancers in children in the neighborhood, the truth about what was made at Rocky Flats (cleaning supplies, her mother guessed)–best not to inquire too deeply into any of it.

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Go there and read. More tomorrow.

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Video About How The Planet Can Be Saved – Environmental claymation

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Here we go again . I am going to try to share a video from a cool website I found. You all know how bad I am at this so do not hold your breath.

http://cleantechnica.com/2012/06/08/the-healing-power-of-new-energy-friday-fun/

The Healing Power of New Energy (Friday Fun)

June 8, 2012 By
Here’s a fun video in support of clean energy and a healthy planet that I ran across on NewEnergyNews recently:

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Well for now I failed but if you go to the New Energy News link you can see it.

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Go there and see the video from The Colbert Report. More tomorrow.

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