I have this theory that the oil market is broken. I predicted that gasoline prices would spike this summer NO MATTER what the price of oil. In other words the price of oil has been decoupled. I think it is the result of speculators driving the price up last year past 3$$ a gallon. The Saudi’s always said that that was a “psychological barrier” for Americans. Maybe they were right and the speculators were stupid.
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Even Warren Buffett has been bamboozled by oil.He admitted it in his latest annual report to the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway(NYSE: BRK-A) — the holding company he runs. In his own words: “I bought a large amount of ConocoPhillips(NYSE: COP) stock when oil and gas prices were near their peak. I in no way anticipated the dramatic fall in energy prices that occurred in the last half of the year.”Specifically, he made the bulk of his purchases during the six months ending Sept. 30, 2008 — you know, the same time in which oil prices peaked near $150 a barrel.
The price of oil is now around $50 a barrel, and ConocoPhillips’ stock price has tanked in lockstep with the oil freefall. Buffett clearly bought oil too early. But is it still too early for us to buy up oil stocks now?
Now may be the time
Those bullish on oil point to the inevitability of “peak oil,” arguing that the time will come when we hit the peak of global oil production. From that point on, we’ll be able to pump less and less oil out of the ground. In economic terms, we’ll face decreasing supply.
Meanwhile, bulls argue that demand will increase greatly, as China and other emerging markets fuel their economic growth with oil. On average, each person in the U.S. consumes about 25 barrels of oil a year; each person in China consumes just more than two. That’s a lot of possible future demand.
And all of us amateur economists know what happens when you restrict supply while simultaneously increasing demand: prices rise.
But then again …
Um, weren’t these the same arguments made when oil was at $147 a barrel? Yup. At that price, all these favorable supply and demand assumptions were baked in, and then some. The subsequent price fall highlights that we’ll only make great returns if we buy at low prices.
With oil prices at a third of their summer highs, oil plays are certainly tempting now. Getting in at steep discounts to the prices Buffett paid is a wonderful thing. However, when we look back in time, we see that current oil prices are four times the lows of the late 1990s.
In other words, looking at price movements by themselves just isn’t that helpful. We need to estimate oil’s intrinsic value.
How do we do that?
Beyond bubbles and busts, oil should sell at its marginal cost of production, plus some profit. Unfortunately, that’s not easy to calculate with much precision. Some oil sources are really easy to find and extract (traditional onshore) while others are especially onerous (especially oil sands and deepwater).
Oil prices fell Wednesday, weighed by weaker stock markets and waning optimism that the U.S. economy will soon recover from its severe recession.Benchmark crude for May delivery fell $1.09 to $48.06 a barrel by afternoon in Europe in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract fell $1.90 on Tuesday to settle at $49.15.Oil and stock markets have dropped this week, winding back March’s big rally, as investors eye what could be a grim first quarter U.S. corporate earnings season.
Oil traders often look to stocks as a measure of investor sentiment about the overall economy. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 2.3 percent Tuesday. Asian and European markets also dropped Wednesday.
Alcoa Inc., the world’s third-largest aluminum maker, reported a loss of $497 million for the first three months of the year as revenue dropped 44 percent. Alcoa was the first blue chip company to report first quarter earnings and is considered an indicator of upcoming results from other firms.
“The rally we saw in oil and equities was based on optimism that all the fiscal stimulus will be effective in sparking demand down the track,” said Toby Hassall, an analyst with Commodity Warrants Australia in Sydney. “But we haven’t seen much evidence of that yet.”
Let us say that you had an operable form of cancer and your doctor offered you chemotherapy. What would you say to him? Let us imagine that you had a torn tendon and your doctor offered you aspirin as your main form of treatment. What would you say? Actually you would probably CHANGE doctors…
Drilling began this week for a carbon dioxide injection well as part of an $84.3 million project beneath Archer Daniels Midland Co. property.Workers have started constructing a well that will reach more than 6,500 feet underground. The drilling of the injection well is expected to be completed in late March or early April.
No objections were filed before a late January deadline for an Illinois Environmental Protection Agency permit approving the process. That clears the way for the drilling equipment to be moved into place, said Sallie Greenberg, Illinois Geological Survey communications coordinator. The project is intended to capture carbon dioxide from ADM’s ethanol plant, convert it into liquid and pump it underground for storage before it’s emitted into the atmosphere. The U.S. Department of Energy expects 1 million tons of carbon dioxide from the plant to be injected over a three-year period, beginning in early 2010. The project is intended to reduce the amount of carbon dioxide that contributes to global warming.
Midwest Geological Sequestration Consortium receives Phase III funding Storage, Feb 21 2008 (Carbon Capture Journal)
– The Midwest Geological Sequestration Consortium (MGSC), and the Illinois State Geological Survey (ISGS) have been awarded a $66.7 million contract from the US DOE.
The funding is to conduct a Phase III large-scale sequestration demonstration project in the Mt. Simon Sandstone.
The MGSC, ISGS, and Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM) will work together on this carbon sequestration project, which will involve the capture and storage of CO2 from ADM’s ethanol plant in Decatur, Illinois.
The $84.3 million project will be funded by $66.7 million from the U.S. Department of Energy over a period of seven years, supplemented by cofunding from ADM, Schlumberger Carbon Services, and other corporate and state resources.
The project is designed to confirm the ability of the Mt. Simon Sandstone, a major regional saline reservoir in Illinois, to accept and store 1 million metric tonnes of CO2 over a period of three years.
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Already they are a year behind..Why does this sound like a replay of NUCLEAR Power. Delays….Cost over runs….Accidents… All to avoid leaving the nasty stuff in the ground in the first place. Even Scientific America gets into the act:
OXYFUEL: In September 2007 the oxyfuel combustion chamber is lifted into place at the Schwarze Pumpe power plant in Germany–one of the first power plants in the world to capture carbon dioxide. Courtesy of Vattenfal
Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of five features on carbon capture and storage, running daily from April 6 to April 10, 2009.
Like all big coal-fired power plants, the 1,600-megawatt-capacity Schwarze Pumpe plant in Spremberg, Germany, is undeniably dirty. Yet a small addition to the facility—a tiny boiler that pipes 30 MW worth of steam to local industrial customers—represents a hope for salvation from the global climate-changing consequences of burning fossil fuel.
To heat that boiler, the damp, crumbly brown coal known as lignite—which is even more polluting than the harder black anthracite variety—burns in the presence of pure oxygen, a process known as oxyfuel, releasing as waste both water vapor and that more notorious greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide (CO2). By condensing the water in a simple pipe, Vattenfall, the Swedish utility that owns the power plant, captures and isolates nearly 95 percent of the CO2 in a 99.7 percent pure form.
That CO2 is then compressed into a liquid and given to another company, Linde, for sale; potential users range from the makers of carbonated beverages, such as Coca-Cola, to oil firms that use it to squeeze more petroleum out of declining deposits. In principle, however, the CO2 could also be pumped deep underground and locked safely away in specific rock formations for millennia.
From the International Energy Agency to the United Nations–sanctioned Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), such carbon capture and storage (CCS), particularly for coal-fired power plants, has been identified as a technology critical to enabling deep, rapid cuts in greenhouse gas emissions. After all, coal burning is responsible for 40 percent of the 30 billion metric tons of CO2 emitted by human activity every year.
“There is the potential for the U.S. and other countries to continue to rely on coal as a source of energy while at the same time protecting the climate from the massive greenhouse gas emissions associated with coal,” says Steve Caldwell, coordinator for regional climate change policy at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, a Washington, D.C. think tank.
Even President Barack Obama has labeled the technology as important for “energy independence” and included $3.4 billion in the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act for “clean coal” power.
Today three types of technology can capture CO2 at a power plant. One, as at Schwarze Pumpe, involves the oxyfuel process: burning coal in pure oxygen to produce a stream of CO2-rich emissions. The second uses various forms of chemistry—in the form of amine scrubbers, special membranes or ionic liquids—to pull carbon dioxide out of a more mixed set of exhaust gases. The third is gasification, in which liquid or solid fuels are first turned into synthetic natural gas; CO2 from the conversion of the gas can be siphoned off.
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Then there is this:
ckmapawatt at 10:27 PM on 04/06/09
NO, NO, NO. Carbon Capture and Storage is not the answer! It is treating the symptoms and not the disease.
I recently wrote a blog looking at this same issue:
http://blog.mapawatt.com/2009/03/13/carbon-capture-and-storage/Basically, we can take BILLIONS and spend it on burying something underground, or we can spend that money and put it to good use while taking the same amount of CO2 out of the air.
Carbon Capture is short term decision making and thinking that is mainly being promoted by the Coal Industry. Would you really call Carbon Capture a sustainable practice?
(Disclaimer: the below article is a thought experiment. I’m not suggesting it as a real solution, but rather a way to analyze two different carbon mitigating strategies. Enjoy!)
You might have seen the environmental articles recently related to Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS). Basically, all CCS does is take the CO2 that coal plants produce, collect it, and pump it underground. Sounds like a good idea right? Well, on the surface it does, but let’s dig down into the actual numbers a little bit.
In order to better understand the proposed function of CCS, let’s walk through a comparison of a power generation plant with and without CCS. I’m going to look at two options:
Option 1: 500 MW (capacity before CCS) IGCC (type of coal plant) with Carbon Capture and Storage
Option 2: 500 MW IGCC plant with the money that would be used on CCS to be spent on a wind farm
In comparing our two options, pretend you’re the President of Power Generation Company for planet Earth (this is a made up company. The point is you base your decisions on what is best for the planet and the people buying your power. You don’t base your decisions on politics). In both options the 500 MW IGCC plant is already installed, you are just comparing whether to spend money on carbon capture and storage, or take the equivalent amount of money and use it for another purpose that would help the environment, in this case a wind farm.
You may ask: Why do I want to install a wind farm if my goal is to reduce CO2 (even though your real goal is to do what’s best for Earth)? Because you are all powerful, you are going to figure out how much energy the wind farm produces, then find an old dirty coal plant that produces the same amount of energy, and take that coal plant off line. Therefore, reducing the amount of CO2 that enters the atmosphere by enabling the old coal plant to be taken off line, and also helping wind power reach economies of scale.
Installing CCS or a Wind Farm that replaces old Coal:
A recent paper by David and Herzog at MIT estimated the future cost of CCS at $1,145/kw (estimated cost in 2012) of installed power. So, for the 500 MW IGCC plant, it would cost $572.5 million dollars to install CCS technology. Now, you have the option of taking this money and using it to buy a Wind Farm instead. The American Wind Energy Association states that it costs about $ 1 million to install 1 MW of generating capacity for a wind farm. Therefore, $572.5 million will enable you to install 572 MW of installed wind energy (with $500 k left over)!
In order to analyze how much CO2 will be kept out of the atmosphere by taking the old coal plant off line, we have to calculate the yearly power output of the wind farm. To do this, you need what is called a Capacity Factor. Basically, this is just the percentage of time during the year that a power producing facility produces power at its rated capacity. The organization National Wind Watch states that in 2003, the average capacity factor for US wind farms was 26.9%. Therefore, to calculate how much energy the wind farm produces (MWh) during the year:
Yearly Output (MWh) = (installed capacity)*(capacity factor)*(hours in a day)*(days in a year) =
Now we have to use this value to decide how big a coal plant this would replace. Using the wind farm yearly output and the average capacity factor for Coal plants in the US, which is 73.6%, we can use the above Yearly Energy Output equation to back-solve for the “installed capacity” the wind farm would replace:
Installed Capacity (MW) = (yearly output) ÷ (Capacity factor * hours in a day * days in a year) =
(1,347,884) ÷ (.736*24*365) = 209 MW
Therefore, if you use the $527.5 million dollars it would cost to install CCS on a 500 MW IGCC coal plant for a wind farm, the energy the wind farm produces is equivalent to a 209 MW pulverized coal plant!
OverPopulation is never a pleasant topic. Why? Well for so many reasons:
1. It is Anti-Capitalistic. Capitalism is founded on an unlimited growth model as is it’s hand maiden in literature – science fiction. Malthus sends Capitalists into a frenzy of “it ain’t so” denial. But if he is ultimately right, and our technology and science can not prevent our population from stabilizing at a set amount, then Capitalism is dead.
2. It is anti-religious. Almost every religion in the world preaches procreation. The idea has always been that the religion that has the most recruits will eventually become the ULTIMATE Religion. Which is the goal of course.
By Steven Duke Editor, One Planet, BBC World Service
LIVING ON A CROWDED EARTH
Current world population – 6.8bn
Net growth per day – 218,030
Forecast made for 2040 – 9bn
Source: US Census Bureau
There are already too many people living on Planet Earth, according to one of most influential science advisors in the US government.
Nina Fedoroff told the BBC One Planet programme that humans had exceeded the Earth’s “limits of sustainability”.
Dr Fedoroff has been the science and technology advisor to the US secretary of state since 2007, initially working with Condoleezza Rice.
Under the new Obama administration, she now advises Hillary Clinton.
“We need to continue to decrease the growth rate of the global population; the planet can’t support many more people,” Dr Fedoroff said, stressing the need for humans to become much better at managing “wild lands”, and in particular water supplies.
Pressed on whether she thought the world population was simply too high, Dr Fedoroff replied: “There are probably already too many people on the planet.”
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3. OverPopulation is very male. Knowing that OverPopulation must end is very women centered. One of the most mysogynist impulses is religion’s and men’s impulse to control a woman’s womb. When women control their womb they produce 2 or 3 children which is just about right for their health and just about right for the planet. But over procreation has been the norm for the last 300 years and we are about to reap it’s wind.
Think the population explosion is over? Think again.
On or about October 12, 1999, human population is expected to reach 6 billion. While it took until about 1800 to reach the first billion, the trip from 5 billion to 6 will have required a mere 12 years. Those born in 1930 will have seen humankind triple within their lifetime.
That makes all the more surprising the strange take of the national media, which over the past few years have been full of stories like “The Population Explosion Is Over” (The New York Times Magazine) or “Now the Crisis Is Global Underpopulation” (Orange County Register). These contrarian stories are based on two recent demographic trends: fertility in nearly all developed nations has fallen below the population-stabilizing “replacement” rate (2.1 children per woman, where mortality is low), and fertility is declining in most of the developing world. These trends led the United Nations to revise its population projections, reflecting a slower rate of growth than previously forecast.
“Slower,” however, does not mean slow. At the current global growth rate, 1.5 million people–roughly a new metropolitan Milwaukee–are added every week. Despite fertility declines, birthrates in much of the world remain high. For example, Guatemala’s fertility is 5.1 children per woman, Laos and Pakistan’s 5.6, and Iraq’s 5.7. And those are not even the high end of the spectrum: Afghanistan’s fertility rate is 6.1. The 43 nations of East, West, and Central Africa average 6.0, 6.2, and 6.3 children per woman, respectively. Countries that have reduced their birthrate to three or four children per woman are also growing very rapidly. This is partly because of “population momentum,” in which earlier high fertility yields a large proportion of young people. Even fertility rates fractionally above replacement can perpetuate rapid growth.
What if every nation’s fertility stayed at its present level? Human population would exceed 50 billion by the year 2100–if the earth could support that many.
The UN “medium” projections (perhaps the most realistic) now assume that fertility in developing nations will fall to about 2.2 children per woman over roughly the next 30 years. Even so, world population would reach 8.9 billion by 2050. The 2.9 billion gain would itself equal the world’s entire human population in 1957.
Most future growth will occur in the most distressed regions of the earth, many of which are already experiencing severe deforestation, water shortages, and massive soil erosion. In the medium projections, sub-Saharan Africa’s present population of 630 million will more than double to 1.5 billion by 2050. By that time, Afghanistan, Egypt, Iraq, and Pakistan will also more than double, as will Bolivia, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Paraguay. Bangladesh will grow by two-thirds, and India will increase by more than half a billion persons to 1.5 billion.
4. OverPopulation harbors everyone’s worst fears about “State” control. That we will be prohibited to breed “for our own good” and that only the rich shall have kids. Which would your rather have a human die off of 6 billion people or a little self control?? But we are past that now. The die off will happen and the real issue is “what do we do when humans become food”…and once we get over the crash how do we stabilize the population. Many world leaders are thinking about this now. Shouldn’t you?
Overpopulation does not depend only on the size or density of the population, but on the ratio of population to available sustainable resources. If a given environment has a population of 10 individuals, but there is food or drinking water enough for only 9, then in a closed system where no trade is possible, that environment is overpopulated; if the population is 100 but there is enough food, shelter, and water for 200 for the indefinite future, then it is not overpopulated. Overpopulation can result from an increase in births, a decline in mortality rates due to medical advances, from an increase in immigration, or from an unsustainablebiome and depletion of resources. It is possible for very sparsely-populated areas to be overpopulated, as the area in question may have a meager or non-existent capability to sustain human life (e.g. the middle of the Sahara Desert or Antarctica).
The resources to be considered when evaluating whether an ecological niche is overpopulated include clean water, clean air, food, shelter, warmth, and other resources necessary to sustain life. If the quality of human life is addressed, there may be additional resources considered, such as medical care, education, proper sewage treatment and waste disposal. Overpopulation places competitive stress on the basic life sustaining resources, leading to a diminished quality of life.:}
Well that depends on your perspective. Americans are so used to not calculating the energy that goes into making things that they act like they appear “by magic”. But they require a lot of energy to make and presented with that evidence people might forgo a bunch of “stuff”, objectives, the old material accumulations, valuable possessions and all that.
1. Coal produces what percentage of America’s electricity?
50%. Coal is a dirty 19th century technology, yet still produces half of our electricity. France, in comparison, produces more than 80% of its electricity from carbon-free nuclear power.
After visiting the border we were taken to the site of an abandoned open pit iron mine. With prices increasing, several companies are considering reopening the mine.
Today, 1984, most of the steel mills in the United States have either phased out or merged with foreign steel mills. — A very sad state of affairs, and leaving millions of steel workers unemployed. — The steel mills exploited the immigrants when they came to this country. — The steel mills made their fortunes and failed to modernize their plants. — They phased them out and invested in foreign plants — exploited those workers and then dumped their steel into this country, and making another fortune. — Yes, I know that this is a free country, and corporations can do what they want with their money, but I always felt that there was a moral obligation on the part of the steel mills, (and other corporations) to re-invest in America.
We just paid 11,000 $$$ for a new metal roof from the lovely people at Pro Max in Decatur, IL. Thanks Dean! We could have gotten the same roof in asphalt for 7,000 or 8,000 $$$s. Some people would say that is a negative right there. But what is 4 or 5,000 $$s among friends when the life of the roof could easily be 50 years?. Not only that but it lowers your homeowners insurance enough that the payback times must be in like 5 years. Especially with how much it can save in energy consumption:
Americans spend about $40 billion annually to air condition buildings — one-sixth of all electricity generated in this country.
Why choose ENERGY STAR reflective roofing for your building?
ENERGY STAR qualified roof products reflect more of the sun’s rays. This can lower roof surface temperature by up to 100F, decreasing the amount of heat transferred into a building.
ENERGY STAR qualified roof products can help reduce the amount of air conditioning needed in buildings, and can reduce peak cooling demand by 10–15 percent.
How does roof insulation relate to ENERGY STAR labeled roof products?
The ENERGY STAR energy-efficiency criteria do not include a specification for roof insulation. However, in addition to reflectivity, roof insulation (measured by the R-value) plays an important role in building energy consumption for heating and cooling. The colder the climate, the greater the need for a higher R-value to ensure that less heat is lost from the building envelope. To determine the minimum R-value for a given location, refer to the International Energy.
by the Cool Metal Roofing Coalition
Patrick Bush, U.S. Steel; Greg Crawford, AISI; Scott Kriner, MCA; Todd Miller, Classic Products; Charles Praeger, MBMA; James Robinson, Architectural Metals Systems; Robert Scichili, BASF; Lee Shoemaker, MBMA
Last updated: 02-13-2007
Introduction
Metal roofing has been available and utilized as a roofing material for centuries. Metal roofing is available in a wide variety of substrates, colors, textures, and profiles. Though diverse in appearance, metal roofing has many common attributes such as durability, recycled content, recyclability, fire resistance, low weight, and low life-cycle cost.
Depending upon the surface finish, cool metal roofing can provide enhanced energy efficiency with its solar reflectance and infrared emittance properties. In fact, the solar reflectance and infrared emittance of a metal roof can be engineered to meet the climate requirements of the building. Cool metal roofing can provide the desired high reflectance and low emittance in climates where heating loads prevail. Cool metal roofing can also provide the desired high reflectance and high emittance where cooling loads dominate. Cool metal roofing easily meets the requirements of the EPA’s Energy Star® program. Cool metal roofing is also eligible for other cool roof incentive programs:}
Out of the box, metal roof cost can seem astronomical when comparing it to a traditional asphalt shingle roof. But to just compare absolute material cost and no other factors is not comparing “apples to apples”. Metal roofing does not get its cost effectiveness from its materials. To better understand the expense, we are more apt to examine the differences in an asphalt roof versus a metal one.
Asphalt always looks like a bargain. At approximately one third of the metal roof cost and warranty slapped on the package boasting twenty years or better, it seems clear to the uninformed that an asphalt roof will provide the same performance at a fraction of the payout. Over our time, warranties have become more a tool for marketing than a display of quality. We, as consumers, take it as a company standing behind their product for a specified amount of time but the details are in the small print. Don’t take it wrong, there are a lot of great warranties out there but it’s key to understand their limitations and fine print when taking warranties into account.
Upon further examination, we see that most shingle warranties do not cover the shingles to their claimed lifespan. Instead, the company heavily pro rates the value so if and when you were ever to file a warranty claim, you would not recover the amount of the initial product. Also, these warranties do not cover the cost of labor of the initial job or replacement.
The second biggest myth that homeowners face when comparing metal roof cost to asphalt are the effects of the environment has on them both. Your climate can bring some of the harshest conditions we could ever imagine. Scorching heat, hail, rain, sleet, snow, tornadoes, wildfires, and hurricanes are some of the environmental conditions we face in the United States. As these conditions get more extreme, the more asphalt shingles fail and the more often they will need to be replaced, thus increasing ownership costs and maintenance requirements.
A roof has a significant impact on the energy use of a building. As a result, building owners and their architects have discovered that it pays to specify building products such as “cool metal roofs” to help avoid unwanted heat build-up inside the building and to help ensure maximum energy conservation. Buildings consume one-third of all energy and two-thirds of all electricity generated in the U.S. But, commercial metal roofs with heat-deflecting coatings and finishes can drastically lower the energy consumption rate by reducing cooling loads. In the process, these roofs can save building owners up to 40 percent in heating and cooling energy costs, perhaps more if used in conjunction with insulation under the roof surface, according to the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
At the same time, highly emissive roofs benefit the environment by lowering urban air temperatures, thereby helping to reduce smog. They also offer a solution for communities searching for ways to control the demand for electricity.
Cool Roof Performance Depends on Reflectance, Emittance
The performance of a cool roof depends on two properties: solar reflectance and infrared emittance. Solar reflectance indicates the percent of sunlight reflected off the roof. Emittance indicates the percent of the sun’s heat re-radiated from the roof to its surroundings.
Available unpainted, with baked-on paint finishes, or with granular-coated surfaces, cool metal roofing can reflect up to 70 percent of the sun’s rays, resulting in less heat transfer to the interior of the building. The emittance of painted or granular-coated metal roofing can be as high as 90 percent.
Just in time for the rain storm tonight. Tonight’s rain [hence the dreary looking photos – I’ll take better pictures when the sun comes out] will fall on a new sustainable metal stone coated roof. Justin read that this type of process was developed in WWII. The reflective metal roofs on buildings were attracting enemy planes so folks put tar on the metal and over that ground up stone or sand. Such stone coated metal roofs are commonly used in New Zealand. Jules’first homestead in the rural South Island (NZ) had a corrugated metal roof which collected and diverted the rainwater into a huge cement cistern. Now we have an “upgraded” metal roof and we once again plan to harvest the rainfall and it use to irrigate the garden.
For those of you who have been following the roof saga since summer you are probably glad you won’t read about the “R” word anymore. Truthfully, this project wasn’t as easy as you would think – believe me. We spent many sleepless nights and stressful days agonizing over this decision. Looking at the 4? thick folder of all the types of roofing that we looked at Justin would comment “choosing a roof is like getting married, the only thing is you can’t get divorced if it doesn’t work out.”
Time for high fives, pats on the back and hugs all around – time to celebrate !!!! A friend of ours dropped by yesterday with a bag of goodies to “celebrate your new roof.” How kind and thoughtful! Of course he couldn’t help but admire and question in amazement “that’s metal?” Speaking of admiring these last few days you’ll find us pausing as we work in the garden just to admire the roof.
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But you say how much energy does it consume vs. a shingle roof. I don’t know, but I will try to find out for tomorrow.
As always please read the complete articles and attachments above for many more details.
Every gardener gets to the point where the produce is overwhelming. I am not even talking about having more garden than you need. I mean I DO have more garden than I need BUT even one zucchini plant can fill a bushel basket towards the end of the season. Even a few tomato plants can leave you with a pile every week. It is the damnedest thing too, you can’t give them away because everyone else has the same problem…well you caaaan give them away but more about that later because it is kinda beside the point.
We are planting this garden to save energy. That is because corporate america has forced a food system down our throats that literally has us drinking oil (processing and transportation) for inferior food products. The additives alone consume enough energy to power America for years. What does that have to do with my produce? Fall will fall and winter will set in and then where are you going to get your produce from? That’s right the freedom from the corporate foodchain evaporates as you trudge back to the store dreaming of those green beans you gave to your mom. Who love’s yah now baby? So we need a way to store this produce until we need it. Basically we have to combat rot:
Yes that is right just like poop, rot is stinky stuff that is hard work. But rot is our friend when it comes to poop on the garden and our compost pile. Rot here is bad though. There are many ways to combat food rot, that is to preserve the food until you need it later. You can dry, cook, or chill your food and that will slow down the mold and bacterial processes that degrade your food. Basically what we are talking about is securing the nutrients.
The Oldest method of preserving food is to dry it. This was brought home to me when my wife went mushroom hunting last spring. She took one of my string bags with her. Months later I used the bag for something else and this cute little morel fell out and hit the floor. It was perfectly preserved and hard as a rock. I guarantee that if I put it in water it would reconstitute a mushroom fit for cooking. The fancy pants phrase for taking the water out is dehydrating and the 37$ phrase for putting the water back is reconstituting or re-hydrating even worse. I prefer solar drying. The ingenuity of this is it is solar inputs (growing the food) and solar outputs (preserving the food). Not a drop of oil is spilled.There is a loss of nutritional value and taste/palatability in this or any preservation process, though there are some herbs that are actually better dried.
Drying is the oldest method of preserving food. The early American settlers dried foods such as corn, apple slices, currants, grapes, and meat. Compared with other methods, drying is quite simple. In fact, you may already have most of the equipment on hand. Dried foods keep well because the moisture content is so low that spoilage organisms cannot grow.
Drying will never replace canning and freezing because these methods do a better job of retaining the taste, appearance, and nutritive value of fresh food. But drying is an excellent way to preserve foods that can add variety to meals and provide delicious, nutritious snacks. One of the biggest advantages of dried foods is that they take much less storage space than canned or frozen foods.
Recommended methods for canning and freezing have been determined by research and widespread experience. Home drying, however, does not have firmly established procedures. Food can be dried several ways, for example, by the sun if the air is hot and dry enough, or in an oven or dryer if the climate is humid.
With the renewed interest in gardening and natural foods and because of the high cost of commercially dried products, drying foods at home is becoming popular again. Drying is not difficult, but it does take time and a lot of attention. Although there are different drying methods, the guidelines remain the same.
Although solar drying is a popular and very inexpensive method, Illinois does not have a suitable climate for it. Dependable solar dehydration of foods requires 3 to 5 consecutive days when the temperature is 95 degrees F. and the humidity is very low. The average relative humidity in central Illinois on days with 95 degrees F. temperatures is usually 86 percent. Solar drying is thus not feasible.
Home-food dehydrators fall into two categories: those with stackable trays, and those constructed of a rigid box with removable shelves. Size is a factor; most fit on a countertop, but larger models are free-standing and require more space. Some models have base-mounted fans that move hot air vertically; one has a rear-mounted fan for moving air horizontally; yet another uses convection drying, with no fan at all.
I put these four different models through their paces during the peak of the humid harvest season here in Iowa. Each dehydrator dried lots of herbs and vegetables with comparable ease, but the fleshy crops, like tomatoes and peaches, put the dehydrators to the ultimate test, determining their maximum capacity, efficiency and overall effectiveness.
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All of the dehydrators I tested have their appropriate applications, and all performed well under most conditions. Determine your needs, space limitations and budget before you buy. When it comes down to preserving food flavors and quickly drying fruits, vegetables and meats, especially when fully loaded and under humid conditions, the Excalibur Large Garden model won my highest praise. Its rear-mounted fan, in my experience, simply did the best job.
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There are some special concerns with fruit:
Food Drying Principles
Dehydrating your own produce does require time and some knowledge of food drying principles.
Preparation
Select the best fruit and vegetables! As with canning and freezing, dehydrated foods are only as good as the fresh fruit or vegetables. When selecting fruits and vegetables for dehydration, choose ones that are ripe, unbruised and at peak-eating quality.
Prepare foods to be dehydrated as you want them to be served. Apples, for example, may be sliced, cut into rings, or pureed for fruit leather.
Keep pieces uniform in size and thickness for even drying . Slices cut 1/8 to 1/4-inch in thickness will dry more quickly than thicker pieces.
Some foods should be washed before drying. Foods such as herbs, berries and seedless grapes need only be washed before dehydrating.
After Drying (for fruit only)
Allow dried FRUIT (not vegetables) time to “condition”: When dry, allow fruit to “condition” for four to 10 days before packaging for storage. The moisture content of home dried fruit should be about 20 percent. When the fruit is taken from the dehydrator, the remaining moisture may not be distributed equally among the pieces because of their size or their location in the dehydrator. Conditioning is the process used to equalize the moisture. It reduces the risk of mold growth.
To condition the fruit, take the dried fruit that has cooled and pack it loosely in plastic or glass jars.
Seal the containers and let them stand for 7 to 10 days. The excess moisture in some pieces will be absorbed by the drier pieces.
Shake the jars daily to separate the pieces and check the moisture condensation. If condensation develops in the jar, return the fruit to the dehydrator for more drying.
After conditioning, package and store the fruit as described below.
of the hot garbage they produce, the quicker we get rid of them. Geologic storage is the only hope. I know I am supposed to be posting about gardening…but somethings I just gotta get off my chest..!
for used radioactive fuel rods piling up near power plants
By Michael Hawthorne |Tribune reporter
March 11, 2009
In a pool of water just a football field away from Lake Michigan, about 1,000 tons of highly radioactive fuel from the scuttled Zion Nuclear Power Station is waiting for someplace else to spend a few thousand years.
The wait just got longer.
President Barack Obama‘s proposed budget all but kills the Yucca Mountain project, the controversial site where the U.S. nuclear industry’s spent fuel rods were supposed to end up in permanent storage deep below the Nevada desert. There are no other plans in the works, meaning the waste for now will remain next to Zion and 104 other reactors scattered across the country.
Obama has said too many questions remain about whether storing waste at Yucca Mountain is safe, and his decision fulfills a campaign promise. But it also renews nagging questions about what to do with the radioactive waste steadily accumulating in 35 states.
With seven nuclear plant sites, Illinois relies more heavily on nuclear power and has a larger stockpile of spent fuel than any other state. Besides Zion near Lake Michigan, plants storing waste are sited along the Illinois, Rock and Mississippi Rivers.Customers of ComEd and other nuclear utilities have shelled out $10 billion to develop the Yucca Mountain site in spare-change-size charges tacked on to electric bills. Most of that money will have been wasted, and experts forecast that billions more will be spent on damage suits from utilities that counted on the federal government to come up with a burial ground
So you have your soil test back. Hopefully you have planted several plantings of your favorite stuff to eat so that they will continue to produce for as long as the weather will allow. In a totally fluke year I had some spinach that lasted for a year and well into the next spring.
It is time to start both improving your soil and planting your “main” crops. The soil test says that you “need something”. Now I am not going to cover all of the soil additives but usually there will be somekind of chemical deficiency. Here you run smack dab into your modern industrial farming dilemma. Don’t worry, this will only last for a year. At the end of World War II the world had a total surplus of explosives and poison gas. What to do? Well they converted the explosives to nitrogen fertilizer and they turned the poison gas into herbicides and pesticides. Farmers fell in love with them and well here we are no longer loving our food. NO2 (commonly called Nox) is a much more potent greenhouse gas than CO2 It is estimated that when farmers fertilize there fields they castoff more greenhouses gases than the entire world’s transportation fleet:
“The public does not yet know much about nitrogen, but in many ways it is as big an issue as carbon, and due to the interactions of nitrogen and carbon, makes the challenge of providing food and energy to the world’s peoples without harming the global environment a tremendous challenge.”
The speaker is University of Virginia environmental sciences professor James Galloway (quoted in an AP piece), talking about his paper published (abstract here) in the latest Science.
According to Galloway, “We are accumulating reactive nitrogen in the environment at alarming rates, and this may prove to be as serious as putting carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.”
Nothing new here that I can tell at first glance. (I’d love to read the paper, but it’s password-protected.) I agree, though, that nitrogen’s role in climate change is way under-discussed.
The same issue of Science also contains an article about how synthesized nitrogen affects the oceans — specifically their role as greenhouse-gas sinks.
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So what to do about nutrients? Well it all comes down to crap. That’s right manure, excrement or poo. Not your’s. Though there is a case to be made for that, the small scale gardener is hard pressed to deal with human crap. In fact there are better fertilizers around. But lets take a step backwards, in the “old days” of sustainable farming the farmers had all kinds of animals, goats, cows, horses, mules, and chickens to name a few. They would collect this shit and straw from their animal’s housing and their yards and toss it in a pile. At the end of the growing season they would take all this manure and spread it on their field. Over winter it would break down. Then in the spring when they plowed they would turn it into the soil and “there you have it” fertile soil.
ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION SERIES
ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY
Agriculture & Natural Resources
EXTENSION ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION, AUBURN UNIVERSITY, AL 36849-5647
Using Livestock Manure As Fertilizer
ANR-723, 1992. By Charles Mitchell,Extension Agronomist, Agronomy, Auburn University
Livestock manure is an excellent fertilizer for the soil, providing such nutrients as nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. Manure application can also benefit the soil’s water holding capacity and tilth. When using livestock manure, however, one should follow good management practices in order to avoid hazards to the crop and the environment. Sources Of Livestock ManurePoultry waste, cattle manure, and swine manure are all used as organic fertilizers in Alabama. They are all excellent sources for nutrients; however, nutrient compositions will vary among operations and over time. Users of manures from broiler houses, lagoons, or feedlots should have an idea of the total and available nutrient content before they are applied to land.Possible ProblemsBecause nitrate-nitrogen can leach into groundwater and both nitrogen and phosphorus can erode or runoff into streams, manure applications should be based strictly on the nutrient requirement of the crop. Therefore, the soil should be tested to determine nutrient needs for the crop to be grown.Good Management PracticesThe following precautions should be taken in order to prevent nutrient losses through leaching, erosion, and runoff:
Eliminate excessive applications.
Time applications appropriately, rotate crops,
and use winter cover crops. Apply manure when it will be utilized by the crop.
Incorporate or inject the applications into the
soil. Do not leave the manure on the soil surface.
Do not apply manure to steep slopes or during
periods prone to erosion and runoff.
Document the amounts and contents of material applied.
Protect soil from erosion.
Use filter strips or buffer zones between fields
and nearby streams
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So when I end my growing season, I take a couple of big tubs to a local animal farm and I get free poo and straw from the farmer. Take it to my garden and toss it on. Big draw backs? It’s hard work and it stinks. But so what? Why did I say that this will be a problem for you only a year? Well because you have started a compost pile (hint hint) and you have located a farmer (hint hint). What to do now for you though. Well, you can go get fertilizer for one year and tell yourself everyone has to start somewhere. Or you can buy composted manure. Here again you have be to careful. Transportation and its oil use is the real issue so read the labels. Buy the composted manured produced the closest to you. If you are lucky you can find some poo from your own state. Now, if you have started your seeds inside and it’s time to plant YOUR plants. Or if you depend on a garden center it’s time to plant THEIR plants. Try to stagger them just like you did for your early crops so that they will produce for the entire growing season.
Oh, and for awhile you maybe a standard “row” gardener but there are more efficient ways to use your land:
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Barbara Wilde, L’Atelier Vert,Everything French Gardening, frenchgardening.com
This juvenile bed in a French garden shows how closely young plants are crowded together in intensive planting.
Crowding a bunch of plants in a narrow plot might not seem like a good idea at first. After all, it runs counter to everything you’ve learned about gardening. But this specialized method of planting – called French intensive gardening – is actually a tried-and-true technique to maximize your harvest in a small space. Even if you’ve only got a tiny plot, you can get amazing results if you develop it properly.
As you might’ve guessed by its name, French intensive gardening evolved in Europe. Its purpose is to make the most of limited growing space. Known as “square-foot gardening” in the US, it’s also the preferred method of many growers who want extra produce for themselves or to share with friends and neighbors.
OK so you have picked the site for your garden. You have picked the size of your garden. You have turned the soil for your garden. You have sent your soil off to be tested by the Ag extension office (if you are in the USA). There are a couple of things that you can plant now that are soil indifferent while you are waiting for the test results. The list includes most roots, like carrots, potatoes, turnips, radishes, and parsnips to name a few. All the roots care about is that the soil is well worked – no stones, no clumps and broken up deep. The onion family will grow almost anywhere any time. This is also true of the leafy vegetables. From lettuce to kale to spinach they all can be planted early and often. Sandy soil is the one thing that negates all that I have said so far. Because it drains fast and has few nutrients. But you can see whether your soil is too sandy just by looking at it.
Today I want to discuss 2 factors to keep in mind at this stage of your gardening, besides saying that you will make mistakes and nature will deal you a bad hand at times. It happens to all of us. 1. Assess your tastes. Tastes change over time and if you have never had the plant that you are growing FRESH, get fresh and try it. In my case, I had never had fresh spinach. I had grown to quickly hate the canned spinach dished out by mom and the school cafeteria, thus I thought all spinach tasted like that. Boy was I wrong! Fresh spinach rocks. I have gotten to the point where I cook with it alot too but it takes practice.
(CBS) When the editors of Taste of Home magazine asked their readers for submissions for their Garden Bounty recipe contest, they were inundated with all manner of delicious dishes, from appetizers to salads to vegetarian entrees to fruit-laden desserts.
After reviewing all the recipes, they found their winner: Kathryn Pehl, the third 2007 Taste of Home contest winners to appear on The Early Show. Katie hails from Prescott, Ariz., and the judges could not resist her Spaghetti Squash with Red Sauce, especially her flavorful tomato sauce, which is served over spaghetti squash instead of the usual pasta.
If you’re interested in participating in a Taste of Home recipe competition, the next contest is “Corn is King.” You can also still submit a recipe for Slow Cookers. To get more information, click here.
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2. Every “GOOD” gardener will tell you to buy plants at a greenhouse or a garden center for great production. But think about it. The main reason this Site is discussing gardening is to SAVE energy. If the greenhouse grew their plants from seed, fine. But a lot of places truck their plants in…and that is kinda missing the point. I urge people to start there plants from seed where and whenever they can:
by miss gard(e)ner Inhabit Hardiness Zones 5 through 8?
Ready to start your growing season?
The much anticipated moment has arrived.
Planning
Keep the following in mind when planning your garden:
Climate: What grows well in your region? Space limitations: How extensive will your garden be? Domestic habits: What would you like to eat from your garden? Production levels: How many tomatoes do you really need? Aesthetic desires: How would you like the space to look?
Make a list of your top ten most desired veggies. Start with them.
Seed Sowing Schedule
This seed starting chart will help you figure out exactly when to plant different seeds.
First, determine your region’s frost-free date. Ask your local plant nursery or gardener neighbor. Alternatively, check out–www.almanac.com. The reality of weather makes an `exact’ date rarely exact. Keep in mind the forecasts for your region. A colder, longer winter? Push the date forward a few weeks. As they say, better safe then sorry.
There are several ways in which compost heaps can be made and various theories exist as to the way in which they should be treated. There are two important points which are essential for successful compost making and these are adequate drainage and aeration and sufficient moisture.
A compost heap is a necessary feature in the average garden. It provides a means of collecting the surprising amount of waste material which is gathered together during regular garden maintenance and it supplies the garden, or rather, the soil, with valuable organic matter. This organic matter fulfils several vital functions. It helps to improve the structure of the soil, especially the heavy clay types and the light sandy kinds. It encourages a vigorous root system and also acts as a sponge to retain moisture. Light, sandy soils tend to dry out rather badly and a high humus content is necessary to overcome this problem. Well-rotted composted vegetable waste can be used as a mulch around plants and between rows of vegetables where it will smother small annual weeds and prevent the surface soil from drying out badly.
Collect rainwater and use a watering can instead of a hose. If you prefer to use a hosepipe, fit a trigger nozzle to control the flow. Water Butts for your garden can be purchased at Greenfingers Trading Ltd
Water your garden in the cool of the early morning or evening. This will reduce the amount of water lost to evaporation.
If you water plants and shrubs too often their roots will remain shallow, weakening the plant. Leave them alone until they show signs of wilting.
Regularly weed and hoe your garden, to ensure that watering helps plants and not weeds.
Plant flowers and shrubs that thrive in hot and dry conditions such as thyme, evening primrose, rock rose, Californian poppy, pinks, lavender, buddleia and hebes.
Mulches such as wood chips, bark and gravel help to prevent water evaporation and also suppress weed growth, saving you both water and time spent weeding.
Lawns can survive long periods of dry weather if the grass is not cut too short. Even if the grass turns brown, it will quickly recover after a few days of rain.
Garden sprinklers can use as much water in an hour as a family of four uses in a day. If you use a sprinkler, many water companies require you to have a water meter fitted.
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This can become a lifestyle if you let it and I do.
Plant a garden. You think I am kidding right. BUT if everyone on the planet who does not have a vegetable garden planted one, the world would change. Most products that you buy in the grocery store in America travel 1,500 miles…That’s a lot of gasoline products. All the produce, herbs and flowers you grow soak up carbon dioxide, especially sweet corn. Plus if you compost your garden waste you put that carbon directly into the soil where it will not be released. Plant a tree while you are at it. If all 7 billion people in the world planted a tree our problems would temporarily be over. Young trees soak up an incredible amount of carbon as they grow. Not to mention the health and well being benefits from working out doors and being away from modern stress inducers. Or the health benefits of eating good nutritious food. If you have kids teach them how to do it (it is no longer innate) and you will have passed along a valuable skill. Invest in an efficient refrigerator and a small efficient freezer to store your valuable products. This saves bunches too. If you are really adventurous invest in a dehydrator and a solar cooker or make your own. You save even more. By the time you are done heck you wlll amaze yourself at how much you have done. Seem impossible? NOPE, it starts with the first seed you plant. So lets get agrowing.
Getting Started:
Some of you are lucky to have year round growing conditions. As the world warms more of you will enjoy that perk. But where I live in Illinois it’s pretty much a 3 season affair. Today is March 6th and I plan on planting a row of peas and some lettuce and spinach. That will be dicey though and if we have an ice storm in April or early May it will be a wipe out. Such is life. If I get lucky I will be freezing sweet peas by the end of May. Here are some great sources for getting in the groove.
So you’ve decided to grow some veggies this year? Welcome to the club. Before you decide on what to grow or pick up a spade, you need to make some basic decisions about your garden’s location, size, and shape. Here are some things to consider.
Vegetables do best in full sun. You will get decent results with less than that, but in general strive for a site that gets at least six hours a day during the summer. Remember that sun patterns change dramatically with the seasons; a site that looks good in April may be too shady when the leaves come out.
Another factor to consider is proximity to your kitchen. You are more likely to check out your garden frequently if it is close to the house. My garden is maybe 30 feet from the kitchen door. When I need some parsley or mint, or maybe a few more tomatoes for a salad, it’s not a big deal to go out and get them.
If you have a choice, a flat area is better than a hilly one. A gently sloped site can work well, especially one that faces south or west.
What about water? You will most likely want a source close by, be it an outside tap, a rain barrel, or even a stream or pond.
Don’t despair if your lot is is very small. Even if you don’t see a way to create a separate garden area, you can probably tuck a couple of vegetable plants in somewhere: near the house or by the garage, perhaps. Or on the deck in containers.
Size and shape For a garden of moderate size, aim for 400 square feet (20×20) to 625 square feet (25×25). You’ll have enough space to grow several different crops, but not so much that you’ll be overwhelmed. If even that seems daunting, start small. You can always enlarge the space later.
Gardens are generally square or rectangular, but they don’t have to be. You may want a different configuration to take advantage of sun patterns, to work around boulders, or just for artistic reasons. The plants won’t care if they are arranged in straight lines or curves.
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Personally I pick any 10 x 20 ft area that is unshaded and jump in. Begginners should start smaller. But if you are going to grow peppers, squash, corn or tomatoes you need a lot of space. Just think, the bigger your garden the less grass to mow.
Gardening is not too complex. Almost all of us–probably in grade school–planted a seed in a cup of dirt, watered it, and watched it grow. But creating a garden that produces fresh food and flowers all season is not so elementary, especially to those who did not grow up gardening. So we’ve compiled this guide to the basics of organic gardening and the keys to success we’ve learned over the years. When you’re done reading, look at your thumb–you may see a tint of green that wasn’t there before.
No. 1 Plant Seeds
1. Make your bed. About three weeks before you are ready to plant, after the soil has dried so that it doesn’t clump when you pick up a fistful, sink a fork into the earth. Loosen it down to about 12 inches, add a half-inch layer of compost, and rake the surface of your garden until it has no weeds, dirt clumps, or big stones. Over the next three weeks, pull any weeds that come up. Raking and then letting the soil sit for a few weeks brings out weed seeds that were lurking in the soil.
For more information on garden beds, check out this article about raised beds and this video to see how to build a raised bed, or watch this video to see how to turn your lawn into a garden bed.
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I am not going to copy all of this stuff. go and read it yourself. If you have never done it before this is essential reading:
