Citizen Power

This city, to be called “Babcock Ranch” would be a great idea if it really were a solar city, and that is the eventual plan.  It looks cool, right?  But according to the Miami Herald, it will only be a solar city by day when the sun is shining and it will get conventionally-generated energy by night.  They haven’t figured out a way to store the solar power yet.  They will though, and if the smart grid is built, it may be easier for them to do that.  Then why do it now?  Well, we  have to start somewhere.  There should be hundreds of these cities all across the country.  The sun shines everywhere, not just in the south. And some of the new photovoltaic solar power cells in development will get more energy out of less sun.   Overall, a solar powered city is a great idea!  The solar power plant, to be a big 75-megawatt plant, will be built regardless of whether the city itself will be built.  (No, it’s not built yet.)

The developers are West Palm Beach-based Kitson & Partners.    My biggest question is:  why do it in Florida, which might be under water soon?  My guess is that Florida has such a temperate climate, it won’t get too hot or cold and therefore the inhabitants will use less energy.  This is a recent headline from a major UK newspaper:

World will not meet 2C warming target, climate change experts agree

That article from the Guardian says that in the next century, the planet will warm between 4-5 degrees, bypassing the safer levels of only 2 degrees C.  That means we are on track to a world we won’t recognize, all in 100-200 years.  This rise in temperature seems small, but it’s huge on a global average scale and will lead to a devastating sea rise of between 1 meter and 2.5 meters, by current estimates.  That would put much of Florida and especially its cities near the coastline under water.  We can say goodbye to parts of  Miami and the keys and any at-sea-level city in Florida — and elsewhere — on this planet.

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Today I read that GM is looking seriously into bankruptcy.  Meanwhile, this little Segway vehicle might be what this former car giant has been reduced to.  GM might be mass-producing these soon.  It’s called the PUMA, for Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility.  Not a bad idea, but shouldn’t GM invest in something a little more serious to save itself?

This little vehicle (a prototype) will eventually use “vehicle-to-vehicle technology”, whatever that means, and supposedly be able to navigate it’s own way through tough traffic situations on regular city streets.  I don’t think this is terribly likely. It will just take one of these little things squished between a city bus and a semi truck and that will be the end of that.  They should have their own little bike path-like roads,  and in fact I can see cities accommodating tiny vehicles like that in the future.

Last week President Obama gave GM more or less an ultimatum:  shape up and make a viable plan for the future,  or no more public money loans.   That means they can and probably will go into bankruptcy and this is what should have happened a long time ago.  GM was a great car company at one point, before anyone knew what CO2 or Peak Oil even was.  Then after we knew what it was, and gas prices rose, GM continued to churn out big gas-guzzling monster SUVs and big pickups.  People wanted smaller more fuel-efficient cars in the last 20 years, but GM didn’t respond with what they wanted.  If they had, it’s possible that  hundreds of people would have lost their jobs because GM had no contingency plan.  No “Plan B”, no plans for better cars (except the EV1).    Even when they were failing and the government gave them the first two ultimatums to shape up, GM didn’t take it seriously.  Now GM is in serious danger of failing for good.  But these little Segway vehicles won’t save them.

It didn’t have to be this way!  America had electric cars in the 1930’s.  Why didn’t GM start seriously making lots of hybrid vehicles and electric cars years ago?

Well, they did. In 1996  they made a very cool-looking electric car that was wildly  popular and a best-seller, called the EV1, pictured above.

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Ken Salazar was a one-term senator from Colorado when he was nominated to be the  Interior Secretary by President Obama.  I remember at the time there was a lot of trepidation from people on the left that he wouldn’t be “progressive” enough as the new secretary.   It doesn’t make any difference to me whether he’s a “conservative” Democrat or not as long as he does a good job protecting the environment.

The Interior Department secretary is a very important job for the environment — it oversees energy resources, natural resources, drilling for fossil fuels on public lands, and oversees the country’s parks and wilderness areas.   Salazar has turned out to be very good so far, protecting a lot of wilderness in many states and showing he cares very much for the environment, as someone in this position should.  There is a good article in Rolling Stone about the accomplishments and viewpoints of Salazar so far that is definitely worth reading.  He’s not afraid to stand up to the big energy companies either, something that was completely lacking during the Bush administration.

Shortly after taking the job, Salazar canceled  77 oil and gas leases Bush authorized near Utah’s national parks, including ones that would have put oil wells in eyesight of major landmarks in the parks.  Can you imagine going to a national park and seeing oil wells nearby?  I would much rather see windmills in the distance, if anything.  Salazar also delayed the rush into offshore drilling and he said a big “NO”  to Bush’s plan for oil-shale mining in the Rocky Mountains.  Salazar’s already proven himself to be worthy of the job of Interior Secretary.

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The economy is bad everywhere. Where I live, unemployment is now about 10%.  Early last week one day when it had snowed a lot,  I was out in the backyard with my new puppy. While I was watching her, a man in his 30s walked through the alley with a shovel.  He paused when he saw me, seemed to hesitate, and then asked, “Do you need anything shoveled?”  At first I thought, “what a nice person”, even though I told him “No thanks”. Then I realized he was asking me for a job.  He was probably unemployed, and looking for a few dollars here and there shoveling snow for people in my neighborhood.  Then I felt sorry for him, but he probably wasn’t the only man trying to use the snow to get some work that day.

This recession is driving people to make money from jobs kids used to have. How many older people do you see stocking shelves at local stores, or delivering newspapers these days?  It’s really kind of depressing because you know that isn’t the type of work they were doing a year ago.  It’s hard to believe the economy will get even worse, but that’s what we hear is coming.  If it does get worse, I really fear for people, and what might happen to them.

Even so, there is optimism that the green energy and jobs revolution we were hoping for will still happen.  In fact, it could really help the situation!  Even the Wall Street Journal   has noticed that green jobs could help the economy.   I’ve noticed a few articles about environmental issues lately from their website.  And like the mayor of San Jose just said, “We’ve got to create not just green jobs but green careers.”  We need long-term green jobs to really help the economy and people, not just jobs that start now and end in a few months.  You can read a WSJ story on green jobs here.

I agree that a jobs and energy revolution should include long-term plans for a real green revolution, not just create busy jobs like repairing roads and building bridges.  That won’t even help global warming,  because it might even encourage more car traffic, and right now that’s not a good idea.  Let’s not get too carried away with transportation-related work and instead focus more on planning for what U.S. transportation should look like in 50 years.

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This is about where not  to get energy.   Look at this photo — it was once beautiful green mountains.  Appalachia mountaintop explosions still happen, caused by coal mining by large coal companies .  Huge amounts of TNT are used to blow the tops off the mountains in a few southeastern states.    Boulders and dirt roll down the rolling green mountains of Tennessee and West Virginia, and North Carolina.  This type of coal mining literally removes the tops of mountains. The results are moonscapes — miles and miles of vegetation free, flattened hills where mountains once graced the landscape.   These beautiful natural landscapes  are now literally ruined forever because of coal mining, and the irresponsibility of coal mining companies.

This is environmental devastation in so many ways.  The toxic runoff from the procedure kills wildlife and poisons drinking water.  This is nothing less than a crime.  Why do people allow this to happen?  I Love Mountains is one  activist group and website trying to change these practices.  I like promoting their site because it’s a good portal to more information on this terribly damaging coal mining in an area of the U.S. that not too many people know about.  The coal plant nearest to me, in South Dakota, uses coal from this area of the U.S.

Last Christmas millions of tons of coal fly ash from a holding pond in Tennessee broke through its levees and devastated the area around the holding pond for miles and miles. This created a disaster the scope of which is still being discovered.  The sheer volume of this coal slurry itself was 48 times the size of the Exxon Valdez oil spill of about 20 years ago.   At least two rivers, and the groundwater, were contaminated with many different pollutants,  including radioactivity,  and arsenic and barium.   This spill was a major catastrophe, and yet when is the last time you heard the mainstream media in the U.S. write about this spill in terms of catastrophe, or in any way at all?  It’s not yet been cleaned up. Not even close.   When is the last time you heard the mainstream media talk about coal waste as radioactive, or about mountain top removal, or about how damaging coal mining is?  Oil shale mining is nearly as bad.

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Let’s get back to the basics, and look at the differences between fossil fuels, clean fuels, renewable energy, and alternative energy.

There are many types of real renewable energy.  Renewable energy means it comes from a source that renews, and will not run out — a natural source that is more or less infinite and free,  like energy from the sun and the wind and water.  Non-renewable energy comes from oil and gas and coal, and because they are running out, they are finite.  Makes sense, right?  We might have less than 50 years worth of coal left.  It’s finite.  So is oil and gas. We might have reached the other side of “peak oil” already and as demand is increasing due to the short-sightedness of car makers and humans in general, oil, gas, and coal will probably all run out in a few decades as use increases. That’s just a fact.   These things will run out during the lifetimes of many people alive right now.  And then what?  We might as well start to use real renewable energy now and save what oil is left for plastics and other things future generations will need it for. Oil is used in hundreds of products, not just for energy.

It may surprise some people that renewable energy does not mean “natural gas” as the current misinformation from some politicians (Nancy Pelosi) and oil men billionaires (T. Boone Pickens) would have you believe.  Even more astounding, the new GOP budget contains much talk of renewable energy as being offshore oil drilling!  It’s on page 11 if you care to download that ridiculous document from the GOP website**.  (See quote below.)

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Now that April fool’s day is almost over, I can assume that no one will be fooled by the above picture, which appeared on the Whole Foods website.  Yes, it was a joke, but I bet someone would buy it if it wasn’t!   Too bad the site will remove the silly stories tomorrow, because they were pretty funny.  Including stories like “When milk goes bad: 12 daring recipes“.  While I was enjoying the funny stuff on their site I was listening to a radio show (the Jeff Farias show, which isn’t exactly on the radio) that  mentioned sour gas.   I wasn’t familiar with this so I had to look it up and I was disgusted.  Sour gas isn’t something your grandmother produces after a large meal.  Sour gas is not a joke!    It’s a deadly, toxic gas that can kill people.  And yeah, it’s related to the drilling of natural gas, the very fossil fuel that T. Boone Pickens and his “army” of tens of thousands are pushing on you and me and the rest of the world.  They want us to drive around with this in our gas tanks, or at least fill the gas tanks of large trucks with it.  Why?  So T. Boone Pickens can make a lot of money, that’s why.  Unfortunately, natural gas isn’t going to help us with climate change or our energy problems in the long run.

A sour gas well produces deadly hydrogen sulfide during the process of drilling for natural gas. This is perfectly fine with many natural gas energy companies.  They have no problem sickening people with this deadly gas.  “Sour gas” by the way is the actual term for this gas and yes, it stinks, as its name implies..   Here is the wikipedia explanation of what sour gas is, exactly.

And it is making people sick.  One family in Texas especially has a problem and has become sick from sour gas drillling,  because they don’t own the mineral rights to their 100 acres of land. So there are 4 natural gas “sour gas” wells on their property.  I can’t imagine how angry I’d be if some energy company put 4 wells on my property and their drilling was making my family sick on top of that.  Hydrogen sulfide, or H2S, is supposedly burned off during the process of drilling for natural gas, but in this case, in January,  the hydrogen sulfide leak lasted 13 days.  The legal limit is 10 days. So if you live in Texas and some big corporation wants to drill for natural gas on your property, they can sicken your family with deadly hydrogen sulfide, legally, for 10 whole days. 

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What next?  My jaw dropped when I saw this thing on ABC news the other night.  It’s called the Hotelicopter.  What’s unclear is whether it’s a hotel first or a helicopter first; a joke; or just incredible excess for the filthy rich who have run out of things to throw their money at!

The buzz online is that this is an April Fool’s joke, and maybe that’s true.    ABC news didn’t mention that it was, and their story on it aired 2-3 days ago.  They reported the story as fact.  Why did people assume it was a joke?  Despite peak oil, despite high gas prices, despite global warming, people continue to build massive cars and other machines that run on fossil fuels.   If you’ve ever seen some of the most massive SUVs, they also look like jokes.

They test flew the world’s biggest airplane last year,  so I would not be terribly surprised that they would now plan to fly the world’s biggest helicopter.  I see no actual evidence that this monstrosity isn’t real.  People who are swimming in money have a peculiar talent for ignoring what’s going on around them in the world.  People starving on the streets of America and global warming nearing tipping points?   People without health care, 5 million jobs lost in the last couple of years — Who cares, let’s stay overnight in this  hotelicopter  and  fly 700 miles for the heck of it!

Even so, I have to admit it’s kind of amazing — if it is  real.

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We’ve all seen science fiction book covers that depict cityscapes of the future.  They usually include some type of flying cars or sometimes floating neighborhoods or even floating cities.  Now a form of windmill is being designed that will “float” — or be suspended high in the atmosphere, where the wind is steadily strong, and where they could gather the most power.  It’s science-fiction-y but very basic at the same time.

This windmill, pictured below, is in the prototype stage.  This project is called high altitude jetstream windpower, and it’s wind energy that literally captures the jetstream.  Why do they want to use the jetstream?  Because mid-level wind at a high altitude in the jetstream produces winds of 125-160 mph, so it’s like capturing the power of  a hurricane.

Early designs for these windmills were more like kites. In fact, this type of power has gone through many variations.  All versions consist of some type of flying wind-gathering apparatus that is tethered to something (obviously, or they’d fly away) and they need to be attached to a grid or energy storage facility of some type.  Some versions have been designed to be built out of kevlar, aluminum, or carbon nanotubes.  All the materials used have to be super-strong but very lightweight.
Advantages and disadvantages of this type of power generation include:

Advantages and Disadvantages over Present Ground Turbines (Wind Mills)

Advantages:
* Less visual pollution
* Avoids noise pollution
* Eliminates impact on wildlife
* No CO2 emissions
* Makes maximum use of wind power

Disadvantages:
* High maintenance cost
* Dangerous if they were to fall (yikes!)
* Planes could crash into them, as jets often follow the jet stream

Earth Hour is Saturday, March 28, and it seems like such a nice idea, doesn’t it?  Turn off your lights for an hour, starting at 8:30 pm where ever on earth you are.  This is a world-wide “event”.   The purpose is not really to save energy, but to raise awareness.  It seems kind of a round-about way to raise awareness.  Why not write about climate change, talk to people about global warming and energy,  instead of sitting in the dark?  Well, the dark can be fun for an hour, I guess.  You could always pretend it’s 1809 instead of 2009.  But many people will light candles, because it’s the middle of their evening and it will be dark.  Put down those candles!   They emit more carbon than burning your lights the usual way, with electricity.

It would be better to plan on taking a nap for an hour, or just hang out with no lights, or use a flashlight, or maybe only light one candle, because candles are extremely inefficient light, and they are basically pure hydrocarbon.   Candles are carbon-negative .  Sure, I love candles too.  Candlelight is romantic and glowy, making everything look nice, but candlelight  also pollutes more than many sources of electricity.   According to Eco-Geek , candles are ten times worse for the environment than regular lights!  It takes 40 candles to produce the same amount of light as a 40-watt light bulb.  They waste most of their energy on heat because they burn at such a low temperature, and provide very little light.

On the original EarthHour.org website, they suggest you do all sorts of carbon-intensive things afterwards and seemingly, during Earth Hour, when you are supposed to have your lights off.  Take photos, upload photos, upload video, etc.   If you are turning off your lights for Earth Hour, why not turn off your computer, your TVs, and all your carbon-using things?  I get the feeling a lot of people are just going to be sitting in front of their computers in the dark on Saturday. That doesn’t sound any more useful for fighting climate change than doing that with the lights on is.

Celebrate Earth Hour responsibly.  Why not go outside and look at the stars?  If all goes well, there will be less light pollution for an hour, and more stars to see as a result.

What’s really funny is “25 activities to do in the dark during Earth Hour”.

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The billionaire Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens likes to claim that his natural gas scheme will get us off our dependency on “foreign” oil and make us safer.  He’s wrong about a lot of things, but he’s especially wrong about natural gas. He’s usually talking about liquified natural gas to run big semi-trucks when he discusses natural gas.  Liquified natural gas, or LNG, is natural gas that has been cooled down to minus 260 degrees F, which condenses it into liquid, and then it can be shipped and stored in refrigerated tanks.  It takes a lot of energy to convert LNG to it’s liquid form and then more energy to transport it in a cooled state so that it stays liquid, and in its liquid form it’s basically nearly entirely methane.  And despite the insinuations of Pickens, no natural gas is a renewable, and it’s also not an alternative fuel in the usually understood sense.  It’s a polluting fossil fuel that will run out someday, but for now, there is a huge boom in natural gas as more and more people use it for heating their homes.  Expanding the use of it to burn in big trucks is an especially bad idea.

Besides the fossil fuel part of natural gas, we have to consider whether or not it’s safe, and this takes us back to the foreign oil and terrorism connection.  Many countries that allow us to buy their oil and gas are currently not countries that the US has made a point of becoming equal partners or friends with.  The US has, in its recent history, even started wars for fake reasons, for the purpose of taking whatever fossil fuel resources a country has,  or for controlling its pipeline accesses, etc.   Obviously, starting wars does not make friends, and it has definitely decreased our “safety” where these countries are concerned.

Now it’s being pointed out that the natural gas is also a potential safety concern. LNG is usually safe to transport, and stable, but since it’s 90% methane, it’s highly combustible, which is another way of saying “explosive”.  There have been explosions involving LNG; though so far, not very many.

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The tiny Tata car is admittedly cute and compact, and I wish I could have one myself — but only if it were electric.  And why couldn’t it be — it’s small enough and looks lightweight enough to go pretty far on existing battery technology.   Unfortunately, the new small car from the Indian automaker that’s on the market right now is futuristic looking but still runs on gasoline, getting about  54 mpg (very respectable for an old fossil-fuel burning engine) So, it’s a throwback to all the other combustion engines out there.  Overall, I’d say Tata Motors is doing pretty good with emissions compared to other car makers though, especially American ones.  And it’s not a bad car, as cars go.   It’s actually got some room in it.   Tata Motors is also doing well with sales already, as India’s largest automobile company with revenues of US $ 7.2 billion in 2006-2007.

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