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.

Continue Reading »

Former skeptics in Congress are realizing that climate change has to be dealt with and some of them are ready for action!

Representative Bob Inglis (R-SC) recently went to Antarctica with a small Congressional delegation. Scientists that work there showed him ice cores, and those ice core samples clearly showed the high spike in CO2 levels that are now warming the Earth. Inglis was a former skeptic, but he is now convinced: “The evidence is compelling: Global Warming is a real, human-caused problem,” he said .

What a difference that is from the Michele Bachmann (R-MN)  approach. She gets her talking points from the GOP, and repeats her claim that global warming is not happening without exploring any of the science or visiting Antarctica or even Greenland.  I applaud Congressman Inglis for taking the steps to gather the information he needed to determine that global warming is real, even though his Republican party doesn’t want to admit it.

Bachmann, who is my Congresswoman, gave a “climate change” forum today in my city and not only refused to take questions, she had a lawyer from the right-wing think tank - CEI - give us propaganda on global warming.  He doesn’t believe in it, so he made up all kinds of fairy tales about Ice Ages and how the sun is causing global warming, and how much of this is also to blame on methane from cows and CO2 from the ocean. (The ocean is actually a carbon sink, it’s not causing global warming as he claimed).   It was all propaganda to further the CEI and GOP agenda of no new taxes.   He even denied that the climate is getting warmer at all.  In reality, from January 2008 to January 2009, the planet warmed a remarkable 0.37°C (see data here).   (That’s a lot.)

Continue Reading »

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.

Continue Reading »

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.)

Continue Reading »

The writer of this blog (me) is certainly not at the G20, (which is starting next week) but plenty of protesters are out there trying to bring awareness of global economic insecurity and climate change to the world.    Thousands are marching for jobs, and justice, and environmental awareness and action.  People don’t often think of economics and climate change as being related, but they very much are. Everything is ultimately related to our climate, the atmosphere, and the weather, as that all affects food supply and jobs and the economy.    As global warming progresses there will be more droughts,  more severe storms, and more severe weather in general. This will lead to more food shortages, more displaced people, more refugees, more homelessness, more unemployment, more social unrest, and more division of the poor from the wealthy.  It may also lead to more wars for resources, disguised as “liberating” people.

I’m a big fan of street protests even though most of them are ignored by the media. But when the G8 meets or the G20 or any group of the wealthy who determine the fate of the poor meets, protesters will be there.  For many protesters it’s just about having a voice and having a say in their fate and futures.  Protesting has always been the ultimate free speech, the empowerment of the average citizen.   In London alone it is estimated that 35,000 people will turn out to protest the G20 economic summit.  The photo above is of the actual protest in London and is from The Guardian.

What are they protesting? Lack of jobs, lack of control, lack of power — what people always protest.  In this case, they are also trying to bring awareness to the need to remake the way the world does things, really and truly fix the economic crisis, and seriously deal with our climate crisis.

Continue Reading »

On Monday, March 23, President Obama spoke specifically about clean energy, and described plans to spend about $59 billion in economic stimulus funds and $150 billion from the federal budget to promote a  clean energy future.  The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, (aka the stimulus bill) officially includes $39 billion the Energy Department and $20 billion in tax incentives for clean energy.  Even so, Obama didn’t say a lot that we haven’t heard before.  In fact, he mentioned cap and trade and energy again on Tuesday night during his press conference.  He’s a big fan of cap and trade (I’m not). I think we need to take more drastic action.

But the most interesting part of the speech were the remarks made by MIT President, Susan Hockfield, said before the President spoke.  She described our current energy problems as:  rapidly increasing energy demand, energy security, and solving the climate change crisis.  Hockfield called clean energy an historic investment, and said the stimulus bill makes a major investment in energy stimulus,  including 6.5 billion for R&D, which to her was the most important part, being the president of a major and prestigious university known for its research.

She called the stimulus bill the largest and most important investment in technology since Sputnik inspired the launch of the Apollo program.

Continue Reading »

Earth the Sequel review

This was a good TV show on the Discovery Channel last Wednesday night. (It’s repeating on March 15th if you want to watch it, at 11:00 am ET) called Earth: The Sequel, based on the book by Fred Krupp and Miriam Horn. Mainly it was about the new renewable energy revolution. I was surprised at how interesting it was. Usually you don’t expect types of energy presented to be terribly interesting, but this show covered the main types of alternative energy without getting boring at all.  (If you are interested in science, it helps).  The show started with a guy in Alaska who runs a large hotel and greenhouse operation and more,  all on geothermal energy from hotsprings in Alaska. It moved on to solar photovoltaic power and plain old massive solar power arrays in the southwest. It was about new technologies and innovations that we’ll be using in the next 50 years to replace our polluting energy with new renewable energy, none of it fossil fuels, and some of it nearly in the “sci-fi” realm.  But it’s all doable and being developed, or even already implemented, right now.

There was only one form of energy covered that I’m really against and that is biofuels from sugar cane, and that’s because I don’t believe in clearing trees to plant sugar cane for fuel to burn.  We should be moving toward electric cars that use renewable electricity from solar or wind power.   Sure, sugar cane is renewable, but the cost to the Amazon rainforest is in no way worth it.   We are getting this sugar cane from Brazil, which means they are cutting down the Amazon rainforest to clear land to plant the trees. Deforestation is one of the biggest problems we are facing today and one reason climate change is advancing so quickly. We need to hang on to our trees, not cut them down for fuel, because trees are carbon sinks, which means they absorb that CO2 we are pumping into the air.   We should not be getting rid of things that absorb carbon.  So that was the one segment I disagreed with, where a scientist who is developing new ways of burning bio fuels said he’s an advocate of sugar cane from Brazil.   It’s the worst idea I can imagine and I’m surprised it was even in the show.

Otherwise, the ideas in this show were good, and none of them included natural gas.*

Continue Reading »

Another coal plant ash spill happened on the morning of March 8th: 4,000 gallons of coal ash spilled out of a hole in a pipe carrying it to an ash pond, according to initial reports, into the Potomac River. Coal ash is a dirty sludge mess of toxic chemicals, some of it possibly cancer-causing, and some of this ash went into the Potomac River, which could make its way down to the Washington D.C. area. What a message that would send to the White House. This is the third coal ash spill in only a few months. Did these used to happen before the media didn’t report them?

This spill happened from a coal plant that was dedicated to the New Page paper mill in Maryland. This company has three pipelines that go out from its power plant carrying coal plant waste. These pipes go over the Potomic River and dump the sludge into an ash pond. This is what the industry calls “clean coal”.

The reference to clean coal is an industry fantasy: they have put scrubbers on some plants that get the sulfer out of the emissions, but that’s about it. The CO2 is still being pumped out with no way to capture it, and the toxins and mercury still remain in the byproducts of burning coal for energy. In other words, coal plants are death factories, and they should all be shut down for good. (”Death factories ” is the terminology of climate scientist James Hansen).

Continue Reading »

This video is a preview of a Discovery channel show airing on Wednesday night (March 11)  called “Earth: The Sequel”.  Yes, we need a revolution of power from the sun, wind and water. The show is based on the book , written by Fred Krupp and Miriam Horn.  I plan on watching it and I’ll probably write a review here, since I’m a little concerned about this video’s message which seems to be:  There’s lots of money in global warming!  Or: climate change — a money-making opportunity!  It probably is, but it seems to be missing the point of the threat of climate change, which is that our very lives are threatened by it.

“The biggest new source of wealth in America”?  It’s possible, I guess, but is that what drove the Apollo program at NASA?  I bunch of guys thinking, “wow, this could make me rich!”  They wanted to get to the moon because they were scientifically challenged and motivated and they had a deadline.  The super-capitalist viewpoint seems to be suggesting that in order to get people to do the right thing, you have to tempt people with making lots of money.  For some people, that is no doubt true.  For them, saving the habitability of the planet and  humans and other life is not enough of a motivation.  But if there is lots of money to be made, even non-environmentalists will try to help out. I’m just worried about the type of “help” they might be offering, and whether it might do more harm than good.  Like “biofuels” and pushing the use of natural gas.

Continue Reading »

This podcast episode highlights from Powershift09 sending a message to end the use of coal — and as speaker Robert Kennedy put it, coal is a criminal enterprise. What they are doing to mountains and our air is nothing short of criminal. It’s time to take action to stop coal. It’s time for a citizens arrest of coal. Speakers from Powershift09 include RFK Jr., Van Jones and Lisa Jackson; also Bill McKibben and Jimmy Carter in the second half.  I start the podcast off with a brief clip from a new documentary on climate change that is coming out next week (in the UK).  It’s called The Age of Stupid.

The Age of Stupid movie trailer can be seen here.

Interested in the Clean Energy Corp — story link about green jobs from the Environment News Service:
“Clean Energy Corps Proposed to Create Jobs, Fight Global Warming“

In the 2nd half, you’ll hear about why natural gas isn’t such a great fuel, why it’s not “clean” like Pelosi is claiming, and whatever happened to Jimmy Carter’s solar panels, and his dream of clean energy? It’s not a happy story, but 30 years later, we have another realistic chance at it. And at the end, bits of a speech from 32 years ago, much of which President Obama could be saying today.

Nancy Pelosi’s conflict of interest is her financial interest in T. Boone Picken’s natural gas venture.
From the Wall Street Journal.

WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her husband invested between $50,000 and $100,000 in T. Boone Pickens’s Clean Energy Fuels Corp., which could benefit from legislation the California Democrat favors to boost U.S. use of natural gas.

Nancy Pelosi’s letter about switching the CPP to natural gas: Read the whole thing here.

Pelosi has a conflict of interest with natural gas, being an investor in T. Boone Pickens natural gas company. She’s an investor in natural gas, so she is pushing the use of natural gas on the nation’s capitol, insinuating that it’s “clean” and renewable, which it most certainly is not. She should be installing solar panels instead. — like our president did 30 years ago. The drilling process for natural gas contains the use of toxic chemicals, including Benzene which causes cancer. And get this — the company who perfected this deadly technique was Halliburton. Here more about this in part 2 of this episode.  There is a serious danger of ground water contamination.

From Scientific America:

Continue Reading »

Powershift 09, which just took place, reflects a shift in priorities for activists and protesters–from ending the war in Iraq to saving the habitability of our planet. This is a welcome change because this is where activist efforts have to be right now! The latest protests are now reflecting the most important challenge the world facts. That climate change is now getting so much attention is a very positive change. We need to preserve the habitability of the planet for ours and future generations. This is not even a debateable point, but there will be a lot of resistance to government regulations and various climate legislation in the next few years, so we’ll have some enormous barriers to overcome in the next few years on this subject. There is nothing more precious to some business (and some individuals) than the ability to continue to pollute and retain their freedom to ruin the world for the rest of us. They actually feel it’s their human imperative to retain those rights, so all activists have a big job ahead of them.

Generally, the ways conventionally seen to save civilization from climate change are conservation, efficiency, and renewable forms of energy, as well as other methods like regulation of emissions and the big one - shutting down coal plants. Powershift09 was about getting this message to Washington. They attempted to shut down the capitol coal power plant which is now running on about 65% coal and 35% natural gas. They did succeed in blocking the entrances and shutting it down for a short period of time.

From the Powershift website: “We aren’t going to stop global warming by just changing lightbulbs and driving hybrid cars. The only real solution is to come together and demand unprecedented change through unprecedented action.”

Coal power plants are the cause of most of the world’s most damaging pollution and most of the CO2 currently contributing to global warming. The U.S. and China and India contribute 40% of the greenhouse gas emissions via coal burning to the atmosphere. It’s widely understood that we have got to stop new coal plants from being opened and shut down or transform the ones currently in operation. Transforming means we have to switch these power plants to another form of energy, preferably a renewable source. Natural gas is not a renewable source of energy, but some politicians such as Nancy Pelosi and T. Boone Pickens (who have a personal monetary stake in natural gas) are pushing natural gas to be the replacement for coal. This is, at best, only a short-term answer. Natural gas is another fossil fuel that emits CO2 also — though 56% as much as coal does, according to the natural gas industry’s website. Here are the real statistics on natural gas:

Pollutants: Natural Gas vs. Coal
Source: Naturalgas.org

Carbon Dioxide (Pounds per Billion BTU of Energy Input)
Natural gas 117,000 ——– Coal 208,000
Natural gas pollutes 56% as much as Coal

Nitrogen Oxides (Pounds per Billion BTU of Energy Input)
Natural Gas 92 ————- Coal 457
Natural Gas pollutes 20% as much as coal

Carbon Monoxide (Pounds per Billion BTU of Energy Input)
Natural Gas 40 ———— Coal 208
Natural gas pollutes 19% as much as coal

Bottom line: Natural gas is still a formidable source of CO2 and other pollutants. Saying something is “better than coal” isn’t saying much. Two schools of thought are 1) anything other than coal is an improvement; and 2) (shared by most climate scientists) we should get off fossil fuels completely as soon as possible because we have to stop putting CO2 into the atmosphere completely. Natural gas is a polluting fossil fuel. It’s only “better than” coal because coal is so awful. There is an abundance of natural gas in North America, but it is a non-renewable resource that will eventually run out; the formation of which takes thousands and possibly millions of years. Therefore, retrofitting any power plant to burn natural gas instead of coal only makes sense if you do not believe we are in a climate crisis and need to end the use of fossil fuels; and if you believe that the millions of dollars this would cost us is not better spend on renewable energies. There is also a matter of the time it would take to retrofit power plants for natural gas that might be better spent on installing solar panels. Time does matter, now that we have waited so long to address the climate crisis.

The following report is from a mixture of reports from various sources. Also after the break, more photos from Powershift09.

Continue Reading »

Speaker Nancy Pelosi is confused. She sent out a letter today claiming that natural gas is a “clean fuel”.

Washington, D.C.— Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid sent the following letter today to the Acting Architect of the Capitol, Stephen T. Ayers, asking that the Capitol Power Plant (CPP) use 100 percent natural gas for its operations.

The leaders wrote: “The switch to natural gas will allow the CPP to dramatically reduce carbon and criteria pollutant emissions, eliminating more than 95 percent of sulfur oxides and at least 50 percent of carbon monoxide…We strongly encourage you to move forward aggressively with us on a comprehensive set of policies for the entire Capitol complex and the entire Legislative Branch to quickly reduce emissions and petroleum consumption through energy efficiency, renewable energy, and clean alternative fuels.”

Pelosi and Reid are giving us the mistaken impression that natural gas is a “clean alternative fuel”. That’s clearly deceptive. Natural gas is a fossil fuel that emits CO2, the main greenhouse gas. She also wrote:

“The conversion will also reduce the cost of storing and transporting coal as well as the costs associated with cleaning up the fly ash and waste. Eliminating coal from the fuel mixture should also assist the City of Washington, D.C., in meeting and complying with national air quality standards, and demonstrate that Congress can be a good and conscientious neighbor by mitigating health concerns for residents and workers around Capitol Hill.”

I’m having a flashback to the campaign — the John McCain campaign. Sarah Palin often mentioned natural gas, since Alaska is in the business of selling it. In one speech, Sarah Palin even called Natural Gas “clean and green”. My message to all politicians: Natural Gas is a fossil fuel. It is burned, and when it is used, it emits C02, methane, nitrous oxide, and other things like radon and mercury. Surely Nancy Pelosi can’t seriously call any fossil fuel “clean alternative” energy. What is she thinking? If she really wanted to use clean alternative energy she would advise the use of solar panels or wind power. But she is calling for 100% natural gas. The letter says,

Continue Reading »