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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This isn’t about piracy, although pirates seem to be a huge problem lately.   This is about ocean acidification, a much bigger problem than most people realize.   For one thing, the growing ocean acidification might end a lot of the life in the ocean, especially that associated with coral reefs and with shells, and that would lead to massive food shortages around the world.  Hundreds of millions of people depend on the ocean as a major food source.  Why is the ocean becoming more acidic, and what is the problem?

This information is from a recent radio interview with Dr. Richard A. Feely, an Oceanographer at the NOAA Pacific Marine Laboratory in Seattle, and a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union. His main area of focus is carbon cycles in the ocean, and this very problem.

At a 3-day summit in Copenhagen last month, European scientists warned that we’re creating ocean conditions not seen since dinosaurs walked on the earth, 65 million years ago.   Human beings have recreated these hostile conditions in about 200+ years by burning fossil fuels and with harmful agriculture practices,  and as a result, carbon emissions continue to rise and affect the oceans.

Ocean acidification isn’t complicated.  As we burn coal and oil and natural gas and gasoline for fuel and energy, all that CO2 is released into the atmosphere.  Over about the past 250 years, we have released about 540 billion metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere.  About a third of that has been absorbed by the oceans. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is a gas that immediately reacts with sea water, and it forms a weak acid called carbonic acid .   This carbonic acid quickly dissociates and releases a hydrodyne, which gives the ocean its acidity. This increase in carbonic acid over time has increased the acidity in the last 200 years of about 30%.  With the projections of the use of fossil fuels in the future, we could see increases in acidity by 150% by the end of this century. This is what has scientists hugely concerned.

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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.)

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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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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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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

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.

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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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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.

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