Our World and Everything in It

Gas will more than likely shoot to $6 per gallon because Ike is now the size of Texas itself and will more than likely destroy rigs and pipeline. So we are to drill elsewhere for more? Isn’t that perpetuating a problem?

We’ve been told by science, not politicians that man may have a hand in the rapid global warming we’re seeing. The administration in play for the past 8 years is an oil administration. They would do and say whatever to keep oil flowing and have. As a result, Americans are doubtful about global warming; more so than citizens of other developed countries that don’t simply shrug global warming off on Al Gore. Other countries are trying to affect change.

Meanwhile, this administration has flat out lied to us about a war, what would make us think especially after the latest news that government regulators party with oil lobbyists that maybe we’ve been lied to by this government about the environment?

And what about all the offshore drilling that everyone wants? Those rigs aren’t hurricane proof either. Hurricane Hannah ran up the side of the east coast, the gulf is getting lambasted now, and the west coast took a beating late winter and early spring this past year. There really is not safe place for a rig, except maybe in your backyard.

But why should we open up our backyards to more oil exploration in the first place when we have almost 70 million acres leased for oil that is producing NADA—absolutely nothing. That type of production would boost our oil by 5 million barrels per day, and enough time to progress with alternatives. Alternatives will insure we no longer have to worry about pipelines and oil rigs getting damaged from what will assuredly be intensified storms due to global warming we’re helping to grow. 

The real fear is that hurricanes running too closely together might join into one mammoth and frightening proposition. Ditto for tornadoes.  Oil is only an interim fix, we need to harness the power of some of that nature we’re seeing attack us.

I wonder how much energy Ike is putting out?

http://money.cnn.com/2008/06/23/news/economy/oil_drilling/index.htm?cnn=yes.

And the race is on. Alternatives or the same ole polluting solutions until we’re extinct. Looks like Washington isn’t waiting around for anyone’s opinion. The oil people are getting their dibs in while they can. We won’t see any of that oil for years but hey why not?

The wealthy are starting to polish their crowns in front of us.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/17/us/17alaska.html?_r=1&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss&oref=slogin

A short synopsis of what I gathered from a brief presentation of Al Gore’s speech in Washington today:

Gore thanked all of the congressman present and the many that he has conferred with over the years and around the world. He said he hoped to lift partisanship from global warming efforts.

He went on to say that America needs to shake off its complacency because the survival of the United States is at risk, as well as, what’s at stake for all civilization relative to global warming.

He acknowledged what many of us are currently thinking that so many things are going so wrong simultaneously. The economy is tanking. We’re losing job. The mortgage industry is in dire straights. We still have security risks, and the Iraq war. Gas prices keep rising. Food prices are rising.  And our weather is increasingly horrible, posing new threats to the economy as many homeowners lose everything they own to fires, floods, and tornadoes.

Global warming is advancing faster than originally thought in 2001, (National Geographic’s “Planet Earth” series proves this). Our own U.S. Navy subs went under the Arctic Ice Cap, and it’s now believed 75% of it will be gone in just 5 years. Greenland is disappearing with 20 million tons of ice melting into open water daily. Sea levels will rise. And based on the latest round of increased lightening strikes during storms, scientists say that a 1% increase in global warming will increase lightening strikes 10% more. The problem is bigger than we think.

So the bulk of America’s problems can be categorized as economic, environmental, and as national security issues. After speaking with leaders from around the world, scientists, engineers, CEO’s of major corporations, etc., all agree that old solutions that treat each of these categories separately is a mistake because at the core of every bad issue is our dangerous dependency on fossil fuels.

America needs to end dependency on carbon-based fuels!  (Roar from the crowd). It’s easy to see that these same measures to help the environment can:

• Ease the economy by offering thousands of new jobs in new green industry right here in America
•  Stop the energy/safety threat we suffer through control by foreign oil interests. These foreign (enemy) interests have a stranglehold on us. If we don’t need oil, we won’t need them. Oil fuels their wealth and power.  

Gore stated that the U.S. is borrowing money from China to purchase oil in the Middle East. We end up polluting while accelerating global warming. In that statement alone are the three categories of our problems economics, security, and the environment. We’re dealing with potential enemies to supplies us with our needs while they drain our bank account.

The quickest, cheapest, best answer to all three problems is the efficient production of electricity for all of our needs. Science proclaims that the sun provides enough cumulative energy every 40 minutes to provide 100% of the entire world’s needs. Now why wouldn’t we use that instead? Gore also reiterated what I’ve already learned, that there is enough wind through the U.S. corridor to provide all of America’s energy needs. Add geothermal power to the equation and we simply have enough energy to get away from fossil fuels once and for all.

Gore remembers a statement that was made long ago that if oil got to $30 per barrel then alternative energy sources would be competitive. We’re closing in on being 5 times that limit and greater demand for alternative energy by big corporate consumers is already bringing costs down.

The logic then follows that we must put an end to our old fossil fuel solutions. We need a new start. Gore presented a strategic challenge to all of America. It is the linchpin of a bold new strategy to change America’s direction. He urged Americans to strive to reach 100% reliance on clean alternative energy sources within the next 10 years! And we should never think we can’t, because we can. Gore sited the walk on the moon at this juncture. (Huge applause and ovation).

Talking about solutions 40 years away is ridiculous. We have to aim for less than 10 years and if that challenge is not politically viable, Gore said, “Then ask the people.” (Another huge ovation).

Gore stated that our country can’t afford 10 more years of a tanking economy, job outsourcing, horrible weather disasters whereby the home insurance business may bottom out, and 10 more years of troop deployments to dangerous regions who happen to have huge oil supplies. Hmmm that last statement was interesting. Did we really invade Iraq for the oil and how is that playing out, and what oil companies and people are benefiting from our grief?

That’s pretty much all CNBC and CNN allowed us to watch. CNN announced at the same time Gore was giving this speech that John McCain was in Kansas getting an ovation for his idea about offshore oil drilling. I think Gore can forget partisan unity at this point.   

I got some interesting e-mails today. One announced that Al Gore will be speaking in Washington D.C. tomorrow about the way we think about energy and climate, and bringing prosperity to America.

His speech should generate a great deal of attention. But that was it.

This ought to be interesting and raise a whole new wave of Gore remarks from the environmentally uneducated. Tune in.

So Al Gore went to the Whitehouse today. Interesting isn’t it? I would love to have been there to observe. President Bush honored the Nobel Prize winners and Al was among them. Considering the Bush administration altered reports of global warming (read my blogs below), and there was that voting outcome back in 2000…things could have been awkward.

Apparently, Al had nothing to say to the press as he left. There is very little coverage about the meeting. I just know it was probably uncomfortable since the president is still punishing NASA who complained about censorship. He cut their funding by a hefty percentage, yet is giving plenty of money to the space station project. Lack of those funds has shelved a state of the art satellite that would allow scientists to accurately measure the amount of direct sunlight that hits the earth at one time. It’s in a warehouse somewhere. The satellite would also allow meteorologists to more accurately predict bad weather a lot sooner. Really sound judgment here–space station and/or trip to Mars trumps an accurate picture of what’s happening on earth regarding solar heat via the new satellite.

A good article that speculates about the meeting today is:
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/10/16/101926/97.

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5h8nwMDNrp_DbQkdrAynlv0NN_RYg

My blogs about altered reports of global warming:

http://www.blogsmonroe.com/world/?p=94.

http://www.blogsmonroe.com/world/?m=200611

I was brought up and went to Catholic schools my whole life. While I no longer practice organized religion, I have a firm belief in the Lord, and I might pray for rain privately, but when people are gathering in public governmental places to pray for rain in Atlanta, I think it makes us look like boob tubes to the rest of the world. For Pete’s sake the water commission and/or government there have failed to stop over 400,000 gallons per month or more than 14,000 gallons per day from flowing to just one wealthy resident’s estate because of lack of evidence he is breaking watering laws. Watering laws? Cut the guy off! The guy’s last name is Carlos.

And maybe this is supposed to be a humbling experience for moral America. Alabama prayed for rain and got nothing ever since. We sure remember to pray when something goes wrong, but forget morality and mercy when it comes to our use and abuse of animals in this country between research, industrialized farms, aerial killing of wolves, canned hunts, roadside zoos and carnivals. For that matter, many children don’t fare much better.

And how about the air, earth, water? We just don’t want to own up to being one of the largest polluters on earth. We take the self-righteous path and immediately point to others like China. Our neighbor Canada announced on the news that 25% of all pollution coming out of China is directly due to America and our demand for cheap goods. I would say we have plenty of work to do in our own back yards.

Americans also ignore news that our pollution directly affects poor nations like Africa. They, not Michigan, have the world’s largest freshwater lakes that are drying up due to global warming and the rape of that land and its natives by big oil concerns. We as Christians have literally turned a blind eye to our treatment of the paradise God bestowed on us, and our neighbors, like the Africans, because it doesn’t directly affect us, and the earth has no soul, was given to us as our domain. Animals have no soul. And anyone that is not Christian will not get to heaven. This is some of the credo coming right from our pulpits, and we’re going to pray to God for rain now? 

Do we as a moral society pay attention to our prayers at all anyway? When they end with: “World without end, Amen,” and “Heaven on Earth, Amen” do we really believe it? Because an awful lot of people think the world is going to disintegrate somehow after saying those very words in church every Sunday. And if we truly believe we will have heaven on earth, why are we pigging it up so badly? Do you really think God just wants us to keep procreating without being responsible for our waste also? I’ve written plenty of blogs that address these moral issues.

Gore is right about the overall care of the environment being a moral issue. We’ll see when other states dry up, how much we love our brothers. I know I want Michigan’s water to stay in Michigan. I have property all along the waterways. But I’m not going to let a fellow citizen perish from lack of water, that is if those in need have done all they can possibly do for themselves first, and that doesn’t mean simply praying. Remember: “God helps those that help themselves?”

He meant it. He gave us great mental capacity to overcome many obstacles. I doubt he will do anything for a people that not only do not help themselves to their full capacity, but also have created even more obstacles to life that they don’t know how to dismantle. That’s hardly doing all that we can do or being all that we can be. We need a big kick in the rear to wake up. God is our FATHER, and as a parent to let our children make their own way, figure out their own mistakes is sometimes the best wake up call, the best lesson to teach. We should ready ourselves for more lessons unless we begin to change.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/15/us/15water.html?ref=us. 

I just read an interesting article in U.S. News and World Report called “Power Revolution.” It says that due to Silicon Valley’s money, ideas, and push for alternative sources of energy they may make the green movement happen faster and with better alternatives. Vinod Khosla, founder of Sun Microsystems and venture capitalist, is one that is interested in promoting alternative energy now. He believes the government will move when entrepreneurs get interested and start moving. One estimate shows venture capital funds for green investments tripled last year to $2.4 billion working toward a clean future.

In the solar arena, there is Pacific Gas and Electric that announced it will install 5 times the amount of solar power available in the U.S. Their motto is cheaper, bigger, and faster. One of its partners, Solel, an Israeli firm will use mirrors much like the Kramer Junction solar plant, but PG&E is looking to reduce the silicon used for conductivity down to an ultra thin film. It will lower costs. The plan is to concentrate the energy reflected by the mirror film to one point. By increasing the energy and lowering the cost, the flat lands of the desert should provide enough solar resource to provide six times what California uses today.

One of the most promising renewable energy sources is one that isn’t often mentioned–deep geothermal heat. And how do you like this?  Bush’s Crawford ranch is heated this way. He’s killing us with his thrust for more oil exploration, and more money in his civilian pocket, but uses geothermal energy himself. Anyway, MIT is working on improving this technology. Cold water is pumped down miles into the earth causing fissures in hot molten rock; the cold water is heated when it enters the fissures. The heated fluid flows back up to the production wells at the surface. The steam from this hot fluid is separated and used to turn a turbine generator. The article said that MIT stated it “could provide 10% of the U.S. base energy needs if the nation would spend $1 billion on its development over the next 15 years—less than the cost of one coal plant.” Hear that DTE?

As far as keeping ethanol in the equation, everyone pretty much agrees corn isn’t going to cut it. But, Range Fuels, founded by Khosla, received Dept. of Energy grants to make cellulosic ethanol fruition soon. A new commercial plant is set to go up outside a Georgia forestland in order to use all the timber waste wood. Range plans on using heat and pressure to change the wood into gas. Range’s senior exec used to be a VP for Apple Computer. Techies aren’t just providing capital; they’re on the job too.

Finally, not to be left out of the successful techie trek to the renewable energy market is Google. Google is sticking its money into plug-in hybrid cars. Google figures this is the quickest fix to lower our CO2 problem.  It has a lofty goal of getting 100 mpg out of some cars. They want to see the big automakers mass produce plug-ins. From a program that I saw on Eco Tech on the Science Channel, there is the possibility that a plug in car can have a spare charge. When it’s plugged into an outlet again, the excess power goes back to the grid and shows up as a credit on the homeowners electric bill! That’s just too ingenius!

For the whole article: http://www.usnews.com/articles/business/economy/2007/10/26/power-revolution.html.
 

As a quarter million people flee the fires of the Santa Ana winds in southern California, Atlanta’s water supply dwindles and without relief will be gone by January, and floods and tornadoes have steadily pummeled the middle of our country. It’s a little obvious something’s up. Is it global warming and how worse can it get? A lot.

In light of all that’s happening, I searched global warming on the internet and there was a whole new cache of naysayers. Something set them off and I’m thinking it was Al Gore getting the Nobel Prize. I was a little surprised. I checked again today and the opposition has leveled off. Looks to me like the fossil fuel industry turned up the heat against going green. For a few days their bloggers put out a surge of propaganda like: Global warming is a U.N. conspiracy. Watching the news about California tonight, I don’t think so, and when are we going to start thinking about the other guys, especially other Americans?

Global warming affects the entire population of the world and everything in it. Isn’t it wiser to err on the side of caution if things aren’t certain? Besides what’s wrong with cleaning up after ourselves, the outcome of which would be:

The oil money that feeds terrorism will literally dry up.

We get away from fossil fuels for good. No more of the landscape will be destroyed with incessant stripping and drilling.

We could get agriculture involved. Instead of subsidizing them for loss, part of their land will be set aside for wind and solar farms bringing in alternative income.

A new economy gives everyone a chance at new jobs. New investments can be made in the stock market. New people will be able to offer new innovation to sustain us for years to come, creating more jobs.

Disease will dwindle. Clean up the air, earth, and water and possibly ease someone’s suffering.

Low utility bills or none at all. Trying to cut back on energy use, my last combined gas and electric bill fell even more. I paid $103.00 last month for my gas and electric. I’m home all day. The PC is going, TV is on, and an air cleaner. I haven’t taken everything off of standby yet…another TV, Roomba, printer, stereo, DVD player, etc. But by changing my light bulbs, unplugging the old fridge in the garage, adding two overhead fans in the house, regulating my window coverings, and hanging my laundry out on a line, what a difference!

Finally, if we do heat up all at once, chances are our power grids won’t hold up. So we’ll be miserable. Wouldn’t it be better to use that which is going to fry us to cool us? Solar energy could run our a/c units, keep the fridge going, and many other things like boil water.
 

Today is blog action day. And I don’t want to talk about the environment per say, post the latest news, or try to convince anyone man’s part in global warming is real. Today I would simply like to thank the thousands of volunteers of many, many organizations that give their time, energy, and passion to helping the environment and every creature in it, including humans that won’t get off the couch to save their own lives. To these volunteers and spokespeople we owe you our lives, many of us  just don’t realize it yet.

Volunteers for the environment are tireless in their efforts. I’ve been to meetings where the person holding that meeting drove an hour at night, leaving family at home, to offer a presentation of information about what is happening and what can be done, only to have 8 people show up.  They have to pack it all up and drive an hour to go home to a household already asleep. Yet they are never daunted in their determination to inform possibly one new person. That’s dedication, discipline, and selflessness.

While we sit in our comfortable living rooms there are countless organizations of people like Greenpeace on board ships in the freezing cold to stop whale hunts, or fisherman using nets that trap dolphins, others like Earthjustice, Environmental Defense, and NRDC holding oil drills at bay in some pristine part of our country, or The Sierra Club lobbying in state’s senates against industry pollution, or Waterkeeper Alliance that has joined Sierra Club’s fight against CAFO’s. Their volunteers took 3000 plus photos of CAFO’s and produced DVD’s to expose that industry’s pollution.  There are the many, many meteorologists that have ventured to the N. Pole, Greenland, and Iceland in small boats to get photographs and gain first hand knowledge of crashing ice falls from glaciers not 50 ft. in front of them in order to inform the masses about what they’ve seen, and the brave and undeterred efforts of the scientists who testified before congress that they are fed up with being censored by the Bush administration relative to reports of global warming. They’re brave, bold, and forthright while much of the population flounders in a sea of apathy.

Take for instance what is called “junk mail.” It’s tossed without a thought. But in those envelopes are the voices of those that I’ve just described that are trying to get the truth out, trying to stop the insanity of pollution, trying to stop further fossil fuel endeavors, or simply trying to save the lives of animals that have no one to speak for them. It’s valuable information that took research, time, effort and skill to produce with the hope one more person will open and read the contents in lieu of being tossed without conscience or concern. Ditto for the many TV networks like The Discovery Channel, Science Channel, and Sundance that dedicate themselves to saving the environment by showcasing the marvelous inventors, scientists, and engineers from around the globe that have solutions for our ailing earth already.

To all the wonderful, passionate, faithful people that see the Almighty in their surroundings and fight to save and nurture what we were given as a blessing, I want to say thank you heart and soul. The road you travel is new and like any other time in history, your fellow humans are not quick to follow a new revolution. Go with peace and passion in every step because most assuredly you have one Traveler that will remain by your side always. Nature is Earth’s Metaphor for God and you “get it.” Bless you. Keep the faith, keep up the fight.  
 

So Al Gore gets the Nobel Peace prize. That pretty much says it all for me. But he still has detractors that say his movie “An Inconvenient Truth” has about 9 misleading points, like tornado activity being linked to global warming. There is no scientific proof of that. But scientists will tell you we have never experienced what we’re seeing now. Doesn’t that go against the arguments by scientists that say global warming is a natural phenomenon that operates in cycles anyway? And, of course there is not scientific proof for tornado activity, or earthquake activity relative to global warming. It’s too new!

So will we all be in dire straights by time it’s a proven fact that tornadoes, earthquakes, droughts, or whatever are a result of global warming or use our noggins to figure out that if the population of the world has quadrupled in the last decade and we dump 70 million tons of global warming pollution into the air every day there will be consequences. And those consequences are the increasingly horrendous, house destroying, life destroying streaks of bad weather that caused major fires to destroy our forests, displace critters, burn down homes, or floods that wiped homes off of foundations in the Midwest, or tornadoes that ran in packs of 5 at a time, leveling everything around, or the drought that is hitting southeast and southwest America right now.

What else would be causing an increasingly horrible weather pattern to hit many of the states? The natural, cyclical occurrence that many say it is. If it were that easily tracked as part of the history of weather patterns, why weren’t we warned? See, I have questions that have never been answered. Natural occurrences can be traced and this one is upon us without warning because it’s MANMADE, not natural at all. Mankind has been side-blinded by the intensity of this climate pattern.

So say what you want about Al Gore, someday the realization will hit everyone, he was right. Unfortunately, if we don’t get moving in unity, it will be too late. As it is now, I think it’s going to get a whole lot worse.