Our World and Everything in It

I was listening to Good Morning America this morning and it seems cities around the country are having a hard time controlling speeding drivers. Follow along here. Scottsdale, AZ was the first city to have speed enforcement cameras on one of its highways. Other cities are following suit. A county in Maryland that has speed cameras simply sends a citation to the speeder in the mail if they are clocked at more than 11 mph over the limit. Eleven miles over is a far cry from one driver that was caught doing 131 mph past a 65 mph sign. This camera system has its detractors that claim the cameras aren’t always accurate and they are limited. But the cameras work.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety knows that Americans speed and on all types of roads.  The speed cameras have got the 75 mph crowd way down from 15 percent to less than 2. That’s quite a drop.  But why do we speed? Because we can. And most of the time we do it around 20 percent over the limit. We should be asking why during this oil crunch and with CO2 emission overload hasn’t our federal government lowered the speed limit to 55 mph like it did in the 70’s?
The idea of speeding because we can is bolstered by our car industry. Don’t get me wrong; it’s sheer joy to hear pistons slamming while jumping out in front of the guy that wasn’t going to let me on the expressway. But that’s about it. Keep traveling too fast and get caught, not to mention burning way too much gas and emitting excessive CO2 in the process. We should wonder about the contradiction of producing speedy cars in a country of speed limits. It’s stupid irony.

Lowered speed limits and the introduction of ethanol pumps, something I have yet to see anywhere, were the combination of choice in the 70’s when gas was high. I don’t think ethanol is the best idea, it will burden the space for food crops and give us another empire that is corn rich, but among alternative choices, it has its place. So where are the ethanol pumps? Are they gone the way of a lower speed limit?

Some of the excuses look extremely flimsy for all the things we do and don’t. If we had ethanol pumps back in the 70’s, than we should most surely be able to get them out there now and fast. It isn’t like we don’t have the technology. Ditto for lowering the speed limit. As for car manufacturers, Daimler-Chrysler (at the time) had the technology to produce hydrogen buses for Iceland 5 years ago but “nada” for us now. Ford and GM are slow to present true hybrids and keep lobbying on fuel economy issues. They claim they need time to produce 40-mpg cars. But back in 1984, the Big 3 automakers produced a total of 35 cars that got 40 mpg or more.  GM had 19, Ford had 6, and Chrysler had 10 of those gas savers. I say drag out those engineering plans and slap a new, sleek, light weight body on those babies and get em out there! My girlfriend who is in the market for a hybrid came back from the auto show disappointed and a little unnerved by the propaganda she heard like, “this is a REAL car,” because it goes too fast for the speed limits and burns mega petro.

Have you followed the logic and gathered a clear idea that nothing adds up here? We chase our tail—backwards! The experience and technology is there, so we have to look to the reason it’s not happening. There is only one industry that benefits from speeders, inefficient fuel economy, and no alternative fuel sources readily available—OIL.

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=4221537

http://www.mpgomatic.com/2007/10/19/super-cheap-high-mpg-cars-1984/
 

Did you know that a lake could blow up from CO2 gases settled on the bottom? Until 1986 scientists didn’t think so either. I was watching the History Channel. A Professor Riskin hypothesized about methane gas sea explosions causing prehistoric earth to scorch. The scientific community was not convinced about gas exploding out of the ocean until in 1986 Lake Nios in Cameroon, Africa exploded from 1.6 million tons of CO2 gas being released that had settled on the bottom. Over 1700 people were asphyxiated up to 16 miles away along with all their livestock, some 3000 head of cattle.
 
Scientists argued for a while that it was a volcanic eruption and a mix of sulfur that caused the explosion, but sulfur substances weren’t found. The survivors of the explosion claimed they smelled sulfur but there is evidently something called olfactory hallucinations associated with CO2 asphyxiation and one of them is the smell of sulfur.

According to an article on Bnet, it was believed carbon dioxide gas build-up had a volcanic origin and built up slowly in the lake over a long period of time. U.S. researchers didn’t know exactly what triggered the explosion, but it was never believed a volcano or earthquake was responsible. French researchers disagreed. They believed the exploding cloud that dispersed throughout the area traveling at 40 mph was a mix “of steam, carbon dioxide and sulfur compounds that had been building up in a layer of groundwater heated by volcanic rocks far below the lake. These compounds reportedly were injected into the lake when the pressure of the steam eventually cracked the rock that had been holding it down.”

The problem is “U.S.scientists said lake temperatures were not elevated, its bottom did not appear to have been disturbed, there were no volcanic sulfides in the lake and no suspended sediments that might have resulted had steam rushed through bottom sediments.”

Either way we look at it, whether the CO2 was just laying there and blew or was caused by too much pressure from too much CO2 being injected into the rock fissures, it does not bode well for a future with too much CO2 around. So much for the gasification process relative to “clean coal.”

Coal burns filthy. The reason why it’s recently being touted as “clean” is because of a gasification process where the CO2 pollution is trapped, and liquified. The pollution never gets into the air but the liquified CO2 needs some place to go. Just like the spent fuel of a nuke, the best place for the leftover liquid CO2 is to put it in the ground by injection. But do we know how much CO2 is safe to inject? Will we have to worry about CO2 geisers in the future?  If so the future is looking pretty prehistoric. Told ya we’re dinosaurs.

Read more about the Lake Nios’ explosion:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1200/is_v131/ai_4645289

I don’t know if any other people interested in moving forward with all types of alternative energy have noticed the purposeful placement of the word “foreign” in many of the presidential contenders, Bush/Cheney, and legislator’s speeches. When a politician says they will make sure to fund research for new technologies to get us away from “foreign” oil dependence, they are probably talking money for a new type of oil drilling process. Technically, they won’t be lying, just misleading, if you tend to disregard that tricky little word “foreign.”

Granted, it’s been said that we do not have alternative technology available yet to take up the brunt of our oil demand, but it seems we keep looking to only one, and not a combination of alternative sources. What about a combination of alternative energy sources? I hear this idea floating around, but no gelling. The Sierra Club of Michigan has a very good presentation that shows a combination of energy sources, wind, solar, geothermal, etc., plus conservation programs like reclaiming wastewater, and recycling may meet all of our energy demands in Michigan. But we’re not advancing toward a future that will no longer be reliant on one big massive conglomerate like the oil cartel is to us right now. It seems we work toward monopolies in this country. Then we’re upset when we’re stuck with them without a choice. We should be looking to all venues to move forward for our energy future, not reinforcing the idea of fossil fuel again, like it’s all right because it belongs to us. 

I see the big push to get away from “foreign” oil as the big ruse to drill in the Arctic circle, the polar bear habitat, Utah, even Livonia, MI for Pete’s sake, and anywhere a slant oil drill can legitimately be utilized to “not’ enter our protected National Parks. They do so anyway at an angle right under protected habitat, while doing a great deal of damage with all the accompanying paraphernalia like roads, pipeline, trucks, heavy equipment, and trash. Ditto for coal mining. Using coal is getting away from “foreign” oil, all oil, but is still perpetuating the use of filthy fossil fuel that will eventually run out. Sure it might be thousands of years before it does, but at what price, gutting the countryside, ruining the earth trying?

So beware of that tricky little “foreign” word that comes before oil. It’s not a detail that should go unnoticed, because it doesn’t make any difference. It does, or they wouldn’t be slipping it in there.  It makes all the difference in our lives, our environment, and our world whether our future continues to poke around the earth and the oceans below for oil or coal that is “OURS.” Our oil and coal burn just as filthy as the “foreign” stuff.

I caught the end of a program on the Science Channel tonight that featured Stirling Energy Technologies. Stirling has been around since the 80’s relative to alternative energy sources. Stirling is not selling retail to the public on an individual basis yet, but considering I have a large satellite dish out here in the boonies I would have no problem owning a solar dish in the future.

The FAQ page for Stirling describes: 

Our Solar Dish Stirling system is shaped much like large satellite dishes (approximately 37’ in diameter) and covered with curved mirrors. These solar dishes are programmed to always face the sun and focus that energy on a collector in much the same way that a satellite dish focuses radio waves on a tuner. This collector is connected to a Stirling engine, which uses the thermal power generated by the focused solar energy to heat liquid hydrogen in a closed-loop system. The expanding hydrogen gas creates a pressure wave on the pistons of the Stirling engine, which spins an electric motor creating electricity with no fuel cost or pollution. This technology is referred to as solar thermal or concentrating solar power.

The company also says that at a “power plant producing 1,000 MW, the cost per kWh would be less than ten cents,” and “[o]ne dish on an annual basis can produce 55,000-60,000 kWh of electricity. This is equivalent to the total energy required for 8-10 homes in the U.S.” ChaChing!

Stirling may save the Western part of our country in the future. Right now Stirling is planning a solar field 5 miles square in the desert that will supply the entire city of San Diego with electricity. Of course as more of this type of technology is utilized, the more the engineers can improve and modify, modify, modify. Remember computers back in the 70’s? I used to do keypunch and then worked on a desktop computer in U of M hospital’s personnel dept. The mainframe to those computers back then took up a whole room. We had to type the info on forms with 7 carbon copies first, then input the data too because we couldn’t trust that the system wouldn’t go down and dump everything. The miracle of innovation, and modification is apparent as I type this on my little laptop that I can take anywhere and doesn’t even require a mouse. See what I mean?

The sooner we unleash all the technology that is out there to see what we actually can come up with, the sooner it gets modified down to convenient personal size. Right now it would take 20,000 dishes to equal a coalburner or nuke plant. But with future innovation and modification in no time we could see that number down to hundreds as the size of the equipment is reduced. Better yet our own personal dish, and mini power station no bigger than a small boiler that produces everything we need with absolutely no fuel used or pollution produced to keep us nice and cool as the sun sears on.  Am I taking it too far? I don’t think so.

Read more about Stirling: http://www.stirlingenergy.com/faq.asp?Type=all

I was looking on the Internet for websites to find out how our political candidates stand on the environment. Fortunately, I received my League of Conservation Voters newsletter in the mail today. The LCV has a new Presidential Candidate Profiles Website. It has the most comprehensive analysis of the candidate’s positions on global warming, energy, and how they’ve voted in the past. It also has Operation: Spotlight. Real interesting. The objective of the LCV is to target 14 states with a total of 159 electoral votes to elect environmentally friendly legislators in those states.

Unfortunately, Michigan is on the list of the 14 states that need a change in order to be environmentally up-to-par. I say unfortunately because we are surrounded by the world’s 2nd largest freshwater supply, and we can clearly see the fight for freshwater is in America’s future after this summer’s droughts. While our current legislators work to get a multi-state compact signed to keep our water here where it belongs, we have a Republican Senate that is not too terribly friendly to the environment. So we fight to keep freshwater here, and then do nothing to stop the industry pollution that threatens it? No sense to it at all. I know we have the Great Lakes Legacy cleanup thing going. You know where they dumped all the dredged up toxic sludge from the first project? Right near my house near Pt. Mouille game reserve, various protected wetlands, and another DNR game reserve all on the banks of Lake Erie again. It’s all just getting moved around. 

As far as our federal congress, a small group of Republican Senators has already blocked the House’s new energy bill. The LCV sites Senator Sununu for standing “with a minority in the Senate that sided with big oil and big coal to block a measure that is good for jobs, good for the economy, good for national security, good for consumers and good for the planet.” The power behind the lobby of big polluters is a force to be reckoned with. The LCV website is very informative as to who and who isn’t being bought by big energy, oil, lumber, coal, etc. According to the LCV, among the top candidates who are up for re-election or looking to move to the senate and receiving massive contributions by polluters to stop any progress forward to protect our earth, our health, and the lives of everything on the planet:

• Heather Wilson (NM)            835,512
• James Inhofe     (OK)             636,965
• Pete Domenici   (NM)            567,928
• Steve Pearce     (NM)             547,415
• Arlen Specter    (PA)              546,303

What’s up with New Mexico? I know it has plenty of open land. It’s a shame its legislators are being backed by dirty money, by that the LCV means polluter’s money, because New Mexico has a lot of open space. It could be an ideal place for solar or possibly geothermal energy. And it is one of 5 states fed by one river threatened by global warming.  Three people on that list will vote against the environment. Where’s the sense? If New Mexico runs out of water, watch them eyeball Michigan. It’s irresponsible. Add up that column above and it totals $3,134,123.00 to keep polluting. And it’s very early yet. Imagine the contribution total by November, 2008. It’s a sad statement considering the same money could be invested in alternative energy sources creating a win win situation no matter how the future progesses. 

 Check out more of “Operation: Spotlight, exposing the influence of dirty money in Congress” on the LCV website. This is valuable info. Politicians have scorecards for their voting history for specific environmental bills year by year. If you’re concerned about the environment, it is essential to know the candidates.  This is a must see checklist for doing your homework before elections: http://www.lcv.org/      

 http://www.lcv.org/OperationSpotlight/home.html                

Over the weekend a discussion about prices of natural gas came up. Why is natural gas so high priced? It isn’t a petroleum by-product or anything. And we’re supposed to have plenty of the stuff. Well by time I looked everything up, it turns out we have a natural gas shortage on the way. Production of natural gas has been declining for a while. Hurricane Katrina didn’t help the offshore drilling for natural gas in the gulf either.

What I found while looking to find why natural gas prices are high is that most of our power plants are fueled with natural gas. So when we use electric, natural gas is used in massive amounts by that industry. An article in Rolling Stone about all types of fossil fuels stated: 

 American natural-gas production is also declining, at five percent a year, despite  frenetic new drilling, and disasters at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl and the  acid-rain problem, the U.S. chose to make gas its first choice for electric-power  generation. The result was that just about every power plant built after 1980 has to  run on gas. Half the homes in America are heated with gas. To further complicate  matters, gas isn’t easy to import. Here in North America, it is distributed through a  vast pipeline network. Gas imported from overseas would have to be compressed at  minus-260 degrees Fahrenheit in pressurized tanker ships and unloaded (re-gasified)   at special terminals, of which few exist in America. Moreover, the first attempts to  site new terminals have met furious opposition because they are such ripe  targets for terrorism.

Not good. I also caught an article about Conoco Phillips being prepared to fund a new natural gas pipeline off the north slope of Alaska through Canada to us down here. It would cost over 30 billion dollars. But it wasn’t clear the route they plan to take and the environmental impact this pipeline would make. The article made it appear CP wasn’t concerned with government funding for the project, which usually means they can circumvent any major regulations, by the government.

The NRDC had an article particularly about any proposed pipelines for natural gas out of Alaska. Are they on their toes or what? Until everyone gets the details of just how Conoco Phillips plans on building this pipeline and through where, everyone needs to rethink yet another unrenewable fuel.

Despite everything I read, our demands are so high that if the energy source is not renewable on a mass scale, we are just buying ourselves a quick fix not a cure. Read all the articles below. They each give a perspective. I can see that there just may be an alternative in the mix that will keep the environment safe, offer a tremendous service that will give us enough natural gas until we come up with a permanent fix, not to mention a lot of jobs will be created for that pipeline. It’s little too early to tell if this is a good feasible idea.

I know I like to stay warm in the winter, and prefer gas because I live in the country. My mother always said to have a gas stove in the country. You will always have food and warmth if the power fails. We also have a wall unit with no electronics. If the pilot is on, I have heat even without electricity.  But I’m hoping that with so many incredible advances I’ve seen and read about, we might not need a pipeline anytime soon. I have to think that maybe by time that pipeline is finished, it could end up being an outmoded energy solution. What I do know is that we better get moving on something we can all live with well into the future.

http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/7203633/the_long_emergency

http://www.nrdc.org/air/energy/rep/chap3.asp.

http://enews.earthlink.net/article/bus?guid=20071130/4750ea50_3ca6_1552620071201-448662628.
 

Big funding may be around the corner for CO2 capture technology. We’ve got plenty of coal. We’re not going to quit using it. We have coalbuners everywhere. But coal is dirty and part of the pollution problem.  So it looks like we may be going the route of capturing the CO2 emissions from coal burning plants and burying it.

There is new problem. How much CO2 can the earth hold? It seems like a volatile business to me, like a little too much compressed gas and kaboom! But there appears to be big motivation to get moving on this. John Kerry recently introduced a bill that would increase “funding to establish three to five coal-fired power plants with advanced carbon capture technology and three to five large-scale sequestration projects” according to environmental news service.  I guess these would serve as models.
The news also reported: “The legislation authorizes $2.4 billion in annual grants through 2015 for the power plants, as well as $1.6 billion annually through 2015 for the sequestration projects. It also calls on the U.S. Geological Survey, USGS, to complete an assessment of the nation’s geological storage capacity.” There was unanimous agreement between parties on the subcommittee that this is a good bill.
Maybe if we realize our feasible limits for CO2 storage we won’t run into some of the problems we have now. Was there ever a way to measure just how much CO2 our atmosphere would hold without going bust when we created coalburners and failed to offer fuel economy cars? If so, someone goofed.
I realize that we might have to do things like store CO2 in the earth, but it should not be looked at as a solution, only a temporary fix. We need to seriously start experimenting with combinations of renewable energy to relieve the overload on fossil fuels. We may have plenty of coal but strip top mining for example is wreaking too much havoc on habitat and our mountains. Miners are wreckless and the entire surrounding area is destroyed
There should be a happy medium for every living thing if we don’t end up in an all out race by waiting too long to decide whether or not a problem exists. We need to get moving in order to have a smooth transition into a future with renewable, sustainable energy.
http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/nov2007/2007-11-08-10.asp.

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.
 

I’m sick and tired of the underhanded movements of the Bush/Cheney administration’s all out assault on nature. Their latest accomplishment: A proposal introduced in August that would dismantle vital protections for our National Forests and grasslands and eliminate key federal protections for all wildlife in those areas as reported by Defenders of Wildlife.   

You must know they intend to enter our national forests to drill for oil and strip mine mountaintops for coal. They lie through their teeth as expected. They’re oilmen and are not in earnest about pushing too much for alternative energy. Bush didn’t sign the Kyoto Treaty because it would hurt whom? Industry. He promised instead to regulate industry emissions ourselves. He has been pushing for self-regulation in industry from the beginning. Self-regulation is the fox watching the henhouse.  Let’s see how this administration regulated big business pollution over the past 7 years? 

• They removed key sections of the Clean Water and Air Acts. These have always had bipartisan support because they are crucial to our health!  Have you noticed the rise in cancers of all types? There as been no progression to test for air pollutants in neighborhoods across the country relative to a rise in illness and disease for the past 7 years. 

• They’ve cut the EPA enforcement to its lowest level on record, so they aren’t watching what goes on.  There has been a great reduction in fines to huge polluters, nearly a 2/3 reduction and criminal prosecution for offenders has dropped by 1/3. Our Senate in Michigan just some of them tax breaks and want to cut the budget, which will mean our state won’t be watching polluters here either. 

• They’ve disabled the Superfund program. Superfund is used for cleaning up millions of pounds of industrial waste in neighborhoods in 48 states. You know the fact that Superfund even exists is an acknowledgement by the opposition that we do indeed produce a huuuuuge amount of industrial waste. Do we really think this stuff will just disappear?

• They’ve totally ignored any pledges to protect native plants and animals from extinction and are the first administration to not add one single species to the list even though we read about 100’s of species that are near extinction right now.

• They’ve reversed the ban on commercial whaling that was in place since 1986 under Reagan.

• Millions of acres of wilderness and our most sensitive public lands have been opened to logging, mining, and oil and gas drilling. One plan allowed 10% of all trees in California’s Giant Sequoia Park to be removed. 200-year-old trees cut down. We’ve had enough fires this past summer destroying forests that this is just like the looting that takes place after a disaster.

• Other national parks have either had land up for sale by public auction or for development like the million acres Grand Canyon-Parashant Monument in Arizona, the 2,000-foot spires at Fisher Towers, Utah. Arches National Park in Utah has 1200 mining claims within 10 miles! Texas might soon auction off part of its Christmas Mountains. The wealthy are buying the country.

 I think that anyone who assaults the earth, the air, the water of any nation this way, ultimately assaults its people. Without clean soil we cannot grow food. We need air to breathe, and water to drink. The faster we get away from fossil fuels the quicker we help the world renew itself, and the quicker we disable the stronghold of power shared by industry and government that will do its best to keep us from advancing into a green future, ruining the environment in the process.  Crimes against humanity come to mind when I think of our present government. And it continues without opposition!  An awful lot of people think the Bush administration will be gone in short time. They do not physically leave office until Jan. 2009. That gives them 15 more months to contribute to the extinction of at least 200 species already threatened. And don’t forget the lovely weather we’re having. It will most assuredly get worse, while this government aids polluters.   http://www.defenders.org/index.php.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/5939345/crimes_against_nature/.    

I was reading my husband’s “The Building Tradesman” about Lawrence Tech’s participation in Solar Decathlon 2007. The students plan to construct a small house on a back parking lot at LTU, which is part of an international competition with other universities. The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy sponsors the project.

The article said 20 student teams from colleges across the country and Europe compete to design, build, and display a highly energy-efficient solar home as part of a solar village that will be erected on the National Mall in Washington.

Lawrence Tech is the smallest college, and the only one from Michigan in the competition. The students have great plans and ideas but when it came time to actually construct the house well not so good. Some union trades workers are volunteering their time after work to help out. One of the students who is studying architecture and civil engineering said the skilled trades guys really saved their behinds. Sure, build one house…

I imagine it is interesting for the carpenters, electricians, and plumbers helping out. They get to build a solar home probably for the first time. That gives them a one-up on experience when contractors actually start building homes that way. It will be interesting to see how it all comes together.