Tag: Green Energy

On Hole Cards, Or, “Drill, Baby, Drill”? Why? Is Canada Out Of Sand?

In America, today, there are three kinds of drivers: those who look at the other gas pumps down at the ol’ gas station and think: “Oh my God, I can’t believe how much that guy’s spending on gas”, those who look at their own pump down at the ol’ gas station and think: “Oh my God, I can’t believe how much I’m spending on gas” – and those who are doing both at the same time.

Naturally, this has brought the Sarah Palins of the world back out in public, and once again the mantra of “Drill, Baby, Drill” can be heard all the way from the Florida coast to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

But what if those folks have it exactly backwards?

What if, in a world of depleting oil resources, the last thing you want to do is use yours up?

To put it another way: why isn’t all our oil part of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve?

On Redistribution, Or, “Afghanistan Peace Dividend Stimulus Lotto? OK!”

They tell us we’re dropping about $10 billion a month in Afghanistan so we can catch that Bin Laden guy…but eventually, we’re gonna catch him, and as soon as we do you can imagine that folks will be wondering why we’re still over there – and I gotta tell ya, I’m one of those people.

I mean, we’re over here talking about how we’re so broke that we have no choice but to cut a couple of billion from heat assistance for the poor, and a billion-and-a-half from the Social Security operations budget, and money from food stamps and childcare assistance and tornado forecasting in Alabama…but every single month, just as regular as clockwork, we seem to be able to find another $10 billion to spend in Afghanistan, even as we have an economy that could badly use another round of truly productive stimulus.

And I don’t think y’all even realize just how much money $10 billion really is – but today we’re gonna see if we can’t fix that with a bit of a thought exercise.

Imagine if we set up a program that took that Afghanistan money and spent it right here at home for a year or two – and it was spent in the form of a lottery, where we stimulate the larger economy, help fix the mortgage crisis, and create a more energy-independent nation, all at the same time.

I got all we need except a catchy name; with that in mind let’s move on to the description of how the Happy Super Fun Day Peace Lotto Stimulus Thingy works.  

China stops our Green Revolution in its tracks

  The news media and the political blogs are enraptured with handicapping the political races. No one has time to worry about real issues anymore. This is the silly season, when immigrant nannies and comments from comedians become “important”. When shady television hucksters are inexplicably taken seriously and hold huge political rallies.

 Yet the real world, the one that operates on tangible things that make an actual difference in our lives, keeps chugging along.

  While all of you were busy obsessing about political trivialities, the governments of the world were entering a global trade war. This development entered a scary stage yesterday when Brazil decided not to attend the coming G20 summit.

 However, that was nothing compared to China’s latest move.

 China, which has been blocking shipments of crucial minerals to Japan for the last month, has now quietly halted shipments of some of those same materials to the United States and Europe, three industry officials said on Tuesday.

  “The embargo is expanding” beyond Japan, said one of the three rare earth industry officials, all of whom insisted on anonymity for fear of business retaliation by Chinese authorities. They said Chinese customs officials imposed the broader shipment restrictions Monday morning, hours after a top Chinese official had summoned international news media Sunday night to denounce United States trade actions.

  China mines 95 percent of the world’s rare earth elements, which have broad commercial and military applications, and are vital to the manufacture of diverse products including large wind turbines and guided missiles. Any curtailment of Chinese supplies of rare earths is likely to be greeted with alarm in Western capitals, particularly because Western companies are believed to keep much smaller stockpiles of rare earths than Japanese companies do.

 American officials had announced on Friday to investigate if China was violating trade laws by subsidizing their clean energy industry. China responded on Sunday with the statement that Washington “cannot win this trade fight.”

 The war of words ended today. The trade war is on.

Blue Green Oregon

“Oregon is a very poor state with the 2nd highest unemployment in the coutry,” said the man I met at the Explosible Man’s demo.  Most of the state – my part of the state, it seemed was filled with ignorant wingers.  Only Portland and surroundings was blue territory.

The Explosible Man, Dr. James McNight, was demoing and providing lectures on a fantastical new green energy taking dead center aim at the lethal fossil fuel, natural gas, pushed most persuasively by supereme con artist T. Boone Pickens to easy marks like Nancy Pelosi.  Nancy has decreed that natural gas is not a fossil fuel.  She has made a hefty investment in Pickens’ wonderfully named “Clean Energy” that would convert vehicles to natural gas fueling while Boone is monopolizing an even more important liquid, water.

I have written up the magical explosible powders in the Orange Satan to the usual raging apathy for true green:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/…

When I took my then fiance from Portland to the Oregon Outback where I had lived and have not for over half a century, I got lost trying to find the house where I had lived the first years of my life. The house had long ago burned down and the road was no more.

We stood on a hill in waist high sagebrush overlooking a large swath of Warner Valley.  A buzzard or two circled lazily overhead and a jackrabbit scampered across the desert floor now and then.  There was not another sign of life or human habitation except a gravel road that could be seen crossing the desert.

“We lived on the other side of the draw,” I told my beloved.

She was silent for a bit with the wonder of it all.  “You lived here?” she finally managed.

Well yes.   Lived rather well even though we had no electricity.  

Got water from a hot spring.  The water was atrocious but it was at least wet.  If we had known how to use it, we could have warmed the house with it instead of using wood.

We were actually looking at a monumental ecological disaster, a monstrous crime against nature that eventually chased nearly all the Democrats of old out of the valley.

http://img693.imageshack.us/im…

The Crump Geyser, drilled by the invincible prophet of geothermal power had already become a mud puddle.

Now, a half century later, the Crump Geyser and perhaps the Hallinan Hot Spring, will be developed.  The geese are back.  In our “big city” [population ~2,000), Lakeview and smaller towns have Goose Lake back.  A small wood-burning power plant may rejuvenate an area long ago logged out.  In the Basque country of Harney County, a huge wind farm is being born.  On the coast, America’s first wave farm is under construction.

The state long ago went blue and now is the greenest state of them all, even in the Outback where once life was nearly as hard to detect as on Mars.

This country bumpkin long resident in the backward wilds of Upstate New York is thrilled for Blue Green Oregon.

Best,  Terry

Solar Cell 40% Efficiency Breakthough, becomes Product Ready

This 40% breakthrough … has finally become available for your home (maybe?) and office use …

Solar cell breaks efficiency record

Michael Kanellos, CNET News — December 6, 2006

Boeing-Spectrolab has developed a solar cell that can convert almost 41 percent of the sunlight that strikes it into electricity, the latest step in trying to drop the cost of solar power.

Potentially, the solar cell could bring the cost of solar power down to around $3 a watt, after installation costs and other expenses are factored in, over the life of the panel.

[…]

Current silicon solar cells provide electricity at about $8 a watt, before government rebates. The goal is to bring it to $1 a watt without rebates or incentives.

http://news.cnet.com/Solar-cel…

Here is the Final Product from Spectrolab for your Home use. from this week’s news.

Imagine a 350 World — It IS Possible!

350 is more than a catchy slogan —

350 is a target Ceiling for a very good reason:

that reason:

+6 C

325 or 300 ppm, of worldwide CO2 levels,

would be more like what the world really needs!

Alas, what is an Oil and Coal addicted Planet to do?!?

1) Get educated

2) Don’t lose hope

3) Do YOUR part — No one else, can do that …

The Best Green Power You Might Have Never Heard Of!

Okay, let’s talk Solar Power for a little bit. The Dog knows what immediately jumps to your mind, huge, flat black panels atop the house of that local hippie couple, that either generate enough electricity to run a 12 inch  black and white TV, or barely give you enough hot water for a single shower.