Trying Windows Live

This is a test of the Writer feature in Windows Live to see how it works with the Blogger system.  Please disregard.

What "Lower Consumption" Means

[Link: The Oil Drum: Campfire | What "Lower Consumption" Means] "The fevered frenzy of Industrial Civilization’s resource consumption appears to have finally reached its apex and begun its decline in this, the first decade of the twenty-first century. A closer look at the physical realities of resource extraction reveals that the resource situation is, in fact, terminal for our high-consumin’ civilization. Resource depletion is a predicament requiring adaptation to an entirely new low-consumption paradigm, rather than a problem to be solved with technological or social solutions. As a country, we need to start the conversation about what a lower-consumption, resource-poor society would look like, and begin the appropriate preparations."

These are the types of discussions we should all be having today. You and I cannot be certain of what the future will hold. It is certainly possible that a new, unpredicted energy source or technological trick will allow us to move on into the future with our existing lifestyle. Possible but not probable. I don't know about you but I have been taught that to assume the improbable is normally not the best way to do your critical planning. Even if we could continue on, the earth and its climate seem to be telling us we can't anyway. I think that we are approaching a point of crisis in society. A point where most of us will understand in our gut that something needs to be done but won't really know what to do. It is thought exercises like these that might allow us to move in the right direction when that time comes.

Big flat TV sales could lead to big stress on power grid

[Link: McClatchy] "But the bigger picture, many say, is one of unnecessary stress on the nation's electricity supply for years to come."

I read articles like this and I have to chuckle. If we are aware of the stress an appliance like flat screen TV's will place on our power grid, and actually think it will be enough to strain it, how in the world can we be contemplating replacing our auto fleet with electric cars. The electricity requirements for a world full of electric cars, charging away between trips, must be horrendous. Has anyone stopped to wonder where all the new energy is going to come from if our grid is already strained in order to accomodate our TV watching.

Come on folks. Those cute little electric cars are going to need thousands of new power plants (most of them coal fired), all generating vast increases in CO2 emissions and other pollutions associated with power generation, to keep charged up. We are essentially going to be trading the pollution of the existing fleet of internal combustion engines with the pollution of coal powered power plants. This doesn't even include the added energy and pollution required to build and maintain all of these new power stations. We don't have a bunch of electrical energy laying around unused. Our TV's need all they can get.

Peak Oil: The End Of the Oil Age is Near, Deutsche Bank Says

[Link: Environmental Capital - WSJ] "Deutsche Bank expects the electric car to become a truly “disruptive technology” which takes off around the world, sending demand for gasoline into an “inexorable and accelerating decline.”

Five years ago I bought a new car. I had just retired and I wanted to have a car I could depend on in my retirement years. I told my wife that this could possible be the last gasoline powered car we would ever own. Our next car could very well be electric. At the time, we got a good chuckle out of that.

Well, it looks like Deutsche Bank has come to the same conclusion. Predicting the end of the oil age, they say the electric car will replace the internal combustion engine powered car that has come to symbolize the material age that we are living in. The Peak Oilers (myself included) have been saying that the oil age is eminent for some time now but they have been assuming the oil supply will begin to dwindle and we will be forced to give up our addiction whether we like it or not. I think Deutsche Bank is underestimating how many other ways we will find to use the oil if we don't use it in our cars but the point is still made. Whether we run out or just don't want to use it any longer doesn't really matter I guess. we are approaching the end of the petro-road and we should be getting ready for whatever lies beyond.

Post-human Earth: How the planet will recover from us - environment

[Link: New Scientist] "Not so, says James Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. He argues that past episodes are a poor guide to what will happen in the future, for the simple reason that the sun is brighter now than it was then. Add that to the mix and the release of methane hydrates could lead to catastrophic, unstoppable global warming - a so-called 'Venus syndrome' that causes the oceans to boil away and dooms the Earth to the fate of its broiling neighbour."

Most conversations about Climate Change focus on the short term. What will the weather be like around here as Global Warming kicks in? This article is grappling with the bigger picture. As we pour CO2 into the atmosphere by burning hydrocarbons, we are returning the earth to a state that hasn't been seen for millions of years. Who knows what will happen as this occurs? All of earth's systems will be effected. Much of the earth may well become uninhabitable. The good news is that we will run out of hydrocarbons to burn eventually and we won't be able to add CO2 to the atmosphere. The bad news is that when we run out of hydrocarbons to burn we will also be out of energy needed to combat the changing conditions.

Birth control could head off climate crunch

[Link: Reuters] Birth control and new technologies -- not lifestyle change alone -- may be needed to head off a combined climate, food and energy crunch later this century, said the head of Britain's science academy Martin Rees.

It is amazing how we can't talk about population control. I really don't think we will ever find a way to do it either. We are programmed to reproduce just like we are programmed to breath air, and limiting reproduction is an ultimate threat. But that doen't change the fact that there will soon be more of us than there are resources to support us. Population that we can't control will be controlled by natural processes and natural population processes are generally not very pretty.

Solar industry's promises bring environmental challenges for Tennessee

Solar industry's promises bring environmental challenges for Tennessee: "As the state tries to reap the benefits of a growing solar industry that could bring thousands of new jobs and billions in new investment, the massive projects also bring with them environmental challenges in the form of intensive manufacturing operations that will draw a tremendous amount of electricity from the state's power grid used to run sprawling chemical reactors.

With just two investments — Hemlock Semiconductor Group near Clarksville and a similar Wacker Chemie AG plant near Chattanooga — Tennessee is poised to become a nationwide leader in the production of polysilicon crystals, the basic building block for the solar industry. Together, these plants will cost at least $2.2 billion to construct."

Solar might be replacing hydrocarbon use in other states, but in Tennessee it looks like more of a tossup. Maybe solar power might have a little bigger "footprint" than most of us imagine.