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Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Once a Dream Fuel, Palm Oil May Be an Eco-Nightmare

Link: New York Times


Rising demand for palm oil in Europe brought about the clearing of huge tracts of Southeast Asian rainforest and the overuse of chemical fertilizer there.

Worse still, the scientists said, space for the expanding palm plantations was often created by draining and burning peatland, which sent huge amounts of carbon emissions into the atmosphere.


As we desperately try to replace oil as a primary fuel for our civilization's transportation needs, this is going to be an ongoing story I'm afraid. Most high capacity agricultural projects are high impact operations. We have developed agricultural methods that are efficient and energy intensive. That is the way things are done today. But that is for food. The fuel industry is going to be added on top of the food industry. There will be no place safe from the gasoline farmers. Of course it will be an eco-nightmare. How could it not be.

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Daniel J. Popeo: The state of our energy is dangerous


Those of us who are convinced that hydrocarbon resources are in finite supply, and that we might be challenging the limits of its availability, are often reminded of the many flaws in our logic. For instance, we are encouraged to remember the power of the market. When the price of scarce hydrocarbons gets high enough more will appear. The invisible hand of Supply and Demand will guarantee that we can produce what we need. Maybe more expensive, but there. Others implore us to take into account the force of technology. The ingenuity of man will come through as it always has. Like the market, when there is a need there will be a solution.


This author however reminds us of another way that we have misjudged our predicament. It seems that the energy is there if only our poor energy companies were not throttled by the powerful government bureaucracies and all consuming environmental organizations. In other words, we are not short of energy resources, we are merely keeping ourselves from using it. He doesn't mention that we have had a national administration in power for six years that came from the oil industry and instead of tearing down those impenetrable barriers set up by the environmental juggernauts that control our country's resources they invaded a weak middle eastern country to insure our oil interests there. He also mentioned that we have not built a refinery in 30 years. I don't think he mentioned, however, that a refinery was proposed in the western United States last year and it wasn't built because, after getting all of the environmental approvals they needed, they couldn't find anybody that would guarantee a supply of oil that could be refined.


He is obviously unwilling to accept any restraints on our use of resources that might limit his lifestyle. If he could just roll back those pesky rules and regulations he would get us all the energy we would need. That may have made some sense a couple of decades ago, but I would think that the immediate threat of Global Warming would have been a strong enough signal that, hey, maybe the environmentalists have a point here.


[Link: Daniel J. Popeo: The state of our energy is dangerous - Examiner.com]

Board's ban on global warming film challenged

In Federal Way, Washington state, a suburb of Seattle, a controversy rages on the propriety of showing Al Gore's film on Global Warming, "An Inconvenient Truth," in the classroom. The "controversy" is that some parent's have complained that the school district has not presented alternative viewpoints to that presented in the film. Specifically, these parents would like to see counter arguments, including religious ones, to the contention that Global Warming is caused by man's activity. Well, I'm sorry, but I think we are a little late in the game for this to be happening. There is no longer any controversy regarding Global Warming or its primary causes. That is not just my opinion it is the accepted opinion of all of the appropriate experts. Any alternative argument is almost certainly wrong.


Education is never perfect, but there is no justification for deliberately teaching information that is probably wrong. If you do that you are not educating you are indoctrinating and that can not be tolerated in a free nation. Today's children will be living their lives in a world subjected to the climate changes caused by global warming. They will be the ones who have to face it and find a way to live with its fury. It is too late for us to prevent global warming from effecting them so we must prepare them for it. "An Inconvenient Truth" can only be a small start for that immense task.


[Seattle P.I. Link: Board's ban on global warming film challenged]

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

The hype over hydrogen cars

You get a sense that the Post senses the oversell of this hydrogen car when you see the word hype used in the headline. The story, however, is less skeptical.


The Ford Edge gliding along the George Washington Memorial Parkway doesn't have spinning rims or a booming sound system. The bling in this SUV is the technology. The vehicle runs almost silently. It needs no gas and releases no polluting exhaust.

The devil is in the details my friend. Two million dollars to produce this SUV. Can you even imagine the pollution produced in all of the processes involved in that cars production. A car like this is merely pushing its pollution back a step. The pollution will now be expelled in the extraction and manufacturing processes involved in producing the hydrogen and batteries. The hydrogen in particular will probably require a lot of power and natural gas feedstock for it production. And this doesn't even consider the building of a completely new infrastructure to deliver these new products.


I think we are not yet thinking clearly about our problems here. The article notes that we will have to "leap high technological hurdles" to make this work. That is probably an understatement. There may not be enough energy left to get us over the top.


[Link: WP: The hype over hydrogen cars - washingtonpost.com Highlights - MSNBC.com]

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Cutbacks Impede Climate Studies

The government's ability to understand and predict hurricanes, drought and climate changes of all kinds is in danger because of deep cuts facing many Earth satellite programs and major delays in launching some of its most important new instruments, a panel of experts has concluded.

Oh great! Just as the need for ever more vigilance and precision in weather and atmospheric monitoring becomes critical, the funding is cut. We couldn't make global warming go away by denying it. Now apparently we are going to try ignoring it. It is just another case in a long list of incredibly misplaced priorities by this administration.



We are fighting the wrong war. Instead of fighting for control of the worlds oil in order to assure an uninterruptible supply of fuel to support our existing lifestyle, we should be fighting the threat to our existence from using that oil at all. Eventually we will realize that the only way to get out of the trap we have set for ourselves is to quit using oil. We must do this for two reasons. To survive the climate catastrophe that is Global Warming, obviously we have to stop adding carbon to the atmosphere as we have been doing. We can best do that by not burning hydrocarbons and thereby releasing all of the carbon that has been sequestered in the earth's crust all these millions of years. But also, because we will begin to run out of oil in no more than a generation, we have to find a way to survive, as a species, without it. I think the only way to do that, painful as it might be, would be to go cold turkey for all uses of oil that could be done another way. That includes transportation, direct energy generation, fertilizers, asphalt and so on. That would force us to build a rational way of life using renewable resources while we still have some petrochemicals around for those situations where that is the only way to do it. Think of lubrication, medicines, exotic plastics, electronic components, etc. Let's not burn up those possibilities. In the long run there are no hydrocarbons. The bad news is that you probably can't hand off the long run to your children and grandchildren anymore.


[Link: Cutbacks Impede Climate Studies - washingtonpost.com]

Saturday, January 13, 2007

Big Coal's Dirty Move

As the world heats up, the coal industry is racing to build more than 150 new power plants before Congress decides to crack down on global warming.

According to the American Heritage Dictionary, a suicidal act is one that is 'dangerous to oneself or to one's interests; self-destructive or ruinous.' By this standard, the coal boom that is currently sweeping America is the atmospheric equivalent of a swan dive off a very tall building. At precisely the moment that scientists have reached a consensus that we need to drastically cut climate-warming pollution, the electric-power industry is racing to build more than 150 new coal plants across the United States.
[ Link: Rolling Stone : National Affairs: Big Coal's Dirty Move]

Another clue that we (people generally, American's especially) are not going to be able to deal with global warming and energy depletion rationally. I have noted before that people are a group of clever individuals interacting in infinitely complex ways such that the final result is a totally irrational species. There is no way that we will not use up all of the supplies of hydrocarbons that can be profitably extracted. The climate will have its way.

Thursday, January 11, 2007

Bridging Peak Oil and Climate Change Activism

By now a disturbing trend becomes clear: the two problems of Climate Change and Peak Oil together are worse than either by itself. Strategies that might help to keep lights burning and trucks moving while reducing emissions are questionable from a depletionist point of view, while most strategies to keep the economy energized as oil and gas disappear imply increasing greenhouse gas emissions. As we will see, the closer we look, the worse it gets.

As noted above, both groups need to design a survivable energy transition strategy in order to “sell” their message to policy makers. Carbon emissions come from burning depleting fossil fuels, the primary energy sources for modern societies. Thus both problems boil down to energy problems—and energy is essential to the maintenance of agriculture, transportation, communication, and just about everything else that makes up the modern global economy. [Link]

(Thanks to PeakEnergy (US) for directing me to this article.) I agree with Jon S. that this article is a very important addition to the public dialogue on energy issues. I have long claimed that the issues of Climate Change and Peak Oil are really two sides of one coin which is hydrocarbon dependency. We are not going to solve either problem alone because, as Mr. Heinberg explains, the two problems are really just symptoms of another common problem which is uncontrolled hydrocarbon exploitation.


Imagine if we had somehow limited our use of hydrocarbons over the years to some small fraction of todays consumption. Today we would probably have neither global warming (at todays rate, anyway) or peak oil (by definition). I suspect we would also have a lot fewer people as well because there would not have been the green revolution or globalization to encourage population increases. They are really the same problem.


We need to be thinking on this level. We need to be thinking about the real problems that confront us. We need to be thinking.

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

Bush Lifts Oil-Drill Ban in Alaska's Bristol Bay

Royalties to Rise for Some Offshore Wells in Advance of Democrats' Plans to Roll Back Tax Breaks

The Bush administration yesterday moved to boost U.S. oil and gas supplies by lifting a long-standing moratorium on drilling in Alaska's Bristol Bay, as OPEC accelerated plans to reduce supplies in order to prop up sagging crude prices. [Link]

This is not a surprise. But the reaction from Congress may look a little different now that there is a Democratic majority. In their remaining two years look for this administration to leave no stone unturned (literally) in their quest to open up our common resource legacy to corporate exploitation.

EU: Days of secure, cheap energy over

These kind of headlines are starting to show up pretty regularly now. You can see discussions like this on any given day in the news. In the United States it is still glossed over with a yawn and a comment about how the market or technology will take care of it "somehow." In the rest of the world, though, reality seems to be taken more seriously. Sometime, very soon I believe, awareness of this new reality is going to achieve critical mass and we are going to be living in a brand new world. We have used our hydrocarbon reserves to artificially boost crop yields and increase consumer goods production levels to such a degree that our population has attained unimaginable levels. Also, we have consumed hydrocarbons at such a high rate that we have managed to destabilize the climate. All of this, just as we are running into energy production limits. This is really going to be interesting.
[Link: EU: Days of secure, cheap energy over - Yahoo! News]