http://www.jillsfloorcloths.com/index.html

Check out the natural themes in these great paintings that can withstand the rigors of family footwork!

And check out this letter to the editor that the artist wrote:

A friend recently asked me, "What is it you Democrats want?"  I had to stop and think a bit.  "Well," I said, "to grow the Party, to elect Democrats, to reverse the course George Bush and company have led us on."

In November, I showed up at a Party function wearing a campaign pin to which I had affixed a picture of my grandson.  I realized that I wasn't working for a particular candidate or party, so much as I was FIGHTING for this child, for all the generations to come, and more than that even, for this planet to which we all cling in fear and hope.

But to answer my friend, in concrete terms; this, in part, is what we want.

1)  Fairness.  Corporations and the wealthy should have to pay the same tax rate as the rest of us.  They don't.  Everyone knows this.  It is inexcusable.

2)  A health care system that includes everyone.

3)  Energy independence.  No more subsidies for oil companies.  That money should go to innovation in alternative energy.  Our idle factories could be producing wind and solar, and other systems, providing new technology and good jobs.

4)  New thinking in education.  Our kids aren't dropping out because they're stupid.  It's because they don't believe in the future.  Our society raises them to be mindless consumers instead of problem solvers.  We need to challenge them, involve them, invite them to participate politically and otherwise.  Education needs to be about ideas, innovation, meeting the challenges of an increasingly crowded and complicated world.  Education needs to be RELEVANT.

5)  A government of the people.  At the very least, average citizens deserve representation equal to that the corporations enjoy.  Until that happens, nothing will change.  They will just keep getting away with it.

6)  We need an acknowledgement from government and the private sector of our responsibility to the planet and all of its inhabitants.  We must accept our part in the degradation of our world and join the many nations already working to make changes, and we need to influence those who are not, to begin to do so.  This is not a political issue.  It's a matter of survival.

7)  We must demand a renewed commitment to international diplomacy.  America must lead by example, not by bullying.  We cannot afford the Neanderthal attitudes of the current occupants of the Whitehouse.  NEVER AGAIN should we allow our brave troops, our sons and daughters, to be sent into harm's way on the basis of faulty information or downright lies. 

8)  After 9/11, George Bush asked us to keep shopping, keep traveling.  For the challenges we face, we must ask more of ourselves and our leaders.  During Word War II, the public sacrificed proudly.  We need leadership that represents the best we can be.  Until that happens, we will continue to be ignored and exploited by the scoundrels in Washington. 

I will close with the words of Bob Marley, "Get up.  Stand up.  Stand up for your rights...."

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/2/13/17311/9218#3

"...lawmakers must also have the courage to promote safe climate-friendly nuclear energy."

Yep, that's the right word for the people who live or work near a nuclear plant.  Courage!!  

If there's an accident it might not be as bad as Chernobyl.  

Actually a government study found that each one of over 100 "swimming pool" used nuclear fuel rod storage facilities (located at nuclear plants all over the US, some on earthquake fault lines)could release 8 to 17 times the contamination of the Chernobyl incident.

Or it might be the deadly silent (covered up by nuclear contractors/regulators)contamination in your groundwater that gets you.  

Or the yellowcake dust in the air from uranium mining.

Or nuclear proliferation of weapons made possible by nuclear power plants, like those in Iran.  And N Korea, and Pakistan, and on and on.

Or nuclear winter caused by nuclear weapons "exchanges" in the middle east.

Let's take the chicken's way out instead.  Forget " the courage to promote safe climate-friendly nuclear energy".  

Wind power, wave power, solar power, conservation, plugin vehicles.... cowardly yes.  But a lot better for the planet.

Doom and gloom! Hard to maintain a sense of humor in the face of that figure.  It would take 7 million square miles of prairie grass to sequester all that!  Contrary to my optimistic estimates.

But a prairie national park and windfarm could still do the job.  If plugin hybrid drivetrains took over transportation energy and conservation in the form of geothermal heat pump heating/cooling took over from standard heating and air conditioning. 

Another promising source of GHG reversal is manure, sewage, garbage,and farm waste biogas digestion.  It would prevent the massive amount of natural gas released by nitrogen runnoff into wetlands, rivers, and lakes.  By both directly preventing the runoff and also providing organic fertilizer for farming.  This would stop fossil fuel fertilizer runoff.

This whole comprehensive plan is a very tall order though.  Political will to do this just does not exist at this time.  I fear that only a series of natural disasters, like huge icecap melting and/or several Katrina sized hurricanes in one hurricane season would galvanize the mass media and the public into forcing politicians to actually agree to a comprehensive plan.

Right now scientists are afraid themselves.  Afraid to even connect more severe storms and catastrophic ice melting with global climate change.  It could very well kill their careers if they come out and tell the truth.  The sad state of the IPCC report tells the tale.  Intimidation and censorship have us all waiting another two years for the next report to verify what we already know.

Meanwhile the ice proceeds to melt at an exponentially increasing rate.  And subsidies keep on going to fossil fuel, nuclear power, and fuel farming.  With huge kickbacks to political parties to keep the status quo cash flow going.

Only two areas provide very slight hope. 

First:  Wind power has been given the green light from The Audobon Society (as far as danger to birds) and a recent windfarm study confirms that wind could provide most of our baseload power without a lot of expensive storage or backup power plants.

Second:  there appears to be a race heating up between many automakers to produce plugin hybrid vehicles. 

These provide very little hope though since the resistance to actual capital for mass production for these efforts is very strong.  The really large investment funds and banks that hold  very large stakes in the status quo energy systems, fossil fuel, nuclear, and now fuel farming see only financial disaster in any energy revolution.

They don't see the much larger financial disaster coming from massive global climate disaster.  Bottomline corporate group think only considers the upcoming quarterly profits. So it goes.  It really is a hopeless fight.

But hopeless causes are the only ones worth fightinmg for.

Number one in the hood G!

http://www.gothamist.com/archives/2007/02/01/aqua_teen_hunge.php

Perhaps homeland security needs to hire at least a few people who watch cartoons, maybe that would be more helpful.

These packages were attached to a bridge for WEEKS before being discovered?  What does this tell US about the performance of homeland security?

Has it improved since Katrina or since that plane flew into the Manhattan building a few months ago?

How many 100 billion has Chertoff (the whitewater assistant prosecutor, great credentials to oversee homeland security?) squandered.  1.2 trillion doled out to Halliburton and friends in Iraq.

How is that going?

Better send those cartoon promotion guys to gitmo.  That'll secure the homeland.

And better hope that real teens don't get the idea that pranking homeland security is just good clean (whistleblowing) fun.  Exposing the sorry state of contract on america homeland security before Condi's mushroom clouds sprout.

Maybe the only way to get any of our country back from corporate kleptocracy is by waking up the public to the complete lack of any competence or honesty in the brand new homeland security agency.  It's like that police "academy"  in Baghdad.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/27/AR2006092702134.html 

Looks good from a satellite in geostationary orbit, but on closer inspection the whole structure has been gutted by looters and is dripping sewage.  And that's the police "academy"!  Imagine what the rest of the Halliburton Iraq reconstruction looks like?

http://www.corporate-ir.net/ireye/ir_site.zhtml?ticker=fcel&script=412&item_id=913867

Biogas from brewery waste digestion is being used in direct fuel cells, and the waste heat is used to generate steam for the plant. 

Turbines can be added to harvest the waste heat as well, generating extra power.  Then the heat from the turbine exhaust can heat hot water.

By using the cO2 in the exhaust to enhance the growth of algae in solar collectors, biodisel and biomass to put back through the fuel cell can be produced.  Putting all these systems together would provide liquid transportation fuel as well as a backup distributed generation source for wind, solar, and water power.

The same biogas cycle can be initiated with manure, sewage, garbage, or farm waste as well.  Lots of small distributed systems at landfills, farms, sewage plants. and even skyscrapers would provide a great renewable biomass "battery" for the renewable grid.

Dig the green skyscraper with microturbines. 

http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2007/01/zero_energy_chi.html#comment-28026046

It stands for "use renewably generated electricity, efficiently", invented by David roberts of  "Grist" magazine.

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/1/12/151559/034#5

Now add tax credits for using and investing in CO2 saving renwable energy, distributed storage, and conservation.  Tax credits to be determined by actual CO2 savings.  That way the difficulty of predicting which technologies are the best is left to science and the market place.  

A pure electric plugin vehicle would get the highest tax credit, a standard hybrid the lowest, regular gas guzzlers no credit at all.  Solar and wind systems would be credited by how many kwh they generate.  Conservation devices like geothermal heating/cooling systems by how much CO2 or kwh they save.

Long term tax policies that we can all count on for about 10 years.  Then sunset all subdsidies, because they won't be needed by then.  As mass production takes hold, costs will come down and the early adopters will have payed for their solar panels, plugin hybrids, and biogas systems in energy savings and actual income.

The actual income part comes from reforming utility regulation like the Engineer pointed out is happening in your state and others.  Paying for renewable distributed generation and storage so customers will invest in it.

Great bumpersticker, "URGE2"!!  I'll borrow some of your language for referendum writing, if you don't mind.

A political digression on "The Energy Blog".  A proud patriot hadn't heard about this?  Hehey.

http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2007/01/catching_up.html#comment-27687090

Ever hear of habeus corpus?  The Bush administration canceled it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus

They kidnapped a Canadian citizen from a NYC airport where he was changing planes.  They took him to Syria where he was tortured for  months.  He is now suing.

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/050214fa_fact6?050214fa_fact6

Point taken Harvey, the US constitution has been effectively suspended since the 2000 "appointment" fiasco.  this administration does not represent anything "decent" and certainly not any kind of "democracy".

http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2006/12/audubon_society.html#comment-26959488

We win!  Game over dood! 

And this seals the deal!  95% of our power from wind?  Yep.

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/12/17/212637/60

With almost no backup power!  It's due to the fact that the wind is always blowing somewhere.  Nature's own design, creative chaos!  Go with the flow.  Wind wins hands down for clean, cheap, easy to use power.

Backed up with water power that harvests power all the way down a river with no dams, no propellers.  Stay tuned!!  (more on this as it develops...)

This makes regular power plants unecessary and obsolete, solving the intermittency problem with wind, water, and solar power.

http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2006/12/westinghouse_wi.html#comment-26871562

But are biogas resources too small to backup wind, solar, and water power?  yep, most likely they are, but not because digestion loses energy.  Manure and farm waste alone would supply a large percentage of backup biogas.  Especially when the biogas is used at 75% efficiency.

Where does the rest of the biofuel come from so that natural gas is conserved as long as possible?

From algae in solar collectors.  Half of the dry weight of the algae is biodiesel, the other half is cellulose powder.  The biodiesel could power the fuel cell vehicles in driving mode, the powdered cellulose, biogas (with natural gas as a backup fuel) in stationery V2G mode.

In v2G the CO2 could be sequestered in the algae system.

The energy lost in bacterial conversion of coal and oil to natural gas would be less than the energy expended in conventional mining and refining.  and all that toxic mess that comes with coal and oil would stay far underground where it is already.  The natural gas would carry the energy in the coal and oil to the fuel cells.

Yep nukes are all TOO real Dem!  Too bad for all of us. 

Fuel cost?  Biogas in a fuel cell/turbine is around 5 cents per kwh, powdered cellulose from algae is even cheaper.  Biodiesel from algae will be cheaper than diesel or biodiesel from fuel farming. 

In plugin/fuel cell cars that use 1/10nth of the fuel on average of an equivalent ICE car, biodiesel from algae can  provide more than enough liquid fuel for transportation needs.

Manure and waste to biogas. Biogas to electricity and cO2.  CO2 to algae biofuel.  Biofuel to electricity and cO2.  CO2 back to biofuel. It's a cycle. 

While it is true that if the grid is mainly powered by solar, wind, and wave power the whole capacity of the grid may need to ocasionally come from a backup source.  V2G does that with no duplication of generating capacity.

A big argument with renewables is that if you aproach 100% renewable power on the grid, you also need storage and generation capacity that equals that capacity.  in other words you would need all the present power plants idling in case the wind, water, and solar power dissapears all at once all over the grid.  And that cost of maintaining those plants in that idling state would negate all the savings from renewables.

By using v2G to supply this emergency backup generation that duplication of generating capacity does not take double the capital investment.  Because the vehicles are already payed for by consumers for their transportation function.  The V2G mode is a free bonus.

Trillions can also be saved by going to this distributed power generation and storage grid design, because it not only dispenses with power plants, but makes hugely expensive grid upgrades unecessary.

Each home with v2G becomes a neighborhood power system that can power that local grid.  And it builds out in blocks from there.  Also protecting from ever more frequent power outages due to increased storms from global climate change.

The profit potential of a home, small business, or farm that uses biogas digestors, V2G, wind, and solar power all together is enormous.  It allows an individual V2G/renewable supplier or local renewable energy cooperative to guarantee a set minimum amount of power to the grid, making renewables just as reliable as advocates claim  fossil and nuclear power are.

http://www.semiconductor-today.com/news_items/DEC_06/SPECTR_061206.htm

With concentrating solar that is 40% efficient, verified by the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL).  By collecting heat as well from the same collector, using solar cogeneration, all the heat and electricity for a very energy efficient home could be provided for an initial investment of less than 10k. 

Even without tax credits and other subsidy plans that would give a 5 year or less payback period in most regions of the US.  Because many states offer incentives the payback would be even quicker.  In NJ for instance, the clean energy credits would bring in around 1000 dollars per year.

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/12/5/164414/053#2

I have noticed a lot of grasping at so-called credibility in the discussion lately.

This seems to involve pandering to conventional "wisdom" that renewable energy is more expensive and only practical for maybe 20% of our power needs.

The Wright Brothers labored in anonymity for 4 years after they flew, giving up in despair for 2 1/2 years.  Why?

Because of conventional wisdom.  The New York Times, the army, and all of the media of their time ignored them as crackpots.  For four years, until a marginal nature publication wrote a story on them.

This energy revolution is suffering from this same conventional wisdom syndrome.  Drop that and your audience will grow.  People need to know that modern day "Wrights" have the solutions that will work already.

100 million electric cars with 20kw fuel cell/microturbine backup generators have the capacity to generate over 3 times our present electric power use.  All on biogas with natural gas as a backup fuel.  With 3 to 5 times present efficiency and 1/10nth the CO2 emmissions.

http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2006/12/teacher_saves_t.html#comment-26213019

75% in 10 years, 100% in 20 years. 

Along with an increase of conservation reserve cropland and wetlands to reverse GHG concentrations, a 50% increase from the present.  Presently 1/3 of our GHG emissions are absorbed by conservation reserve and park land.

http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2006/12/acore_conferenc.html#comment-26050525

I was googling for some estimate of available roof space, space over parking lots, and space over highways suitable for solar power.  This study of San Diego county concludes that 53% of electric power could come from solar cells if all available, suitable roof space were used.

Double the assumed efficiency of around 10% for older generation solar cells and supply meets demand.  That 20% figure has been reached with several PV designs.  And 38% has been reached with 10 sun concentration in concentrating collectors in National Renewable Energy Lab tests.

By using the latest. 55% efficient wide spectrum cells, going into production now, combined with concentration and the added efficiency of heat collection as well, up to 70% could be possible.

And that solar heat can be used for asdsorption cooling for air conditioning as well.  Air conditioning is the grid breaking brownout load for electric power.  The solar panels also shield roofs from extra sunlight that tends to boost air conditioning load.

Adsorption cooling and direct geothermal ground circulation cooling would reduce air conditioning load on the grid to a tiny perrcentage of current use.

This roof area solar energy estimate is very conservative.  It is likely that with technologies in development right now, sunnier areas of the nation like the southwest could produce far more electricity  than  they use just from solar power mounted on available rooftop and over parking lot space.  That is with no use of space over highways at all.

And highways in very hot regions could generate signifigant power from heat energy harvested with tubing running in the road surface that collects that heat to run electric generating turbines running on refrigerant that recondenses by using geothermal cooling.

The southwest can be a net solar power energy exporting region.  And almost every region in the uS can at least supply it's needs with solar on roofs and over parking lots.  That is even with a huge new power load from electric plugin hybrids.

Concentrating solar cogeneration systems that generate electricity at much higher efficiency than older style flat plate collectors, grow algae that supplies biodiesl fuel, and collect heat energy for heating/cooling; all from the same solar system.  With energy conservation from geothermal heating and cooling, plugin hybrid cars, and energy efficient appliances and buildings  the world can be powered from rooftops, with no extra land space used.

Reply to nuclear advocates on "The Energy Blog".

http://thefraserdomain.typepad.com/energy/2006/11/vhtr_reactor_pu.html#comment-24989138

Well Brian, you caught me.  I'm really hoping the 10 to 20 year delay to prove nuclear power safe and cost effective and able to neutralize it's own waste is a long enough time period for renewables to win.

Thus my compromise proposal.

Wind is already proven safe and cost effective.  And that old saw..."We will be lucky to see solar and wind contributing 10% of our power by 2021'..that since renewables are a small part of the energy market now, they can't expand quickly.  Well that's pure bunk.

The same kind of bunk that buggy whip manufacturers used to appease their shareholders at the advent of the horseless carriage. 

Only 1% of people use horselerss carriages, therefore buggy whip sales will continue to be strong well into the second half of the 20th century!

Equals..

Invest in nuclear and fossil power now!!  Renewables are only a tiny portion of the market.

In the case of nuclear it is like the buggy whippers figured they could maybe build carriages the horses ride inside of on treadmills.   In order to keep buggy whip sales going.  And got billions in corporate welfare (stolen from taxpayers) to develop!

Nuclear fuel, fossil fuel.  It's still fuel, with plenty of deadly dangerous pollution, climate disaster producing greenhouse gases, and toxic waste.

Abandon your buggy whips, get onto the renewable power bandwagon, the "horseless carriage" of this energy re-evolution.
 

EXTRA!!!   READ ALL ABOUT IT!!

Pat Buchanan, arch conservative, on MSNBC supports my wild contention that Bush will attack Iran if congress remains in control of the GOP.

He says that Bill Kristol and the other neoconservative idealogues closely coupled to the vice president's office are pushing for a preemptive attack on Iran and that Bush is for it.

Democrat, republican, green, what have you. Are any of US in favor of invasion, occupation, and nation building (or even bombing) of Iran?  10 dollar gas over night?  Panic and disaster in markets and the US and world economy.

All because Bill Kristol needs to "bloster" (bolster with bloviation) his ego after backing the Iraqtastrophe?

Everyone.  Vote democrat or vote for invasion of Iran.  It truly is that simple this time around.

These neoconservatives running the country and the GOP are not republicans.  Republicans are enabling them.  We all need to give them the boot into the peanut gallery of history resreved for the nut wing.  Out damnable plague of corpoRATS, get thee to a "think" tank.  AEI is hiring!

The official US military newspapers all US troops in the middle east read have called for Rummi's dismissal.  What does that unprecedented event tell you when the most conservative, the officers in our military, have turned on the neocon nonplan in Iraq?

Let Rummi,this arrogant murderous tortuing old fart, invade Iran?   Lets skip that step.  Vote democrat across the board this time. 

Democrats are democrats, for better or worse, at least we are who we say we are.

These neocons who pretend to be the GOP are not conservatives, republicans, and many aren't even americans (yet?).  The main necon liar of the Iraq mess opotamia is Chalabi.  An Iraqi. 

No doubt Tom Delay's first job as a lobbyist will be to get a special citizenship for Chalabi bill passed just as Iraq goes to Vietnam-consulsate-helicopter-from -the roof mode.

Rumor has it that Kissinger, the genius behind the Vietnam war era bombing of Cambodia, has been secretly advising the running of this war, same result ("peace with honor?!?"), different location.  655,000 dead from this Vietnam war sequel.