Free the grid, free the chickens (and other animals), free the soil (from chemical death), free the people. Cooperatively, peacefully.. a nonviolent re-evolution, Ghandi with a solar panel and a smart grid chip.   more »

The 3 am Hillary ad? "Who do you want answering the phone in the white house at 3 am?" Barack. "You want someone with good judgement." How does he deflect these attacks and make it look so easy?    more »

Without a switch to organic agriculture AND elimination of as much human caused GHG as possible and as much land returned to natural carbon sink as possible, it won't be stopped.   more »

How smart grid technology tames the wind and solar energy and storms to stabilize your home power.   more »

It turns out Bill was in bed with big ethanol interests, brokering deals for an ethanol startup of Vinod Khosla that Branson and others bought into. Bill got fees for brokering these deals. Hillary opposed corn ethanol at times, but worked for Vinod's dream of cellulosic ethanol in upstate New York. This hampered her ability to take a new energy policy direction. Clinton family ethanol investments.    more »

Really sketchy details on this new green community. partly because these energy issues are so technically complex. But dollar savings from green energy and payback is understandable. Give consumers the cost, that they understand.   more »

Hillary should go radically green with her energy policy and taunt Barack into the energy debate in Texas thursday night. Texas wind is huge, this could be her last chance   more »

Or flood the ocean with white reflective plastic bags? A stark choice, hehey. I have been talking up mechanized organic agriculture for quite a while. The organic fertilizer a soil ammendment coming from biogas digestors. The biogas providing a clean, storable energy backup for a renewable smart grid with distributed biogas powered cogeneration (electricity and heat).    more »

Big lie Interesting history of the tactic. I guess it really goes back to the sophists though. I bet Canis knows when it first appeared on the scene. Repitition a valid substitue for facts? It would seem so. Sound bite media produces mass delusion by reptition.    more »

Give homeowners a 10 cent per kwh subsidy (taken out of oil company taxpayer ripoffs), to get growth in solar PV going.   more »

Teddy Roosevelt Remember how TR turned on the GOP? McCain could do that. Turn against the corporate power behind the neocons. Who use the evangelicals, just as they use US soldiers for their private oil war in Iraq. So if you Nader boosters want to go for it, no problem.    more »

Will the best new suburban gated communities have names like "The Green zone"? It honors our military!    more »

Practical politics, how to get a simple 10 cent per kwh subsidy, in direct checks to homeowners, and 5 cents per kwh for conservation, through a lobbyist controlled government.    more »

With popular advice like this motivating the culture can the consumption = happiness equation ever be cancelled? Nope. Evolve, reject this attitude!    more »

Main issue sidestepped As usual. The main issue? Burning biomass as fuel prevents plants from removing CO2 from the atmosphere and storing it in the soil.    more »

Well the candidates made it to Wisconsin, in driving range, but our wonderful party did not feel the need to tell us hardworking volunteers where or when in advance.  Even though we requested it.

No problem, it will all be over tomorow if the media tools are right.  They seldom are though.

I really would not have enjoyed a rah rah rock star rally, or a Hillary dirge-fest.  So it goes.

Muscle cars, restored art artifacts, are precious to motorheads.  Does eco-efficiency (falsely) pit envrios against collectors of automotive art?

http://editorial.autos.msn.com/article.aspx?cp-documentid=455013&topart=hybrids

No, not al all.  By simply adding plugin battery front wheel drive electric power to muscle cars they can average over 100 mpg.  Most restored cars are only driven a few miles once in awhile, so this would prevent most gas guzzling.  But even regularly driven thundercars could still run on a 40 mile range plugin electric system most of the time.

To fire up the gas guzzling monster engine for a few miles, the electric motor could be switched off.  For true fanatics a computer generated engine roar just like the gas guzzling motor sounds could be piped through the car sound systyem.  hehey.  Now that would be funny.

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/2/15/121144/176#22

I guess Bill Becker has written the proverbial "Einstein letter" for this current crisis.  

Now if the next prez will only read it and take it to heart, like FDR did with Einstein's letter warning of the possibility of the A-bomb in 1933.

The Manhattan Project was iniiated and we see the mixed results.

I think the mix of soultions Bill has chosen will yield much better results, along the lines predicted.

Maybe Al Gore could present it too Hillary and Barack and extract a pledge?  It might just help defeat the pack of coal, oil, nuclear, agribizz, and gas lobbyists.

A story of unvalentine destruction on the 15th.  Any solution for this depressing commercial cultural phenomenon?

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/2/15/16312/3653#3

This whole unvalentine trend is growing.  Overthrow Cupid, this evil cherub has caused far too much suffering ...with the help of romantic expectations.

I propose a whole new kind of serial monogamy.  Seasonal serial monogamy.  One season, fall, spring..what have you, then skip three seasons to date others.  Then try another season with the same person.

If children result, no problem, keep up the same schedule.  unlike marriage, this might last for a few years.

I have name a hypothetical Lutz designed  car the "Troll", named after the demofraphic he appeals to.  As opposed to the "Volt', the GM green car that is only a commercial.

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/2/13/145718/167#9

That's the problem
Lutz appeals to a very marginal demographic.  Thus GM's huge losses due to his POV.

He refuses to view GHG climate problems seriuosly so he killed the GM electric car.  Will he actually manufacture the "Volt"?  No way to tell.

So consumers flock to toyota, the company that gives the vast majority of customers the more efficient, cheaper to power, greener transportation they want.

Lutz should start his own gas guzzler auto company, to preserve the guzzle lifestyle!  Instead of using other people's money, in those stock shares in GM, to further his demented vision.

He's like an old style commisar in soviet industry.  Stalin got angry and had all but one of his jet aircraft development team murdered during WW 2.  GM needs someone less Stalinesque at the helm than Lutz.

Lutz could call his new auto the "Troll".  In honor of his demographic.

Let's see, instead of a battery it would have a nuclear thermocouple generating device, the kind that power satelites.

The motor could be a 12 cylinder ethanol/gasoline flex fuel model.  The envirionmental concession.

What other features would the "Troll" include?

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/2/13/102858/012#1

Great to see biogas from the waste stream mentioned in this proposal.

20% of retail electricty from renewables by 2025, 30% of that to consist of distributed sources, like roof top solar and farm biogas.  I think that's an accurate summary.  So roughly 2% from renewable distributed sources by 2025?  

Residential (retail electricity) is roughly 30% of grid power, times 20%, times 30%.  No where near good enough.  

Conservation to cut 20% of grid power use?  Amory Lovins' home uses 120 watts, 10% of normal home power consumption, that includes his heating/cooling.  Futhermore he gets more power than he uses from roof mounted solar.

No mention of geo heat exchange heating/cooling, a huge conservation advantage in very hot areas like Arizona.  Retrofitted on all buildings over the next 12 years?  Huge savings.  Building heating/cooling accounts for 36% of GHG production on average in the US.

 A better goal and bargaining position for greens?  

100% of grid from a renewable distributed smart grid, conservation including geo heat exchange heating/cooling, and plugin hybrid vehicles and electric mass transit.

Shutter all nuclear and coal plants.  Convert natural gas fired capacity to emergency backup.  Use solid oxide fuel cell/turbine cogeneration with distributed generators powered by biogas as regular backup for wind and solar sources.

Forget about "clean" coal IGCC and  geothermal.  Geothermal uses too much water and  IGCC is far too expensive as it (does not, no IGCC with cO2 sequestration has ever been built, not even experimentally) exists now.

Recycle water with a switch to drip irrigation coming from recycled grey water, composting toilets, and biogas plants that recycle waste water.  

That's a better goal for 2025.  

It can happen with a 10 cent per kwh subsidy direct to utility customers who invest in distributed wind, solar, or biogas.  Homeowners with solar panels, businesses and farms with solar, wind, and biogas manure and crop waste recycling.

Try to get the author to visit and comment if you could Adam?  It would be interesting.

http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2008/2/12/11332/9852#8

Fine idea Canis
"...get cultivated carnivorous/omnivorous fish to switch from eating other fish to eating a diet based on common, easily controlled and rapidly reproducing invertebrates, e.g. insects and worms."

I think it has great potential.  For feeding chickens too.  Earthworms are an excellent choice for this food chain.  

A wacky idea I have had on aquaculture is kind of a free range fish farm.  Floating ocean platforms that house wind and wave and underwater ocean current generators could serve to culture oysters with the dock mounted system they use now.

They could also be designed to shelter fish and put extra air into the ocean with the wave machine output water.  A structure like this designed to increase food supply, just like natural structures, like corral does (where waves break on corral extra air is mixed with water), would incease food chain growth and GHG absorption all the way up through the local food chain around the platform.  From micro-organisms to large fish.

These could be designed to serve as corral seed beds too.  By planting corral on the underwater structure, than periodically replanting it in suitable locations on the seabed.

In over fertilized polluted areas like the Gulf coast/Mississippi delta, the wave machines could filter extra algae and weeds from the water and biodigest it, producing organic fertilizer and cleaning polluted water.  Biogas for clean kwh would alsio be produced.

Lakes and rivers over run by overgrowth due to fertilizer and manure run off could benefit from smaller models of these floating systems.  There are even micro-organisms that have a special ability to trap and concentrate heavy metals and radioactive contaminants for removal from the watery ecosystem.