Imagine you are an exxonmob or peabody boardroomate. From that POV it would make sense to keep energy prices on the rise enough to sap the political and financial will from your enemies. But not boost energy prices quickly enough to make alternative energy sources cost competitive.   more »

Why rely on biogas digestion of the waste stream for that solution? Because biogas and natural gas can run in the same very efficient, low cost distributed cogeneration device. Namely solid oxide fuel cell/turbine generators. They are scalable from backup for a home to powering a plugin hybrid to a 100 mw power plant.   more »

Solar thermal power plants in the desert and on factory roofs can generate power all night long, after the sun goes down. How so? With heat stored in molten heat storage salt or in factory products like cooling glass or metal. With cogeneration, a turbine generator running on constantly rec-condensed, recycled refrigerant gas heated by the stored waste heat. Red hot metal or glass stores a lot of energy.   more »

Kinder gentler, friendly coal? Well if coal industry thugs are going to invoke "pony spirits" they need pony hawk 'do's. All coal industry officials, coal bribed politicians, and lobbyist/liars ought to be required to wear pony hawks then. Like that kid on American Idol. That would rule!   more »

Evidently it is too much to expect, that scientists remember their basic math education and take it into account in climate modeling. The only explanation I can think of is that politics must be effecting studies like this. Climate scientists MUST understand feedback effects and exponential change.   more »

And without adding on huge debt, to your already burdensome mortgage and credit card debt. I sure like add on greenhouses for retrofit. The best would be on the southside of an existing building. But to adjust to buildings that have no solar exposure, a greenhouse can be built on, extending into a good sunny patch of the property.   more »

Fold your tent and move on GM, you have officially lost. This announcement of the Prius triumph combined with soaring gas prices, makes your autopsy iminent and also completely boring. Good riddance to lobbyist trash.   more »

Incredible new statistics in this article, coinciding with a local news report of thousands of dollars per year in energy savings foer homeowners who install geo heat exchange heating/cooling systems. I have been using the 36% figure for percentage of GHG from building heating/cooling, the 48% firgure must be for lighting, water heating, cooking as well? 76% of electricity? Incredible.   more »

If only I had a real PHD now, maybe someone would listen to my pleas to subsidize farm biogas, hehey. It is looking better and better as a central part of ag and energy policy reform. Biodigestion not only takes care of the methane released by manure and fertilizer run off (organic fertilizer a byproduct of biodigestion, tends not to run off, as chemical fertilizer does), but also the nitrogen. 296 times the GHG effect of CO2.    more »

Now fertilizer prices and companies are on a similar tear, to oil? That boosted oil company profits and market cap? Yes. What will this do to food prices? Is it real scarcity that is driving this or merely human psychology? The fear of scarcity? Fear is becoming the main force in the market, for everything. Even greed gives way to fear.   more »

A great commentary on exactly why CBA should never rule environmental policy decisions. I still am fond of breaking down this analysis to family economics though. To fight the corporate economist mud hole of CBA justification for feudal corporate rule of planet earth, why not try to use CBA itself?   more »

That's a constant theme lately, it seems to lead to a vision of a culture thrown back into the pre-techno times of horses and endless human labor. But we really need to moderate the pessimism.   more »

It's the same commercial slogan for the anti-depressant, Effexor. If you voted for bush, twice! Wouldn't a drug that might cause suicide be kind of comforting? Thus the excellent GOP sloganeering!   more »

This is the right policy, for the wrong reason. Lower gas prices? Well it's the wrong reason to stop filling reserves. Refining and speculation are more powerful bottlenecks than crude oil supply in retail gas pricing.   more »

What would it take to restore enough of the ice cap to give polar bears a chance at survival? Maybe floating snow machines? Wind/wave powered pumping platforms floating in the arctic sea that spray sea water up into the 50 below zero arctic air.   more »

An interesting article in Grist. How do you get the CO2 coming out of our tailpipes and smokestacks back out of the air once it's been mixed together? Scientists and entrepeneurs are looking for a majic techno fix that does this. The main problem is that it takes huge amounts of energy, and with our present energy mix, where would that energy come from? Burning more fuel, producing more CO2.   more »

This great explanation of the McCain version of GHG cap and trade (the permits would be traded) just came up on Grist. It's a stark warning, thanks for that DR. Let us imagine, how would a hedge fund set up a scam to incorporate the McCain plan? Following the past models of hedge fund bubble inflation market manipulation. Mainly the most recent bubble, that caused the global credit crisis and our present economic problems here in the US.   more »

Is carbon permit trading by hedge funds likely to sabotage green energy revolution? Yep. Gar is right with this one. "...put a carbon tax in place or auction permits already. Forget game-playing CDM and the whole additional new carbon lobby that secondary carbon markets create." That secondary carbon permit market will be the ultimate GHG reducing policy killer. As hedge funds scam and energy prices to consumers rise, industry friendly politicians will say "See, we told you so, government intervention is destroying the economy."   more »

Here is an excellent dissection of a newspaper article on biodiesel and ethanol. Why does old style media get the story wrong almost every time? Bio-d, a tireless Gristmill opponent of biofuel farming, does the autopsy. If only 5% of our energy came from biogas/waste, the rest of the CO2 we emit would be offset. Effectively eliminating our collective carbon footprint. That would allow renewable/conservation energy revolution along with organic fertilizer byproduct from waste biodigestion to actually reverse GHG disaster. Biogas/waste farm projects could use heavy subsidies, politicians and eco-lobbyists please take note of this main component of green revolution.   more »

The fantasy of peak oil is not gloomy. Think about it. It is good for our side. Mother earth's side. The fear and gloom sets everything up for real GHG solutions. Peak oil? Bring it on!   more »

An article about Arnie and his relatives in the NYT. How do they run on forever?   more »

What a concept! Thanks to the sleep deprived mind of "Pathos" (a gristmill blogger) for this gem. "The best solution to both peak oil and global warming is to hawk renewables like they'll save us all by themselves, and alter our lifestyles like renewables won't do a damn thing."    more »

Hope springs eternal in the pants of man. Why not use that to push eco-revolution? Sex sells. Sex sells the message. No one would watch it without the sex. it wouldn't have been linked here without the sex. We wouldn't comment on it.   more »

So nuclear advocates insist that we renewable energy boosters give them an exact time/cost estimate to compare to their nuclear dreams? I am not claiming to know exactly what the eventual result of a 20 year move to renewable smart grid technology, conservation using geo heat exchange heating/cooling, biogas distributed generation grid backup (and organic agriculture), renewable electric powered mass transit, and plugin hybrids will look like.   more »

A very good interview here in Grist with Barack's energy advisor. Finally the source of confusion is loccated, excellent work by Dave Roberts of Grist, yet again! This guy talks like a computer. Reeling off complex language in theory laden terminology. Photographic memory is wonderful, but it doesn't help one's judgememt or understanding.   more »

Yes, the process of turning cellulose into charcoal and burning the wood gas for energy as a carbon neutral energy source is rendered defunct by this new study mentioned in Grist. Well don't worry about the failure of biochar to live up to sequestration expectations (but where is that nasty engineer-poet so I can say I told you biogas was better?). Biogas (from manure, garbage, and biomass waste) still offsets 20 times the effective GHG that it emits when burned.   more »

Rip and tear logging is still destroying salmon habitat on the west coast? Yep. In scandanavia the eco-friendly logging nations have come up with machines that don't destroy the soil and the forest, and yet still remove selected trees and brush. And even allow waste wood to be chipped for recycling, use in building materials, animal bedding, and energy recovery.   more »

A discussion in Grist this morning, features leters to the editor in the NYT by opponents of Brazilian sugar cane ethanol. They cite a couple of negatives of cane ethanol. Might as well cite all the reasons that fuel farming is a bad idea. They forgot starvation and food riots. And diversion from real solutions, like the following.   more »

Check out the video. It is peak GHG, not peak oil that is the main problem. Personally I think Jim is techno-phobic. He really wants to go back to a world made by hand. Did he really have a big Y2K fixation too? Hehey. Colbert's research staff (an intern who googled "Kunstler" and "Y2K") busted him? 'Fraid so. Check it, check it out now.   more »

8000 hrs/year (85% total CP)x 1 million mw (total US generating capacity)= 8 trillon kwh per year. Times 10 cents per kwh that would be 800 billion. Maybe 1 trillion dollars at retail, 11 to 14 cent per kwh actual range, that we pay for electric power every year. But the actual cost was 327 billion. Large customers pay much less, maybe 5 cents per kwh? I'm guessing that conservation can cut that figure to 200 billion, then with plugin vehicles it would go to around 300 billion. 50 billion in subsidy diversion could subsidize up to 20% of that over the first five years of renewable energy revolution. About right as far as buildout rates at the start. AWEA says that by 2015 20% of present grid power could come from wind.    more »

I finally get to use Albert Brooks' "nest egg" theory from his hilarious film "Lost in America". Chew on this corn ethanol apologists and your economist allies, hehey.   more »

Branson announced a 25 million dollar prize for the invention of a process that would remove GHG from the atmosphere. Since then I have tried several ideas. No check yet. Maybe he doesn't read my blog? Hehey. I put it up on Grist. Anyway, since the media has turned on ethanol in a big way and fuel farming in general, and rightly so. I offered this reality check and substitue farm based energy process in response. Farm biogas that actually cancels out GHG from other sources..    more »

A big giveaway plan for business as usual and pork barrel politics as usual? Of course, what else can be expected from lobbyist run governance?   more »

"...considering our country's largest energy and carbon footprints come from the predominantly coal-burning grid....Can somebody explain to me how using electricity to fuel our over-abundant needs to drive absolutely EVERYWHERE in our culture is an environmentally sound idea? " Yes I can, thanks for your question.   more »

So lighten your front wheel drive economy car by 300 to 500 pounds (replace most of the metal body with fiberglass?), add these batteries and one used golf cart motor for each rear wheel, and you got yourself a plugin hybrid. For about 3000 dollars in parts, and a lot of screwing around.   more »

I'm skeptical, this food crisis, complete with riots and mass starvation in the poorest regions, they are literally eating dirt cakes in Haiti, seems to be caused by corn ethanol gas guzzling. "In one report by an industry group, oil has a greater impact on food prices -- by a factor of 2 to 1 -- than ethanol." Was that an ethanol industry group or an agribizz industry group?   more »

The cleanest backup fuel for the grid? Biogas, second is natural gas. And both of these fuels are easily stored and distributed, on already existing gas pipelines. Biogas is more easily and efficiently generated in a distributed manner. Less transportation of farm waste and biomass, and the organic fertilizer byproduct.   more »

No wonder guys like Joseph Romm hardly ever respond to my stuff. Hehey. He has 14 wedges of energy policy that he says are the best way to head off climate disaster.   more »

Adam makes a fine point here. Values are the fractals by which we all interact in the symbiotic human herd. One buffaloe is frightened, it jumps and jostles another, the wave spreading by the fractal expressed in each individual buffalo's reaction, the herd start fleeing the supposed danger.   more »

How does this help fund renewable energy and conservation to end GHG climate disaster? I don't know. The government auctions off GHG emission permits. The money raised is distributed to everyone on the planet equally. Consumer energy prices rise as industry passes on the cost of the permits.   more »

So Google uses 103 mw for it's server farm? Here's the answer. From the article in Harper's: "the servers require a half watt in cooling for every watt used in processing." So solar powered geo heat exchange cooling would knock off 33%   more »

Now imagine carbon emission permits sold by the government. Who would aquire those permits? Who would trade those permits? Would electricity prices double or triple suddenly, soaring as gas prices have soared? Pushed by speculators manipulating markets with insider information?   more »

Just because NRDC's lawyer Hawkins, appears to oppose coal, does it mean that they want to do away with it as an energy source? Or do they really just want to boost "clean" coal? Hawkins, eff you and the "Ferrari" you rode in on.   more »

Las Vegan wing nut calls alternatives to coal powered gambling, air conditioning, lawns, pools, fountains in the desert and flying in the suckers to pay for it all on gas guzzling aircraft a commie conspiracy to destroy america? Yeah, pretty much. I would suggest that publications like this adopt a dancing duubya logo in the corner of each online page! Combine your moronic pronouncements with the image of the poster chimp of corporate feudal stupidity!!   more »

What is completely free and priceless all at the same time?   more »

It seems that Barack's refusal to join in flag lepal patriotism has become a key part of his political strategy. Dissing politics as usual, with a call for actual action. Whenever another personal tabloid political attack appears, he falls back on the same fact. So maybe we need a new lapel pin? How about a "blue marble" lapel pin? Symbolizing planetary patriotism. Do you love your planet? Spasceship earth, it's the only thing keeping us going.    more »

This is earth shaking good news for mother earth and all her green asociates. We sure need it. The "Oracle of Omaha", Warren Buffet (the most successful investor in history?) speaks, but Gates and others ignore him? At their financial peril.   more »

Barack points out that people whose jobs were outsourced facing real world inflation (higher prices in stuff real people actually buy), are bitter. In their frustration and fear for their future (if any) they tend to cling to guns, religion, and zenophobia. So the media goes bat shit crazy over it. Then Hillary takes advantage of it, with NRA friendly "learning to shoot as a child" hunting stories. Reminiscient of the Kerry "hunting trip".    more »

Mass delusional media is doing it's job too well. Those Mayan cities where everyone suddenly dissappeared or the population of ancient Rome suddenly going from millions to thousands after destruction of the aqueducts. These are the forgotten warnings. Is our future history already written? We died off because humans couldn't "get the math" of exponential change?   more »

Might scary! "...can it overcome the ick factor?" Mega agrichem, agripoison, GMO ICK factor. It's much more than icky! In a natural living organism, evolution designs robust, self protecting (as in immune system) systems. We have seen artificial confined animal feeding operations (CAFO) destroy these immune systems, producing anti-biotic resistant disease breeding food chain problems. Is GMO soon to add genetic disease to the equation? It messes with the very evolutionary design down to the bacterial, viral, cellular, DNA level. ICK!!!!   more »

This is the sort of real free market trading that will finally eliminate fossil, nuclear, and ethanol fuel farming energy. Forget cap and trade hedge fund manipulation, that's the wrong kind of trading to get markets to respond to the realities of GHG climate disaster and economic ruin from soaring energy costs and oil war.   more »

After a narrow defeat in the senate, the concept of diverting subsidies, tax breaks given to big oil monopolies, is actually getting some notice. A modest propsal to divert a measly 13 billion over 10 years in oil company tax breaks (only 1.3 billion per year out of the 18 billion per year total) and apply them in part to renewable energy subsidies was just too hard to get by oil lobbyist controlled legislators. But it's a start.    more »

As the total backup solution for a renwable distributed smart grid, how much GHG can biogas help eliminate? All of it we now produce and even more, to actually reverse climate disaster.   more »

Without some important enlightenment on the right GHG free energy and ag policy, even a democratic sweep will just boost the wrong stuff. Namely ethanol fuel farming, nuclear power, and clean coal. I'd say the time frame to get to all our democratic incumbents and democrats about to be elected with the real cure for climate disaster is about the same as the time to the next election.   more »

Received this announcment from the Sierra Club: "Conservation Congress: All Wisconsin citizens have the unique opportunity to attend the Conservation Congress meeting in their counties this Monday, April 14, 2008 at 7 p.m. and the Sierra Club should have a presence across the state. The Conservation Congress is unique to Wisconsin, and provides every citizen a voice on important conservation issues. This meeting will ask citizens their input on allowing a hunting season on wolves."   more »

The profits from local organic ag don't buy enough muscle for protection. So do we send our soldiers in to protect the families who grow those crops and start up civilization again?   more »

There's a gossip site and everything! Already missed the casting call for extras. They will film at "Little Bohemia" in Manitowish Waters, where the orginal bullet holes from the federal assault on the lodge are carefully preserved.   more »

Check out this NYT article on "The Emperor's club". This was a mom and pop outfit, not mob connected, with a paltry income. Plenty of sex slave trade is ongoing in the same metro areas that need FBI investigation a lot more than this operation, one of thousands of escort services routinely overlooked by law enforcement.   more »

Yep, according to former Sierra Club president Adam Werbach, recently a Walmart consultant on greening their image. Youngest president of the club at 23, way back in '96. He joined on the bandwagon, declaring environmentalism dead a few years back. Where is he really coming from?   more »

Of course these are rough guesses, but informed by the results from actual application of these technologies. This could all get going as fast as needed to convert our energy and agricultural and manufacturing sectors within the next 20 years. just in time to have a pretty good chance at turning GHG climate disaster around. If the rest of the world buys into our energy revolution.   more »

So some of us decided to fight a seemingly hopeless battle to save the planet from corporate greed. Young, old, or inbetween, we are vastly outnumbeed and underfunded. We need each other, from that two year old with her crayons, protesting the river run hydro project in BC. To the enviro blogger typing from a hospital bed, fighting for decades and about to pass the torch. And pass on into the great unknowable.   more »

In a very familiar false dilemna fallacy, the corporate friendly sides in the climate debate are attempting to marginalize a very different approach. An approach that pays we the people directly for installing solar panels on our homes and using geo heat exchange heating/cooling and plugging in plugin hybrid cars to our own home energy systems.   more »

Why oh why does NRDC shun reason and GHG free wind energy in favor of agribizz fuel farming, that actually doubles GHG compared to guzzling gasoline? NRDC, why do you hate our planet?   more »