I just saw an interview with P J Singer on the Daily Show, he wrote "Wired For War". All about the use of technology in the ME wars. He claimed that soldiers using drone planes killed 2400 "insurgents" to propell a recent much touted "victory". But we need to notice that in Israel, where most of this technology is developed they couldn't stop rocket attacks without an invasion.   more »

Hand it to Grist, their people really find vital stories that the mass delusional media hides. This is the start of distributed smart grid technology and where the internet switching giant leads, the paradigm must shift. Shift right over to a marriage of the grid and the internet. Cisco's Chambers signalled the death of the old phone companies before the bushwacking began. It's finally happening, phone traffic is shifting to the internet. Pretty soon a shift to wireless broadband over the power grid might gobble up the cell phone business too?   more »

Why execute cap and trade? Any carbon cap is easily adjustable, that's the problem. When democrats are in power a cap might be imposed, as soon as repuglicans (sp) win a few seats back, the cap will be lifted. Subsidies work differently, once a commercial change wave gets going, adjusting caps won't stop it. Renewable energy will cost less going forward as the fuel inflation spiral inevitably leaves fossil and nuclear energy in the dustbin.   more »

A sad sign of the disastrous times we are living through, this is an actual probability. Internet betting in general should be added to the long list of informal fallacies, but this bet seems to be careful enough to avoid the fallacy designation. The interesting part of this wager is the volcano exception.   more »

Here is is. A nice cheering up, hehey.   more »

A great article and thread here by Gar Lipow, on exactly how fast we need to cut GHG emissions. Of course I am thinking already that since positive feedback effects like ice melt/increased solar absorption and ice melt/methane release aren't figured into current climate models and estimates, where are we really at? And how can this climate be saved at this late date?   more »

This is just in time for the new administration to order up a raft of these new ultra-efficient carbon fiber plugin hybrids for government use. They have the right stuff to save the climate and save taxpayers fuel costs for government employee driving.   more »

Yeah that's the usual schtick from the extremists, anything but unlimited population growth constitutes eugenics. Read Lester Brown's Gristmill piece for illumination into these dark political corners. This is the charge leveled from both right and left who oppose family planning and reproductive rights. From the right religious dogma motivated by the unending growth formula, based on nationalistic, ethnic, and religious (but usually corporatist) motives. They want to out populate the "evildoers" and "infidels". Their religious warriors are supposed to beat back the inhuman hordes who don't believe in their particular God (and/or "free" market economic model).   more »

In the year of America's birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people: "Let it be told to the future world...that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive...that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [it]."   more »

Shakspeare's possible take on "cool" muscle car gas guzzling? Internal combustion is "...but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more: it is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing." "Nothing" except wasted energy. 6% of the energy in the gas guzzler gets to the road surface to propell the car. When the tires smoke, that goes down below 3%, since it is being converted into friction.   more »

No the news is all about, the majical hydrogen economy, again?!? Is it some of that really cool internal combustion hydrogen guzzling (like BMW prefers), or platinum fuel cell .. never mind. It's all a moronic scam anyway. Did Toyota have the 962 pound, Prius sized, 600 mile range (on a battery charge and 4 gallons of gas), 1/X concept car, there? Notice how this article deletes any mention of the plugin hybrid nature of the 1/X?   more »

Maybe this eruption or another one somewhere else on the planet will trigger another year without summer, like 1816? Scientists have talked a lot about a geo-engineering plan to send solar reflecting particles into the upper atmosphere, like a volcano does.   more »

I have always opposed conventional geothermal power because it injects fresh water into underground rock faults and uses the resulting steam, losing most of the water in the process. This huge water use and the possibility of contaminating aquifers with mineral bearing sulphate rock leechate from escaping steam, put the kibosh on this technology for me. A brilliant commetor in Gristmill came up with a new idea. He suggested teaming hot rock steam with solar furnace steam. That way the rocks get to rest and recuperate when the concentrating solar plant is powering the turbines. Molten salt storage could use solar even at night, cutting the time/heat needed from the hot rocks. The rocks lose their heat after 10 years of constant operation, this symbiotic design cures that. The beauty is that the turbines are powered by both sources.    more »

This is a travesty, as these recent reports detail. What would that buy in terms of ground source heating systems to replace fuel oil? A 5k subsidy per system would support 1 million of these energy, oil, and GHG saving installations. That's a lot of job stimulus too. Carefully targeted to replace fuel oil heating in public buildings, it would also allow smart grid operation that can store heat in building mass.   more »

CNBC's Dylan Ratigan is the only financial commentator I have seen that bemoaned the eclipse of real risk/reward capitalism, still evident in small and medium businesses, at the expense of global corporate monopoly insider market manipulation. Today he explain how the "velocity of money" through the economy, hand to business to hand, will signal the effect of a stimulus. It is sluggish right now, everyone is afraid ro buy or invest, and especially to take on new debt with their jobs in question. Or for businesses to hire new employees.   more »

Would it sell? I think so!   more »

How could he let us down like this? Touting "clean" coal, carbon taxes (that could never pass in a recession.."No new taxes"), and pie in the sky 4th generation (fast neutron, waste neutralizing?) nuclear reactors. At least he dissed cap and trade though: 'Policies being discussed in national and international circles now, which focus on 'goals' for emission reduction and 'cap and trade,' have the same basic approach as the Kyoto Protocol. This approach is ineffectual and not commensurate with the climate threat. This really needed to be said, but Barack will go with "experts" who tout cap and trade, the "free" market solution. The same sort of "experts" who caused the credit crisis and are now failing to deal with it. Hansen will be deemed to have no expertise in these business matters.   more »

A sad New Years revelation in amongst the Grist top 10 climate stories of '08. "...the tundra has as much carbon locked away in it as the atmosphere contains today." This will most likely be the main point in the autopsy of life on planet earth as we know it. The tipping point has surely passed if the feedback of methane and ice melt works as expected, based on these factors.   more »

Jeff bridges as Preston Tucker, in "Tucker"... the movie. Tucker's final statement to the jury. Who found him innocent, after being set up on fraud charges by the big three and their political allies.   more »

It has become necessary for all scientists commenting on the exponentially increasing GHG climate disaster to explain the nature of this phenomenon. They need to climb down from their lofty theoretical world and go back to basics. To science and math that they learned in grade school. Here's a news flash: Politicians and the general public and even some of your colleagues do not understand the basic concept of positive feedback and exponential change. Do not take this understanding for granted. People like Obama and his top advisors who are well educated enough to have heard of this concept still don't apply it to climate change.   more »

That might be what CIA officials could admit were they not stuck with the usual "No comment" on reports that they are successfully winning over Afghan warlords by dispensing Viagra. A side note: How will the "chattel" of these local dictators be effected? More rapes at first, but then more heart attack deaths for tyrants too. As in the HBO series about polygamy though, the monsters of war will find Viagra addicting.   more »

Could you maybe get together with middle eastern leaders, and european leaders, and try to get them to collaborate with our solar and wind industries? Aramco, the Saudi oil giant wants to go solar, maybe ME leaders would like to see the Fertile Crescent become fertile again with wind, wave, and solar powered cloud formation and desalinization technologies. They have the money, we gave them in return for oil, we have the technology.   more »

Is this the first attempt to patent human weather control? This inventor is seeking a patent for seawater spray geo-engineering. "He proposes installing 1,000 or more devices that spray water 20 to 200 feet into the air, depending on conditions, from barren stretches of the West African coast, bluffs on deserted Atlantic Ocean isles, deserts adjoining the African, South American and Mediterranean coasts and other arid or windy sites." Could the Sahara be a new green expanse? Or the ME deserts, could the Fertile Crescent be fertile again? It's feasible. Mass production of the floating energy machines from molded fiber concrete in shipyards everwhere, starting on the US west coast could maybe do it. There's a green job wave.    more »

Are the twin positive feedback effects of methane release and ice melt/solar absorption already making the climate tipping point inevitable? Add in corporatism that fights any manufacturing trend towards GHG mitigation with political corruption, and how could the tipping point not be inevitable? There's another feedback mechanism too. Firestorm related to drought. Geo-engineering may seem megamaniacal, but it maybe the only alternative now. Cloud creating wave/wind powered floating platforms that send a fine mist of seawater up into the astmosphere to increase cloud reflectivity and rain/snowfall seems to be possible and less drastic than other schemes.   more »

Ponzi scheming is in the news again: About 90% of the currency circulating the globe in electronic accounts, seems to be imaginary. So, yes (as Steven Earl Salmony says here) I think... "the global manmade economic colossus {a veritable and proverbial, modern Tower of Babel in all its glory} could crash before the overproduction, over-consumption and overpopulation activities of the human species worldwide collapse the frangible biological systems and finite physical resources of the planet...". If we had a real currency that was based not on imaginary economic theories, or gold and silver as it once was, but on the commodities we depend on day after day, just maybe the labor of honest people could be turned into financial security without global scammers taking a 150% cut.   more »

This is troubling: "Worried about radioactivity? Coal's still your bogeyman. Dr. Chu says a typical coal plant emits 100 times more radiation than a nuclear plant, given the flyash emissions of radioactive particles." Here chu repeats a tired old nuclear industry talking point, and glaring false dilemna fallacy. The choice is not between nuclear contamination and coal radiation, it is between distributed smart grid renewable energy and fossil/nuclear central power grid corporate monopoly.   more »

But really Chrysler, if you are serious please go Fiber Forge carbon fiber body/frame technology too. That might put you in position to buy out GM in a few years. The key to plugin hybrid, is lightweight. Carbon fiber does it while actually increasing crash protection strength and safety. A 1200 pound economy plugin hybrid would beat the world to the punch. make it a Chrysler.   more »

I was at first comically dismayed at the inane response to the first real smart grid thread on Gristmill all about Austin's smart grid project (they own their own grid!). Why complain though, it's another opportunity to repeat myself, yet again, in another fashion. Maybe someone will comprehend something from my techo-bloggerel this time? Hehey. Consider distributed computing, remember Napster anyone? Instead of a central server with computers connected to it, it was made up of computers acting as servers. A smart grid uses distributed generation and storage controlled by distributed computing to adjust demand to match supply.   more »

An excellent Gristmill article on the state of the auto companies' remaining denial. How do their points of view on bail out compare? Ford really gets it. GM has problems with focus, but has the vastly overpowered overpriced Volt. Ford is further behind on plugin but shows promise for 2012. These companies can be saved! How? Force them to upgrade to hypercar, Fiber Forge stamped carbon fiber body/fraime design, or they get no bail out. Mileage would double or triple in every model. Sales would soar.   more »

Descent into the Maelstrom. Deflation is rearing its depressionary head. The tipping point between recession into depression is approaching. A maelstrom of falling prices and profits and layoffs powers itself, one by one industries enter the event horizon and plunge into bankruptcy, the memory of the corporate entity lingers after chapter 11. Individual fortunes are gone for good, thanks to tighter individual bankruptcy laws, lobbied in by credit card companies disguised as banks, too big to fail.   more »

This interview is really great! Tom says: '...it's about national power -- not power so we can stomp all over the rest of the world, but power so we can actually be where we need to be as a country, to lead the world they way we need to lead the world and also to pass on what we need to pass on for the next generation."' My advice, use the force Tom!   more »

A long discussion all about cars finally turns to reality. 40,000 deaths per year and how many serious injuries? Why not bike at 20 mph instead? It really puts the whole car issue in another light, any alien observor would definitely spot the insanity. The Walmart stampede killed one person and it was on the news constantly. The Hadj stampedes in Mecca regularly kill hundreds. 40,000 per year and maybe 200,000 serious injuries? And we go on driving like maniacs? Yow. Collective insanity rules the roads.   more »

A great story on local agriculture from NBC nightly news. "The government began a subsidy program for small-scale farmers, providing them with fertilizers and high-tech seeds at roughly 15 percent of the market cost – the fertilizers and seeds were required for a more productive and resilient crop. The scheme cost the Malawian government $60 million, a huge amount for one of the poorest countries in the world where the average annual income is only $250." "Malawi’s major donors, including the World Bank, European Union and the United States balked and warned Malawi to reconsider. They claimed that such large-scale subsidies would cripple the economy. But the government went ahead."   more »

Another NBC nightly news ag story. It seems that with modern agribizz equipment, fertilizer, and seed, abandoned Russian collective farms are yielding bumper crops.   more »

How to reduce oil demand incrementally year after year in order to stabilize the global economy? What is needed is an OPEC for consumer nations. The oil importing countries getting together to "drill, baby, drill" efficiency and renewable energy for oil demand reduction. OPEC puts a billion into a new oil field, we put 10 billion into mass production of solar, wind, plugin hybrids, ground source heating systems, and smart grid technology.   more »

This sounds serious: "Big American utilities are slashing their investments in alternative energy. Florida Power & Light has cut its planned investment in wind power next year by 400 megawatts. Duke Energy of North Carolina has lopped $50m off its budget for solar power. And on October 31st VeraSun Energy, one of America’s biggest ethanol producers, caught out by gyrations in the prices of corn and petrol (gasoline), filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. In the European Union the price of carbon permits has fallen from a high of almost €30 in July to around €20, making clean-tech investments less attractive." But as the failure of VeraSun shows, the drop in oil prices is killing agribizz ethanol. Which is a good thing. Will this also delay the roll out of plugin hybrids? Will it give the auto makers an excuse to put off mass production of oil substituting electric vehicles?   more »

Check this out! Larry Summers, the proposed director of Obama's National Economic Council? David Corn really sounds a warning on Mother Jones blog. This creep, along with Gramm, Greenspan, and Rubin was in on the crucial moment that regulation was prevented. Now we know where the blame really should be placed for "derivatives" and "credit default swaps", whatever they really are, these creeps obviously never understood them, and don't to this day.   more »

A very good presentation, direct to Obama, the latest from climate action pioneer Dr. James Hansen. But he makes a rash statement. That 4th generation, waste eating nuclear reactors can be ready for mass deployment in the 2015 to 2020 time window. Hansen is picking technology, and doing something he says he is against, asking government to pick technology. He uses the old false dilemna fallacy, in a soft way. Stating that we, america and europe, maybe able to rely on renewable/conservation energy technology to replace fossil fuel, but China and India won't. Leaving the reader to conclude that nuclear and CCS will be necessary.   more »

World trade problems have the global economy in a tailspin again. Could we maybe look back into ancient history for a key to local farming versus global commodity agri-business conflict? Maybe Adult Swim could bring back Sherman and Peabody? I think Jay Ward did an episode on the Incan corn based empire? The Incan system worked like a federal reserve, with store houses of corn, rather than storehouses of electronic/imaginary currency.   more »