Newspapers dying, massive layoffs, Rupert media monopolizing the formerly free press? Well yeah, those are the headlines, but here on the internet street corner there is deeper examination of the process from paper based to internet based media The internet street is right next to our park bench here in virtual global interactive reality. This is distributed news media, like distributed smart grid power generation, and distributed manufacturing and agriculture and learning, research, and development; this will all change business models and make the whole topic pretty interesting.   more »

It doesn't have to be. As long as it isn't permanent, but rather a stage in a recovery plan. Take a bank for instance, why give the present management and owners bailout money? Why not just take over the bank then share ownership with bank employees who were owed retirenent, healthcare, and pensions? Put senior employees in charge, they did most of the work anyway, and they now have an incentive to make the business succeed, once the economy turns around and the bank is profitable again, the government would sell it's shares taking the bank public again.   more »

No need to ask Swiss bankers how and what happened to the global economy, Frontline asked the right questions and the simple explanation followed. PBS had our back all along, go figure. How could socialist media be so much more effective than "free" market media? Here is the essence of the 800 trillion dollar mortgage scam: Mortgages were bundled into "mortgage backed securities", essentially bonds. These bonds were sold to banks and other investors all over the world. They were supposed to provide good safe returns based on homeowners paying their mortgages. The bank or investor that bought the bond did not have to deal with each homeowner, the mortgage company did that for them. But what if an economic downturn, caused by soaring oil prices, for instance, caused job losses that started to make it difficult for those mortgages to be payed?   more »

Where is the new administration on the hi-tech organic ag front? When Vilsack connects farm biogas, organic fertilizer, and distributed smart grid backup from farm based energy, wind, solar, and biogas fuel cell power generation. And calls for per kwh subsidies direct to farmers, that replace the current farm subsidy program, that will be the time to celebrate. Elimination of GMO crops, pesticides and herbicides is going to take robotic organic farming, it's just too hard to grow grain and soybeans on an industrial ag scale with human labor. Even getting enough veggies will be difficult with human powered organic farming.   more »

How could this be good news? From the Grist interview: "...analysts suggest an even higher figure, attributing between 38 percent and 52 percent of GHGs to the livestock sector, if all the factors are considered." Even this is a low estimate. Everyone forgets a HUGE source of GHG, namely nitrous oxide emitted by chemical fertilizer, it is equal to a staggering 2/3 of the CO2 uptake of the crop fertilized.   more »

Finally exponential climate change hits the headlines. From WAPO: 'The pace of global warming is likely to be much faster than recent predictions, because industrial greenhouse gas emissions have increased more quickly than expected and higher temperatures are triggering self-reinforcing feedback mechanisms in global ecosystems, scientists said Saturday. ' "We are basically looking now at a future climate that's beyond anything we've considered seriously in climate model simulations," Christopher Field, founding director of the Carnegie Institution's Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University, said at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.   more »

Speaking across the centuries, heed his observations. "It must be considered that there is nothing more difficult to carry out nor more doubtful of success nor more dangerous to handle than to initiate a new order of things; for the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order; this lukewarmness arising partly from the doubt of mankind who does not truly believe in anything new until they actually have experience of it."   more »

It's great to see the times catching up on energy reporting. The Lovins blog article was another great example of this. GristMill chews over the virtual newsprint: As usual the main talking point against renewables, reliability, is identified early on. This article mentions Xcel and the reporter talked to Xcel's boss, but not about their Colorado smart grid project, the first city-wide effort of its kind in the US.   more »

Here's where we are really at: over 50% of us want to go green. Under 10% of our energy use is renewable and conservation and efficiency combined barely have the combined figure reaching 10% of our energy use. Over 50% of us are willing to sacrifice some convenience and adjust our lifestyles to do it. We would be willing to give up always on 100% centralized grid power and gas guzzlers, and go for smart grid power timing and ocasional emergency backup power and plugin hybrids that make us actually pay attention and plugin our cars. So we have 50% of us demanding change and willing to sacrifice for it, and less than 10% market pentration of green energy conversion. There is huge growth potential, only capital for mass production is missing. Government stimulation could set a fire under this commercial wave.   more »

15 cents per kwh with installation and inversion/grid connection? That's at southwestern US solar insolation levels and durations? The latest mass produced solar technology could even compete with large scale wind power at these prices. First Solar is expanding capacity rapidly, even a modest subsidy and low interest loan program could increase growth right into the exponential range, large scale wind is already there. And that kind of growth is necessary to counter exponential GHG climate change and economic disaster. Job losses are in danger of hitting exponential growth too. Get those solar manufacturing plants and solar installation companies humming Barack! That way we will be on the right side of the exponential growth curve where the mathematical trend is our friend.   more »

Yeah GE thanks for your smart grid commercial during the superbowl and beyond. But it just can't explain what Amory Lovins and others have in mind for the future. It would be nice to understand progressive green energy reform from a new perspective. What will your energy bills be for electricity, heating fuel, and gasoline and what will your taxes be to pay for war after oil war after oil war? This current round of oil wars totals a trillion so far. Will energy and taxes cost more than your mortgage if we persist in the status quo energy systems? Will a distributed renewable smart grid help? Will it get you free energy after you payback your solar panels and plugin hybrid in savings on energy costs? Will it mean lower energy costs across the economy? And much lower trade deficits from canceling the purchase of imported energy? Could it mean good manufacturing jobs and financial security for families too? Yep it looks like it: but how to explain how it could do that? Let's follow Lovins point by point and try to put his technicaleze into plain english and household budget concerns. Let us reason together: hehey.    more »

And why it is already replacing central coal and nuclear powered grids. Especially in terms of investment. Now contrast and compare the idiocy displayed by an economics reporter in the times just a few pages away from the NYT blog Lovins was writing on. In Lovins' world, conservation and efficiency cuts power demand and the supply is everywhere, mainly renewable, with distributed storage and backup distributed generation. In the economist's world of the perpetual status quo, the only/best of all possible worlds: plugin hybrids are mass produced in China and Germany, we aren't allowed to buy them here though. Will that change anytime soon? How about the rest of the devices needed to make the new energy economy work? Will they be mass produced elsewhere too? Solar cogeneration panels, smart grid devices, batteries, all the items that will make this next big boom happen will most likely only produce installation and sales jobs here.    more »

That's what cap and trade really amounts to. So let's avoid selling permits to use the atmosphere. Once it is in corporate hands, we the people will end up buying it back by the lungful. Seem impossible? Who ever thought that we would see water for sale on store shelves?   more »

Two articles from recent Gristmill offerings bring into focus a convergence between renewable energy and a national super grid. Sort of a superhighway system for the electricty we generate and use. Like the federal highway system. Maybe even buried in federal highway freeway median. I would add that high speed rail should be built along existing freeway medians in tubes, and incorporate underground HVDC smart grid lines.   more »

Ashely Judd has a video out defending wildlife from Sarah's endangered species eradicating air force of hunting "guides". This brings up a relevant question: HBO why not consider this? A new HBO series. "Sarah Gone Wild". In this episode the governor arranges a shotgun marriage for her daughter Bristol, into one of Wasilla's many meth lab operating families. Will her new grandchild emerge a "tweaker"?   more »

Austrailia is cooking under record heat and drought. Could climate change trigger another dust bowl? On a global scale that triggers volcanic like cooling as happened in 1816, when three volcanoes triggered drastic cooling and a year without a summer. Here's a question for progressive green australians: Will you take hold of the opportunity to go green with solar, wave, and wind power over a renewable smart grid and restore water supplies with conservation, waste water recycling, and renewably powered desalination? Will you become manufacturing leaders in these technologies? Or will you wait and watch and deny and delay until it's too late? Nature has given you the lead on this whole conversion from the old GHG- intensive energy economy to the new renewable smart grid economy (wether you want it or not).    more »

Check this Gristmill article, the survey says everyone wants luxury, instead of nature. Do people really value luxury over real natural spiritual experiences? Sitting around the campfire with your kids, at age 20 or age 80, isn't that a better spiritual experience than a luxury resort? Of course it is. I see a subtle shift here to silent sports, nature friendly low cost resorts. Resorts that feature low cost cabins and campsites and access to running, skiing, biking, hiking, kayaking, showshoeing and good old fashioned summer camp type fun that baby boomers fondly remember from childhood.. at traditional summer camps and resorts.   more »

On many levels the Dylan/Emmy Lou harmony leaves plenty of mystery to leaven any despair that this hopeless climate/economic situation leaves behind it.   more »

And raking in lots of cash while doing it? Oh...it be! By scamming the EU cap and trade scheme. From the Guardian: "This [ETS] was not designed as a scheme to give corporates cheap short-term funding options in the face of a credit crunch meltdown where banks are not lending, but that appears to be what's happening," said Mark Lewis, a carbon analyst at Deutsche Bank. Steel, concrete and glassmakers are believed to be the main sellers along with financial speculators such as hedge funds. The sell-off of the pollution permits has led to carbon prices plunging 60% – from over €30 to around €12 per tonne.   more »

This is a strange coincidence after recent talk of volcanic cooling that might head off GHG climate emergency. Redoubt Volcano Latest Observations 2009-01-31 20:19:18 Seismicity over the last hour has included the reappearance of periods of weak tremor at the summit stations. These signals are much weaker than the episodes from Friday afternoon.   more »