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 »

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 »