Waste Based Society

[agelbert]

Scientific Investigations of Alcohol Fuels 1890 – 1920

Studies of alcohol as an internal combustion engine fuel began in the U.S. with the Edison Electric Testing Laboratory and Columbia University in 1906. Elihu Thomson reported that despite a smaller heat or B.T.U. value, “a gallon of alcohol will develop substantially the same power in an internal combustion engine as a gallon of gasoline. This is owing to the superior efficiency of operation…”62 Other researchers confirmed the same phenomena around the same time.

USDA tests in 1906 also demonstrated the efficiency of alcohol in engines and described how gasoline engines could be modified for higher power with pure alcohol fuel or for equivalent fuel consumption, depending on the need.63

The U.S. Geological Service and the U.S. Navy performed 2000 tests on alcohol and gasoline engines in 1907 and 1908 in Norfolk, Va. and St. Louis, Mo. They found that much higher engine compression ratios could be achieved with alcohol than with gasoline. When the compression ratios were adjusted for each fuel, fuel economy was virtually equal despite the greater B.T.U. value of gasoline. “In regard to general cleanliness, such as absence of smoke and disagreeable odors, alcohol has many advantages over gasoline or kerosene as a fuel,” .[/b]the report said. “The exhaust from an alcohol engine is never clouded with a black or grayish smoke.”64

USGS continued the comparative tests and later noted that alcohol was “a more ideal fuel than gasoline” with better efficiency despite the high cost.65

The French War Office tested gasoline, benzene and an alcohol-benzene blend in road tests in 1909, and the results showed that benzene gave higher mileage than gasoline or the alcohol blend in existing French trucks.66

The British Fuel Research Board also tested alcohol and benzene mixtures around the turn of the century and just before World War I, finding that alcohol blends had better thermal efficiency than gasoline but that engines developed less brake horsepower at low rpm.67

On the other hand, a British researcher named Watson found that thermal efficiencies for alcohol, benzene and gasoline were very nearly equal.68

These experiments are representative of work underway before and during World War I. The conclusions were so definitive that Scientific American concluded in 1918: “It is now definitely established that alcohol can be blended with gasoline to produce a suitable motor fuel …”69 By 1920, the consensus, Scientific American said, was “a universal assumption that [ethyl] alcohol in some form will be a constituent of the motor fuel of the future.” Alcohol met all possible technical objections, and although it was more expensive than gasoline, it was not prohibitively expensive in blends with gasoline. “Every chemist knows [alcohol and gasoline] will mix, and every engineer knows [they] will drive an internal combustion engine.”70
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And THEN, ALONG CAME PROHIBITION and all the above was suppressed. What a COINCIDENCE!

Alcohol from grain and potatoes, at about 25 to 30 cents per gallon, was far too expensive to compete with petroleum, but alcohol from Cuban molasses, at 10 cents per gallon, was thought to be competitive.

Some observers suspected a conspiracy in the fact that Standard Oil of New Jersey had financial ties to the Caribbean alcohol market. The influence of an oil company over the alcohol industry was “a combination which many will regard as sinister,” said Tweedy.59

In 1942, Senate committees began looking into the extent to which the oil industry had controlled other industries, including the alcohol industry and the rubber industry. Attorney General Thurmond Arnold testified that anti-trust investigations had taken place into the oil industry’s influence in the alcohol industry in the 1913-1920 period, in the early 1920s, and between 1927 and 1936. “Renewed complaints in 1939 were brought to the anti-trust division but because of funds no action was taken,” Arnold said.60

Then the investigation of 1941 which exposed a “marriage” between Standard Oil Co. and the German chemical company I.G. Farben also brought new evidence concerning complex price and marketing agreements between du Pont Corp., a major investor in and producer of leaded gasoline, U.S. Industrial Alcohol Co. and their subsidiary, Cuba Distilling Co.

The investigation was eventually dropped, like dozens of others in many different kinds of industries, due to the need to enlist industry support in the war effort. However, the top directors of many oil companies agreed to resign and oil industry stocks in molasses companies were sold off as part of a compromise worked out with Arnold.

http://www.environmentalhistory.org/billkovarik/research/henry-ford-charles-kettering-and-the-fuel-of-the-future/

Ethanol WAS ALWAYS a superior fuel to gasoline even WITHOUT the horrendous pollutants that an ICE burning gasoline produces. And ethanol requires NO CATALYTIC CONVERTER.

Every nasty, negative naysaying thing you have heard about ethanol from it using up food crops to having a "low" EROEI to corroding engines from increased water vapor to it being less economical than gasoline is DISINFORMATION and I can prove it point by point.

**"The gasoline engine became the preferred engine for the automobile because gasoline was cheaper than alcohol, not because it was a better fuel. And, because alcohol was not available at any price from 1920 to 1933, a period during which the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol was banned nationally as mandated in the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The amendment was repealed by the Twenty-First Amendment on December 5, 1933. In time to produce alcohol fuels during World War II.

By the time World War II ended, the gasoline engine had become "entrenched" because gasoline remained cheaper than Alcohol, and widely distributed – gas stations were everywhere."

Hope for a viable biosphere
Renewables, why they work and fossil and nuclear fuels never did

http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/blog/2012/07/17/hope-for-a-viable-biosphere-of-renewables/

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[agelbert]

The other day, knowledgable diner and mechanical engineer Roamer stated this concern about the colossal challenge and, in his opinion, impossibility of switching to renewable enrgy machines in time to avoid a collapse from an energy to manufacture and global industrial capacity limitation in our civilizational infrastructure.

Roamer said:

I admire your enthusiasm, and I agree with many of the points you make. Yes ICE waste high EROEI consistently, yes fossil fuels and conventional engineering has a warped distorted perspective because of the ICE, and yes we have an oil oligarchy protecting its turf.

However say we hypothetically made all the oil companies dissappear tommorow and where able to suspend the laws of time and implement our favorite renewables of choice and then where tasked with making certain all of societies critical needs were met we'd have a tall order. The devil is in the details and quantities.

Its the magnitudes, its 21 million barallels per day we are dependent on. Its created massive structural centralization that can only be sustained by incredible energetic inputs. Not enough wind, and not enough rare earth material for PV's to scale and replace. We have to structurally rearrange society to solve the problem. Distributed solar powered villaged, not bit cities and surely not suburbia. I fear we'll sink very useful resources and capital towards these energy sources (as we arguably have with wind) when the real answer is structural change.

I have shown evidence that there are several multiples of the energy we now consume available just from wind power. This data came from a recent study by Lawrence Livermore Laboratory Scientists.

Roamer thinks we CAN'T do it even if we had enough wind because of the colossal challenge and, in his opinion, impossibility of switching to renewable enrgy machines in time to avoid a collapse from an energy required to manufacture and global industrial capacity limitation in our civilizational infrastructure.

His solution is to survive the coming collapse with small distributed energy systems and a radically scaled down carbon footprint. Sadly, that option will not be available to a large percentage of humanity.

Hoping for a more positive future scenario, I analyzed his concerns to see if they are valid and we have no other option but to face a collapse and a die off with the surviving population living at much lower energy use levels.

I'm happy to report that, although Roamer has just cause to be concerned, we can, in reality, transition to 100% Renewable Energy without overtaxing our civilizational resources.

This is a slim hope but a real one based on history and the world's present manufacturing might. Read on.

 




I give you the logistics aiding marvel of WWII, the Liberty Ship. It was THE JIT (just in time), SIT (sometimes in time) and sometimes NIT (never in time because it was torpedoed) cargo delivery system that helped us win the war.

This was a mass produced ship. These ships are a testament to the ability to build an enormous quantity of machines on a global scale that the U.S. was capable of over half a century ago. 

The Liberty ship model used two oil boilers and was propelled by a single-screw steam engine, which gave the liberty ship a cruise speed of 11 to 11.5 knots. The ships were 441.5 feet long, with a 57 foot beam and a 28 foot draft.

The ships were designed to minimize labor and material costs; this was done in part by replacing many rivets with welds. This was a new technique, so workers were inexperienced and engineers had little data to go on. Additionally, much of the shipyards' labor force had been replaced with women as men joined the armed forces. Because of this, early ships took quite a long time to build - the Patrick Henry taking 244 days -
but the average building time eventually came down to just 42 days.

A total of 2,710 Liberty ships were built, with an expected lifespan of just five years. A little more than 2,400 made it through the war, and 835 of these entered the US cargo fleet. Many others entered Greek and Italian fleets. Many of these ships were destroyed by leftover mines, which had been forgotten or inadequately cleared. Two ships survive today, both operating as museum ships. They are still seaworthy, and one (the Jeremiah O'Brien) sailed from San Francisco to England in 1994.

These ships had a design flaw. The grade of steel used to build them suffered from embrittlement. Cracks would propagate and in 3 cases caused the ships to split in half and sink. It was discovered and remediated.

Ships operating in the North Atlantic were often exposed to temperatures below a critical temperature, which changed the failure mechanism from ductile to brittle. Because the hulls were welded together, the cracks could propagate across very large distances; this would not have been possible in riveted ships.

A crack stress concentrator contributed to many of the failures. Many of the cracks were nucleated at an edge where a weld was positioned next to a hatch; the edge of the crack and the weld itself both acted as crack concentrators. Also contributing to failures was heavy overloading of the ships, which increased the stress on the hull. Engineers applied several reinforcements to the ship hulls to arrest crack propagation and initiation problems.

Heavily loaded ship

http://www.brighthubengineering.com/marine-history/88389-history-of-the-liberty-ships/

Today, several countries have, as do we, a much greater industrial capacity. It is inaccurate to claim that we cannot produce sufficient renewable energy devices in a decade or so to replace the internal combustion engine everywhere in our civilization. The industrial capacity is there and is easily provable by asking some simple questions about the fossil fuel powered ICE status quo:

How long do ICE powered machines last?

How much energy does it require to mine the raw materials and manufacture the millions of engines wearing out and being replaced day in and day out?

What happens if ALL THAT INDUSTRIAL CAPACITY is, instead, dedicated to manufacturing Renewable Energy machines?


IOW, if there is a ten to twenty year turnover NOW in our present civilization involving manufacture and replacement of the ICEs we use, why can't we retool and convert the entire ICE fossil fuel dependent civilization to a Renewable Energy Machine dependent civilization?

1) The industrial capacity is certainly there to do it EASILY in two decades and maybe just ten years with a concerted push.

2) Since Renewable Energy machines use LESS metal and do not require high temperature alloys, a cash for clunkers worldwide program could obtain more than enough metal raw material without ANY ADDITIONAL MINING  (except for rare earth minerals - a drop in the bucket - LOL- compared to all the mining presently done for metals to build the ICE) by just recycling the ICE parts into Renewable Energy machines.

3) Just as in WWII, but on a worldwide scale, the recession/depression would end as millions of people were put to work on the colossal transition to Renewable Energy.

HOWEVER, despite our ABILITY to TRANSITION TO 100% RENEWABLE ENERGY, we "CAN'T DO IT"   because the fossil fuel industry has tremendous influence on the worldwide political power structure from the USA to Middle  East to Russia to China.

IOW, it was NEVER

1. an energy problem,

2. a "laws of thermodynamics" problem,

3. a mining waste and pollution problem,

4. a lack of wind or sun problem,

5. an environmental problem,

6. an industrial capacity problem or

7 a technology problem.

Details

   
EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THE ABOVE excuses for claiming Renewable Energy cannot replace Fossil Fuels are STRAWMEN presented to the public for the express purpose of convincing us of the half truth that without fossil fuels, civilization will collapse.

It was ALWAYS a POLITICAL PROBLEM of the fossil fuel industry not wanting to relinquish their stranglehold on the world's geopolitical make up.

It drives them insane to think that Arizona and New Mexico can provide more power than all the oil in the Middle East. Their leverage over lawmakers and laws to avoid environmental liability is directly proportional to their market share of global energy supplies.

They are treatened by Renewable Energy and have mobilized to hamper its growth as much as possible through various propaganda techniques using all the above strawmen.   

It is TRUE that civilization will collapse and a huge die off will occur without fossil fuels IF, and ONLY IF, Renewable Energy does not replace fossil fuels. It is blatantly obvious that we need energy to run our civilization.

It is ALSO TRUE that if we continue to burn fossil fuels in ICEs, Homo SAP will become extinct. This is not hyperbole. We ALREADY have baked in conditions, that take about three decades to fully develop, that have placed us in a climate like the one that existed over 3 million years ago.

We DID NOT thrive in those conditions or multiply. This is a fact. We barely survived until a couple of hundred thousand years ago when the weather became friendlier and even then we didn't really start to populate the planet until about 10,000 years ago.

The climate 3 million years ago was, basically, mostly lethal to Homo SAP. To say that we have technology and can handle it is a massive dodge of our responsibility for causing this climate crisis (and ANOTHER strawman from Exxon "We will adapt to that"  CEO).

Fossil fuel corporations DO NOT want to be held liable for the damage they have caused, so, even as they allow Renewable Energy to have a niche in the global energy picture, will use that VERY NICHE (see rare earth mining and energy to build PV and wind turbines) to blame Renewables for environmental damage.



In summary, the example of the Liberty ships is proof we CAN TRANSITION TO RENEWABLE ENERGY in, at most, a couple of decades if we decide to do it but WON'T do it because of the fossil fuel industry's stranglehold on political power, financing and laws along with the powerful propaganda machine they control.


What can we expect from the somewhat dismal prospects for Homo sapiens?

1) Terrible weather and melted polar ice caps with an increase in average wind velocity in turn causing more beach erosion from gradually rising sea level and wave action. The oceans will become more difficult to traverse because of high wave action and more turbulent seas. The acidification will increase the dead zones and reduce aquatic life diversity. But you've heard all this before so I won't dwell on the biosphere problems that promise to do us in.

2) As Renewable Energy devices continue to make inroads in fossil fuel profits, expect an engineered  partial civilizational collapse in a large city to underline the "you are all going to die without fossil fuels" propaganda pushed to avoid liability for the increasingly "in your face" climate extremes.

3) Less democracy and less freedom of expression from some governments and more democracy and freedom of expression from other governments in 

direct proportion to the percent penetration of Renewable energy machines in powering their countries (more RE, more freedom)

and an inverse proportion to the power of their "real politik" Fossil Fuel lobbies in countries. (more FF power, less freedom).

The bottom line, as Guy McPherson says, is that NATURE BATS LAST. Nature has millions of "bats". Homo SAP has a putrid fascist parasite bleeding it to death and poisoning it at the same time. The parasite cannot survive without us so it is allowing us to get a tiny IV to keep us alive a little longer (a small percentage of renewable energy machines).  It won't work.

But the parasite has a plan. The IV will be labelled a "parasite" (the villain and guilty party) when Homo SAP finally figures out he is going to DIE if he doesn't fix this "bleeding and poison" problem. Then the real parasite will try to morph into a partially symbiotic organism and Homo SAP will muddle through somehow.

I think that the parasite doesn't truly appreciate the severity of Mother Nature's "bat".
If the parasite (as a metaphor for a fossil fuel powered civilization) does not DIE TOTALLY, I don't think any of us will make it. 

If the the parasite takes MORE than 20 years to die, some of us will make it but most of us won't. 

If, in 2017, when the north pole has the first ice free summer, all the governments of the Earth join in a crash program to deep six the use of fossil fuels and the internal combustion engine within a ten year period, most of us will make it. 


A word about political power and real politik living in a fossil fuel fascist dystopia.

IT simply DOES NOT MATTER what the 'real world", "real politik" geopolitical power structure mankind has now is. IT DOES NOT MATTER how powerful the fossil fuel industry is in human affairs. The ICE and fossil fuels have to go or Mother Nature will kill us, PERIOD.

Pass it on. You never know when somebody on the wrong side of the Darwinian fence will read it and join the effort to save humanity.


Save as many as you can!

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[WHD]

Agelbert,

You are some kind of genius. And I'm all for it. Esp if it means dismantling off-shore oil wells and all nuclear facilities.

WHD 

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[agelbert]

Thank you WHD and Mking for your kind comments. Feel free to distribute this article with or without attribution. We are all in this clusterfuck together and anything we can do to counter the fatal inertia we seem to be on is worth it.  It is my hope that Ashvin will hand carry it to TAE for comment. Maybe NF will take it seriously.

Mking,
I'll have to research the Dyson sphere and see how I can crunch the numbers for different energy source combination scenarios.

My most basic beef with all this energy business from an engineering standpoint is the obviously tiny use of energy that a sailfish uses to go over 50 mph in the ocean or I use to type on this keyboard in comparison with some machine powered by exothermic processes. Machines seem so primitive and inefficient compared with biological processes. And when you get a lot of biological processes working together, you can generate an awful lot of energy in a distributed fashion even though you can NEVER do it in a centralized fashion.

Centralized concentrated power not living nature's way even though it certainly applies to natural forces like solar fusion and a tsunami from a large earthquake. 

I am certain that if we really get down to business with biological catalysts in chemical reactions that mimic life processes (low exothermal activity in a narrow temperature range to prevent protein denaturing - distortion and loss of function), we can increase the efficiency of our energy producing devices over 50% without any other changes. 

This would translate to an INSTANT world power demand reduction from 18 TW 24/7 to 9 TW. Of course, SOMEBODY stands to lose a hell of a lot of money under this scenario. 

As for nuclear power, I think it has a definite place in our future, but not on this planet.  On the moon or any other bitterly cold, airless environment where cooling WITHOUT WATER is feasible and surrounding colony life forms are suitably shielded, it sounds like a good deal.

But I simply think it's still not cost effective here because of the sophistication required to manage properly and shield life form DNA from damage (the process used in mining Uranium is particularly and permanently harmful to aquifers - an early type of fracking  ).

Sure, we CAN do it but, when ALL the costs on the environment from mining to baby sitting used fuel rod assemblies for over a century are figured in REALISTICALLY to include non-subsidized insurance and bio-remediation of mined land and decommissioned power plant sites as well as balancing the impact of gargantuan amounts of cooling water being output as high temperature water on the biosphere, it seems to me that other, less sophisticated energy outputting devices that have low or NO exothermic energy dynamics are a better deal.

I'll support a nuclear powered colony in space or an airless moon (NOT on a planet with atmosphere that is potentially terraformable like Mars). Maybe a big power plant on Phobos or Deimos would be feasible to microwave power down to the surface but not on the surface.

The following video has some eminent scientists and scholars discussing the extreme importance of stopping the CO2 emissions as soon as possible. Nuclear power and an atmospheric carbon trap to extract CO2 from the atmosphere at an equal or greater rate than it is being generated are discussed.

This proposed carbon trapper is a chemical process. I don't know if it is exothermic. He hasn't built a prototype even though he has obtained about 8 million dollars for research up until now. He says it's doable for about $30 a captured ton of CO2, the cost of which would be passed on to energy consumers world wide in the form of a surtax per kWh.

Also discussed, and something I quite agree with, is that our energy problem is actually a spin off from our central problem. Which is answering the thorny question of what, exactly, it is about our politics and society that led us into this box canyon?

Refusal to plan ahead or use the precautionary principle when innovating or responding to a given technical problem without a multi-generational cause and effect horizon is GUARANTEEING unpredictable and deleterious effects from every bit of tinkering we engage in. This, arguably STUPID behavior on a societal level is NOT being sufficiently addressed and should be.

Of course this was old hat to the Native American tribes that considered the effects of any action they took on the succeeding 7 generations. It is good that the scientific community is, at least, talking about it.



<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/XPaTAC29W2I#&fs=1" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/XPaTAC29W2I#&fs=1</a>
I don't necessarily agree all the ideas presented here but I DO AGREE something has to be done IMMEDIATELY if not sooner! 


<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/B4Q271UaNPo#&fs=1" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/B4Q271UaNPo#&fs=1</a>



Stay tuned for Answers to Ashvin's questions Part 2. 

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[luciddreams]

You are a trip Agelbert.

So you are betting that mother nature is going to finally scare the shit out of the majority of Homo Sap enough to collectively pull our heads out of our collectively massive collective asshole?  I don't have enough optimism in my pessimistically optimistic expression of self to put any hope in that.  Sounds good though.  I hope you are right btw...for the sake of my children (and Homo Sap). 

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[agelbert]

So you are betting that mother nature is going to finally scare the shit out of the majority of Homo Sap enough to collectively pull our heads out of our collectively massive collective asshole?

Well, ACTUALLY, that is my hope. As you can see from the three future scenarios I envisioned, due to the political power of the fossil fuel fascists, the odds are very bad and it is basically a bad bet.

But I'm a stubborn fellow so I'll keep envisioning a massive extraction from the darkness of the descending colon, sigmoid colon, rectum and anus so that the fossil fuelers can smell the coffee instead of that shit they are so used to. 

Remember, the masses will willingly and enthusiastically turn to acceptance of ANY sacrifice needed to reduce energy use during a massive transition to renewable energy IF, and ONLY IF, the fossil fuel power brokers decide to face reality. The propaganda machine, hitherto used for mendacity, engendering doubt of solid scientific data, double talk and distraction, once used for TRUTH is much more powerful.

But I admit the "IF" that includes emergence of the fossil fuelers from that river in Egypt is ONE BIG FUCKING IF! 

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[agelbert]

Was there any information relating modern CO2 levels to the type of planet we had when they were once much higher, or was the entire video pretty much just modern model centric?

I wish to apologize for mixing up the videos. Although the one I posted made a case fo limiting GHG, it was not the one with the techno-fixes proposed.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/XPaTAC29W2I#&fs=1" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/XPaTAC29W2I#&fs=1</a>
This is the correct video - I have not watched part 2 yet

Strictly modern model centric. They do engage in the "what if we don't do anything scenario in detail" as well as various techno-fixes and questioning the rationale behind techno-fixes. Human society power structure and planning failures from educational systems (kindergarten through university) pushing conformism instead of critical thinking to short term, profit orientated business models offloading environmental costs as if we existed in an infinite growth biosphere are discussed.

I understand the big picture of capitalist thinking. It envisions costs as a biological organism deals with shit. The problem with this thinking is evolution made SURE that SHIT is a RESOURCE for other organisms so that the life sustainability loop can continue in a CLOSED system like the biosphere.

Capitalists CANNOT GET THAT THROUGH THEiR HEADS. The very IDEA of providing a RESOURCE to something else out there is heresy to their 'accumulate forever' faulty mindset.

They picture sustainable behavior among corporate businesses as a weakness born of the watermelon people (he outside an socialist commie red on the inside).

The weakness is in the capitalist mindset which fails to recognize that releasing ANY toxins into the biosphere is tantamount to the 19th century bad habit that sickened and killed many humans of putting latrines near their wells, but on a larger scale.

The metaphor of the lion predator just "doing what it does" to kill a prey animal comparing it EQUALLY to corporate corruption, bribery, murder, propaganda and stifling scientific innovation just to make profits is a FANTASY that science has been unable to right in the ideologues BECAUSE a large part of the scientific community and the university scientific peer review process has been purchased to argue AGAINST objective reality.

Some of that is discussed and, quite frankly, some of the scientists there weren't happy when it was brought up.    But ideology is killing the human species.    We aren't out hunting an impala when we buy a patent or keep a law from being passed to fine or imprison us for polluting the planet; we are committing slow suicide. This is ABOMINALLY INSANE and STUPID  behavior worthy of an evolutionary dead end. 

I recommend you wade through the whole thing if you have a chance and tell me what you make of the philosophical discussion and the techy solutions. I realize you don't feel the threat is as great as that envisioned by me and many others but, nevertheless, your knowledge of nuts and bolts industrial processes can shed some light on whether any of these techno-fixes is doable. 

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[agelbert]

Thailand Adding 1,000 MW of Solar  with New Feed-in Tariffs


800 MW Set Aside for Community-Owned Projects   

Paul Gipe, Contributor 

July 19, 2013  |  1 Comments 

While municipal utilities in Los Angeles and on New York’s Long Island plod along with timid municipal feed-in tariff programs, Thailand plans to add another 1,000 MW of solar photovoltaics (solar PV) by the end of 2014.

Since Thailand launched its aggressive feed-in tariff program in 2006, the country had installed nearly 1,000 MW of solar PV by 2010 and had a portfolio of signed contracts of more than 4,000 MW, nearly half of that for solar PV.

As in successful program elsewhere, the Thai feed-in tariffs were differentiated by technology. There are tariffs for wind, solar, hydro, biomass, and biogas. However, contracts were for a limited time period of 10 years or less.

Now in a radical departure from the past program, Thailand’s National Energy Policy Commission (NEPC) has approved new feed-in tariffs for both rooftop and ground-mounted solar PV with contract terms of 25 years. This brings the Thai program into alignment with similar programs in Germany, Great Britain, and Ontario, Canada.


Full Story here:
 http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2013/07/thailand-adding-1000-mw-of-solar-with-new-feed-in-tariffs?cmpid=SolarNL-Saturday-July20-2013

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[agelbert]

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/_pKZLHNYPbM#&fs=1" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/_pKZLHNYPbM#&fs=1</a>
All the panel members agree that STEP 1 is to STOP ALL FOSSIL FUEL SUBSIDIES IMMEDIATELY.

NOTE: At the 22 minute mark some interesting scientific data about Mercury and Venus sheds light on OUR Climate Energy balance and WHY and HOW  CO₂ "does what it does". 

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[agelbert]

Renewables Provide 25% of New Electrical Generating Capacity in First Half 2013   


Renewables Outpace Coal, Oil and Nuclear Power Combined

 Kenneth Bossong, SUN DAY Campaign 
 
July 19, 2013 

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- According to the latest "Energy Infrastructure Update" report from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's Office of Energy Projects, renewable energy sources (i.e., biomass, geothermal, solar, water, wind) accounted for 24.93 percent of all new domestic electrical generating capacity installed in the first six months of 2013 for a total of 2,144 MW.

That is more than that provided thus far this year by

coal (1,579 MW - 18.36 percent),

oil (26 MW - 0.30 percent),

and nuclear power (0 MW - 0.00 percent) combined.

However, natural gas dominated the first half of 2013 with 4,852 MW of new capacity (56.41 percent). 


Among renewable energy sources, solar led the way for the first half of 2013 with

94 new "units" totaling 979 MW followed by

wind with 8 units totaling 959 MW.

Biomass added 36 new units totaling 116 MW

while water  had 8 new units with an installed capacity of 76 MW

and geothermal steam had one new unit (14 MW).

For the month of June 2013 alone, six new solar projects in North Carolina and one in New Mexico came on-line with a total capacity of 15 MW while a single 4-MW hydropower project was also added.  No new capacity was reported for the month for natural gas but coal and oil had additions of 618 MW and 26 MW respectively.

For the first half of 2013, compared to the first half of 2012, new capacity from all sources declined by 16.16% (from 10,259 MW to 8,601 MW). However, solar capacity grew by 3.70 percent while natural gas capacity increased by 12.47 percent. Water power saw a more than ten-fold increase from 7 MW in the first six months of 2012 to 76 MW thus far in 2013.

Renewable sources now account for nearly 16 percent of total installed U.S. operating generating capacity:

hydro - 8.52 percent,

wind - 5.17 percent,

biomass - 1.31 percent,

solar - 0.48 percent, and

geothermal steam - 0.33 percent. 

This is more than nuclear (9.05 percent) and oil (3.51 percent) combined. Note that generating capacity is not the same as actual generation. Actual net electrical generation from renewable energy sources in the U.S. now totals about 14 percent according to the most recent data (i.e., as of April 2013) provided by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2013/07/renewables-provide-25-of-new-electrical-generating-capacity-in-first-half-2013

Month by month, the Renewable Energy Revolution continues to grab market share from fossil fuels. GOOD! 

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[agelbert]

You seem to be questioning the fundamental assumptions that a lot of PO people rely on in their analysis of our energy situation.

The fundamental position of the PO people is accurate. It's a simple math equation involving energy. We use A+B+C+D energy sources for most of our energy. If we have less of A+B+C+D or if one or two of those letters symbolizing energy sources is being rapidly depleted (depleted is a loaded term I will discuss later), as is now the case, when one or two of them is exhausted there will not be enough energy to run industrialized civilization and a collapse and die off occur.

All this is quite logical until you ask a certain question about these energy sources. The question is, are the use of those energy sources harming the biospshere that we all depend on? Science says they are harming the biosphere and the health of Homo sapiens to the point of endangering his ability to survive. This is not hyperbole. Using these energy sources has created a baked in climate scenario that takes decades to make it's impact fully felt and will linger about 1000 years even if all CO2 pumping is stopped now. We have ALREADY passed a point of "no return during a human life span".

Details

CO₂ Staying power
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/XPaTAC29W2I#&fs=1" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/XPaTAC29W2I#&fs=1</a>

(Above slide is from this video which is the first of a two part video on Climate Change with noted Scientists and Academics explaining our plight and possible solutions in societal structure and possible techno-fixes)

We are now in uncharted territory. How do I know? Because the acidification baked into the oceans takes at least 30 years to fully be felt, according to U.S. ocean scientists. IOW, we are NOW feeling with our increased algae blooms, dead zones and overfished ocean areas, the beginnings of massive damage to the ocean biome. It will get much, much worse regardless of what we do to stop Green House Gas (GHG) accumulation from burning hydrocarbons at this point. In the above video, several scientists underscore that reality and one of them mocks the  efforts by propagandists and politicians to bend reality to some comfortable popular perception.

The ten indicators that climate scientists are monitoring are all going into uncharted territory promising a climate that humans have never, ever been subject to. See the article I posted on my channel written nearly three years ago with some recent charts I added at the top.
http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/forum/index.php?topic=559.msg27545#msg27545

Please ignore the snark I included in that post. I am just a bit tired of having the data I present here being viewed as questionable, debatable, or some tree hugger's hysterical opinion. Did you know one of the founders of a Disinformation Think Tank (The George C. Marshal Institute) created to defend the Reagan SDI star wars stuff and, after the cold war ended, switched to adopt the "Tobacco Strategy" of sowing doubt about the global warming science, had been previously president of Rockefeller University?

Details

Anti-Climate Science Think Tank

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/XXyTpY0NCp0#&fs=1" target="_blank" class="new_win">http://www.youtube.com/v/XXyTpY0NCp0#&fs=1</a>
(Above Slide is taken from this video of Science Historian Naome Oreskes)

Naome Oreskes, a Science Historian explains the propaganda tactics in this video. Because of all that propaganda, the threat climate change presents to us is being underplayed.

From the book "The Tyrrany of Oil" by Antonia Juhasz I learned the ruthless modus operandi of oil corporations for over a century. They, much more so than the average person, are keenly aware of other energy sources that have always been able to compete (and win the ccompetition) effectively with fossil fuels and have actively engaged in slanting the market to smother the competition by gaming the laws.

Their propaganda efforts have been effective throughout the world, not just here. They are losing their mendacious battle to defend their toxic energy sources now, not because they have accepted that fossil fuels are bad for the biosphere but because the renewable energy sources they gamed out of existence as far back as Prohibition such as:

1. Ethanol (ethanol could no longer be produced by farmers to run their farm machines),

2. Photovoltaic panels (principle discovered by Einstein at the beginning of the 20th century but not developed in the USA until they had no other choice for space vehicle power - and even then severely underfunded),

3. Wind turbine generators (originally powering part of the city of Cleveland PRIOR to the year 1900, again developed succssfully in the 1970s, when 4 giant wind turbines were tested for a year by NASA, only to have the fossil fuel powered utilities REFUSE to to take up their maintenace which, along wiht Reagan's presidency, killed the project),

4. CSP (concentrated solar power) plants, one of which was built over 30 years ago in the Mojave desert and has ALWAYS produced electricity cheaper than fossil fuels but was NOT allowed to be duplicated or built above a certain Mega Wattage back then)

HAVE COME ROARING BACK with greater efficiencies that compete with the massively subsidized fossil fuels despite the fact that the cost to the environment is NOT being added to the price of fossil fuels. No, what is happening is that, as fossil fuels get more expensive to extract, the fossil fuel corporations want to pass that cost onto we-the-people. That has backfired on them because a plethora of renewable energy devices are now more profitable. The massive drop in oil prices in the 1980s was used to destroy renewable energy from PV and wind at the starting gate but they can't seem to pull it off again.

The one renewable energy technology that fossil fuels could not stop was the massive dam building that began in the 1930s because so much power was needed to electrify the nation (one third of all the electricity in the USA was hydro in 1940 from over 1500 dams - that renewable energy penetration of the grid has never been greater). However, they thwarted the 'plastics from hemp' developing industry in 1937 by making hemp illegal.

The plastics industry does not now, or ever, HAVE to be based on petroleum. Switching to biofuels for plastics and ethanol is a massive drain on fossil fuel profitability. That is the reason that corn, the absolute WORSE crop you can imagine because of high lignin content (makes it more difficult to make ethanol), massive energy inputs from farm machine plowing and chemical fertilizers, was allowed to be grown as a biofuel.

Ever since corn ethanol came into existence the fossil fuelers have been wailing and moaning about endangering food supplies and "low" EROEI. Scientists have recently thrown a curve ball at fossil fuelers claims of low EROEI for corn by inventing a process that uses the entire plant to produce biofuel to lower the energy needed to make ethanol! Talk about making lemonade out of lemons!

There is so much innovation going on that the oil pigs are having an awful time playing wack-a-mole with new technologies and increased efficiencies. But Monsanto is doing quite well and fertilizer and farm machines run on gasoline or diesel.  Of course the farmers are returning to there old habits from before Prohibition and using their home made hooch (ethanol) to run their machines and fossil fuel corporations are not happy. Is it any wonder that we are now hearing about how ethanol "damages" engines? It's just more propaganda.

I can prove every nasty, negative, naysaying bit of propaganda against renewable energy from ethanol is false and have done so on these pages with scholarly references.

Ethanol Disinformation and how to deal with it.
http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/forum/index.php?topic=478.msg27677#msg27677 

The pattern of fossil fuel corporations is to study diligently all availble sources of energy and make certain they hamper the competitivity of any non-fossil fuel source by law, propaganda or both.

The point is we have a sort of immovable object running into an unstoppable force. The fossil fuel lobby is the immovable object but renewable energy is NOT the unstoppable force; it's the global climate change. Fossil fuelers are used to owning the referees on the playing field of global energy markets and financing for infrastructure (which is true ).

Their present intractable problem is that the scientists that they hire to lie to us are not lying to them. They realize that fossil fuels ARE messing up our air, water and land. This is bad for business.

No, I don't think they are all that concerned about wildlife diversity YET. No, at them moment, they are concerned with TORT.

Remember that old law school tort situation where a person parks their car in a parking lot and has stuff stolen from their car or the car is vandalized? In one of the few law courses I took the way that worked out was that, since consideration ($) had been paid to park, the owner of the parking lot was liable for damages as long as the owner of the vehicle acted responsibly (didn't leave the doors unlocked and/or windows open or put a "steal me" sign on the car. LOL). Big Oil wants to dance around their liability for the world they are responsible for messing up.

What does an unscrupulous lawyer counsel a client if that client caused massive damages and, if he can't avoid liability, he'll go broke?

1) Deny the very existence of damages by claiming the science isn't settled (Tobacco Strategy).

2) When the existence of the damages can no longer be denied, deny responsibility for the damages. Ensure the trail of evidence is obscure. Buy or threaten the witnesses. Attempt to flip the alleged damages on their head and pretend they are "good" for the victim and he should be greatful (anonymously through propaganda outlets, of course).
 And out come the stories of a new ice age, right on cue as increasing hard evidence of increasingly severe weather extremes from climate change piles up.

3) Make sure somebody else (i.e. renewable energy) is accused of doing all the harm to the environment that you are pretending you did not cause. Toss at the competition every piece of propaganda dirt you can create from whole cloth like people going hungry, mining damage, lost jobs, etc. (heavy duty scare tactics).

But I've left something out of the Big Oil calculus. That something is new CHEAP renewable energy. Why does a behemoth that can control governments and laws care about this type of energy? Because the basis of their power is NOT simply fossil fuels, but control of the world wide energy spiggot.

They are keenly aware that if the governments of the world embark on a project like the USA did in the 1930s with just ONE form of renewable energy technology (hydro - building of 1500 dams is not small potatoes), in less than a decade. there is no longer any need for fossil fuels and, more importantly, since renewable energy is distributed uniformly all over the planet, the casus belli for wars and power games including the whole structure of world empires and their armies loses much of their reason for being.

It is not simply a matter of big oil switching to renewable energy (something they could easily do with all their money). NO, no, no they do not want to lose their ability to cause price shocks and contrived wars.

It IS about POLITICAL POWER, not about the 'energy' kind of power. It always was. Rockefeller wasn't stupid. The Seven Sisters weren't stupid. Exxon mobile isn't stupid. They simply do not see how they can retain power in a world of distributed renewable energy.

BUT, they recognize that this climate change looming series of extreme weather events is a serious problem they DO NOT want to be blamed for so they are allowing renewable energy to gain a small market share niche large enough to be a climate change scapegoat for big oil's liability but not large enough to be a threat to big oil's political power.

The master game plan of the fossil fuel corporations is being executed according to "1)", "2)" and "3)" above.

Admiting renewable energy is the greatest thing since toasted bread would open them up to charges of climate harm liability when the extreme weather events become common.

Consequently they are allowing renewable energy to grow in leaps and bounds ONLY UNTIL it's market share is big enough to mount an effective  scapegoat campaign or, if that fails, continue to use the Tobacco Strategy to claim there are too many other irritants in the air to blame a single cause for lung cancer.

By keeping Renewable energy underfoot, so to speak, they can continue to control governments with their centralized type energy source. I expect, as the climate worsens, they will get more and more into biofuels in the hope of preserving the internal combustion engine infrastructure that keeps their power intact aven as they are FORCED by horrendous weather to stop burning NON-renewable hydrocarbons. 

Most people say that renewable energy simply CANNOT step in to fill the energy gap, and that people need to get used to a MASSIVE downsizing in global human civilization as it now stands.

They say this because they have been fed an enormous amount of propaganda or they are part of the propaganda effort.

I have posted scholarly articles from creditable scientists that state that MULTIPLES of the present (about 18 Terrawatts) global energy demand can be obtained SEPARATELY, from the sun or the wind. This is without even counting the massive energy available just off the coast of the continents in the ocean currents just a few miles from where MOST of the world's people live and energy is needed (coastal cities). And there is geothermal and existing hydro.

As far as the alleged "impossibility" of manufacturing all of that PV and wind turbines along with battery, centrifugal or other type of energy storage to balance a grid that powers most of civilization, that's just plain propaganda. I have posted here on the massive amount of energy now expended year in and year out just to manfacture and maintain internal combustion engines. These engines will require fuel for their entire working life. Yet, the Renewable energy devices, after manufacture, will not. I mostly covered this with Part 1 in discussing the rapide manufacture of Liberty Ships during WWII as an example of what we can do when we really want to.

At the moment we have, because of the global recession/depression worldwide, a MASSIVE amount of UNUSED capacity in factories. Of course it can be done. The point of the big oil master plan, is to continue to claim it can't be done so renewable energy machine penetration just bleeds in slowly while big oil retains the power broker position.

Sure, the complexity of modern society has made it more difficult to get organized and get things done at a large scale, but I feel that this limitation is greatly exaggerated at times.

I agree completely. Just watch some of those megastructure videos from National Geographic where gigantic bridges and port facilities were built in Asia. It's absolutely amazing what humans can do when they decide to just DO IT.

Every time someone says it can't be done to me here, I ask for data and point at my own
hard data and massive projects like the dams and the mobilization for WWII. We've got robots now and can do things much faster as well. I'll wager that the metals in all the internal combustion machines in use now would do nicely without mining much of anything to build all the renewable energy machines from tidal turbines to deep ocean current turbines, to wind turbines to PV as I discussed in Part 1.

The amount of NON-arable land on the earth easily accessible to duckweed pond farming or algae biofuel farming FAR exceeds the amount of arable land. But even as it is, if much of that land now used for corn ethanol was used to grow hemp, switch grass or some hardy perennial that doesn't require plowing or chemical fertilizer, fossil fuels would be a thing of the toxic past in a couple of decades at the most.

And secondly, I am starting to see the logic in your critique of the EROEI method and the misinformation about renewables out there.

I think most people like the concept of renewables but they still think there is nothing wrong with fossil fuels. This is why, despite the status quo, I try to explain to the propagandized that there is no contest between the two. Fossil fuels have to go because they make us sick.

We have scientists,  inventors, entrepreneurs and technicians that can make the ONLY CHOICE WE REALLY HAVE, which is renewable energy devices, work. Of course it won't be a bed of roses. But to say it's mission impossible is rather defeatist and unrealistic.

Here's a thread from a fracking story where the defenders of fracking and fossil fuels were thick as thieves. I post this to give you a bird's eye view of how the propagandized respond to hard truths (i.e. they don't request sources but, instead, attack the messenger. The brainwashing is, unfortunately, quite effective).

Well, the people you see at the helm in our country are delivery boys. They have their marching orders and it has everything to do with the 1% and nothing to do with democracy, the right or the left.

Given the harsh reality of a deteriorating global climate for the upper classes who own over 90% of it, I am confident that they are slowly emerging from their denial of the massive damage fossil fuels and industrial pollutants and toxic chemicals of all types have have visited on the biosphere. That is why the massive transition to Renewable energy is being backed by important one percenters like Warren buffett and Bill Gates, to name just two. There is also Elon Musk. To show you this move by the elite is real and brings hope to all of us, just look at this report by the IEA (a 28 country energy agency that has ALSWAYS been pro fossil and nuclear fuels since their founding in 1974). They have RADICALLY altered their posture and predictions.

IEA Predicts Wind to Double and Solar Solar to Triple in 6 Years
http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/...

Fossil fuels are on the way OUT. and with them, the EXCUSE for wars and a huge military "protecting" oil resources and tanker routes because we will get our energy HERE and no contrived price hikes can be rigged from the sun or wind. A better future is coming if we can just get the fossil fuel, war loving pigs out of the way.

Texas agelbert • 4 days ago
Speaking of Warren Buffet...did you ever hear (or do research on) Butterball Turkey Plant and their waste management (sideline project)? It may not be up anymore on the web but, to summarize it it went something like this: A company who Buffet (supposedly) owned stock in could produced no.2 sweet crude oil in approximately 2 hours (not 20 million years) using a high pressure 'vessel design' . Its base (raw material) originated from turkey remains (blood, bone, flesh and feathers). The 'pressure cooker' (though inefficient) apparently worked. Later and continued experiments demonstrated anything from old clothing, computer monitors, household waste etc. literally boiled down to three basic elements. The most prominent was crude oil. The media article 'reports' also dropped other names that were on board including the 'EPA'. The story (as I read it) existed as recently as 2006. Proponents of that project stated that only hydrocarbons' (that were already in the environment) were being re-cycled (opposed to re-introducing further hydrocarbons' from conventional drilling.) No joke, no hype.

agelbert From Texas • 4 days ago
No, I hadn't heard about that device but I am certain that biofuel can be made from many sources. What I know about Buffett is that he is having electric buses built in California that are a Chinese brand (BYD).

I just read yesterday that the US Government approved several million dollars for using a new GM strain of tobacco that has nearly one third its dry weight in hydrocarbons to make biofuel.

Also, there's an algae outfit in Arizona making jet fuel from algae. They call it green crude. A lot of changes are in the air.

Here are the links to the stories:

Are Beer and Cigarettes the New Bioenergy?

http://www.renewableenergyworl...

What is Green Crude

http://www.sapphireenergy.com/...

cammo99 agelbert • 4 days ago
Since the end of the Cold War when oil was openly declared an issue of nationalo security "oil wars" has been over stated as a cause for war. Humanity isn't that good, it can't find many other things to fight over. As for my part in theGulf Wars, gald we got the oil turned back on as much for the Iraqi's as the rest of the world and the world is a much better place without Saddam Hussein's regime. Sorry you miss him so much but Obama dropped the hand off.
I don't mean to be ruder but I will be unavailable for comment as I am entering a wilderness area, looking for oil....not. Moose.

agelbert cammo99 • 3 days ago
Read this and weep, PAL!
A quote from the following book:

Dilworth (2010-03-12). Too Smart for our Own Good (pp. 399-400). Cambridge University Press. Kindle Edition.
]"As suggested earlier, war, for example, which represents a cost for society, is a source of profit to capitalists. In this way we can partly understand e.g. the American military expenditures in the Persian Gulf area. Already before the first Gulf War, i.e. in 1985, the United States spent $47 billion projecting power into the region. If seen as being spent to obtain Gulf oil, It AMOUNTED TO $468 PER BARREL, or 18 TIMES the $27 or so that at that time was paid for the oil itself.

In fact, if Americans had spent as much to make buildings heat-tight as they spent in ]ONE YEAR at the end of the 1980s on the military forces meant to protect the Middle Eastern oil fields, THEY COULD HAVE ELIMINATED THE NEED TO IMPORT OIL from the Middle East.
So why have they not done so? Because, while the $468 per barrel may be seen as being a cost the American taxpayers had to bear, and a negative social effect those living in the Gulf area had to bear, it meant only profits for American capitalists. "

Note: I added the bold caps emphasis on the barrel of oil price, money spent in one year and the need to import oil from the Middle East.

It's OVER for fossil fuels. You got suckered into going so now you want to believe, like the Viet Nam vets who were suckered too, that there was a national security reason.

Read this form the Department of Energy and weep some more for your dead man walking called fossil fuels:

http://www.redorbit.com/news/s...

cammo99 agelbert • a day ago
Why would I weep?
Cambridge the sorts of way you cobbled together an argument of omission? when you have a broader range of facts in your data base then we will communicate until then I suspect it would be a waste of time because you have bought the cheapest sources for some of the facts. The first Gulf War was already paid for by 1985. you have omitted all the billions of dollars in funding and cut gas prices the Saudi's gave us for fighting those wars. They extended up and at least until Bush's last year in office when Obama nearly nullified all the work Bush had done to get prices back under control. Is it that you have no memory or no conscience to do a full investigation. My pump prices went up $.20 in part because Obama sided with the Muslim Brotherhood and threats the Salafists, Al-Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood will retaliate by attacking the Suez and the Pipeline has created speculation. Are you a pro-Islamist like the President?

agelbert cammo99 • a day ago
Listen genius, the Dilworth quote I gave you is from a PEER REVIEWED book. If you don't know what that means, google it.
Here's another book to fill the Gran Canyon sized gaps in your mythical "petroleum is needed for our national security" history. I used to be a Republican. I used to believe all those fairy tales you cling to. I woke up. Just because you are making a buck off of fossil fuels doesn't mean you can justify that "convenient only for oil corporations" version of American history.

The Tyranny of Oil:

The World's Most Powerful Industry--and

What We Must Do to Stop It

"Who's really driving oil and gas prices? How much oil is left? How far will Big Oil go to get it, and at what cost to the environment, human rights, the economy, worker safety, public health, and democracy?

Here, at last, are the answers we've been looking for—and the inside story on Big Oil.
In The Tyranny of Oil, Antonia Juhasz investigates the true state of the companies collectively known as "Big Oil," uncovering their unparalleled global financial power, their political dominance, and their increasingly destructive plans for the future. And she tells us what we can do about it.

A tool for meaningful change that blends history, original investigative research and reporting, candid interviews with key insiders, and a unique focus on activism, The Tyranny of Oil is required reading for every concerned global citizen."

As to your Saudi paid for this and that comments, listen hard.
In 1978 NASA erected 4 giant wind turbines which proved we could reliably use the wind for energy. Thanks to your fossil fuel buddies, the utilities REFUSED to use them after the one year proof of concept.

In addition, utilities in Arizona wrote the NASA that same decade complaining that solar panels on Indian Reservations for water pumping, even though they WERE NOT SERVED BY POWER CABLES, might cause the utility to have to lower their rates on fossil fuel powered electricity. NASA took the panels down.

A CSP power plant that has ALWAYS outcompeted fossil fuel generated electricity just complete 35 YEARS of continuous, successful operation in the Mojave dessert. Do you HONESTLY THINK that we could not have built thousands of those in the southwest, which according to the U.S. DOE has potentially several multiples of the solar power needed to run our grid along with high voltage transmission lines? Of course we could have but BIG OIL DIDN'T WANT US TO.

All that happened long before the gulf war. Of course the Saudis fell all over themselves to defend their swag. Oil was IT for them and for Bush and his oil buddies. U.S. National security didn't have BEANS to do with it.

Go back to Prohibition and you will learn it was NEVER about booze. The temperance movement was funded by Rockefeller to the tune of millions of dollars. Henry Ford had his original carburetors set up to run on ethanol based on the Edison/U.S.Navy labs research in 1906 that stated ethanol is superior to gasoline as a fuel. Rockefeller changed Ford's mind with money so the refinery "waste" product that had been hitherto flushed down the rivers of Pennsylvania could make a tidy profit. But still the farmers resisted because they made their own hooch to power their tractors,

And then Prohibition made ethanol illegal in the internal combustion engine. By the time it became legal again, Standard oil had a stranglehold on the fuel market in the USA with gasoline stations all over the country.

By the way, many children suffered learning disabilities from tetra-ethyl lead poisoning from
gasoline. Do you know when this high octane poison came out? Just MONTHS after ethanol (a higher octane fuel (suitable for high compression, more powerful truck and aircraft engines) than non-leaded gasoline became ILLEGAL because of Prohibition. ALL the farmers were FORCED to use gasoline even though that had hitherto been able to grow their own fuel.

DO YOU SEE A PATTERN HERE? If you don't, you are willfully blind, deaf and dumb.
Everything I told you is researchable and historically ACCURATE. You are helping to kill Homo SAP and a large part of the biosphere by supporting this poison technology. Wake up.

cammo99 agelbert • 19 hours ago
The only pattern I see is your unscrupulous attacks on oil as if it is evil incarnate which of course it is not. The tyranny of oil? Who comes up with this nonsense. Islamists are tyrannical, Putin's state instituted Authoritarian crony capitalism that has been absorbing private Russian companies and putting the owners in jail after little more than a kangaroo court. And Obama? He isn't that different in how he approaches the green industry. One big failure after another with an Obama crony involved in each instance. People are tyrannical. The gas companies invested large portions of their profits to cleaner fuel and better fuel efficiency, they did pay $.50 on the barrel to import as a standard federal tax. You talk about tyranny and you have no idea what tyranny is.
Tyranny is the Muslim Brotherhood summarily carrying out religious executions for no other reason than a person does not believe the same thing they do.
I suspect you have more in common with real tyrants than the people you accuse of tyranny.


"Fracking — formally called hydraulic fracturing" Maybe if it had been called hydrating or soothing it would have less opponents. "We hydrate the earth to coax out the gas." Or, "We sooth the earth so it will release its hidden gas." But "fracking" sounds so violent. You know there will always be tree-huggers trying to stop progress, so can't the gas industry afford a little marketing to keep them from starting behind the eight-ball?

etlib Tabakin • 5 days ago
The Luddites will oppose this kind of thing no ,matter what it's called.

Joanne Fiorito Tabakin • 6 days ago
I'll willing to take you up to my buddy's house and you can drink his radioactive tap water, thanks to sCABOT.....four types of URANIUM, two of which are weapons grade mat'l....U235 & U238......but I'm sure you don't have the cajones to take me up on this offer, HEYNA

Smurfet Joanne Fiorito • 6 days ago
prove what caused it. fracking has been in use since the late 1940's so why is it just now a problem?

brasch Smurfet • 6 days ago
that was VERTICAL fracking--totally different process. Horizontal fracking is primarily since 2008--and a whole different process, with a lot more possibiolities for damage to health, environment, and food sources. Check out FRACKING PENNSYLVANIA, my latest book, loaded with DOCUMENTED information. You know, like journalists are supposed to do, rather than acting as stenographers for companies that provide expense-paid junkets.

Ron G brasch • 5 days ago
Have read a portion of it. You claim to attempt to be objective in the book, but it is very apparent that you had decided to turn it into an anti fracking book. On reading your bio I can say that you almost represent everything that I oppose. I say almost because I do agree with you on Leonard Peltier. I never met him, but while visiting three people on Pine Ridge that I had served with in Vietnam I did meet Banks and Means. I have to admit that if I wasn't with a relative of his Means would have scared the heck out of me. Anyway, on your support of Peltier I'll give you a thumbs up.

agelbert Ron G • 5 days ago
"Anti fracking book"!!? WTF?
Scientific data isn't anti this or pro that. If something is bad for human health but helps you make money, that doesn't make someone who writes the scientific truth anti-fracking". It makes YOU people making the money calloused, greedy, conscience free bigots!
Too bad you don't like that "shoe" because it fits you perfectly.

Corlia agelbert • 4 days ago
You know, some people will just never listen to reason or accept data because it is not consistent with their conservative agenda


As you can see, all criticism of fossil fuels as toxins or the tool of powerful interests is fiercely rejected.

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[jdwheeler42]

I recommend you wade through the whole thing if you have a chance and tell me what you make of the philosophical discussion and the techy solutions. I realize you don't feel the threat is as great as that envisioned by me and many others but, nevertheless, your knowledge of nuts and bolts industrial processes can shed some light on whether any of these techno-fixes is doable.

I found the first 20 minutes genuinely useful.  After that, I was particularly disgusted when the woman said "You don't have to take the bus"; personal action IS necessary, if only to make the message more effective.

As to the technical fixes, they might be doable, but they are kind of stupid.  They are still based on the linear "Resource - Product - Waste" model, trying to "dispose" of the CO2.  There are two far better solutions based on the cyclical "Waste = Food" model.

First, one of the major limiting factors they've been having with getting biodiesel from algae has been CO2 supply in the water.  By coupling CO2 removal with algal biodiesel production, preferably right at the power plant, the need for fossil fuels is reduced at the same time as CO2 emissions.  Closing the loop further, the algal solids that don't go towards biodiesel can be burned to produce power.  And if the power plant burns biofuels, it can be completely renewable.  (This idea is not my own, I believe it came from a paper on The Oil Drum back around 2010, I'll see if I can dig it up.)

Second, biochar is a method of taking carbon out of the atmosphere at least on a millennial scale, it was being done in the pre-Columbian Amazon, and the carbon is still stable in the soil centuries later.  This also has the advantage of being a primitive technology.  Even if we lose the ability to work metal, we can still use this method to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide.  And unlike the proposals to bind it to rocks, if the climate turns cold, the biochar can be dug up and burned completely to raise the CO2 levels again.

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[agelbert]

Jdwheeler,
I agree the scientific community is, if anything, understating the severity of our plight but AT LEAST they are explaining the fact that we have about 1,000 years of high CO2 to contend with in an extremely hostile climate. They also emphasized the stranglehold the fossil fuel pigs industry has on our government. The public needs to hear this over and over again. Like they said, the public needs a shorter, clearer and more often repeated message about the reality of destructive climate change and the absolutely NOT OPTIONAL requirement that fossil fuel subsidies AND the burning of them MUST STOP.

I am TOTALLY in disagreement with those scientists that the "FREE MARKET" should decide the winners. There IS NO "FREE MARKET". It's a suicide pact to not force giant subsidies for renewables and an end to all fossil fuels, PERIOD. This is a job for, not just our government, but ALL the first world governments.

And did you get the hard data for the "population is the problem" people? They said the science says that as a nation gets wealthier, the birthrate goes DOWN, not up. That's not what the "fossil fuelers propaganda says, is it? Furthermore, they stated that about one billion (the first world countries)  of the earth's 7 billion is responsible for over 80% of the CO2 and other toxic industrial pollutants damaging our atmosphere, land and oceans. The DELTA in population from 7 billion to 10 billion, considering where the carbon pigs are concentrated, doesn't change the energy equation enough to ne significant.

This is VERY BIG coming from the scientific community because it is one of the points I have argued HERE (
http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/blog/2012/08/13/sexual-dimorphism-powerstructures-and-environmental-consequences-of-human-behaviors/ ) with Buzzard, Monsta and several other diners who cling to the inaccurate notion that if we wipe out 3/4 of mankind, everything will be just dandy.

I can only agree IF the ones that are "wiped out" are that one billion doing the 80% carbon pollution piggery. Now what are the chances of THAT happening when we piggies in the first world are the ones with all the high tech toxic toys to survive harsh climate while the other 6 billion. which had NO PART in causing global warming,  get the die off shaft?

The population issue is a strawman; a dog that won't hunt. It's a DISTRACTION from the monstrous elephant in the room called the political power of the fossil fuels destroying scientific inquiry, innovation and sustainable solutions to our plight.

I wish they had talked about duckweed or algae ponds on non-arable land for carbon sequestration and biofuels instead of that CO2 techno-fix. I personally don't think that techno-fix is viable.

I think, as you obviously do,  that it HAS to be a biological type of fix involving a fast growing plant or algae that DOES NOT require plowing or chemical fertilization AND can tolerate high temperatures without slowing down photosynthesis. Lemna minor fits the bill put there are strains of high temperature and high salinity tolerant algae strains that can do the job as well.

The answers are out there but the fossil fuel fascists continue to block the way with a 24/7 plethora of false propaganda points that keep the public thoroughly confused while scientist wring their hands in frustration.

Thanks for your comment. Now for some peppy info on a solar powered hydrogen generating device.


A solar powered electrolyzer that has been on the market for over three years!

HIDRO SELF POWER is a compact, easy to transport and assemble Hydrogen refuelling system, which generates hydrogen from clean solar energy, without any environmental impact in absolute autonomy. The 1kW photovoltaic canopy transfers solar energy to Acta’s hydrogen generator HSP200 that transforms and accumulates solar energy in pure, compressed and dry hydrogen fuel, consuming only distilled water. The Hydrogen storage capacity is 1200Nl.

HIDRO SELF POWER canopy takes limited space (approximately 3m x 2m) and could be easily installed anywhere.

We are looking for Hydrogen consumers who want an independent source of hydrogen for their home energy, boats or vehicles.

Details

http://www.fuelcellmarkets.com/3,1,9763,18,28977.html

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[agelbert]

The Fossil Fuel Utility Fascists FIGHT BACK! Those claiming SOLAR POWER IS "not competitive" want to GUARANTEE IT    BY RAISING THE PV owner RATES! This is the type of low down tactic they have ALWAYS used. This is further proof that fossil fuel driven utilities ARE NOT competitive with SOLAR POWER! 


Escalating Fear   Of Disintermediation Fuels Utility Backlash Against Distributed Energy
 
Last week, the Arizona Public Service Company, the largest electric utility in Arizona, asked state utility regulators to raise electric rates for residential customers who install solar photovoltaic systems at their homes.
Stated in more technical jargon, APS, a privately-owned subsidiary of Pinnacle West, filed a request with the Arizona State Commission to modify the rules for net metering for its residential electricity customers.

Under the amended tariff, APS customers who install solar systems at their homes would either agree to pay an additional $50 to $100 for grid supplied electric power or agree would charge residential customers or accept a substantially reduced credit for any electricity they sell back to the power grid.

Full Story here:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/williampentland/2013/07/16/escalating-fear-of-disintermediation-fuels-utility-backlash-against-distributed-energy/



SNIPPET for fossil fuelers still IN that river in EGYPT!
Reinforcing the status quo by erecting new barriers to deployment of distributed generation is the first step on the road to ruin.     
   



                         

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[jdwheeler42]

I haven't found the specific paper I was talking about, but here's a relevant paper about algal biodiesel from power plants:

Cost Viability and Algae from The Oil Drum, May 29, 2009.

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