Another Drop In the Bucket

No worries right? Nothing to see here just move along.

The amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the air jumped dramatically in 2012, making it very unlikely that global warming can be limited to another 2 degrees as many global leaders have hoped, new federal figures show.

Scientists say the rise in CO2 reflects the world's economy revving up and burning more fossil fuels, especially in China.

Carbon dioxide levels jumped by 2.67 parts per million since 2011 to total just under 395 parts per million, says Pieter Tans, who leads the greenhouse gas measurement team for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

That's the second highest rise in carbon emissions since record-keeping began in 1959. The measurements are taken from air samples captured away from civilization near a volcano in Mauna Loa, Hawaii.

This is not good and if you have been paying attention this isn't the first drop in the bucket and the bucket is rapidly getting full and when it does actually fill it will be the end of mankind on this little planet.
What is so frustrating is that the world is facing two big problems right now...climate change and shrinking employment/economies and addressing climate change with investment in non oil based energy resources, clean industry and other pro-environment initiatives would solve both these problems at once. The frustration being that our leaders are focusing on exactly the opposite. How to get more oil. How to get the dirtiest oil out of Canada and ship it down through the U.S. for export to China. Oh and reducing and already shrinking deficit. Idiots.

What's A WakaWaka?

On the environmental front there some small but good news. The good news is that individuals are not waiting for governments and have developed a solar powered solar lamp also capable of recharging cell phones to replace kerosene lamps among those without electricity. This will have a good effect on both poor people and climate change. They are called WakaWakas and more information can be found here.

 Unfortunately, the "gooberments" of the world are still way behind the curve and have dropped the ball spectacularly with repsect to addressing global climate change and while individual initiative is needed and may help force "gooberment" action it will not be enough. The people that make big money off fossil fuels have an advantage with all the money they have poured into their misinformation campaign and a lot of the public are highly misinformed about the seriousness of the problem. For a nice insight on how the bad guys are working against the world in the Netherlands take a look at Galileo and the Fireflies by NASA scientist Dr. James Hansen.

I thought I had come up with the term "gooberment" but I checked the Urban Dictionary and found that it is already out there. Still, I think it might be worthwhile to use the term when it applies.
 
 gooberment -Useless Government, political systems with their heads in the sand and/or not to be trusted. Slang term for Government being Gooberment.

Full Disclosure: I am a backer (via Kickstarter) of WakaWaka.

Do What You Can

I've been terribly busy lately and in one way that is a good thing. I have been too busy to dwell upon on the bad news, especially about the environment. The shit storm is heading for us fast. 2011 saw green house gas emissions reach its highest point in history. Closer measurement has shown that the worlds oceans are rising twice as fast as predicted and there is  more bad news after more bad news and no one seems to have any inclination to do anything about it.  Wait a minute you say...what about all the Priuses and the compact fluorescent bulbs, and CFC free hairspray and deodorant and stuff. It is there and it is helping but it is nothing compared to the sheer volume of greenhouse emissions coming from the U.S. and other developed and developing countries. Spend anytime reading around and you will be overwhelmed with the bad news...well it is bad news if you are mostly conscious which appears to leave a lot of people in this country out of the picture especially the so-called leadership. Happily, most of the folks who visit here seem to be in the minority in that they actually are aware of the humongous bag of crap that we are in and thus here is the message...

CHILL! Focus on your own universe. Take care of your own heart and mind and the hearts and minds of those around you. The news coming at those of us that are even marginally attuned to the rhythms of the universe is tragic and disheartening and is a sure-fire path to psycho-emotional burnout.  Each of us has limited energy and capacity. As much as our desire and compassion pulls us into the maelstrom of our planet's problems, sickness, torture, abuse, and pollution we must, at some point, pull back and resist. Even as we see the inevitable death of our earth happen before our eyes we must remind ourselves of our limits.  As much as we might desire the power to affect it, the karma of the universe is not ours to rectify. Our responsibility is to our own karma and to some extent the karma of those we are closet to and love. If you spread your energy too far afield and try to embrace the anger, suffering, violence and pain of our dying planet you will self destruct and in doing so fail to address what you actually have the power to control and that is yourself.

The hard truth is that if each of us did what is right, truly right, for ourselves and our loved ones. If each of us focused on the purity of our local universe and lives, the problems of our planet would solve themselves. We would make the correct decisions for our environment even if it meant foregoing some of the niceties of modern life. We would reject consumerism for what it is...disaster. We would reject the idea of war and with it would go the vast wasted resources that go with it. We would turn and recognize our Mother Earth as our partner instead of adversary and we would grasp our small bit of the web of life and make it whole and as each bit is healed the whole is healed.

Staying focused on what you can control and actually have the power to control is not easy. The distractions of modern life and cries of pain and suffering coming from the rest of the world and even from the planet itself are difficult to resist. We shouldn't ignore them but should put them in their proper place in our worldview. We shouldn't, however, allow them to pull us away from our focus on getting our own bit of the universe sorted. If we, by effort or chance, happen to get ourselves and our loved ones properly balanced and have energy to spare we can widen our boundaries and share our successes with the rest of the universe.

It is not selfish to center yourself on what you can control and make right and hope that the balance and correctness spread from your center.

Chernobyl Again

Updated below:

The American media aren't really telling the whole story here. The initial reports of iodine isotopes being dumped into the ocean were no big deal(the half life of most of them are just a week or so). Now that we know the actual fuel rods are burning we are actually getting isotopes with very much longer half lives such as Strontium-90 which is somewhere in the 1,000 year range if memory serves. This is not good news as these isotopes will be with us for a very long time and within that time infiltrate everything we eat or drink. You can't find any general agreement on the effects of ionizing radiation on the human body but everybody agrees that the less we are exposed the better. I, for one, don't like my eggs to glow in the dark or my morning coffee to be self heating. This is going from bad to worse on a daily basis and it appears the tectonic activity smacking our friends the Japanese around aren't letting up much. I really don't see much upside here.

Sorry for the gallows humor...I couldn't help myself.

Mr. Bates has brought to my attention that the half life of SR90 is only 28 years or so. I must have been thinking of another isotope like Plutonium or Cesium or whatever. There are many that have half lives of thousands of years. Still, whatever radioisotopes are spewing from the Japanese reactors are not just old short lived iodine.

This Spill Is Bad News

The situation in the Gulf with respect to the ongoing oil spill is getting worse by the day. It is threatening the coasts of at least 4 states. The news in the AJC this morning made a big deal out of the potential negative impact on the 'Redneck Riviera' along the Florida panhandle and Alabama Gulf Coast and really neglected the impact on the wildlife and sea life along the Gulf. This is prime habitat for dolphins and myriad sea birds not to mention the oysters and fisheries that thrive here. Just a small amount of crude washing over this area will be devastating to the natural habitat for hundreds if not thousands of species. The economic impact on tourism will be bad, granted, but the economic impact on all the people that depend on the Gulf and its waters will be impacted for years and years. We have already trashed the area where the Mississippi dumps into the Gulf with a huge dead zone due to agricultural and industrial run off. This oil spill will be devastating.

So far, word from the White House is that this horrible spill has not caused them to pause or rethink their calls for more offshore drilling. This was a state-of-the-art oill platform with supposedly every safeguard in place and yet here we are facing another event as tragic or even more so than the Exxon-Valdez. This event should be having all the 'drill baby drill' crowd running for cover. Let's hope some sense comes into play here.

Pulling Life Support?

 Not good news:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi just told reporters that she does not believe she has enough votes in the House to pass the Senate health care reform bill as-is—at least not yet. “I don’t see the votes for it at this time,” Pelosi said. “The members have been very clear in our caucus about the fact that they didn’t like it before it had the Nebraska provision and some of the other provisions that are unpalatable to them.”
“In every meeting that we have had, there would be nothing to give me any thought that that bill could pass right now the way that it is,” she said. “There isn’t a market right now for proceeding with the full bill unless some big changes are made.”

Since Madam Pelosi has been the only person in Washington to regularly deliver the votes, you can asssume that the rest of the agenda is in serious danger. The two big ones climate change and financial regulation are surely going to be tough in the current atmosphere. Unless something changes, in a big way, the Dems in Congress are going to spend the rest of their time this year running for cover and moving to the right and all because they are misreading the election results in Massachusetts. It was about a failure to lead effectively and not about the so called 'overreach'. People wanted what was promised...it's as simple as that.

I am serious when I say I don't want to hear the word 'bipartisanship' uttered anymore. The GOP is going to say no to anything and everything that is offered unless it lowering taxes on the rich and screwing the middle class. They might approve another war or two but that is about all you can expect. So far, their campaign of saying NO to everything is working for them and I am sure they see no reason to change after Mass.

Water Kites

Seriously cool development from the Swedish firm Minesto (part of Saab).

A completely new concept of underwater wave energy using a simple 7 ton kite turbine design has been developed by Minesto; which is a spinoff from the Swedish military and aircraft design firm Saab. The Deep Green underwater turbine captures the power of the ocean just like a kite in wind. The system could generate 18 terawatthours of energy annually, enough to provide nearly 4 million British households with reliably green electricity every year. UK households now use about a third of what average US households use in energy.

There is a video and picture at the link. This looks very promising.

Not Serious

The more I watch what is going on in this country around health care reform the more apparent it becomes that a large majority of this country are just plain weak thinkers and not really serious about the challenges we face as a nation and a world. The number of people that have latched on to the Obama birth certificate insanity is enough to justify this conclusion but it is only the most obvious.
How many people that are using Medicare don't seem to realize that it is government run health care?
How many of the reform naysayers are just simply ignoring the fact that nearly 50 million of their fellow Americans are without a health insurance safety net and that one even moderately serious medical problem will bankrupt them if they can even manage to find a way to pay for care?
How many of the 'teabaggers' or whatever they are that are doing the work of the health insurance industry by disrupting Democratic town hall meetings on reform actually know what they are doing to the future of the American way of life? Do these people want the American political dialogue to just be thuggery? Are they so afraid of rational discussion and logical process that they will do anything to stop the dialogue?
How many of the folks that are dead set against modernizing American health care, or at least bringing it up to the standard of other countries, understand what countries like France, Sweden, Japan and other more progressive countries have and how it improves their ability to compete with the U.S. on the world economic stage?
How many of these 'status quo fans' understand that so far this year the health care industry has spent nearly $250 million lobbying against health care reform and what that says?

This particular time in our country is what I like to call a 'Darwinian moment' and we have to ask ourselves whether the people of this nation have what it takes and thus deserve to survive. The key to survival is to understand your environment and where possible adapt your behavior in such a way as to optimize your chances of survival. There are always accidents and unforeseen events but survival is a game of chance and doing what you can to make the odds swing in your favor. It sure looks like to me that a large portion of this country is doing just the opposite. Health care is at the forefront right now but following close behind is the environment and several other things that have the potential cause great swaths of the world's population to feel the sharp teeth of natural selection.

New Emissions Standards

This is good news and yes it will raise the price of a new car. The best thing is that the new standards include tougher standards for each class size of vehicles, as well as a higher average across each company's fleet. The previous rules covered only the fleet average, which meant that companies could offset a giant SUV with some more fuel efficient models. You are still going to be able to buy a bigger car or truck but it will be more energy efficient. These new rules are estimated to be the equivalent of taking 177 million cars off the road. As the global economy recovers and the price of oil begins to climb again this will be a very good thing indeed.

"The Obama administration today plans to propose tough standards for tailpipe emissions from new automobiles, establishing the first nationwide regulation for greenhouse gases.

It will also raise fuel efficiency targets to 35.5 miles per gallon for new passenger vehicles and light trucks by 2016, four years earlier than required under the 2007 energy bill, sources close to the administration said. (...)

The deal has been under negotiation since the first days of the administration. It represents a compromise among the White House; the state of California; and the auto industry, which has long sought national mileage standards and has waged an expensive legal battle against the California waiver. The industry will get its national standard, but at the price of one that approximates California's targets. Industry officials said they would drop all related lawsuits."

Big Energy Strikes Back

Updated below:

Every time you pull up to a gas pump...remember. Every time you see some "feel good" big energy commercial on TV or in the newspaper...remember. The special interest energy people are desperate to prevent change. They want us to waste energy. They want business as usual. They want bloated, gas guzzling SUV's. They don't want energy efficient houses. They don't want mass transportation. They don't want the U.S. or any other country to be more efficient. They do not have your or my best interest in mind when they throw millions of dollars at those who want serious change in how we use energy. They care about one thing and one thing only and that is continuing their obscene profits. Remember.

America's oil, gas and coal industry has increased its lobbying budget by 50%, with key players spending $44.5m in the first three months of this year in an intense effort to cut off support for Barack Obama's plan to build a clean energy economy.

The spoiler campaign runs to hundreds of millions of dollars and involves industry front groups, lobbying firms, television, print and radio advertising, and donations to pivotal members of Congress. Its intention is to water down or kill off plans by the Democratic leadership to pass "cap and trade" legislation this year, which would place limits on greenhouse gas emissions.

A defeat for the bill would have global consequences. The international community is depending on America, as the world's biggest per capita polluter, to set out a firm plan for getting off dirty fuels in the months before crucial UN negotiations in Copenhagen in December.

Update: I spoke too soon...this from Grist...
Dirty energy interests have spent $79 million this year lobbying Congress

According to the latest lobbying data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, the oil and gas industry spent nearly $44.6 million lobbying Congress in just the first three months of this year, and ranked second only to the health care and pharmaceutical industries in total spending. Electric utilities spent $34.4 million, and businesses in the energy and natural resources sector as a whole spent $102.7 million.

To find out how much clean-energy businesses spent, you have to search down into the "miscellaneous energy" category, which includes wind, solar, biofuels, hydro, and other industries—and even then their combined spending only totaled $14.4 million. The American Wind Energy Association was the biggest renewable spender in that category, at $1.2 million. No other organization or company in the category topped $1 million.
Environmental groups have spent even less—just $4.7 million so far in 2009. The biggest spender among green groups was the Environmental Defense Action Fund, which laid out $300,000.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, a staunch opponent of climate action, tops the list of individual spenders on all issues, at $15.5 million. Also on that list: ExxonMobil at $9.3 million, Chevron at $6.8 million, ConocoPhillips at $6 million, and General Electric at $4.8 million.

Of course, it would be wrong to assume that all of these big-energy spenders are lobbying against a climate bill. ConocoPhillips and GE, for example, are both members of the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, and ConocoPhillips’ senior vice president testified in support of the House climate and energy bill last month. But it does give you a sense of just how much renewable-energy groups and enviros are being outspent on the Hill.

Eating Oil

There is a constant discussion about saving energy by buying and driving fuel efficient cars or using public transportation, but changing how we eat can have as much impact on fossil fuel use as what we drive or ride to work. About 19% of the fossil fuels used in this country go into food production which is about the same amount that we use in our cars. A recently published study by David Pimentel, a professor at Cornell, who has been doing research for years about the link between food production and oil, describes how food production energy needs could be cut in half.

The good thing is that by changing the way and what we eat, we can not only reduce our use of fossil fuels but be healthier to boot. Eating smart would be the same as taking half the cars off the road.

For example, the researchers recommend:

• Eat less and cut down on junk food: To produce the typical American diet requires the equivalent of about 500 gallons of oil per year per person, says the study. Americans, on average, consume about 50 percent more calories than recommended by the federal government for optimal health and get one-third of their calories from junk food. Eating less and cutting down on junk food would use significantly less energy, considering all the processing, packaging and transportation costs saved.
• Eat less meat and dairy: We use 45 million tons of plant protein to produce 7.5 million tons of animal protein per year, according to Pimentel. Switching to a vegetarian diet, he says, would require one-third less fossil fuel than producing the current animal-based American diet.
• Eat more locally grown food: Food travels an average of 1,500 miles before it is eaten. "This requires 1.4 times the energy than the energy in the food," Pimentel said. A head of iceberg lettuce, for example, which is 95 percent water, provides 110 calories and few nutrients. Irrigating the lettuce in California takes 750 calories of fossil energy and shipping it to New York another 4,000 calories of energy per head, according to the analysis. Locally grown cabbage, on the other hand, requires only 400 calories to produce and offers far more nutrients, not to mention it can be stored all winter long.
• Use more traditional farming methods: Pimentel's team also shows how using methods to reduce soil erosion, irrigation and pesticide use, through such things as crop rotation, manure and cover crops, could cut the total energy now used in crop production.

It's basically a no brainer!

h/t La Vida Locavore

TVA Reports Another Leak

Here is another reason all the talk about "clean coal" is bullshit. No matter how much you wish it, using coal to produce electricity is a dirty business and the sooner we find a new direction the better. It's dirty on the front end and dirty on the back end.

TVA is investigating a leak from a gypsum pond at its Widows Creek coal-burning power plant in northeastern Alabama, a spokesman said at about 10:45 a.m. Central Time.

The leak, discovered before 6 a.m. has been stopped, according to John Moulton, with the Tennessee Valley Authority.

“Some materials flowed into Widows Creek, although most of the leakage remained in the settling pond,” he said.

Gypsum is a byproduct of coal-burning power plants when “scrubbers” are added that use limestone spray to clean air emissions. This pulls sulfur dioxide from the emissions.

Tighter air emissions controls result in additional waste byproducts. Gypsum can be used in building materials.

Some Good News

Rep. Henry Waxman (Calif.) has ousted Energy and Commerce Chairman John Dingell (Mich.), as Democratic lawmakers voted 137-122 Thursday morning to hand the gavel of the powerhouse panel to its second-ranking member.This, more than anything, could be the biggest change in the federal government in 2009 and beyond. Waxman's Safe Climate Act sets the targets needed to mitigate the worst effects of global warming. It now becomes the working document in the House for anti-global warming legislation. This is the biggest change in policy we have seen so far and it's a big progressive victory.

Another Notch in My Carbon Footprint

The guys are here this morning pumping another 6-8 inches of fiberglass into the attic. It is the next to the last bit in my effort to cut my energy bills in half. The only thing left is the bay window in the living room. It's only single pane so it needs to go. After this install I will be at r-59, or better, and should never have to use any energy at all in heating the house just body heat...well maybe just a little bit.

Update: Actually it turned out to be 12 inches plus and they put in a big styrofoam box over the attic stairs for no additional charge. Looks like a big snowfall in the attic now. Seriously, this should save me some significant dollars on my heating and cooling bills. Here in Atlanta I would imagine savings on air conditioning will be the biggest savings as electricity to run the A/C is a bigger expense here in the South than the gas bills for winter heat.

It was a really good experience with this company. In and out in a couple of hours. No mess and what little insulation got loose they cleaned up. If you are in the Atlanta area and need some insulation I would recommend WilServ in Buford. Not often you get a good experience with a contractor nowadays.

Hope and Possibility

Most of you know me as a big fan of Michael Pollan. I nearly missed it, but it seems Michael Pollan wrote an open letter to the next president in the New York Times last week. While it is likely Barack Obama will be the new resident of the White House , Pollan wants him to pay attention to some of the realities of our 21st century food system. Here's a bit of the letter that I particulartly liked:

After cars, the food system uses more fossil fuel than any other sector of the economy - 19 percent. And while the experts disagree about the exact amount, the way we feed ourselves contributes more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than anything else we do - as much as 37 percent, according to one study. Whenever farmers clear land for crops and till the soil, large quantities of carbon are released into the air. But the 20th-century industrialization of agriculture has increased the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by the food system by an order of magnitude; chemical fertilizers (made from natural gas), pesticides (made from petroleum), farm machinery, modern food processing and packaging and transportation have together transformed a system that in 1940 produced 2.3 calories of food energy for every calorie of fossil-fuel energy it used into one that now takes 10 calories of fossil-fuel energy to produce a single calorie of modern supermarket food. Put another way, when we eat from the industrial-food system, we are eating oil and spewing greenhouse gases. This state of affairs appears all the more absurd when you recall that every calorie we eat is ultimately the product of photosynthesis - a process based on making food energy from sunshine. There is hope and possibility in that simple fact.

More than just a few people will read this and maybe it will get them thinking and we can hope that Obama is one of them.