The necessary precondition for Texas’s unique economic success – a beacon in a deep recession – is energy. And the EPA is closing in for the kill.
This would be one thing if Texas were an outlier among the 50 states in terms of dirty air or an otherwise demonstrably imperiled environment. But the truth is closer to the opposite: the air in Texas has been getting cleaner; in the urban areas, much cleaner. And in spite of being by far the largest electric power producer of the 50 states, and heavily reliant on coal, Texas has been steadily reducing its emissions of the EPA’s least-favored compounds from coal combustion (e.g., sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxide). Its emissions of NOx and SO2 are substantially lower than the national average; Texas is ranked the 11th lowest in NOx emissions (.098 lb/mmBtu in 2009, versus a national average of .159 lb/mmBtu), and 24th in SO2 (.309 lb/mmBtu in 2009, versus a national average of .458 lb/mmBtu).
But the EPA isn’t really making the argument that Texas is an environmental pigsty. It’s not putting any data or findings behind that premise, at any rate. Instead, it is simply acting high-handedly, assuming an authority that nothing in written law confers on it, to pronounce Texas’s procedures in violation of EPA rules – even when there is no basis for making that claim. To put it bluntly, the EPA is making a power grab.
Overriding the state air-permit system
There are three principal facets to the power grab. One began with an EPA decision in January 2010 that the Texas air-permit program was invalid, and that every facility operating under such a permit in the state would have to be re-permitted. The argument was not that Texas plants were emitting too much. Rather, as the Wall Street Journal puts it, the Texas “air-permit program … caps emissions of air pollutants from an entire facility, but the EPA wants to scrutinize and restrict emissions from every polluting unit of a plant.” Texas, along with a number of other states, is concerned that regulating on the EPA’s basis will cost considerably more, without improving air quality.
Neither of the two approaches can claim to be the obvious intent of the Clean Air Act. In default of a clear intent in written law, the point at issue is whose judgment ought to prevail in this matter. Texas argues that federalism was a key component of the Clean Air Act, and properly so; that’s how things work in the United States. The EPA is supposed to set air quality standards, and then the states choose their methods to meet them. Other states agree.
The EPA has made no philosophical arguments to justify its regulatory ukase – but, of course, it doesn’t have to. It is currently operating under a chief executive who endorses its approach and doesn’t require it to justify what it wants to do. Reining it in would require concerted action from Congress, and/or a favorable ruling for the states in a lawsuit.
Keep in mind that throughout the 16 years in which Texas issued its industrial air permits, air quality in Texas improved – a lot. The Texas system wasn’t failing to produce a compliant outcome. And it took the EPA 16 years to decide, in spite of that record of success, to invalidate all the existing state-issued permits. The motivation was clearly political.
The war on coal; New draconian air-quality standards
The permit invalidation was just the beginning, however. The second facet of the power grab, the Obama EPA’s war on coal, will have at least as damaging an effect on Texas as on other states, and in some ways perhaps more. The war on coal is part of a larger regulatory assault on emissions and industrial byproducts of all kinds, which will, if implemented as intended, ensure life as we know it cannot continue in the United States. The impact on Texas is discussed in the testimony submitted to Congress by the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) in March.
The findings include the likelihood that the new regulations adopted by the Obama EPA will shut down more than 5700 MW of electrical generating capacity in Texas, or about one-twelfth of the peak demand levied by state users in the last couple of years. Meanwhile, based on economic trends, Texas expects to need as much as 25% more capacity by 2020. TPPF cites industry and independent think-tank estimates that the cost of compliance with the new EPA standards will be in the hundreds of billions of dollars, and will thus drive utility costs – and therefore the cost of living – up significantly, while at the same time eliminating thousands of jobs in many industries.
From regulating the naturally-occurring fine dust in the countryside, to treating the byproducts of coal combustion as hazardous waste, and preventing them from being sold for use in cement, the EPA’s proposals would shut down one aspect of human economic life after another.
TPPF gets in a number of good points about both the politics and the data; for example, it observes on p. 6 of the document that the EPA got around the rules governing its implementation of the new regulations by deeming its proposed action (dramatically tightening air quality standards) to be deregulatory. How did it do that? By positing that a comprehensive scheme of regulation would involve issuing permits for 6 million sources of emissions, and deciding instead to “tailor” its program to cover only large sources (e.g., the 12,000 emitters that currently require permits to operate).
Just imagine how we could fleece our fellow men if we all had the power to declare it “deregulation” – mercy, relief, a benefit to the regulated – when we don’t do as much as we could have done. There is a distinctly mafia-like ring to that thought process.
The TPPF testimony also alludes to the EPA’s extremely shaky case that fuel-burning plants need to have their mercury emissions reduced by 91% (mercury emissions from US industry have already been reduced considerably in the past 30 years). A number of studies suggest that many coal-fired electrical plants will simply find this impossible.
And there doesn’t appear to be a pressing need for it anyway. Besides the facts that the entire United States power sector emits only 1% of the globe’s anthropogenic mercury output, and that 50% of the mercury in the Atlantic is emitted from Asia, not the US (virtually all the human-emitted mercury in the Pacific comes from Asia), everything in the alarmist case about mercury is either undemonstrated (e.g., that mercury levels in fish have been rising), or wildly overestimated (e.g., the incidence of mercury in child-bearing women in the US, and how that compares to the level of mercury considered dangerous to humans). See here and here for evidence and counterarguments.
But wait – there’s more. If you’re wondering how Texas is going to make up that 5700+ MW of power-generating capacity, so is Texas. Nuclear power would do the trick, of course, but as TPPF observes, new nuclear power plants are an iffy proposition in the wake of the Fukushima disaster. Wind, solar, and biomass are laughably uneconomic sources, and wind and solar are unreliable as well.
Shutting down natural gas
But what about natural gas? The EPA is way ahead of us, with the third facet of its power grab. Ben Voth wrote a piece for American Thinker in January calling out the new EPA assault on the production of natural gas in Texas. And if you think the EPA’s particular beef is with fracking (hydraulic fracturing) chemicals, think again. The basis for the EPA’s abrupt move against a Texas natural gas driller in December 2010 was methane and benzene found in local water.
It all fit nicely with the emotional appeal of the “documentary” Gasland, which did for the natural gas industry what Michael Moore did for 9/11. The problem is that not only was Gasland full of errors and misrepresentations, the EPA case against Range Resources in Texas was full of holes as well. Based on analysis of their nitrogen content, the methane and benzene in the afflicted water came not from the natural-gas drilling by Range Resources, but through natural seepage from a shallower nearby gas formation – one that is not being drilled. In other words, there’s nothing humans could have done to prevent the seepage.
(The Energy in Depth write-ups point out also that methane is a naturally occurring gas and the hazards of its presence in drinking water depend, as with so many things, on concentration. They also cite a study by the Texas health authorities which demonstrated that benzene exposure in the gas-drilling areas of Texas is no higher than it is in the rest of the US, and that the only residents who have elevated levels of benzene are smokers.)
But subsequent testimony from EPA staffers, part of a reconstruction of the December 2010 decision to shut down the Range Resources drilling operation, showed that the EPA did not even consider the possibility that the methane and benzene appeared naturally in the water in question. This failure fit well with other patterns in the EPA action; the reconstruction (see the second EID link) indicates that it was an instance of activists and the EPA working together to jump the gun.
Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK) is pursuing this issue. The Republicans in Texas’s congressional delegation have sent a letter to Cass Sunstein expressing strong disapproval of the EPA’s failure to abide by its own rules in implementing the new air quality and emissions regulations. As Pajamas notes, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers has sent a letter of its own decrying the new regulations – although the Texas Democrats have remained silent.
The fight continues among the states. At least 15 (including Texas) filed suit against the EPA over its “climate-change” regulations in 2010, even before the full slate of new air quality/emissions regulations were published. On the other side are 16 states
fighting back on behalf of the EPA, saying without regulations, climate change will adversely affect them.
Those states are: Arizona, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.
Remarkably, the states “fighting on behalf of the EPA” include the ones with the biggest state deficits, the ones with the highest taxes, the ones with the highest unemployment, and the ones hemorrhaging businesses and revenues and losing seats in Congress after the 2010 census. One principles-of-governance note: as long as there is an EPA, any president can put people in it who will abuse the agency’s portfolio. The courts are incompetent to decide how much the EPA “should” be doing. That’s a political decision that belongs in Congress – and we need to be telling Congress to do things differently.
http://hotair.com/archives/2011/06/19/the-epa-assault-on-texas/
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Changing Tides: Research Center Under Fire for 'Adjusted' Sea-Level Data
In a NASA "what-if" animation, light-blue areas in southern Florida and Louisiana indicate regions that may be underwater should sea levels rise dramatically.
Is climate change raising sea levels, as Al Gore has argued -- or are climate scientists doctoring the data?
The University of Colorado’s Sea Level Research Group decided in May to add 0.3 millimeters -- or about the thickness of a fingernail -- every year to its actual measurements of sea levels, sparking criticism from experts who called it an attempt to exaggerate the effects of global warming.
"Gatekeepers of our sea level data are manufacturing a fictitious sea level rise that is not occurring," said James M. Taylor, a lawyer who focuses on environmental issues for the Heartland Institute.
Steve Nerem, the director of the widely relied-upon research center, told FoxNews.com that his group added the 0.3 millimeters per year to the actual sea level measurements because land masses, still rebounding from the ice age, are rising and increasing the amount of water that oceans can hold.
"We have to account for the fact that the ocean basins are actually getting slightly bigger... water volume is expanding," he said, a phenomenon they call glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA).
Taylor calls it tomfoolery.
"There really is no reason to do this other than to advance a political agenda," he said.
Climate scientist John Christy, a professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, said that the amount of water in the ocean and sea level were two different things.
"To me… sea level rise is what's measured against the actual coast," he told FoxNews.com. "That's what tells us the impact of rising oceans."
Taylor agreed.
"Many global warming alarmists say that vast stretches of coastline are going to be swallowed up by the sea. Well, that means we should be talking about sea level, not about global water volume."
In e-mails with FoxNews.com, Nerem indicated that he considered "sea level rise" to be the same thing as the amount of water in the ocean.
"If we correct our data to remove [the effect of rising land], it actually does cause the rate of sea level (a.k.a. ocean water volume change) rise to be bigger," Nerem wrote. The adjustment is trivial, and not worth public attention, he added.
"For the layperson, this correction is a non-issue and certainly not newsworthy… [The] effect is tiny -- only 1 inch over 100 years, whereas we expect sea level to rise 2-4 feet."
But Taylor said that the correction seemed bigger when compared with actual sea level increases.
"We’ve seen only 7 inches of sea level rise in the past century and it hasn’t sped up this century. Compared to that, this would add nearly 20 percent to the sea level rise. That's not insignificant," he told FoxNews.com.
Nerem said that the research center is considering compromising on the adjustment.
"We are considering putting both data sets on our website -- a GIA-corrected dataset, as well as one without the GIA correction," he said.
Christy said that would be a welcome change.
"I would encourage CU to put the sea level rate [with] no adjustment at the top of the website," he said.
Taylor’s takeaway: Be wary of sea level rise estimates.
"When Al Gore talks about Manhattan flooding this century, and 20 feet of sea level rise, that’s simply not going to happen. If it were going to happen, he wouldn’t have bought his multi-million dollar mansion along the coast in California."
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/06/17/research-center-under-fire-for-adjusted-sea-level-data/?cmpid=cmty_email_Gigya_Changing_Tides%3A_Research_Center_Under_Fire_for_'Adjusted'_Sea-Level_Data
Is climate change raising sea levels, as Al Gore has argued -- or are climate scientists doctoring the data?
The University of Colorado’s Sea Level Research Group decided in May to add 0.3 millimeters -- or about the thickness of a fingernail -- every year to its actual measurements of sea levels, sparking criticism from experts who called it an attempt to exaggerate the effects of global warming.
"Gatekeepers of our sea level data are manufacturing a fictitious sea level rise that is not occurring," said James M. Taylor, a lawyer who focuses on environmental issues for the Heartland Institute.
Steve Nerem, the director of the widely relied-upon research center, told FoxNews.com that his group added the 0.3 millimeters per year to the actual sea level measurements because land masses, still rebounding from the ice age, are rising and increasing the amount of water that oceans can hold.
"We have to account for the fact that the ocean basins are actually getting slightly bigger... water volume is expanding," he said, a phenomenon they call glacial isostatic adjustment (GIA).
Taylor calls it tomfoolery.
"There really is no reason to do this other than to advance a political agenda," he said.
Climate scientist John Christy, a professor at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, said that the amount of water in the ocean and sea level were two different things.
"To me… sea level rise is what's measured against the actual coast," he told FoxNews.com. "That's what tells us the impact of rising oceans."
Taylor agreed.
"Many global warming alarmists say that vast stretches of coastline are going to be swallowed up by the sea. Well, that means we should be talking about sea level, not about global water volume."
In e-mails with FoxNews.com, Nerem indicated that he considered "sea level rise" to be the same thing as the amount of water in the ocean.
"If we correct our data to remove [the effect of rising land], it actually does cause the rate of sea level (a.k.a. ocean water volume change) rise to be bigger," Nerem wrote. The adjustment is trivial, and not worth public attention, he added.
"For the layperson, this correction is a non-issue and certainly not newsworthy… [The] effect is tiny -- only 1 inch over 100 years, whereas we expect sea level to rise 2-4 feet."
But Taylor said that the correction seemed bigger when compared with actual sea level increases.
"We’ve seen only 7 inches of sea level rise in the past century and it hasn’t sped up this century. Compared to that, this would add nearly 20 percent to the sea level rise. That's not insignificant," he told FoxNews.com.
Nerem said that the research center is considering compromising on the adjustment.
"We are considering putting both data sets on our website -- a GIA-corrected dataset, as well as one without the GIA correction," he said.
Christy said that would be a welcome change.
"I would encourage CU to put the sea level rate [with] no adjustment at the top of the website," he said.
Taylor’s takeaway: Be wary of sea level rise estimates.
"When Al Gore talks about Manhattan flooding this century, and 20 feet of sea level rise, that’s simply not going to happen. If it were going to happen, he wouldn’t have bought his multi-million dollar mansion along the coast in California."
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/06/17/research-center-under-fire-for-adjusted-sea-level-data/?cmpid=cmty_email_Gigya_Changing_Tides%3A_Research_Center_Under_Fire_for_'Adjusted'_Sea-Level_Data
More regulations: EPA's fantasy solution to unemployment
American Electric Power Chairman Michael Morris announced last week that his company would be forced to close five coal-fired power plants, spend an additional $8 billion refitting other plants, and lose 6,000 megawatts of its coal-generated capacity if the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency follows through with its latest proposed regulation of coal power plants. That's just fine with President Obama and Lisa Jackson, whom he appointed as EPA administrator. Their goal is to put people like Morris and utilities like AEP out of the coal-fired generation business.
Since the White House's signature environmental policy, cap and trade, died in the Democrat-dominated 111th Congress in 2010, Obama has sought to use the Clean Air Act to do by bureaucratic decree what he could not achieve through the legislative process: force Americans to stop using fossil fuels to generate the energy that our society must have to function on a daily basis. The EPA's Mercury and Air Toxics Standards rule for power plants will take giant steps toward doing exactly that.
Despite the fact the mercury pollution levels have been decreasing worldwide for two decades, the EPA's proposed rule would force power companies to install costly new mercury-scrubbing equipment on existing coal-power plants. The EPA says this will reduce mercury emissions from coal plants by 91 percent. But the EPA's own Regulatory Impact Analysis also concedes that the new regulation will lead to "new lower levels of consumption as a result of higher market prices." That is bureaucratese for saying Americans will have a lower standard of living because they will have to pay more for energy.
This is exactly what Obama promised his energy policies would do. In January 2008 he told the San Francisco Chronicle, "Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. ... Coal power plants, natural gas, whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers." Sure enough, the Chicago Tribune reports that Illinois consumers could see their electricity bills jump an estimated 40 to 60 percent in the next few years if the proposed EPA rule is implemented.
Not to worry, according to the EPA, which claims the proposed regulation will create 30,000 new jobs: "Regulated firms hire workers to operate and maintain pollution controls. Once the equipment is installed, regulated firms hire workers to operate and maintain the pollution control equipment." But if more regulation creates jobs, why has unemployment during Obama's tenure in the White House stubbornly remained above 9 percent? In the real world, the only thing red tape produces is additional pages in the Federal Register. If Obama wants to know why unemployment is still so high, he should start by questioning his EPA's assumption that more regulations lead to more jobs.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/2011/06/more-regulations-epas-fantasy-solution-unemployment
Since the White House's signature environmental policy, cap and trade, died in the Democrat-dominated 111th Congress in 2010, Obama has sought to use the Clean Air Act to do by bureaucratic decree what he could not achieve through the legislative process: force Americans to stop using fossil fuels to generate the energy that our society must have to function on a daily basis. The EPA's Mercury and Air Toxics Standards rule for power plants will take giant steps toward doing exactly that.
Despite the fact the mercury pollution levels have been decreasing worldwide for two decades, the EPA's proposed rule would force power companies to install costly new mercury-scrubbing equipment on existing coal-power plants. The EPA says this will reduce mercury emissions from coal plants by 91 percent. But the EPA's own Regulatory Impact Analysis also concedes that the new regulation will lead to "new lower levels of consumption as a result of higher market prices." That is bureaucratese for saying Americans will have a lower standard of living because they will have to pay more for energy.
This is exactly what Obama promised his energy policies would do. In January 2008 he told the San Francisco Chronicle, "Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. ... Coal power plants, natural gas, whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers." Sure enough, the Chicago Tribune reports that Illinois consumers could see their electricity bills jump an estimated 40 to 60 percent in the next few years if the proposed EPA rule is implemented.
Not to worry, according to the EPA, which claims the proposed regulation will create 30,000 new jobs: "Regulated firms hire workers to operate and maintain pollution controls. Once the equipment is installed, regulated firms hire workers to operate and maintain the pollution control equipment." But if more regulation creates jobs, why has unemployment during Obama's tenure in the White House stubbornly remained above 9 percent? In the real world, the only thing red tape produces is additional pages in the Federal Register. If Obama wants to know why unemployment is still so high, he should start by questioning his EPA's assumption that more regulations lead to more jobs.
http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/2011/06/more-regulations-epas-fantasy-solution-unemployment
Scientists predict rare hibernation of sunspots
Notice that scientists are "stunned" at this change in the sun's behavior. How then, can the same scientists be so sure that it won't cause global cooling? Many so-called "scientists" have become nothing more than
politicians.
Click HERE to read the article.
politicians.
Click HERE to read the article.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Breaking News: The Climate Actually Changes!
The new convention is to refer to “global warming” (something many have told us to worry about) as “climate change” (meaning pretty much the same thing since it’s supposed to be bad and caused by us anyway). The main difference appears to be that climate change is even worse, since global warming also causes global cooling along with a seemingly endless variety of other carbon dioxide-induced upheavals that we are responsible for.
So whenever someone asks whether I believe in global warming, (aka climate change) the simple answer is YES. In fact, I don’t really know anyone who doesn’t. If so they clearly aren’t very old or observant! On the other hand, I don’t buy into the causes, consequences or remedies that alarmists project.
Cyclical, abrupt and dramatic global and regional temperature fluctuations have occurred over millions of years, long before humans invented agriculture, industries, internal combustion engines or carbon-trading schemes. Many natural factors are known to contribute to these changes, although even the most sophisticated climate models and theories cannot even begin to predict the timing, scale (either up or down) or future impacts — much less the marginal contributions of various human influences.
And while global warming has been trumpeted as an epic climate change crisis with human-produced CO2, a trace atmospheric “greenhouse gas” branded as a primary culprit and endangering “pollutant”, don’t be too sure about the veracity of those pitches. Throughout earlier periods of Earth’s history those levels have been many times higher than today, with temperature changes preceding — not following — atmospheric CO2 changes. It doesn’t require a degree in a climate science, or rocket science either for that matter, to understand these basic facts.
Fossil records reveal that atmospheric CO2 levels around 600 million years ago were about 7,000 parts per million, compared with 379 ppm in 2005. Then approximately 480 million years ago those levels gradually dropped to 4,000 ppm over about 100 million years, while average temperatures remained at a steady 72 degrees. They then jumped rapidly to 4,500 ppm and guess what! Temperatures dove to an estimated average similar to today, even though the CO2 level was around twelve times higher than now. Yes, as CO2 went up, temperatures plummeted.
About 438 million years ago, atmospheric CO2 dropped from 4,500 ppm to 3,000 ppm, yet according to fossil records, world temperatures shot rapidly back up to an average 72 degrees. So regardless of whether CO2 levels were 7,000 ppm or 3,000 ppm, temperatures rose and fell independently.
Over those past 600 million years there have been only three periods, including now, when Earth’s average temperature has been as low as 54 degrees. One occurred about 315 million years ago, during a 45-million-year-long cool spell called the Late Carboniferous period, which established the beginning of most of our planet’s (gasp) coalfields. Both CO2 and temperatures shot back up at the end of it just when the main Mesozoic dinosaur era was commencing. CO2 levels rose to between 1,200 ppm and 1,800 ppm, and temperatures again returned to the average 72 degrees that Earth seemed to prefer.
Around 180 million years ago, CO2 rocketed up from about 1,200 ppm to 2,500 ppm. And would you believe it? This coincided again with another big temperature dive from 72 degrees to about 61 degrees. Then at the border between the Jurassic period when T. Rex ruled and the Cretaceous period that followed, CO2 levels dropped again, while temperatures soared back to 72 degrees and remained at that level (about 20 degrees higher than now) until long after prodigious populations of dinosaurs became extinct. And flatulent as those creatures may possibly have been, at least there is no evidence that they burned coal or drove SUVs.
Based upon a variety of proxy indicators, such as ice core and ocean sediment samples, our planet has endured large climate swings on a number of occasions over the past 1.5 million years due to a number of natural causes. Included are seasonal warming and cooling effects of plant growth cycles, greenhouse gases and aerosols emitted from volcanic eruptions, Earth orbit and solar changes, and other contributors with combined influences. Yet atmospheric CO2 levels have remained relatively low over the past 650,000 years, even during the six previous interglacial periods when global temperatures were as much as 9 degrees warmer than temperatures we currently enjoy.
Over the past 400,000 years, much of the Northern Hemisphere has been covered by ice up to miles thick at regular intervals lasting about 100,000 years each. Much shorter interglacial cycles like our current one lasting 12,000 to 18,000 years have offered reprieves from bitter cold. Yes, from this perspective current temperatures are abnormally warm. By about 12,000 to 15,000 years ago Earth had warmed enough to halt the advance of glaciers and cause sea levels to rise, and the average temperature has gradually increased on a fairly constant basis ever since, with brief intermissions.
During a period from about 750 BC to 200 BC, before the founding of Rome, temperatures dropped and European glaciers advanced. Then the climate warmed again, and by 150 BC grapes and olives were first recorded to be cultivated in northern Italy. As recently as 1,000 years ago (during the “Medieval Warm Period”), Icelandic Vikings were raising cattle, sheep and goats in grasslands on Greenland’s southwestern coast. Then, around 1200, temperatures began to drop, and Norse settlements were abandoned by about 1350. Atlantic pack ice began to grow around 1250, and shortened growing seasons and unreliable weather patterns, including torrential rains in Northern Europe led to the “Great Famine” of 1315-1317.
Temperatures dropped dramatically in the middle of the 16th century, and although there were notable year year-to-year fluctuations, the coldest regime since the last Ice Age (a period termed the “Little Ice Age”) dominated the next hundred and fifty years or more. Food shortages killed millions in Europe between 1690 and 1700, followed by more famines in 1725 and 1816. The end of this time witnessed brutal winter temperatures suffered by Washington’s troops at Valley Forge in 1777, and Napoleon’s bitterly cold retreat from Russia in 1812.
Although temperatures have been generally mild over the past 500 years, we should remember that significant fluctuations are normal. The past century has witnessed two distinct periods of warming. The first occurred between 1900 and 1945, and the second, following a slight cool-down began quite abruptly in 1975. That second period rose at quite a constant rate until 1998, and then stopped and began falling again after reaching a high of 1.16 degrees above the average global mean.
About half of all estimated warming since 1900 occurred before the mid-1940s despite continuously rising CO2 levels. Even U.K. East Anglia University Climate Research Unit (CRU) Director Phil Jones has admitted that there has been no statistically significant warming for at least a decade. He has also admitted that temperatures during the Middle Ages may have been higher than today.
So perhaps you’ll wish to ponder this question; Given that over most of the Earth’s known climate history, the atmospheric CO2 levels have been between four and eighteen times higher than now – throughout many times when life not only survived but also flourished; times that preceded humans; times when CO2 levels and temperatures moved in different directions – how much difference will putting caps on emissions accomplish? Consider also that about 97% of all current atmospheric CO2 derives from natural sources.
And yes, change is the true nature of climate. After all, if climate didn’t change, we really wouldn’t need a word for it would we? Wouldn’t it all just be “weather”?
http://blogs.forbes.com/larrybell/2011/05/03/breaking-news-the-climate-actually-changes/
So whenever someone asks whether I believe in global warming, (aka climate change) the simple answer is YES. In fact, I don’t really know anyone who doesn’t. If so they clearly aren’t very old or observant! On the other hand, I don’t buy into the causes, consequences or remedies that alarmists project.
Cyclical, abrupt and dramatic global and regional temperature fluctuations have occurred over millions of years, long before humans invented agriculture, industries, internal combustion engines or carbon-trading schemes. Many natural factors are known to contribute to these changes, although even the most sophisticated climate models and theories cannot even begin to predict the timing, scale (either up or down) or future impacts — much less the marginal contributions of various human influences.
And while global warming has been trumpeted as an epic climate change crisis with human-produced CO2, a trace atmospheric “greenhouse gas” branded as a primary culprit and endangering “pollutant”, don’t be too sure about the veracity of those pitches. Throughout earlier periods of Earth’s history those levels have been many times higher than today, with temperature changes preceding — not following — atmospheric CO2 changes. It doesn’t require a degree in a climate science, or rocket science either for that matter, to understand these basic facts.
Fossil records reveal that atmospheric CO2 levels around 600 million years ago were about 7,000 parts per million, compared with 379 ppm in 2005. Then approximately 480 million years ago those levels gradually dropped to 4,000 ppm over about 100 million years, while average temperatures remained at a steady 72 degrees. They then jumped rapidly to 4,500 ppm and guess what! Temperatures dove to an estimated average similar to today, even though the CO2 level was around twelve times higher than now. Yes, as CO2 went up, temperatures plummeted.
About 438 million years ago, atmospheric CO2 dropped from 4,500 ppm to 3,000 ppm, yet according to fossil records, world temperatures shot rapidly back up to an average 72 degrees. So regardless of whether CO2 levels were 7,000 ppm or 3,000 ppm, temperatures rose and fell independently.
Over those past 600 million years there have been only three periods, including now, when Earth’s average temperature has been as low as 54 degrees. One occurred about 315 million years ago, during a 45-million-year-long cool spell called the Late Carboniferous period, which established the beginning of most of our planet’s (gasp) coalfields. Both CO2 and temperatures shot back up at the end of it just when the main Mesozoic dinosaur era was commencing. CO2 levels rose to between 1,200 ppm and 1,800 ppm, and temperatures again returned to the average 72 degrees that Earth seemed to prefer.
Around 180 million years ago, CO2 rocketed up from about 1,200 ppm to 2,500 ppm. And would you believe it? This coincided again with another big temperature dive from 72 degrees to about 61 degrees. Then at the border between the Jurassic period when T. Rex ruled and the Cretaceous period that followed, CO2 levels dropped again, while temperatures soared back to 72 degrees and remained at that level (about 20 degrees higher than now) until long after prodigious populations of dinosaurs became extinct. And flatulent as those creatures may possibly have been, at least there is no evidence that they burned coal or drove SUVs.
Based upon a variety of proxy indicators, such as ice core and ocean sediment samples, our planet has endured large climate swings on a number of occasions over the past 1.5 million years due to a number of natural causes. Included are seasonal warming and cooling effects of plant growth cycles, greenhouse gases and aerosols emitted from volcanic eruptions, Earth orbit and solar changes, and other contributors with combined influences. Yet atmospheric CO2 levels have remained relatively low over the past 650,000 years, even during the six previous interglacial periods when global temperatures were as much as 9 degrees warmer than temperatures we currently enjoy.
Over the past 400,000 years, much of the Northern Hemisphere has been covered by ice up to miles thick at regular intervals lasting about 100,000 years each. Much shorter interglacial cycles like our current one lasting 12,000 to 18,000 years have offered reprieves from bitter cold. Yes, from this perspective current temperatures are abnormally warm. By about 12,000 to 15,000 years ago Earth had warmed enough to halt the advance of glaciers and cause sea levels to rise, and the average temperature has gradually increased on a fairly constant basis ever since, with brief intermissions.
During a period from about 750 BC to 200 BC, before the founding of Rome, temperatures dropped and European glaciers advanced. Then the climate warmed again, and by 150 BC grapes and olives were first recorded to be cultivated in northern Italy. As recently as 1,000 years ago (during the “Medieval Warm Period”), Icelandic Vikings were raising cattle, sheep and goats in grasslands on Greenland’s southwestern coast. Then, around 1200, temperatures began to drop, and Norse settlements were abandoned by about 1350. Atlantic pack ice began to grow around 1250, and shortened growing seasons and unreliable weather patterns, including torrential rains in Northern Europe led to the “Great Famine” of 1315-1317.
Temperatures dropped dramatically in the middle of the 16th century, and although there were notable year year-to-year fluctuations, the coldest regime since the last Ice Age (a period termed the “Little Ice Age”) dominated the next hundred and fifty years or more. Food shortages killed millions in Europe between 1690 and 1700, followed by more famines in 1725 and 1816. The end of this time witnessed brutal winter temperatures suffered by Washington’s troops at Valley Forge in 1777, and Napoleon’s bitterly cold retreat from Russia in 1812.
Although temperatures have been generally mild over the past 500 years, we should remember that significant fluctuations are normal. The past century has witnessed two distinct periods of warming. The first occurred between 1900 and 1945, and the second, following a slight cool-down began quite abruptly in 1975. That second period rose at quite a constant rate until 1998, and then stopped and began falling again after reaching a high of 1.16 degrees above the average global mean.
About half of all estimated warming since 1900 occurred before the mid-1940s despite continuously rising CO2 levels. Even U.K. East Anglia University Climate Research Unit (CRU) Director Phil Jones has admitted that there has been no statistically significant warming for at least a decade. He has also admitted that temperatures during the Middle Ages may have been higher than today.
So perhaps you’ll wish to ponder this question; Given that over most of the Earth’s known climate history, the atmospheric CO2 levels have been between four and eighteen times higher than now – throughout many times when life not only survived but also flourished; times that preceded humans; times when CO2 levels and temperatures moved in different directions – how much difference will putting caps on emissions accomplish? Consider also that about 97% of all current atmospheric CO2 derives from natural sources.
And yes, change is the true nature of climate. After all, if climate didn’t change, we really wouldn’t need a word for it would we? Wouldn’t it all just be “weather”?
http://blogs.forbes.com/larrybell/2011/05/03/breaking-news-the-climate-actually-changes/
Wind Energy’s Overblown Prospects
Unfortunately, wind doesn’t afford the benefits marketers promise. It isn’t an abundant, reliable power source; doesn’t appreciably reduce fossil dependence or CO2 emissions; isn’t free, or even cheap; doesn’t produce net job gains; nor does it cool brows of feverish environmental critics.
Many green energy advocates have exaggerated the capacity of wind power to make a significant impact on U.S. electrical needs. Any euphoric fantasy that an unlimited, free and clean alternative to carbon-cursed fossil-fuel sources is blowing by with scant notice is exceedingly naïve and misguided.
A major point of public confusion in this regard lies in a failure to differentiate maximum total capacities, typically presented in megawatts (MW), with actual predicted kilowatt hours (kWh), which are determined by annual average wind conditions at a particular site. Wind is intermittent, and velocities constantly change. It often isn’t available when needed most — such as during hot summer days when demands for air-conditioning are highest.
According to a 2009 Energy Information Agency Report on Electricity Generation, wind power provided only 70 billion kWh of the total U.S. 3,953 kWh supply (1.79% of generated power). Yet in May 2008, the U.S. Department of Energy estimated that it is feasible to increase wind capacity to supply 20% of this nation’s electricity and enough to displace 50 % of natural gas consumption and 18% of coal use by 2030.
The report, drawn up by its national laboratories said that meeting this target presumed some important assumptions. It would require improvements in turbine technology, cost reductions, new transmission lines and a five-fold increase in the pace of wind turbine installations. What exactly does that mean in terms of real, available kWh generating output? Actually, it means very little if merely a minor percentage of that technical feasibility provides electricity when needed.
To be extremely optimistic, let’s assume that actual average output would be 25% of that projected installed capacity. In that case, the real output would be less than 5% of the country’s electricity, and more realistically, about half of even that amount under optimistic circumstances.
Output volatility due to wind’s intermittency varies greatly according to location and time of year, typically ranging from 0% to about 50%. Texas, one of the most promising wind energy states, averages about 16.8% of installed capacity, yet the Electric Reliability Council of Texas assigns a value of 10% due to unpredictability. Only about 20% of that capacity is generally available during peak demand periods (about 5:00pm), while average generation during off-peak time averages about 40% of capacity.
Electricity must be instantaneously available day and night to meet “base load” requirements. When peak loads exceed supplies bad things quickly happen. Electrical frequencies and voltages drop as power line currents increase, necessitating automatic or manual interruption of loads (blackouts) to protect grids.
But unlike such workhorse power generators as coal-fired and nuclear plants designed to constantly run at peak load capacities, wind (and solar) power requires incorporation of “spinning reserve” backup systems to provide continuity. These are typically gas-fired turbines, much like those used for jet aircraft engines that are connected to generators. That’s where it gets particularly expensive.
Wind power must be integrated as part of a larger, balanced, grid network. When that wind generation component increases, the temperatures of fossil-fueled boilers must be dropped to maintain demand-supply equality. This involves wasteful shedding of heat for cooling — then more wasting to add heat back into the system without accomplishing any additional work. And since the spinning reserves don’t stop consuming fuel when wind generation is occurring, claims of energy savings or CO2 emission reductions are largely mythological.
But assuming that wind is always blowing somewhere, won’t “smart grids” balance it all out? That is good in theory only. Ed Hiserodt, writing in an October 2010 New American .com. article titled “Wind Power: An Ill Wind Blowing” cites an example of 18 interconnected wind farms located in Southeast Australia. Covering a large area of approximately 40,000 square miles, those installations benefited from sites near a coast where winds are stronger and more constant than inland placements. Yet their combined total capacity was still insufficient to even begin to keep pace with base load demands.
Another major limitation of individual wind farms is that they don’t produce power on massive scales needed in large cities and industrial areas where necessary space is at a premium and land is expensive. The most ideal locations are typically remote from areas where demands are highest, requiring large investments for power transmission lines and land right-of-way use.
Wind turbines are also very expensive to build and maintain. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory reports that “Despite reasonable adherence to those accepted design practices, wind turbines have yet to achieve their design life of 20 years, with most requiring significant repair before the intended life is reached”. Those in offshore locations are even more costly to install, and fare much worse from corrosion damage.
Will the construction and maintenance of wind power produce the many thousands of “high-quality green jobs” touted by the industry? Not according to a report from Spain released by researchers at King Juan Carlos University. It concluded that every “green job” created by the wind industry killed off 4.2 jobs elsewhere in the Spanish economy through missed opportunities to put that money towards more useful and productive ends.
While research director Gabriel Calzada Alvarez didn’t fundamentally object to wind power, he did find that when a government artificially props up the industry with subsidies, higher electrical costs (31%) and tax hikes (5%), along with government debt follow. Each of those jobs was estimated to cost $800,000 per year to create, and 90% of those were temporary. A few months after the study was released, researchers at the Danish Center for Politiske Studier reached similar conclusions based upon their country’s experience: “It is fair to assess that no wind energy would exist if it had to compete on market terms.”
Just how environmentally friendly is that “green” wind energy? Depends a lot on whom you ask and where they live. The best energy-generation sites are typically along mountain ridges and coastal areas–the same types of locations prized for scenic views and overflown by bird and bat species that become turbine blade casualties. And while some national environmental organizations such as Greenpeace and the Sierra Club have become staunch wind power advocates in their war against fossils, others who live in proposed wind farm locations have launched strong legal opposition.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., nephew of a popular president and prominent lawyer for the Natural Defense Research Council, has fought hard against a proposed 130-turbine offshore “Cape Wind” development in Nantucket Sound. Another uncle, the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, along with Senate colleague and fellow Massachusetts resident John Kerry, didn’t want Cape Wind disturbing his vistas either.
Then there’s the concern about whales. Yes, you read this right! On June 25, 2010, environmental groups filed a suit to block the Nantucket Sound project because it will endanger migratory birds and whales. Are they possibly underestimating whale intelligence?
But what about risks to our economy and the well-being of ratepayers and taxpayers who must cover wind power costs? More than half of all revenues for companies that install and operate the systems come from federal, state and local tax benefits. Some state programs also legislate mandatory renewable portfolio standards that require electric utility companies to purchase designated amounts of energy from wind, solar and bio-fuel providers, typically at premium costs that are passed on to customers.
So long as industry survival depends upon those preferential government-imposed benefits, two things are clear. Wind is certainly not a competitive free market source of energy, or a charity we can continue to afford.
http://blogs.forbes.com/larrybell/2011/03/08/wind-energys-overblown-prospects/
Many green energy advocates have exaggerated the capacity of wind power to make a significant impact on U.S. electrical needs. Any euphoric fantasy that an unlimited, free and clean alternative to carbon-cursed fossil-fuel sources is blowing by with scant notice is exceedingly naïve and misguided.
A major point of public confusion in this regard lies in a failure to differentiate maximum total capacities, typically presented in megawatts (MW), with actual predicted kilowatt hours (kWh), which are determined by annual average wind conditions at a particular site. Wind is intermittent, and velocities constantly change. It often isn’t available when needed most — such as during hot summer days when demands for air-conditioning are highest.
According to a 2009 Energy Information Agency Report on Electricity Generation, wind power provided only 70 billion kWh of the total U.S. 3,953 kWh supply (1.79% of generated power). Yet in May 2008, the U.S. Department of Energy estimated that it is feasible to increase wind capacity to supply 20% of this nation’s electricity and enough to displace 50 % of natural gas consumption and 18% of coal use by 2030.
The report, drawn up by its national laboratories said that meeting this target presumed some important assumptions. It would require improvements in turbine technology, cost reductions, new transmission lines and a five-fold increase in the pace of wind turbine installations. What exactly does that mean in terms of real, available kWh generating output? Actually, it means very little if merely a minor percentage of that technical feasibility provides electricity when needed.
To be extremely optimistic, let’s assume that actual average output would be 25% of that projected installed capacity. In that case, the real output would be less than 5% of the country’s electricity, and more realistically, about half of even that amount under optimistic circumstances.
Output volatility due to wind’s intermittency varies greatly according to location and time of year, typically ranging from 0% to about 50%. Texas, one of the most promising wind energy states, averages about 16.8% of installed capacity, yet the Electric Reliability Council of Texas assigns a value of 10% due to unpredictability. Only about 20% of that capacity is generally available during peak demand periods (about 5:00pm), while average generation during off-peak time averages about 40% of capacity.
Electricity must be instantaneously available day and night to meet “base load” requirements. When peak loads exceed supplies bad things quickly happen. Electrical frequencies and voltages drop as power line currents increase, necessitating automatic or manual interruption of loads (blackouts) to protect grids.
But unlike such workhorse power generators as coal-fired and nuclear plants designed to constantly run at peak load capacities, wind (and solar) power requires incorporation of “spinning reserve” backup systems to provide continuity. These are typically gas-fired turbines, much like those used for jet aircraft engines that are connected to generators. That’s where it gets particularly expensive.
Wind power must be integrated as part of a larger, balanced, grid network. When that wind generation component increases, the temperatures of fossil-fueled boilers must be dropped to maintain demand-supply equality. This involves wasteful shedding of heat for cooling — then more wasting to add heat back into the system without accomplishing any additional work. And since the spinning reserves don’t stop consuming fuel when wind generation is occurring, claims of energy savings or CO2 emission reductions are largely mythological.
But assuming that wind is always blowing somewhere, won’t “smart grids” balance it all out? That is good in theory only. Ed Hiserodt, writing in an October 2010 New American .com. article titled “Wind Power: An Ill Wind Blowing” cites an example of 18 interconnected wind farms located in Southeast Australia. Covering a large area of approximately 40,000 square miles, those installations benefited from sites near a coast where winds are stronger and more constant than inland placements. Yet their combined total capacity was still insufficient to even begin to keep pace with base load demands.
Another major limitation of individual wind farms is that they don’t produce power on massive scales needed in large cities and industrial areas where necessary space is at a premium and land is expensive. The most ideal locations are typically remote from areas where demands are highest, requiring large investments for power transmission lines and land right-of-way use.
Wind turbines are also very expensive to build and maintain. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory reports that “Despite reasonable adherence to those accepted design practices, wind turbines have yet to achieve their design life of 20 years, with most requiring significant repair before the intended life is reached”. Those in offshore locations are even more costly to install, and fare much worse from corrosion damage.
Will the construction and maintenance of wind power produce the many thousands of “high-quality green jobs” touted by the industry? Not according to a report from Spain released by researchers at King Juan Carlos University. It concluded that every “green job” created by the wind industry killed off 4.2 jobs elsewhere in the Spanish economy through missed opportunities to put that money towards more useful and productive ends.
While research director Gabriel Calzada Alvarez didn’t fundamentally object to wind power, he did find that when a government artificially props up the industry with subsidies, higher electrical costs (31%) and tax hikes (5%), along with government debt follow. Each of those jobs was estimated to cost $800,000 per year to create, and 90% of those were temporary. A few months after the study was released, researchers at the Danish Center for Politiske Studier reached similar conclusions based upon their country’s experience: “It is fair to assess that no wind energy would exist if it had to compete on market terms.”
Just how environmentally friendly is that “green” wind energy? Depends a lot on whom you ask and where they live. The best energy-generation sites are typically along mountain ridges and coastal areas–the same types of locations prized for scenic views and overflown by bird and bat species that become turbine blade casualties. And while some national environmental organizations such as Greenpeace and the Sierra Club have become staunch wind power advocates in their war against fossils, others who live in proposed wind farm locations have launched strong legal opposition.
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., nephew of a popular president and prominent lawyer for the Natural Defense Research Council, has fought hard against a proposed 130-turbine offshore “Cape Wind” development in Nantucket Sound. Another uncle, the late Sen. Ted Kennedy, along with Senate colleague and fellow Massachusetts resident John Kerry, didn’t want Cape Wind disturbing his vistas either.
Then there’s the concern about whales. Yes, you read this right! On June 25, 2010, environmental groups filed a suit to block the Nantucket Sound project because it will endanger migratory birds and whales. Are they possibly underestimating whale intelligence?
But what about risks to our economy and the well-being of ratepayers and taxpayers who must cover wind power costs? More than half of all revenues for companies that install and operate the systems come from federal, state and local tax benefits. Some state programs also legislate mandatory renewable portfolio standards that require electric utility companies to purchase designated amounts of energy from wind, solar and bio-fuel providers, typically at premium costs that are passed on to customers.
So long as industry survival depends upon those preferential government-imposed benefits, two things are clear. Wind is certainly not a competitive free market source of energy, or a charity we can continue to afford.
http://blogs.forbes.com/larrybell/2011/03/08/wind-energys-overblown-prospects/
JBI finds way to turn plastic into fuel
If John Bordynuik has his way, homes will be heated with milk jugs, and cars will run on plastic bags.
Bordynuik, president and CEO of JBI Inc., has invented a process to convert waste plastic into fuel at a plant in Niagara Falls. His company plans to install the machines at factories and recycling facilities.
Bordynuik said his invention allows JBI Inc. to produce fuel at a fraction of the cost of major refineries, and can convert two tons of plastic into 109 barrels of fuel.
The goal of converting plastic to fuel has been the Holy Grail of recycling for years, but only recently has the process been made commercially viable.
"Plastics are made from natural gas. They're simple products, and this process breaks them down into another simple energy form," said Greg Wilkinson, president of Third Oak Associates, a Toronto-based communication and strategy firm specializing in chemicals and plastics. "I think the combination of the technology being more mature today and the high cost of energy and fuels makes the investment in this type of technology economical."
Wilkinson said the technology was already "on the drawing board" when he started working in the chemical industry 20 years ago, but three or four years ago, most productions were still lab-based and hypothetical.
According to a report funded by the American Chemistry Council and published in April, there are 23 companies worldwide that have successfully developed technology to convert some plastics into fuel. When the study was published, no North American group had created a commercial-scale plastic-to-fuel conversion machine.
Bordynuik's factory is a "pilot scale facility," used mostly for testing and smaller than a commercial operation.
The basic difference between plastic and fuel is the length of the hydrocarbons, Bordynuik said, which are what make up the plastic. The hydrocarbons of plastic are more than 10 times longer than those in fuel.
"Our technology specifically cracks (the hydrocarbons in) the plastic in the ranges that we need to create fuel," he said. "At specific lengths, where we want it, consistently."
When plastic arrives at the facility, it is shredded and fed into a rotary reactor, Bordynuik said. The reactor melts the plastic into a vapor.
"If you just heat up plastic, normally you'll end up with a plastic that's virtually worthless," he said. "There's a lot of companies that have tried."
The vapor goes to one of the two catalyst towers where it is broken down into different types of fuel.
The fuel that comes out of the towers is unrefined, but cleaner than some of what you buy at the pump, Bordynuik said. And the process is cleaner than oil refining.
"That machine has virtually no emissions, it emit(s) less than a natural gas furnace," Bordynuik said.
Air emissions for the unit are similar to standard natural gas combustion products, said Megan Gollwitzer, spokeswoman for the New York Department of Environmental Conservation, in an e-mail. The unit is operating under a consent order while permits are pending.
Bordynuik plans to build two more processors at his Niagara Falls site to train operators on, then install them at companies that generate a lot of plastic and send trained operators along to run them.
The processor uses 8 percent of the fuel it creates to run, melt and process the plastic.
"We're doing joint ventures with large companies where we (will) go in and build it on their site," he said. "We're not selling the machines. We're going to own and operate and run them."
About 40 people work on the "plastic2oil" process at JBI, but as more processors are installed and more operators are trained, Bordynuik expects the staff to grow.
Steve Manolis, operations manager at Coco Asphalt Engineering in Toronto, said his firm is testing fuel from JBI.
"We're still in evaluation phases. We've done a plant trial," Manolis said. "Up until now everything's been running normally."
Bordynuik invented his process in early 2009, but could only convert about two pounds of waste plastic into a quart of fuel. With help from other chemists, his process was scaled up enough to create a machine that could process one ton of plastic.
The company, headquarters in Thorold, Ont., has since attracted investors and is traded on the over-the-counter exchange under symbol JBII. It closed at $3.59 Friday.
Bordynuik said the process and the plant were well received by the state DEC.
"There was one person at the DEC who looked at the chemistry of the process and what we did, and he wrote a letter allowing us to construct a factory to gather data for a full permit," Bordynuik said. "They saw the machine doesn't pollute. It's clean, so they said 'go, build.'"
Bordynuik said he chose to locate his "plastic2oil" processors in Western New York because of the local support, from politicians to machine shops, that are making the parts used in the machines.
JBI has competition. Waste Management, which processes much of Western New York's recycling, is working with Agilyx, from Portland, Ore., to develop that company's plastic-to-fuel conversion process, said Wes Muir, Waste Management director of communications.
It is possible there will be an Agilyx facility in Buffalo someday, said Don Majka, vice president of sales and marketing for Waste Management recycling.
"We're looking to develop about four facilities ... these are really meant to be kind of small-scale units that can be put in facilities throughout the country," Muir said. "It's hard to recycle plastics. It really depends on the type of plastic and where they're found."
The plastics that facilities like JBI Inc. and Agilyx would use are not high-quality plastics, Majka said. Higher-grade and cleaner plastics can be sold for more for other uses, so they are not used for plastic-to-fuel conversion.
"Agilyx is not going to be buying the Tide bottles and the Pepsi bottles," Majka said. "They're going to be buying something dirtier than that."
Numerous companies are pursuing the same plastic-to-fuel goal. Envion, in West Palm Beach, Fla., has a different method of heating its plastic, said Pio Goco, vice president of business development. A far infared heating system, similar to a microwave, is used.
"The breakthrough in this technology happened not in the U.S., but in Asia in 2004," he said.
Goco said the technology is changing the way people think about waste, because it is a resource.
Dow Chemical Company, in Midland, Mich., is also researching how to convert plastic to energy, said Jeff Wooster, plastics sustainability leader for Dow's North America plastics business. Last month, the company experimented with burning plastics in a special furnace.
"If you think of plastics as a stored energy source, there are many ways you can recover that energy," he said. "It doesn't make sense to bury plastics in the ground when we are digging oil and coal out of the ground."
http://www.buffalonews.com/business/article452079.ece
Bordynuik, president and CEO of JBI Inc., has invented a process to convert waste plastic into fuel at a plant in Niagara Falls. His company plans to install the machines at factories and recycling facilities.
Bordynuik said his invention allows JBI Inc. to produce fuel at a fraction of the cost of major refineries, and can convert two tons of plastic into 109 barrels of fuel.
The goal of converting plastic to fuel has been the Holy Grail of recycling for years, but only recently has the process been made commercially viable.
"Plastics are made from natural gas. They're simple products, and this process breaks them down into another simple energy form," said Greg Wilkinson, president of Third Oak Associates, a Toronto-based communication and strategy firm specializing in chemicals and plastics. "I think the combination of the technology being more mature today and the high cost of energy and fuels makes the investment in this type of technology economical."
Wilkinson said the technology was already "on the drawing board" when he started working in the chemical industry 20 years ago, but three or four years ago, most productions were still lab-based and hypothetical.
According to a report funded by the American Chemistry Council and published in April, there are 23 companies worldwide that have successfully developed technology to convert some plastics into fuel. When the study was published, no North American group had created a commercial-scale plastic-to-fuel conversion machine.
Bordynuik's factory is a "pilot scale facility," used mostly for testing and smaller than a commercial operation.
The basic difference between plastic and fuel is the length of the hydrocarbons, Bordynuik said, which are what make up the plastic. The hydrocarbons of plastic are more than 10 times longer than those in fuel.
"Our technology specifically cracks (the hydrocarbons in) the plastic in the ranges that we need to create fuel," he said. "At specific lengths, where we want it, consistently."
When plastic arrives at the facility, it is shredded and fed into a rotary reactor, Bordynuik said. The reactor melts the plastic into a vapor.
"If you just heat up plastic, normally you'll end up with a plastic that's virtually worthless," he said. "There's a lot of companies that have tried."
The vapor goes to one of the two catalyst towers where it is broken down into different types of fuel.
The fuel that comes out of the towers is unrefined, but cleaner than some of what you buy at the pump, Bordynuik said. And the process is cleaner than oil refining.
"That machine has virtually no emissions, it emit(s) less than a natural gas furnace," Bordynuik said.
Air emissions for the unit are similar to standard natural gas combustion products, said Megan Gollwitzer, spokeswoman for the New York Department of Environmental Conservation, in an e-mail. The unit is operating under a consent order while permits are pending.
Bordynuik plans to build two more processors at his Niagara Falls site to train operators on, then install them at companies that generate a lot of plastic and send trained operators along to run them.
The processor uses 8 percent of the fuel it creates to run, melt and process the plastic.
"We're doing joint ventures with large companies where we (will) go in and build it on their site," he said. "We're not selling the machines. We're going to own and operate and run them."
About 40 people work on the "plastic2oil" process at JBI, but as more processors are installed and more operators are trained, Bordynuik expects the staff to grow.
Steve Manolis, operations manager at Coco Asphalt Engineering in Toronto, said his firm is testing fuel from JBI.
"We're still in evaluation phases. We've done a plant trial," Manolis said. "Up until now everything's been running normally."
Bordynuik invented his process in early 2009, but could only convert about two pounds of waste plastic into a quart of fuel. With help from other chemists, his process was scaled up enough to create a machine that could process one ton of plastic.
The company, headquarters in Thorold, Ont., has since attracted investors and is traded on the over-the-counter exchange under symbol JBII. It closed at $3.59 Friday.
Bordynuik said the process and the plant were well received by the state DEC.
"There was one person at the DEC who looked at the chemistry of the process and what we did, and he wrote a letter allowing us to construct a factory to gather data for a full permit," Bordynuik said. "They saw the machine doesn't pollute. It's clean, so they said 'go, build.'"
Bordynuik said he chose to locate his "plastic2oil" processors in Western New York because of the local support, from politicians to machine shops, that are making the parts used in the machines.
JBI has competition. Waste Management, which processes much of Western New York's recycling, is working with Agilyx, from Portland, Ore., to develop that company's plastic-to-fuel conversion process, said Wes Muir, Waste Management director of communications.
It is possible there will be an Agilyx facility in Buffalo someday, said Don Majka, vice president of sales and marketing for Waste Management recycling.
"We're looking to develop about four facilities ... these are really meant to be kind of small-scale units that can be put in facilities throughout the country," Muir said. "It's hard to recycle plastics. It really depends on the type of plastic and where they're found."
The plastics that facilities like JBI Inc. and Agilyx would use are not high-quality plastics, Majka said. Higher-grade and cleaner plastics can be sold for more for other uses, so they are not used for plastic-to-fuel conversion.
"Agilyx is not going to be buying the Tide bottles and the Pepsi bottles," Majka said. "They're going to be buying something dirtier than that."
Numerous companies are pursuing the same plastic-to-fuel goal. Envion, in West Palm Beach, Fla., has a different method of heating its plastic, said Pio Goco, vice president of business development. A far infared heating system, similar to a microwave, is used.
"The breakthrough in this technology happened not in the U.S., but in Asia in 2004," he said.
Goco said the technology is changing the way people think about waste, because it is a resource.
Dow Chemical Company, in Midland, Mich., is also researching how to convert plastic to energy, said Jeff Wooster, plastics sustainability leader for Dow's North America plastics business. Last month, the company experimented with burning plastics in a special furnace.
"If you think of plastics as a stored energy source, there are many ways you can recover that energy," he said. "It doesn't make sense to bury plastics in the ground when we are digging oil and coal out of the ground."
http://www.buffalonews.com/business/article452079.ece
Thursday, June 9, 2011
China overtakes US as top energy consumer
LONDON (AP) -- Global energy consumption rose in 2010 at the fastest pace since 1973, as fast-growing developing nations led a strong rebound from recession, according to a survey released Wednesday.
The overall 5.6 percent rise in consumption saw gains in all regions and all categories of energy, BP PLC said in its 60th annual Statistical Review of World Energy.
Consumption in the world's richest countries grew by 3.5 percent, the most since 1984, bringing it back to the level of a decade ago, BP said. Consumption in developing countries -- particularly resource-hungry ones in Asia and South America -- logged a 7.5 percent increase.
"By year-end, economic activity for the world as a whole exceeded pre-crisis levels driven by the so-called developing world," said Christof Ruehl, chief economist for BP.
Last year's surge was led by China, which increased its energy consumption by 11.2 percent, according to BP.
That moved China ahead of the United States as the world's biggest consumer of energy, accounting for 20.3 percent of global demand compared with 19 percent for the U.S., the report said.
The International Energy Agency reported in July that China had become the world's biggest energy consumer, though Chinese officials insisted their country still lagged behind the United States.
China was by far the world's largest consumer of coal, taking 48 percent. The United States had the biggest thirst for oil with 21 percent of global demand, double China's consumption.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Report-China-overtakes-US-as-apf-1370742434.html?x=0
The overall 5.6 percent rise in consumption saw gains in all regions and all categories of energy, BP PLC said in its 60th annual Statistical Review of World Energy.
Consumption in the world's richest countries grew by 3.5 percent, the most since 1984, bringing it back to the level of a decade ago, BP said. Consumption in developing countries -- particularly resource-hungry ones in Asia and South America -- logged a 7.5 percent increase.
"By year-end, economic activity for the world as a whole exceeded pre-crisis levels driven by the so-called developing world," said Christof Ruehl, chief economist for BP.
Last year's surge was led by China, which increased its energy consumption by 11.2 percent, according to BP.
That moved China ahead of the United States as the world's biggest consumer of energy, accounting for 20.3 percent of global demand compared with 19 percent for the U.S., the report said.
The International Energy Agency reported in July that China had become the world's biggest energy consumer, though Chinese officials insisted their country still lagged behind the United States.
China was by far the world's largest consumer of coal, taking 48 percent. The United States had the biggest thirst for oil with 21 percent of global demand, double China's consumption.
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Report-China-overtakes-US-as-apf-1370742434.html?x=0
The New Military War Against Climate Change
We have met the enemy, and yup, it is us. No doubt about it. The planet is on fire and we’re obviously to blame. Why else would the Department of Defense have to release a February 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) declaring that climate change will play a “significant role in shaping the future security environment”- and cause a “…need to adjust to the impacts of climate change on our facilities and military capabilities”? The QDR warns that this climate change threat “… may act as an accelerant of instability or conflict, placing a burden to respond on civilian institutions and militaries around the world”.
Gosh, does that mean they may have to attack everyone? Maybe not. Since government bureaucrats aren’t mentioned, they’re probably exempt.
And it’s not like we haven’t been warned about this security threat before. Some of you may possibly remember an April 2008 Time magazine cover feature that drew a direct parallel between the current battle against climate change and U.S. involvement in World War II against Nazi Germany and Japan. Here, the famous image of five American Marines raising a flag at Iwo Jima following a terrible 35-day conflict that killed sixty-eight hundred of our troops was modified to depict the Marines planting a tree. The caption read “How to Win the War on Global Warming.” Some of us then took serious offense at that correlation. Some of us still do.
A television commercial produced by the Alliance for Climate Protection (ACP) founded by Al Gore in 2006 showed footage of American soldiers storming beaches at Normandy during WWII, a civil rights march, and a moon landing, linking these historic events to an urgent need for action now. William H. Macy narrated the message, stating “We can’t wait for someone else to solve the climate crisis. We need to act, and we need to act now. Join us. Together we can solve the climate crisis.”
In 2007, Senate Armed Services Committee members Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and John Warner (R-VA) snuck some language into the National Defense Authorization Act which got our military into the climate protection business whether they wanted to or not. The amendment required DoD to consider the effects of climate change upon their facilities, capabilities and missions. Now, through the QDR, the DoD is incorporating and considering the “threat” of climate change into its long-range strategic plans. This despite the fact that no evidence of a climate crisis, much less any human-caused one, actually exists.
And exactly what U.S. national security threats are they worried about anyway? One that security planners highlighted in 2009 revolves around concern that global warming will melt the massive Himalayan ice mass. In theory, that will cause rivers fed by Himalayan glaciers to flood first, then will dry up once the glaciers retreat, endangering tens of millions of people in lowland Bangladesh. Retired Air Marshal A.K. Singh, a former commander in India’s air force, then foresaw resulting mass migrations across national borders, with militaries (including ours) becoming involved.
This dire Himalayan glacier calamity was predicted by a preeminent international climate science organization, none other than the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Who could doubt their competence and veracity? Well, actually, many scientists have good reasons to do so. And in this instance it turned out, and the IPCC later admitted, that the Himalayan prediction was completely fabricated with absolutely no supporting science by a fellow who worked for the IPCC’s director. Seems like top Pentagon officials can sleep better knowing this, provided of course, that someone informed them.
According to Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy , “The QDR may be the most important report DoD provides Congress. It really requires the department to step back and think strategically about the present and the future to set its priorities and objectives and then to connect those to the program and to the budget” (Read this to mean that it ain’t going to be cheap!)
The QDR climate change response strategy includes provisions to “…investigate alternative concepts for improving operational energy use”…and increase use of renewable energy supplies and reduce energy demand to “improve operational effectiveness, reduce greenhouse gas emissions in support of U.S. climate change initiatives, and protect the Department from energy price fluctuations.” So let’s look at an existing example that applies these directives.
The U.S. Air Force is supporting development of the largest North American solar plant to provide electricity for the Nellis Air Force Base located outside Las Vegas which covers 140 acres of the Nevada desert with massive photovoltaic arrays that track the sun. The facility is capable of producing 15 MW of power, enough to cover about 30% of Nellis requirements. As advertised, the Air Force expects to save $1 million per year in power costs. In fact the Air Force is so pleased with the project that it hopes to double the power it gets from solar in the near future. Sounds pretty good so far doesn’t it?
The down side is that these current and future cost savings are only possible thanks to multimillion-dollar federal and state financial subsidies and incentives. “Without those, prices wouldn’t be competitive,” according to Daniel Tomlinson, editor of a solar newsletter for Navigant Consulting.
The Nellis project was developed through a complex arrangement between the Air Force and financial partners where power providers covered system construction costs in return for a guaranteed market along with substantial federal tax subsidies and other incentives. For example, MMA Renewable Ventures and its investors enjoy a 30% tax credit, have the benefit of accelerated capital depreciation schedules, and sell solar energy credits generated by the project to NV Energy, which must obtain 20% of its power from renewable sources by 2015.
So there you have it. Our country’s Air Force (that is, the U.S. Government) is saving about $1 million a year because the same U.S. Government is providing many tens of millions of dollars in tax incentives, in combination with generous contributions in the form of higher electricity prices charged to Nevada customers. Just think of all the money the government is saving us!
But caution: don’t attempt this stunt at home.
http://blogs.forbes.com/larrybell/2011/05/31/the-new-military-war-against-climate-change/
Gosh, does that mean they may have to attack everyone? Maybe not. Since government bureaucrats aren’t mentioned, they’re probably exempt.
And it’s not like we haven’t been warned about this security threat before. Some of you may possibly remember an April 2008 Time magazine cover feature that drew a direct parallel between the current battle against climate change and U.S. involvement in World War II against Nazi Germany and Japan. Here, the famous image of five American Marines raising a flag at Iwo Jima following a terrible 35-day conflict that killed sixty-eight hundred of our troops was modified to depict the Marines planting a tree. The caption read “How to Win the War on Global Warming.” Some of us then took serious offense at that correlation. Some of us still do.
A television commercial produced by the Alliance for Climate Protection (ACP) founded by Al Gore in 2006 showed footage of American soldiers storming beaches at Normandy during WWII, a civil rights march, and a moon landing, linking these historic events to an urgent need for action now. William H. Macy narrated the message, stating “We can’t wait for someone else to solve the climate crisis. We need to act, and we need to act now. Join us. Together we can solve the climate crisis.”
In 2007, Senate Armed Services Committee members Hillary Clinton (D-NY) and John Warner (R-VA) snuck some language into the National Defense Authorization Act which got our military into the climate protection business whether they wanted to or not. The amendment required DoD to consider the effects of climate change upon their facilities, capabilities and missions. Now, through the QDR, the DoD is incorporating and considering the “threat” of climate change into its long-range strategic plans. This despite the fact that no evidence of a climate crisis, much less any human-caused one, actually exists.
And exactly what U.S. national security threats are they worried about anyway? One that security planners highlighted in 2009 revolves around concern that global warming will melt the massive Himalayan ice mass. In theory, that will cause rivers fed by Himalayan glaciers to flood first, then will dry up once the glaciers retreat, endangering tens of millions of people in lowland Bangladesh. Retired Air Marshal A.K. Singh, a former commander in India’s air force, then foresaw resulting mass migrations across national borders, with militaries (including ours) becoming involved.
This dire Himalayan glacier calamity was predicted by a preeminent international climate science organization, none other than the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Who could doubt their competence and veracity? Well, actually, many scientists have good reasons to do so. And in this instance it turned out, and the IPCC later admitted, that the Himalayan prediction was completely fabricated with absolutely no supporting science by a fellow who worked for the IPCC’s director. Seems like top Pentagon officials can sleep better knowing this, provided of course, that someone informed them.
According to Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy , “The QDR may be the most important report DoD provides Congress. It really requires the department to step back and think strategically about the present and the future to set its priorities and objectives and then to connect those to the program and to the budget” (Read this to mean that it ain’t going to be cheap!)
The QDR climate change response strategy includes provisions to “…investigate alternative concepts for improving operational energy use”…and increase use of renewable energy supplies and reduce energy demand to “improve operational effectiveness, reduce greenhouse gas emissions in support of U.S. climate change initiatives, and protect the Department from energy price fluctuations.” So let’s look at an existing example that applies these directives.
The U.S. Air Force is supporting development of the largest North American solar plant to provide electricity for the Nellis Air Force Base located outside Las Vegas which covers 140 acres of the Nevada desert with massive photovoltaic arrays that track the sun. The facility is capable of producing 15 MW of power, enough to cover about 30% of Nellis requirements. As advertised, the Air Force expects to save $1 million per year in power costs. In fact the Air Force is so pleased with the project that it hopes to double the power it gets from solar in the near future. Sounds pretty good so far doesn’t it?
The down side is that these current and future cost savings are only possible thanks to multimillion-dollar federal and state financial subsidies and incentives. “Without those, prices wouldn’t be competitive,” according to Daniel Tomlinson, editor of a solar newsletter for Navigant Consulting.
The Nellis project was developed through a complex arrangement between the Air Force and financial partners where power providers covered system construction costs in return for a guaranteed market along with substantial federal tax subsidies and other incentives. For example, MMA Renewable Ventures and its investors enjoy a 30% tax credit, have the benefit of accelerated capital depreciation schedules, and sell solar energy credits generated by the project to NV Energy, which must obtain 20% of its power from renewable sources by 2015.
So there you have it. Our country’s Air Force (that is, the U.S. Government) is saving about $1 million a year because the same U.S. Government is providing many tens of millions of dollars in tax incentives, in combination with generous contributions in the form of higher electricity prices charged to Nevada customers. Just think of all the money the government is saving us!
But caution: don’t attempt this stunt at home.
http://blogs.forbes.com/larrybell/2011/05/31/the-new-military-war-against-climate-change/
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
The green killer: Scores of protected golden eagles dying after colliding with wind turbines
California's attempts to switch to green energy have inadvertently put the survival of the state’s golden eagles at risk.
Full Story:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1394945/The-green-killer-Scores-protected-golden-eagles-dying-colliding-wind-turbines.html
Full Story:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1394945/The-green-killer-Scores-protected-golden-eagles-dying-colliding-wind-turbines.html
Monday, June 6, 2011
Could the Net be killing the planet one web search at a time?
The environmental foolishness never stops. Here's another way we'll pay to "save" the planet
It's Saturday night, and you want to catch the latest summer blockbuster. You do a quick Google search to find the venue and right time, and off you go to enjoy some mindless fun.
Meanwhile, your Internet search has just helped kill the planet. Depending on how long you took and what sites you visited, your search caused the emission of one to 10 grams of carbon into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming.
Sure, it's not a lot on its own — but add up all of the more than one billion daily Google searches, throw in 60 million Facebook status updates each day, 50 million daily tweets and 250 billion emails per day, and you're making a serious dent in some Greenland glaciers.
The Internet has long promised a more efficient and greener world. We save on paper and mailing by sending an email. We can telecommute instead of driving to work. We can have a meeting by teleconference instead of flying to another city.
Ironically, despite the web's green promise, this explosion of data has turned the Internet into one of the planet's fastest-growing sources of carbon emissions. The Internet now consumes two to three per cent of the world's electricity.
If the Internet was a country, it would be the planet's fifth-biggest consumer of power, ahead of India and Germany. The Internet's power needs now rival those of the aviation industry and are expected to nearly double by 2020.
"The Internet pollutes, but people don't understand why it pollutes. It's very, very power-hungry, and we have to reduce its carbon footprint," said Mohamed Cheriet, a green IT expert and professor in the engineering and automation department at Montreal's Ecole de Technologie Superieure (ETS).
The bulk of all this energy is gobbled up by a fast-growing network of huge "server farms" or data centres that form the backbone of the Internet. They are hush-hush facilities, some the size of five Wal-Marts, packed from floor to ceiling with tens of thousands of computers.
These are the computers that make the Internet run — routing traffic and storing much of those ever-expanding heaps of data.
Say you do a Google search. Your query kicks into action about 1,000 servers at various Google data centres. Those computers scan billions of web pages already in Google's archives and spit out an answer.
Total time elapsed: 0.2 seconds on average. Meanwhile, Google's data centres are also constantly combing the Internet to update their archives of web pages.
All those computers have a voracious appetite for energy, especially for cooling equipment to prevent overheating.
Apple's 46,000-square-metre iDataCenter is set to open in North Carolina this spring with a price tag of $1 billion U.S.. It will use an estimated 100 megawatts of power — as much as about 100,000 Canadian homes.
Apple's mega-facility is part of a cluster of gigantic new data centres coming on line in North Carolina that are powered largely by cheap and highly polluting coal power. Google has a 44,000-square-metre data centre in the state that eventually will consume an estimated 60 to 100 MW. Facebook has a 28,000-square-metre facility under construction there that will eat up 40 MW.
Greenpeace calls the three facilities "North Carolina's dirty data triangle." Coal, it says, is the most polluting of all fossil fuels and the world's single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions.
"The technologies of the 21st century are still largely powered by the dirty coal power of the past," the environmental group said in a report card on the IT sector in April, titled How Dirty is Your Power?
"People are pretty concerned about it," David Kessler, a Greenpeace spokesman in San Francisco.
In Lenoir, North Carolina, Google's $600-million, super-sized data centre offers employees the kind of unusual perks that were the hallmark of the high-flying dot-com era.
But Google chose Lenoir for more than just some nice handouts. It also wanted cheap electricity for those power-hungry servers.
North Carolina offers industrial customers one of the lowest electricity rates in the U.S. — 5.8 cents per kilowatt hour, versus the U.S. average of 6.7 cents.
It just so happens that the state's electricity is also some of the dirtiest in the country. Nearly two-thirds of the state's electricity comes from coal.
The IT industry is now responding by starting to improve the energy efficiency of its data centres.
But that's not enough, said Bill St. Arnaud, an engineer and green IT consultant in Ottawa. The Internet is growing so fast, he said, it's overtaking such efficiency gains. Besides, efficiency improvements alone won't wean the IT industry from using inexpensive and polluting coal, he said.
The real solution, he said, is for governments to impose measures like carbon taxes and emissions caps that make dirty energy less attractive financially.
"The planet is warming up, and it's going to get very bad. We need a price on carbon. It's the only way to get people to move off coal because coal is currently so cheap," he said.
"We have to move from this fossil fuel fiesta to a smarter economy."
Some seeking to reduce the Internet's carbon footprint point to a homegrown solution: the GreenStar Network.
GreenStar, which is based at Montreal's ETS, is an alternative Internet that runs on small data centres powered solely by cleaner renewable energy, like wind, solar and hydroelectric power.
GreenStar is growing quickly because of the huge worldwide demand for green IT, St. Arnaud said. Since being launched last fall with a core of five green data centres in Canada, the network has expanded to include 15 other data centres in Europe and the U.S., mostly at universities and a few small industrial partners. Others are planned for China and Africa.
"Our biggest problem is meeting demand. We've demonstrated that we can build an Internet that's as reliable as the normal Internet, but without using dirty energy," St. Arnaud said.
The province says the market for green IT will be worth $600 billion annually worldwide by 2013.
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Could%20killing%20planet%20search%20time/4891461/story.html
It's Saturday night, and you want to catch the latest summer blockbuster. You do a quick Google search to find the venue and right time, and off you go to enjoy some mindless fun.
Meanwhile, your Internet search has just helped kill the planet. Depending on how long you took and what sites you visited, your search caused the emission of one to 10 grams of carbon into the atmosphere, contributing to global warming.
Sure, it's not a lot on its own — but add up all of the more than one billion daily Google searches, throw in 60 million Facebook status updates each day, 50 million daily tweets and 250 billion emails per day, and you're making a serious dent in some Greenland glaciers.
The Internet has long promised a more efficient and greener world. We save on paper and mailing by sending an email. We can telecommute instead of driving to work. We can have a meeting by teleconference instead of flying to another city.
Ironically, despite the web's green promise, this explosion of data has turned the Internet into one of the planet's fastest-growing sources of carbon emissions. The Internet now consumes two to three per cent of the world's electricity.
If the Internet was a country, it would be the planet's fifth-biggest consumer of power, ahead of India and Germany. The Internet's power needs now rival those of the aviation industry and are expected to nearly double by 2020.
"The Internet pollutes, but people don't understand why it pollutes. It's very, very power-hungry, and we have to reduce its carbon footprint," said Mohamed Cheriet, a green IT expert and professor in the engineering and automation department at Montreal's Ecole de Technologie Superieure (ETS).
The bulk of all this energy is gobbled up by a fast-growing network of huge "server farms" or data centres that form the backbone of the Internet. They are hush-hush facilities, some the size of five Wal-Marts, packed from floor to ceiling with tens of thousands of computers.
These are the computers that make the Internet run — routing traffic and storing much of those ever-expanding heaps of data.
Say you do a Google search. Your query kicks into action about 1,000 servers at various Google data centres. Those computers scan billions of web pages already in Google's archives and spit out an answer.
Total time elapsed: 0.2 seconds on average. Meanwhile, Google's data centres are also constantly combing the Internet to update their archives of web pages.
All those computers have a voracious appetite for energy, especially for cooling equipment to prevent overheating.
Apple's 46,000-square-metre iDataCenter is set to open in North Carolina this spring with a price tag of $1 billion U.S.. It will use an estimated 100 megawatts of power — as much as about 100,000 Canadian homes.
Apple's mega-facility is part of a cluster of gigantic new data centres coming on line in North Carolina that are powered largely by cheap and highly polluting coal power. Google has a 44,000-square-metre data centre in the state that eventually will consume an estimated 60 to 100 MW. Facebook has a 28,000-square-metre facility under construction there that will eat up 40 MW.
Greenpeace calls the three facilities "North Carolina's dirty data triangle." Coal, it says, is the most polluting of all fossil fuels and the world's single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions.
"The technologies of the 21st century are still largely powered by the dirty coal power of the past," the environmental group said in a report card on the IT sector in April, titled How Dirty is Your Power?
"People are pretty concerned about it," David Kessler, a Greenpeace spokesman in San Francisco.
In Lenoir, North Carolina, Google's $600-million, super-sized data centre offers employees the kind of unusual perks that were the hallmark of the high-flying dot-com era.
But Google chose Lenoir for more than just some nice handouts. It also wanted cheap electricity for those power-hungry servers.
North Carolina offers industrial customers one of the lowest electricity rates in the U.S. — 5.8 cents per kilowatt hour, versus the U.S. average of 6.7 cents.
It just so happens that the state's electricity is also some of the dirtiest in the country. Nearly two-thirds of the state's electricity comes from coal.
The IT industry is now responding by starting to improve the energy efficiency of its data centres.
But that's not enough, said Bill St. Arnaud, an engineer and green IT consultant in Ottawa. The Internet is growing so fast, he said, it's overtaking such efficiency gains. Besides, efficiency improvements alone won't wean the IT industry from using inexpensive and polluting coal, he said.
The real solution, he said, is for governments to impose measures like carbon taxes and emissions caps that make dirty energy less attractive financially.
"The planet is warming up, and it's going to get very bad. We need a price on carbon. It's the only way to get people to move off coal because coal is currently so cheap," he said.
"We have to move from this fossil fuel fiesta to a smarter economy."
Some seeking to reduce the Internet's carbon footprint point to a homegrown solution: the GreenStar Network.
GreenStar, which is based at Montreal's ETS, is an alternative Internet that runs on small data centres powered solely by cleaner renewable energy, like wind, solar and hydroelectric power.
GreenStar is growing quickly because of the huge worldwide demand for green IT, St. Arnaud said. Since being launched last fall with a core of five green data centres in Canada, the network has expanded to include 15 other data centres in Europe and the U.S., mostly at universities and a few small industrial partners. Others are planned for China and Africa.
"Our biggest problem is meeting demand. We've demonstrated that we can build an Internet that's as reliable as the normal Internet, but without using dirty energy," St. Arnaud said.
The province says the market for green IT will be worth $600 billion annually worldwide by 2013.
http://www.vancouversun.com/business/Could%20killing%20planet%20search%20time/4891461/story.html
CARBON DIOXIDE ???????
Okay, here's the bombshell. The volcanic eruption in Iceland, since its first spewing of volcanic ash has, in just FOUR DAYS, NEGATED EVERY SINGLE EFFORT you have made in the past five years to control CO2emissions on our planet – all of you.
Of course you know about this evil carbon dioxide that we are trying to suppress – it’s that vital chemical compound that every plant requires to live and grow, and to synthesize into oxygen for us humans, and all animal life.
I know, it's very disheartening to realize that all of the carbon emission savings you have accomplished while suffering the inconvenience and expense of: driving Prius hybrids, buying fabric grocery bags, sitting up till midnight to finish your kid's "The Green Revolution" science project, throwing out all of your non-green cleaning supplies, using only two squares of toilet paper, putting a brick in your toilet tank reservoir, selling your SUV and speedboat, vacationing at home instead of abroad, nearly getting hit every day on your bicycle, replacing all of your 50 cents light bulbs with $10.00 light bulbs...well, all of those things you have done have all gone down the tubes in just four days.
The volcanic ash emitted into the Earth's atmosphere in just four days - yes - FOUR DAYS ONLY by that volcano in Iceland, has totally erased every single effort you have made to reduce the evil beast, carbon. And there are around 200 active volcanoes on the planet spewing out this crud any one time - EVERY DAY.
I don't really want to rain on your parade too much, but I should mention that when the volcano Mt Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1991, it spewed out more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than the entire human race had emitted in its entire YEARS on earth. Yes folks, Mt Pinatubo was active for over one year – think about it.
Of course I shouldn't spoil this touchy-feely tree-hugging moment and mention the effect of solar and cosmic activity and the well-recognized 800-year global heating and cooling cycle, which keep happening, despite our completely insignificant efforts to affect climate change.
And I do wish I had a silver lining to this volcanic ash cloud but the fact of the matter is that the brush fire season across the western USA and Australia this year alone will negate your efforts to reduce carbon in our world for the next two to three years. And it happens every year.
Just remember that your government just tried to impose a whopping new carbon tax on you on the basis of the bogus “human-caused” climate change scenario.
Hey, isn’t it interesting how they don’t mention “Global Warming” any more, but just “Climate Change” - you know why? It’s because the planet has COOLED by 0.7 degrees in the past century and these global warming bull artists got caught with their pants down.
And just keep in mind that you might yet have an Emissions Trading Scheme – that whopping new tax – imposed on you, that will achieve absolutely nothing except make you poorer. It won’t stop any volcanoes from erupting, that’s for sure.
But hey, relax, give the world a hug and have a nice day!
PS: I wonder if Iceland is buying carbon offsets?
Of course you know about this evil carbon dioxide that we are trying to suppress – it’s that vital chemical compound that every plant requires to live and grow, and to synthesize into oxygen for us humans, and all animal life.
I know, it's very disheartening to realize that all of the carbon emission savings you have accomplished while suffering the inconvenience and expense of: driving Prius hybrids, buying fabric grocery bags, sitting up till midnight to finish your kid's "The Green Revolution" science project, throwing out all of your non-green cleaning supplies, using only two squares of toilet paper, putting a brick in your toilet tank reservoir, selling your SUV and speedboat, vacationing at home instead of abroad, nearly getting hit every day on your bicycle, replacing all of your 50 cents light bulbs with $10.00 light bulbs...well, all of those things you have done have all gone down the tubes in just four days.
The volcanic ash emitted into the Earth's atmosphere in just four days - yes - FOUR DAYS ONLY by that volcano in Iceland, has totally erased every single effort you have made to reduce the evil beast, carbon. And there are around 200 active volcanoes on the planet spewing out this crud any one time - EVERY DAY.
I don't really want to rain on your parade too much, but I should mention that when the volcano Mt Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1991, it spewed out more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than the entire human race had emitted in its entire YEARS on earth. Yes folks, Mt Pinatubo was active for over one year – think about it.
Of course I shouldn't spoil this touchy-feely tree-hugging moment and mention the effect of solar and cosmic activity and the well-recognized 800-year global heating and cooling cycle, which keep happening, despite our completely insignificant efforts to affect climate change.
And I do wish I had a silver lining to this volcanic ash cloud but the fact of the matter is that the brush fire season across the western USA and Australia this year alone will negate your efforts to reduce carbon in our world for the next two to three years. And it happens every year.
Just remember that your government just tried to impose a whopping new carbon tax on you on the basis of the bogus “human-caused” climate change scenario.
Hey, isn’t it interesting how they don’t mention “Global Warming” any more, but just “Climate Change” - you know why? It’s because the planet has COOLED by 0.7 degrees in the past century and these global warming bull artists got caught with their pants down.
And just keep in mind that you might yet have an Emissions Trading Scheme – that whopping new tax – imposed on you, that will achieve absolutely nothing except make you poorer. It won’t stop any volcanoes from erupting, that’s for sure.
But hey, relax, give the world a hug and have a nice day!
PS: I wonder if Iceland is buying carbon offsets?
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