Archive for the ‘Environment’ Category

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Reality Check:Since 2008 US constructing 17.9 GW of coal power

September 14, 2010
Hunter Power Plant, a coal-fired power plant j...

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An Associated Press examination of U.S. Department of Energy records and information provided by utilities and trade groups shows that more than 30 traditional coal plants have been built since 2008 or are under construction.

“Building a coal-fired power plant today is betting that we are not going to put a serious financial cost on emitting carbon dioxide,” said Severin Borenstein, director of the Energy Institute at the University of California-Berkeley.

Sixteen large plants have fired up since 2008 and 16 more are under construction. Combined, they will produce an estimated 17,900 megawatts of electricity.

Carbon-neutralizing technologies for coal plants remain at least 15 to 20 years away.

Once the carbon dioxide hysteria dies away – as it surely will – the misguided and wasted effort on carbon sequestration can be redirected to real issues connected with power generation. These are the mundane but practical though unfashionable fields of development – such as energy storage, small scale distributed use of wind power sources (since they cannot ever provide base-load), increase of efficiency for conventional coal and gas plants, integration of solar- thermal contributions into fossil plant to get continuous sustainable generation, mini-hydro (run of the river) power and distributed micro-hydro plants. Subsidies wasted on renewables can also be redirected to more fruitful areas.

Anthracite coal, a high value rock from easter...

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Coal has not gone away.

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Posted in Economics, Energy, Engineering, Environment | Comments Off on Reality Check:Since 2008 US constructing 17.9 GW of coal power

A whiff of common sense

September 14, 2010

Perhaps a return to some common sense instead of the religious fervour of the global warming terrorists.

  • Climate change is inevitable and warming and cooling will continue till the earth dies a “heat death” in about 4 to 5 billion years

  • The little (relative to the distance from the centre of the earth to the sun) turbulent layer of crust and atmosphere within which we live is a “chaotic” system dominated by the sun’s radiation and with the oceans as the primary vehicle for heat transport in this layer. The next largest “heat transporter” is the volcanic activity around the world and its transient effects. The atmosphere comes next and effects of its composition are dominated first by clouds and only then by the trace gases, sub-micron particulates and aerosols such as carbon dioxide and soot.
  • Climate science (which is a hotchpotch of disciplines and still a long way from being a science) can only  speculate as to the causes of and directions of climate change – from coming ice ages in the 1970’s to global warming and the melting of the ice caps in the 1990’s and to the prospects of a new little ice-age now.
  • Resorting to alarmism and the nonsensical “precautionary principle” in an attempt to control climate while still not understanding the causes of change is more than futile – it is plain stupid.

The new UK  Environment Secretary, Caroline Spelman seems to have changed tack – ever so slightly but still significantly – to focusing on adaptation rather than on trying to control or brake climate changes.

Perhaps a whiff of common sense returning. And high time for that.

The Telegraph reports that she will express this shift in her first speech on climate change. For the past few years Government policy has concentrated on trying to make people turn off lights and grow their own vegetables in an effort to bring down carbon emissions. But as global greenhouse gases continue to increase, with the growth of developing countries like China and India, and the public purse tightens, the focus will increasingly be on adapting to climate change. Temperatures are expected to rise further because of greenhouse gases that are already “locked in” but will take decades to warm the atmosphere.

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/telegraph/multimedia/archive/01408/carolinespelmanabb_1408348c.jpg

Climate change is inevitable, says Caroline Spelman

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Posted in Alarmism, Environment, Science | 1 Comment »

Termites predict climate change!

September 13, 2010
Termietenheuvel

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USA Today reports that Termites help predict impact of climate change.

They rely on instinct rather than mathematical models but they surely couldn’t do worse than Michael Mann & The Hockey Stick Gang

Termites are careful builders that locate their mounds in areas with the right balance of moisture and drainage. This intuitive understanding of geology and hydrology can help explain how a local ecosystem might evolve, according to the study by the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology.

“By understanding the patterns of the vegetation and termite mounds over different moisture zones, we can project how the landscape might change with climate change,” explains co-author Greg Asner.

http://i.usatoday.net/communitymanager/_photos/green-house/2010/09/10/termitex-wide-community.jpg

http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v1/n6/full/ncomms1066.html

Regional insight into savanna hydrogeomorphology from termite mounds

by Shaun R. Levick, Gregory P. Asner, Oliver A. Chadwick, Lesego M. Khomo, Kevin H. Rogers, Anthony S. Hartshorn, Ty Kennedy-Bowdoin & David E. Knapp

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Posted in Environment, Science, Trivia | Comments Off on Termites predict climate change!

Microbes ate the BP oil plume

September 12, 2010

There is still some oil left of course but “the micro-organisms were apparently stimulated by the massive oil spill that began in April, and they degraded the hydrocarbons so efficiently that the plume is now undetectable, said Terry Hazen of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory”. These so-called proteobacteria — Hazen calls them “bugs” — have adapted to the cold deep water where the big BP plume was observed and are able to biodegrade hydrocarbons much more quickly than expected, without significantly depleting oxygen as most known oil-depleting bacteria do. Long before humans drilled for oil, natural oil seeps in the Gulf of Mexico have put out the equivalent of an Exxon Valdez spill each year, Hazen said.

NewsDaily reports that “A Manhattan-sized plume of oil spewed deep into the Gulf of Mexico by BP’s broken Macondo well has been consumed by a newly discovered fast-eating species of microbes”.

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/07/13/97433/heres-some-hope-for-gulf-spill.html

The hysteria surrounding the BP accident (almost as if it had been intentionally engineered) has focused on the photo opportunities presented by oil-coated birds and beaches and has almost obscured the fact that 11 people were killed. The accident has been dubbed “the greatest environmental disaster ever” and has been used as evidence of the evils of technology. It has not suited the environmental “do gooders” to acknowledge that “green” activities cause more damage in the Gulf of Mexico than accidental oil spills.

In the media, blame and the allocation of blame has been the order of the day rather than  analysis of the mistakes made and the engineering and technical lessons to be learnt.

That doesn’t mean there is no oil left from the 4.9 million barrels of crude that spilled into the Gulf after the April 20 blowout at BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig. The U.S. government estimated on August 4 that 50 percent of the BP oil is gone from the Gulf and the rest is rapidly degrading.

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Posted in Alarmism, Environment, Technology | 3 Comments »

A reprieve for incandescent bulbs?

September 2, 2010

I still have hope that the Edison bulb will survive – in spite of all the do-gooders who want to be Nanny.

New research may provide the answer.

http://www.greenzer.com/blog/blog_image_store/2009/09/eu-bans-incadescent-light-bulbs.jpg

According to an article in The New York Times,

Incandescent Bulbs Return to the Cutting Edge

“Researchers across the country have been racing to breathe new life intoThomas Edison’s light bulb, a pursuit that accelerated with the new legislation. Amid that footrace, one company is already marketing limited quantities of incandescent bulbs that meet the 2012 standard, and researchers are promising a wave of innovative products in the next few years.

“There’s a massive misperception that incandescents are going away quickly,” said Chris Calwell, a researcher with Ecos Consulting who studies the bulb market. “There have been more incandescent innovations in the last three years than in the last two decades.”

For lighting researchers involved in trying to save the incandescent bulb, the goal is to come up with one that matches the energy savings of fluorescent bulbs while keeping the qualities that many consumers seem to like in incandescents, like the color of the light and the ease of using them with dimmers.

“Due to the 2007 federal energy bill that phases out inefficient incandescent light bulbs beginning in 2012, we are finally seeing a race” to develop more efficient ones, said Noah Horowitz, senior scientist with the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Some of the leading work is under way at a company called Deposition Sciences here in Santa Rosa. Its technology is a key component of the new Philips bulb line.

Normally, only a small portion of the energy used by an incandescent bulb is converted into light, while the rest is emitted as heat. Deposition Sciences applies special reflective coatings to gas-filled capsules that surround the bulb’s filament. The coatings act as a sort of heat mirror that bounces heat back to the filament, where it is transformed to light.

Despite a decade of campaigns by the government and utilities to persuade people to switch to energy-saving compact fluorescents, incandescent bulbs still occupy an estimated 90 percent of household sockets in the United States. Aside from the aesthetic and practical objections to fluorescents, old-style incandescents have the advantage of being remarkably cheap”.

There is still hope.

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Posted in Business, Environment, Technology | 2 Comments »

Human pylons across Iceland

September 1, 2010

Human Engineering !

From The Beautiful Brain

“Like the statues of Easter Island, it is envisioned that these one hundred and fifty foot tall, modern caryatids will take on a quiet authority, belonging to their landscape yet serving the people, silently transporting electricity across all terrain, day and night, sunshine or snow.”

From http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-08/16/human-pylons

An architecture and design firm called Choi+Shine has submitted a design for the Icelandic High-Voltage Electrical Pylon International Design Competitionwhich proposes giant human-shaped pylons carrying electricity cables across the country’s landscape.

The enormous figures would only require slight alterations to existing pylon designs, says the firm, which was awarded an honourable mention for its design by the competition’s judging board. It also won an award from the Boston Society of Architects Unbuilt Architecture competition.

http://cdni.wired.co.uk/674×281/o_r/pylons.png

Human pylons carry electricity across Iceland

http://img.wired.co.uk.s3.amazonaws.com/659×425/o_r/pylons2.png

Pylons

http://www.choishine.com/port_projects/landsnet/landsnet.html

Despite the large number of possible forms, each pylon-figure is made from the same major assembled parts (torso, fore arm, upper leg, hand etc.) and uses a library of pre-assembled joints between these parts to create the pylon-figures’ appearance. This design allows for many variations in form and height while the pylon-figures’ cost is kept low through identical production, simple assembly and construction.

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Posted in Architecture, Engineering, Environment | Comments Off on Human pylons across Iceland

Low energy bulbs – something wrong here.

August 31, 2010

This is in favour of the simple, cheap, traditional incandescent light bulb.

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/01/07/article-1108775-02F409FC000005DC-572_468x313.jpg

I just do not like the new low energy bulbs — they are slow and the light they emit is cold and creepy.

Their claims of 5 or 8 or 10 year life cannot really be tested (there is no guarantee of course and if you drop one its life is over immediately). They are generally bulky and ugly.

They seem to have health risks (http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/swiss_news/Study_warns_of_green_light_bulb_electrosmog_.html?cid=8584642)

and emit more mercury. http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/financialpost/story.html?id=aa7796aa-e4a5-4c06-be84-b62dee548fda

They are supposed to reduce man’s carbon footprint but this is a nonsense on three counts: firstly switching bulbs is almost insignificant in terms of reducing man-made carbon emissions which are in turn a very small part of total carbon emissions and  in any case the effect of CO2 on climate change is insignificant. This argument is not very convincing.

I cannot help feeling that somebody, somewhere is making a lot of money from this change of regulations and enforced switch to the new bulbs. My prime suspect is the lighting manufacturers and their bureaucratic symbiotes.


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Posted in Business, Energy, Environment | 2 Comments »

Wind Turbine blades a security threat?

August 31, 2010

Wind turbines are not without their problems –they are expensive, have to be shut down for strong winds, don’t like freezing weather, need back-up, weaken the grid they are connected in to, are dangerous to transport, can be very noisy and can be dangerous for large birds.

In addition it seems they pose a threat to the military.

The New York Times reports that Dr. Dorothy Robyn, deputy under secretary of defense, has declared that wind turbines pose an unacceptable risk to national security and military training in some areas–because  moving turbine blades can cause “blackout zones” where planes disappear from radar. And in certain cases,  turbine blades are indistinguishable from approaching planes.

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2008/08/19/timestopics/windpower_395.jpg

Moving turbine blades can be indistinguishable from airplanes on many radar systems, and they can even cause blackout zones in which planes disappear from radar entirely. Clusters of wind turbines, which can reach as high as 400 feet, look very similar to storm activity on weather radar, making it harder for air traffic controllers to give accurate weather information to pilots.

Although the military says no serious incidents have yet occurred because of the interference, the wind turbines pose an unacceptable risk to training, testing and national security in certain regions, Dr. Dorothy Robyn, deputy under secretary of defense, recently told a House Armed Services subcommittee.

In 2009, about 9,000 megawatts of proposed wind projects were abandoned or delayed because of radar concerns raised by the military and the Federal Aviation Administration, according to a member survey by the American Wind Energy Association. That is nearly as much as the amount of wind capacity that was actually built in the same year, the trade group says.

As a result of the military’s opposition, Horizon Wind Energy recently withdrew three project applications in the area. AES Wind Generation said it found out in May, after nine years of planning, that the military had objections to its proposal to build a 82.5-megawatt, 33-turbine wind farm.

Wind Power apart from its cost and technical issues is not as benign as it might seem.


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Et tu IAC? Time for Pachauri to exit.

August 30, 2010

The IAC report is in.

And this is a report by a “friend”.

It is time for Pachauri to leave the reform and the improvement of the IPCC (assuming such a politically charged body can ever be reformed) to somebody else since he has clearly not been up to the task.

http://images.cheezburger.com/completestore/2009/11/22/129033627605776300.jpg

The Telgraph: The UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change should only make predictions when it has solid scientific evidence and avoid straying into policy advocacy, a group of national science academies has warned in a report.

The report said the chairman of the IPCC should be limited to one six year term. Its current head Rajendra Pachauri of India, is in the middle of his second term. It called for an overhaul of the panel’s management, including the creation of an executive committee that would include people from outside the IPCC. Regarding the errors that appeared in the IPCC reports, the review group’s report called for stronger enforcement of the panel’s scientific review procedures to minimise future mistakes.

Professor Mike Hulme, a professor of climate change at the University of East Anglia, is due to deliver a keynote lecture to the Royal Geographical Society Annual conference this week in which he will call for a dramatic changes to the way the IPCC operates. Speaking ahead of his lecture, he said: “The IPCC has not sufficiently adapted to the changing science and politics of climate change, nor to the changing expected and demanded role of science and expertise in society. “The IPCC’s approach of seeking consensus obscures and constricts both scientific and wider social debates about both knowledge-driven and value-driven uncertainties that surround climate change politics.”

Rajendra Pachauri

The BBC: UN climate body ‘needs reforms’, review recommends.

Among the IAC committee’s recommendations was that the UN body appoint an executive director to handle day-to-day operations and speak on behalf of the body. It also said the current limit of two six-year terms for the chair of the organisation is too long. The report also suggests the UN body establish an executive committee which should include individuals from outside the IPCC or even outside the climate science community in order to enhance the UN panel’s credibility and independence.

The use by the IPCC of so-called “grey literature” – that which has not been peer-reviewed or published in scientific journals – has been subjected to particular scrutiny of late, partly because this type of material was behind the glacier error. The committee said that such literature was often relevant and appropriate for inclusion in the IPCC’s assessment reports. But it said authors needed to follow the IPCC’s guidelines more closely and that the guidelines themselves are too vague.

Bishop Hill: “Furthermore, by making vague statements that were difficult to refute, authors were able to attach “high confidence” to the statements. The Working Group II Summary for Policy Makers contains many such statements that are not supported sufficiently in the literature, not put into perspective, or not expressed clearly.”

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Posted in Alarmism, Bureaucracy, Environment, Science, Scientific Fraud | Comments Off on Et tu IAC? Time for Pachauri to exit.

Bitter cold wave in S. America — blamed on global warming!!

August 29, 2010

The bitter cold wave being experienced in S. America does not conform to the Global Warming Religion’s creeds. Facts cannot be suppressed forever and Nature has finally acknowledged one cold event in Bolivia but even here finds a way to contort itself to claim this ” as an example of a sudden climatic change wreaking havoc on wildlife”.

Antarctic cold snap kills millions of aquatic animals in the Amazon. Cold empties Bolivian rivers of fish

dead fish

With high Andean peaks and a humid tropical forest, Bolivia is a country of ecological extremes. But during the Southern Hemisphere’s recent winter, unusually low temperatures in part of the country’s tropical region hit freshwater species hard, killing an estimated 6 million fish and thousands of alligators, turtles and river dolphins.

But the cold wave is not an isolated incident and appears to be widespread over a large part of the southern hemisphere. Der Spiegel (translation in Politically Incorrect) reports today that:

Cold wave in South America: The continent is experiencing one of the harshest winters in many years. Altogether 175 people have died as a result of the bitter cold, according to official statements. Especially affected are the more impoverished population groups who are often poorly protected from the cold by precarious housing that has no heating and are poorly cared for.

In Argentina, such low temperatures haven’t been recorded for ten years. There, 16 people froze to death, another eleven died from Carbon Monoxide poisoning because of faulty stoves. It was also unusually cold in the bordering countries: In Bolivia, 18 people fell victim to the cold, in Paraguay it was five, in Chile and Uruguay there were two each, and in southern Brazil nine people.

In addition, thousands of cattle froze to death in the pastures of Paraguay and Brazil. There aren’t stalls because normally it doesn’t get very cold, even in the winter.

In some regions of Bolivia and Peru, children had school-free days until the end of the week. In the larger cities of the region emergency shelters were opened for people who live on the street. The system for supplying electricity and natural gas were working to capacity in many communties. In Argentina there were even shortages in some provinces.

With La Niña already established the Northern Hemisphere may also be in for another harsh winter.

Further contortions are likely by the religious fanatics to show that it is just further evidence of  global warming !

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Posted in Alarmism, Environment, Science | 2 Comments »

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