Showing posts with label Environment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Environment. Show all posts
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Your Infrastructure Will Be Your Undoing - One Reason Why Natural Gas CANNOT Replace The 20% Of Coal-Fired Powerplants Due Offline By 2015
In the San Francisco Chronicle today:
Feds put nation's pipeline operators on notice
Federal safety officials responding to the findings of the San Bruno disaster probe issued a nationwide bulletin Wednesday urging operators... of natural-gas pipelines to verify they have accurate records about their lines and to cut pressure on them if they don't.
The regulators took the unusual step in response to the discovery that Pacific Gas and Electric Co. had erroneous records about the high-pressure gas line that exploded in San Bruno in September, killing eight people and destroying 38 homes.
The revelation raised questions about whether the utility had set the line's maximum allowable operating pressure too high and whether it had used an inspection method for the pipe that was ill suited to detect some possible weaknesses... [Read more]
Even as America comes to depend more and more on Natural Gas for it's energy needs, and it WILL ramp up even more dramatically as that 20% of all coal-fired power plants, 50,000 MW of nation's dirtiest coal plants, begins to go offline due to EPA regulations, one can begin to see that flammable gases are MUCH more dangerous than the 'Bunker Fuels' and Coal traditionally used in power generation.This isn't some fanciful initiative Lisa Jackson dreamed up one day.
Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA is required to continually update pollution limits to reflect the latest science. The U.S. District Court, for instance, has ordered the EPA to set new mercury standards by the end of next year. As a result, new rules are now coming down the pike on smog-forming pollutants, on mercury, on coal ash...
...according to industry analysts, many coal plants will have to shut down...":[The rules] would force utilities to invest tens of millions of dollars on technologies to remove the substances. Many of those plants are about 50 years old and are already inefficient. "Those investments are just not going to be justifiable," said Dan Bakal, director of electric power programs at Ceres, a group of environmentalists and institutional investors.In Full @ New Republic
Francois Broquin, a co-author of reports on coal by Bernstein Research, said the combined rules could push as much as 20 percent of U.S. coal-fired electric generation capacity to retire by 2015. "
But that's not all. Gases are hard to contain in the material's transmission infrastructure itself, EVEN WHEN THE INFRASTRUCTURE IS SHINY NEW, and the source needs to be somewhat nearby the end user to prevent massive product and by-product losses which also pollute heavily.
In the United States, methane emissions from natural gas distribution mains accounts for 32 percent of the industry's total methane emissions. (source)That means gas pipelines and infrastructure everywhere to control costs and pollution, leading inexorably to more stories like these over the last few days:
2,000 Evacuated After L.I. Propane LeakAnother news story today:
"A cracked plastic valve on a propane tank was the source of a leak that sent thousands of gallons of toxic, flammable liquefied propane gas..." More
Gas leak raises alarm at Miami elementary schoolColumbia Missouri:
Miami Fire-Rescue hazmat teams responded to a gas leak Saturday afternoon at Silver Bluff Elementary School.
The situation -- liquid propane gas leaking from three large tanks near the school cafeteria... More
Gas leak by new parking garage under control sourceLittle Rock Arkansas:
CenterPoint Energy fixing Pine Bluff gas leakIt could be worse, ALOT worse, like the blast that wiped the homes and people who were in them near a transmission pipeline in the suburban SF Bay city of San Bruno off the map a few months back.
PINE BLUFF, Ark. (KTHV) -- The Pine Bluff Fire Department has evacuated one block bordered by 3rd and 4th Streets, as well as Main and State Streets because of a gas leak. source
Considering the public safety track record of most power generation companies in the United State AND their state regulatory bodies...
The natural gas boom gripping parts of the U.S. has a nasty byproduct: wastewater so salty, and so polluted with metals like barium and strontium, that most states require drillers to get rid of the stuff by injecting it down shafts thousands of feet deep....one would think that our everyday lives over the next few years, as the RUSH to 're-tool' our energy infrastructure intensifies with the typically concurrent lack of inspection/regulatory oversight (if only due to the lack of qualified inspection personnel), will become MUCH more dangerous.
Not in Pennsylvania, one of the states at the center of the gas rush... In Full @ Alternet
References:
The New York Times: "Utilities shift to gas-based plants as alternative to coal"
Wall Street Journal: "Utilities are increasingly looking to natural gas to generate electricity"
Financial Times: "Wave of closures set to hit U.S. coal stations"
Denver Daily News: "PUC approves retiring Denver-area coal-fired plants, switching to natural gas"
Reuters: "Xcel to shut or convert Colorado coal power plants"
Chattanooga Times Free Press: "TVA to shutter coal plants, turn to nuclear"
Times Daily: "TVA to idle coal plants to cut emission output"
Charlotte Observer: "Duke considers closing old coal plants"
Saturday, November 13, 2010
"They're Just Bastards" - A Tribute To Edward Abbey
”Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners.” -Edward Abbey, A Voice Crying in the Wilderness 198>
An interview with author and unwilling activist Edward Abbey [Wikipedia]
Phoenix Arizona PBS 1982, on 'progress', politics, the environment, and more.
[This presentation is 23:34 minutes. Pop Out Player?]
Download this video from Indymedia (Windows R-click, AVI, 46.2Mb)
Sources: Interview Part 1, Part 2, Tom Russell
A man named "Edward Abbey" came walkin' up to me
He pulled his 'Seagull' from his mouth said I smell lawyers here
The politician running dogs they crawled away in fear
Yippie doo rahy doo
Yippie doo rahy day
I wish Edward Abbey was walking 'round today
For the more 'Pacific'... Wendell Berry In Defense Of Edward Abbey
Documentary - Edward Abbey: A Voice In The Wilderness
Be like Ed
(Description... Personally uploaded to Archive.org. Download, un-zip, click on the file "inttxt.html")
"We aren't trying to overthrow EVERYTHING... ...but certain specific things.Business POLITICS Poverty, and Oppression." ~~Herbert Marcuse
Saturday, October 23, 2010
They Don't Just Lie About Wars You Know... Gulf Slick Spreads In Mississippi River As Coast Guard Declares 'Little Visible'
"MATTHEW HINTON / THE TIMES-PICAYUNE A boat travels through oil that was spotted in West Bay just west of the Southwest Pass of the Mississippi River Friday October 22, 2010." In FullHad Enough?
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Technocracy Responds To Disaster... This is what happens when BP spills coffee - Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre
Technocracy:
"A technocracy is a form of de facto elitism, whereby the "most qualified" and the ruling elite tend to be the same. These elite are selected through bureaucratic processes..."[src]
An Aside, from Dimitry Orlov, Socio-economic commentator:
The Chernobyl disaster was caused more or less directly by political appointeesm: the people in charge of the reactor control room had no background in nuclear reactor operations or nuclear chemistry, having got their jobs through the Communist Party. They attempted a dangerous experiment, executed it incompetently, and the result was an explosion and a meltdown. The Deepwater Horizon disaster will perhaps be found to have similar causes.
BP, the owner of Deepwater Horizon, is chaired by one Carl-Henric Svanberg—a man with no experience in the oil industry. The people who serve on the boards of directors of large companies tend to see management as a sort of free-floating skill, unrelated to any specific field or industry, rather similarly to how the Soviet Communist party thought of and tried to use the talents of its cadres.
.
.
.
Translate "industrial accident" into Russian and back into English, and what you get is "technogenic catastrophe". This term got a lot of use after the Chernobyl disaster. It is rather more descriptive then the rather flaccid English phrase, and it puts the blame where it ultimately comes to rest in any case: with the technology, and the technologists and politicians who push it."
[source, An American Chernobyl, Dimitry Orlov, May 06 2010]
This is what happens when BP spills oil in the Gulf of Mexico
(and elsewhere, like Nigeria, and other places you never hear about):
Feeling Powerless? Get Active!
Try Ecodefense!
This Book is Dedicated To Edward Abbey.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Word To The E.N.G.O.s, Supposed Defenders Of The Environment... Derrick Jensen’s Second Premise From 'ENDGAME'
"Traditional communities do not often voluntarily give up or sell the resources on which their communities are based until their communities have been destroyed. They also do not willingly allow their landbases to be damaged so that other resources—gold, oil, and so on—can be extracted. It follows that those who want the resources will do what they can to destroy traditional communities."
[Pop Out Player]
H/t: Stimulator @ SubMedia.tv:
Last week the supposed defenders of the environment, A.K.A. the Environmental Non Governmental Organizations or E.N.G.O.s, cut a “deal” with timber industries to protect a large chunk of the boreal forest.
On the surface this agreement looks good, but the entire deal was not published, only an abridged version was made available online. Some of the groups that took part of this deal are Greenpeace, the David Suzuki Foundation and Forest Ethics.
The one aspect of this “accomplishment” that they are not publicizing is that they struck it without consulting with the First Nations, the original human inhabitants of those lands.
As we face increasingly catastrophic environmental destruction, it is imperative that we seek guidance from those who “managed” the environment sustainably for over 10,000 years.
This short piece from “END:CIV” is a visual interpretation of Derrick Jensen’s Second Premise from (the book) ENDGAME:Traditional communities do not often voluntarily give up or sell the resources on which their communities are based until their communities have been destroyed. They also do not willingly allow their landbases to be damaged so that other resources—gold, oil, and so on—can be extracted. It follows that those who want the resources will do what they can to destroy traditional communities.Music by stig inge oy. and CJ Boyd
Sunday, May 23, 2010
'Grudge Post' Files: Greenpeace Sold Out Canada's Forests And "Nature Conservancy" Has A 'Posse' Of Corporate Names Too
About Greenpeace's sellout
(and they haven't floated a boat for years either, content with lobbying congress 'for the Whales'):
So a new management deal has been signed for Canada’s Boreal Forest. It’s being hailed as the largest forest deal in the history of the world. You can see the map above: orange will be ‘protected’, gray areas will not. The fragmentation seems to indicate a lack of wildlife migration corridors. Sounds pretty fishy already. Check out this article especially, and this one, and this from the NYT business blog.
21 timber and paper companies, the State and 9 NGOs are on board, including Greenpeace, which is publicly declaring this deal as a major victory. But many questions remain unanswered, like these from DTE.
And as usual, despite their having been here for at least thousands of years, no one consulted the Natives. Mad props to the VMC for breaking this.
“It’s a massive tomb, uh, tome that we’ve put together,” misspoke Richard Brooks from Greenpeace at the press conference on Tuesday morning. Only a twelve page abridged version of the agreement has been made public. The full agreement was leaked to the Vancouver Media Co-op on May 19. According to Brooks, it will now be presented to various levels of government.
“The Canadian Boreal Forest Agreement is essentially another huge jump away from democracy, towards corporate control of the lands of Canada, as well as the corporatization of what is left of a once defiant environmental movement,” said Macdonald Stainsby, coordinator of OilSandsTruth.org.
“I hardly think that this in any way represents an end to the conflict between the true proponants of the war over the boreal forest, which of course are corporations and First Nations,” he said. “What this means is that First Nations no longer have the support of these mainstream environmental groups... [In Full, With Linkage]
But this is a story about The "Nature Conservancy" and THEIR friends, along with a list of "Environmental NGOs" that aren't... "Environmental" that is.
Nature Conservancy's Corporate Posse:
It is a disgrace to ecosystems everywhere and the next seven generations that they pimp nature dot org as their official website. A quick look-see into the world of TNC and comprehension dawns. Their corporate partners in environmental crime and shame:Also see this Washington Post article: Nature Conservancy faces potential backlash from ties with BP
3M Company
Alliant Energy
Altria Group
American Electric Power
Bank of America
Barrick Gold Corporation
The Boeing Company
BP
Cargill
Caterpillar Inc.
Chevron
The Coca-Cola Company
Delta Air Lines
The Dow Chemical Company
Duke Energy Corporation
Eastman Kodak Company
Ecolab Inc.
ExxonMobil Corporation
MeadWestvaco Corporation
Monsanto Company
Nestlé Waters North America
PG&E Corporation
Plum Creek Timber Company
SC Johnson & Son, Inc.
Temple-Inland
Weyerhaeuser Company
Xerox Corporation
Scratching your temple?
Read "This. Is. Serious." Environmentalism is Dead
Friday, April 2, 2010
Does Buying Green, Environmentally Friendly Products Make Us Better People?
(When you hear the word "Green", someone is making $$$. This article also explains my local "Green" government's generally corrupt behavior: "...people act less altruistically and are more likely to cheat and steal after purchasing green products")
Do Green Products Make Us Better People?Source: Psychological Science
Consumer choices reflect not only price and quality preferences but also social and moral values, as witnessed in the remarkable growth of the global market for organic and environmentally friendly products.
Building on recent research on behavioral priming and moral regulation, we found that mere exposure to green products and the purchase of such products lead to markedly different behavioral consequences.
In line with the halo associated with green consumerism, results showed that people act more altruistically after mere exposure to green products than after mere exposure to conventional products.
However, people act less altruistically and are more likely to cheat and steal after purchasing green products than after purchasing conventional products.
H/t to, and more @ DocuTicker
Article in full
Friday, March 5, 2010
It's Different, But Not A Lot, In The 21st Century - 'Owens Valley Water Wars' Redux
For those unfamiliar, the Owens Valley outside of Los Angeles was stripped of it water early in the 20th century by covert means and overt political power plays. Marc Reisner's excellent book Cadillac Desert(short wikipedia entry) covers this travesty in excruciating detail and PBS had done a series of specials(wikipedia) based on the book. That series is no longer available (I HAVE written PBS' ombudsman regarding that but expect no reply.)
(I've discovered that Archive.org has PBS' very informative web pages, but NOT the video)
Cadillac Desert is a history of how the West got it's water, is still out there and is well worth reading. If you ever wanted to know where that hardboiled L.A. Private Detectve image developed...The Los Angeles water companies actually hired dozens of them to act as a mercenary army, harassing the residents and water-bearing property owners of the Valley.
The response was severe:
"Owens Valley farmers watched decades of labor and their livelihoods literally whither away resisted violently by dynamiting the aqueduct (for decades) that carried away their water 230 miles away to LA. In response, (William) Mulholland (Ed. the villian in this story with an engineer named Fred Eaton his 'Judas', although the glorification of the Mulholland name all over Southern California is testament to... something...) is reported as saying that he “half-regretted the demise of so many of the valley’s orchard trees, because now there were no longer enough trees to hang all the troublemakers who live there.” (click the image for the source)
For movie buffs, the events in Owens Valley were immortalized in the movie "Chinatown" starring Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway.
Go to any good book store and Cadillac Desert WILL be on the shelves. There is an audiobook torrent (monotone... not much fun to listen to) available from the usual torrent suspects online.
There's also a 2006 KNX Los Angeles special called: Water Wars! The Battle For Owens Valley (KNX investigative reporter Michael Linder takes you to the Owens Valley where water wars have been raging for century.) which points out that the draining of those water resources nearly a century ago has an effect on the residents of the region to this very day with toxic dust causing respiratory disease and cancer.
H/T: owensvalleyhistory.com
The history in that book is coming to the fore again as Californians see the disinformational headlines in the papers such as "Feds Cutting Off Central Valley Water"(San Jose Mercury-News about a year ago) when in actuality, the federal water subsidies that allowed the stripping of all the water from the Colorado Basin Aquifer and further, also facilitated the supplying of water to California farmers and cities at ten cents on the dollar were due to expire at the turn of the 21st century and most likely won't be renewed no matter what Senator Diane Feinstein, D-CA says).Here's a basic search on the Owens Valley Water Wars
Wikipedia's entries will suffice as a basic reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Water_Wars
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owens_Valley
Also see this reprint of a Smithsonian article @ Mindfully Yours:
California Scheming, MARK WHEELER / Smithsonian v.33, n.7, Oct02
If you REALLY want to get historic: Owens Valley Water Wars Reference File and Correspondence from the personal file of Senator, Joseph E. Riley, 1924-1938. MANUSCRIPT BOX 1883 California Rare Bk Collection location Offline. Contact California State Library No online items
Some 'elective' studies follow.
Here's a Worldwatch Institute article from 1997 about the already-at-that-time looming GLOBAL water crisis: Governments Failing to Protect Societies from Spreading Water Scarcity
More recently (March 2010 Grist via Alternet): Why Availability of Freshwater Is a Huge Factor in the 'War on Terror'
Despite "American Exceptionalism" and all that, buying water and transporting it is a VERY expensive proposition. Making war for water, an age old reason for regional wars and local conflicts, more likely to become a global 'solution' as water rapidly become a necessary 'extractive resource' for the West, except it's also a resource that the people of the area it's 'extracted' from also need... often for their very survival. The word is "BlowBack". If you don't know what that word means, click the link.
But, not meaning to deceive with my ramblings on, that's NOT what this "Owens Valley War" is going to be about.
In many converstions over the last few years I have made a statement to this effect
Decentralization of American society is the only way to survive the end of the oil age.
We used to have a "Wave Ram" in Santa Cruz California at the turn of the 20th century. It used ocean wave motion to turn a generator.
Now you could do that with specialized low frequency transducers like the ones factories mount on their metal milling machinery to computer monitor the machine's cutter wear and embed those simple low frequency condenser microphones into Mylar mats and float them on the Monterey Bay.
But if you cover the WHOLE bay to supply power a population of a millions, you'll have no more fish, or sea birds, and the change of water temperature would surely cause massive algae growths and weather change.... and those are just the first issues that pop into my mind.
There are already existent devices acting as latter day wave rams, but again... an array (for want of a better term) of this thing... or that... will NOT be impactless on the environment when scaled to the needs of a major metropolitan area anywhere on the planet.Sure, you can power a city with wind turbines, (which even energy hypocrites think unsightly) if you don't care that some hilly region down the road has no more birds and the residents nearby suffer the unknown consequences of long term exposure to subsonic sound radiation. Not to mention the HUGE increase in truck traffic and ancillary development in the area just to repair and maintain these high tech pieces of modern machinery
Of COURSE you can power a city by covering the deserts in solar panels if you don't take the collateral ecological damage to the incredibly damaged and fragile near-desert-by-theft environment into account...
L.A.'s New Scheme to Plunder Owens Valley Water, This Time with Solar Panels
Alternet
March 2, 2010
The city of Los Angeles recently announced plans to transform Owens Valley into one of the largest sources of solar power in America, outfitting the region with a massive energy farm that would span 80 square miles and generate up to 10 percent of California's total electricity output...
In Full @ Alternet
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
You're Gonna Have To Kill Someone For Your 'NIMBY' "Green"[tm] Lifestyle
The budget for the Pentagon's SouthCom command has increased dramatically over the last few years... and we're "Muscling Latin America"
Here's ONE reason why:
Most of the lithium is mined in Chile, Argentina and China and sold by only a handful of companies. Bolivia, led by the Anti-American President Evo Morales, recently discovered that one of its decommissioned salt mines harbored giant reserves of lithium....
.
.
.
...The United States used to produce its own lithium and REEs, but most of the domestic mines have closed because mines in Latin America and China are able to operate much cheaper." (and Lithium is one of the most toxic elements on the face of the planet along with Cadmium, another rare material used in high tech batteries. You wouldn't want either mining operation in YOUR back yard. Even if you COULD live near these operations)
The world's next resource conflict (UPI)BERLIN, Feb. 22 (UPI) -- The next resource conflict could be about minerals and rare earth elements needed to fuel the green economy, as China, which supplies most of the minerals, is considering limiting exports.
There is great hope for a green boom to transform the CO2-heavy world economy into one that is less dependent on fossil fuels and more sustainable. Experts envision solar panels and wind turbines to produce clean power and heat and electric cars to cruise tomorrow's roads.
The problem with these technologies is that they rely on minerals and rare earth elements, or REEs, which are produced by politically unpredictable countries...
...When it comes to REEs (Rare Earth Elements, needed for hybrid cars, wind turbines, solar panels and defense industry products), China is the new kid on the block. In charge of more than half the global reservoirs, China supplies around 95 percent of the world's REEs.
This worries experts: A single mine in Mongolia accounts for 80 percent of China's production, so an earthquake or a flood in that region could severely disrupt global supplies.
And don't forget a political earthquake. Recently, Beijing indicated it plans to reduce exports of its minerals in a bid to save supplies for domestic use.
China has a quickly growing green technology industry and its solar panels and wind turbines are already competing with products from Europe and the United States, so they increasingly need the REEs themselves.
The situation is similarly dire for lithium, which forms the basis of the batteries intended to power the electric car boom. According to the Hyundai Research Institute, 80 percent of the world's lithium reserves are buried under just three countries...
In Full
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Visitors To Auntie Imperial's News & Blog Review
Thanks For Stopping By
Posts
Auntie Imperial Says:
