10-10-10 October 10, 2010 + 350ppm

Yes, that's 10/10/10, representing today's date, October 10, 2010 and it's all about 350ppm or 350 parts per million.

Huh? Blah blah blahblahblah. Yadda yadda yadda.

I'm just going to give you the bullet points.

350ppm is the scientifically based target sustainable level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

From the 350.org website:

What is 350?

350 is the most important number in the world—it's what scientists say is the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Three years ago, after leading climatologists observed rapid ice melt in the Arctic and other frightening signs of climate change, they issued a series of studies showing that the planet faced both human and natural disaster if atmospheric concentrations of CO2 remained above 350 parts per million.

Everyone from Al Gore to the U.N.’s top climate scientist has now embraced this goal as necessary for stabilizing the planet and preventing complete disaster. Now the trick is getting our leaders to pay attention and craft policies that will put the world on track to get to 350.

What is 10/10/10?

10/10/10, today, is a day of "work parties" around the world - in theory doing something concrete to help in the war on CO2 - in reality, largely symbolic to get the word out about the problem, both to world leaders and the citizenry, and the urgency of working towards solutions.

There will be around 7,500 "work parties" today in 188 countries.

I'm reading a great book on the subject. It's titled "Getting Green Done" by Auden Schendler, the Director of Sustainability for Aspen Skiing Company. It may be the best I've read on the subject.

And lastly, here is the gist:

American represent 5% of the world's population, yet we use 25% of the world's resources. Americans burn more fossil fuel per capita than any nation on earth - nearly 1 million btu's per person per day, equivalent to 100 pounds of coal, 1,000 cubic feet of natural gas, 8 gallons of gasoline, or 1 lightning bolt of energy per person per day.

The fact is, this is not sustainable. Not in the long term, and possibly not even sustainable in the next twenty years.

The fierce urgency of now. On a global scale.

Combined with a huge dose of hope. But here is my definition of hope:

"Hope is not a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky. It is an axe you break down doors with in an emergency. Hope should shove you out the door, because it will take everything you have to steer the future away from endless war, from the annihilation of the earth's treasures and the grinding down of the poor and marginal... To hope is to give yourself to the future – and that commitment to the future is what makes the present inhabitable." [Rebecca Solnit]

Have a beautiful Sunday!

Flickr Link: http://blog.flickr.net/en/2010/10/10/help-record-101010/

Earth Day 2010 :: What is your Eco-wish?

[Foto by Alex.Tango.Fuego]


Today is the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day! Wow, a time-warp all the way back to 1970.

When I opened up my computer just now, the first thing I really noticed was this Eco-Wish piece from Vanity Fair Magazine. So I'll roll with that. I had planned to lead up to today with various environmental posts - and then have something that I could really be proud of to post today. But I've been busy these days.

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2010/04/earth-day-video2-201004

Here's VF's "Green Archive".


My wish for the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day is the same as actress Marion Cotillard [in the video above], for "Awareness, good sense, and love, because it is the only energy that will change things."

And Deepak Chopra's, that "we renew our relationship with our Mother Earth"...

And Dr. Steven Chu [U.S. Secretary of Energy], that "people around the world, will come together and begin take action with regard to energy and climate change..."

My wish is that people will begin to realize that recycling, ending their use of plastic bottles, increasing their use of compact fluorescent light bulbs, and turning down the thermostat, while these are a good start - that they are only a start, and the true answers to our problems lie in rather dramatic change in the Western way of life. And a huge part of that change is...

My wish is for the pace of this life to slow down, to temper our frantic, frenetic, arrogant and relentless pursuit of the dollar, so that we can appreciate and intimately know our magnificent Mother Earth, return to the deeper extended family relationships of the past, and have more time in our daily lives to come together in order to design and implement and forge a new, sustainable lifestyle based in love and tolerance, and not profit...

My wish is for human kind to acknowledge that we live on a planet with finite resources, and an ever-increasing population will only continue to tax our vital renewable resources such as clean air and water, arable land, nutrient-rich topsoil, forests, marine and fresh water fisheries, and ocean ecosystems to the breaking point - that we will acknowledge this, and begin to address the challenge of over-population...

My wish is that John Adams [The Series]; Food, Inc.; Baraka; The Beautiful Truth; Flow, For Love of Water; Coal Country; (and a few other documentaries) would all be required viewing in high school...

My wish is that we direct our resources - financial and human capital - into the solution of core problems, and less and less on the symptoms of those problems, all while ignoring the core cause of those symptoms...

My wish is that we focus more of our [human] energy and resources into education, and more K-12 education about the Earth and her miraculous systems - the earth and environmental sciences of Ecology, Biology, Botany, Hydrology, Water Resources, Renewable Energy, Climatology, Oceanography, Soils, Agriculture - all with an emphasis on sustainability...

My wish is for more people to turn off their televisions, read more, listen to NPR on a daily basis, and when they do have to turn it on - to watch PBS and the various nature/environment channels more...

My wish is for people to become aware that we are running out of fossil fuels in the next 20-40 years, that even coal and yellow cake (the raw material for uranium for nukes) are finite and will eventually run out...and...

My wish is that "Green" becomes less of a marketing gimmick for the few, and more of a real, substantial, sustainable lifestyle for the many...

My wish is for the people, through the government, will escalate research and development into renewable, sustainable, alternative energy and transportation technologies...

My wish is for the U.S. to embark on a nation-wide mass transit infrastructure development initiative...

My wish is for people to begin to understand that we need to be figuring out ways to use LESS energy, not create MORE energy...

My wish is for corporations not to have the same rights as citizens under the U.S. Constitution, and that they be held accountable for the true, full-life-cycle costs of their activities, especially as it relates to environmental degradation, globally...

A choice is before us today. We can choose to be remembered as the (few) generations who despoiled the planet within 200 years, for profit. Or, we who are alive today, and our children, and their children, can be remembered 100 or 500 or 1,000, or even 5,000 years from now, as the five generations who were able to come to grips with what our current path is doing and will continue to do to the planet, stop and take notice, begin taking the steps towards change, and holding our governments and world leaders accountable in the process, towards a sustainable and beautiful future.

That was one helluva run-on sentence. Five generations. That's what I see it will take - starting from today. Those who are alive today - the great-grandparents (get to sit back and watch), the grandparents, our parents, us (we, The Baby Boomers), our children, their children and their children's children - the next 100 years will tell - but we have to start today.

Go out today and grab a handful of dirt, rub it between your fingers, smell it. Crunch some leaves or grass up and smell that. Or smell a wildflower. Ride a bike. Sit under a tree and watch the branches and leaves sway in the breeze. Go to the nearest ocean and dip your toes into the water. Paddle a canoe on your closest river or lake. Look up at the sky. Experience our Mother Earth. Smell her, listen to her, lay your eyes upon her, and love her - today, and every day. She is our Mother, and she's all we've got.

Five generations. One hundred years. Starting today.

"Awareness, good sense, and love, because that is the only energy that will change things."
[Marion Cotillard, Actress]

Tango in the Dark :: Earth Hour 2010

Okay, not really. But I had to pull in my tango readers to another one of my environmental posts. Plus, Earth Hour 2010 [tonight, March 27, 8:30pm local time wherever you are] is too early in the evening for us to actually dance tango in the dark. Dancing tango in the dark/absence of light would be disastrous.

But this statement makes me wonder if there are not, in fact lots of people dancing tango in the dark, figuratively speaking. But that is a subject for another post.

Earth Hour is largely symbolic - in theory, millions of people coming together across the Planet Earth to turn the lights off. Symbolic of climate change, which for me translates into energy usage, or energy over-usage. It seems no one, especially not any world leader, has the balls to say something like "humanity is currently using levels of energy (from all sources) that are unsustainable over even the next one hundred years". In fact, most world leaders only talk about how we can/must produce MORE energy.

I don't want this to turn into a diatribe, or "troglodytical rant", so I'll leave it at this: One hundred years ago the world at large barely even had electricity - let's call it zero energy - unless you want to count horses and oxen as energy. Today, with the flip of the switch or a tweak of the T-stat, we don't even think about the energy we are using, much less the effects of burning those hydrocarbons on the planet. We can't even comprehend life without limitless energy. We can't even comprehend live with a 25% reduction in our energy use through conservation. People actually used to live without refrigerators and air conditioning in the not too distant past.

I'm not advocating this as a solution. I'm advocating it as a conceptual trigger to get us to start thinking about something between zero energy usage and current energy usage. Sustainability is the key word.

Sustainability. Energy Frugality.

How we get there is the subject of another post.

For now, turn out the lights for an hour tonight at 8:30pm. From then on, be aware of your own energy usage around the house - lights & t-stat mostly. There are other conservation measures we can all take - weatherstripping, caulking, additional insulation, sun shading, bring back the screen doors - again, lots of stuff that is the subject of yet another post.

You might also want to check out my post from last fall - "Brother can you spare 22 terawatts?" - where I tried to get my head around the energy usage/capacity/requirements for the entire planet.

Here's the text from the "About Earth Hour" page: https://www.myearthhour.org/about

Note that you can "join" the movement to show your support.

On Earth Hour hundreds of millions of people around the world will come together to call for action on climate change by doing something quite simple—turning off their lights for one hour. The movement symbolizes that by working together, each of us can make a positive impact in this fight, protecting our future and that of future generations. Learn more about how Earth Hour began, what we’ve accomplished, and what is in store for 2010.



Here's another cool image I ran across in my search for the one at the top of the post - a composite image from NASA showing the sunset over Western Europe and Africa, with the night city lights showing. Keep in mind one would never see something like this with the naked/nekkid eye, as it is a composite of many satellite images.

Okay, I gotta get my head around this...

Another blog post from my PickensPlan profile...trying to get my head around what Mr. Pickens is proposing - was proposing - when the PickensPlan first appeared on the horizon about a year ago.


Photo by AlexTangoFuego

This appears to be a useful resource :: EIA :: Energy Information Administration :: Official Energy Statistics from the U.S. Government ::
http://www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/electricity/epa/epa_sum.html

Total U.S. electricity generation capacity is currently at about 4,065 million megawatt hours [MWh].

Here's the breakdown ::



According to PickensPlan (info gleaned from the home page), wind turbine power is currently at about 48 million megawatt hours [MWh] or 1% of total U.S. power production. Doing the math, that would put the figure at 4,800 billion kWh.

So, for argument's sake, let's say total current capacity is at 5,000 billion kWh.

First and foremost, which I don't ever hear anyone talking about, is the concept of maximum energy production. Under the current state of "affluenza", it's all about more, more, more. We need MORE power, more this, more that. But we don't. Can we all agree that we can't continue building power plants and extracting finite resources infinitely for ever and ever until the end of time?

We need to come clean with the concept of using less energy, figuring out how to live the American dream consuming LESS energy.

So, given that, let's say 5,000 billion kWh is our max - the concept that we should never need more power than that.

Also according to the PP home page, the average American household uses roughly 10,000 kWh (per year). I backed into the figure by using the statement that "4,800 billion kWh is enough power to supply 4.5 million households...".

Keep in mind though, that infrastructure, commercial and industrial power needs are in the 5,000 billion kWh figure.

Now moving on to the dollars.

Pickens says $1.0 trillion for enough wind farms to bring the wind power proportion to 20% of total. Plus $200 billion for the electrical distribution/power grid.

So, corporate sponsorships with little decals on the blades of the turbines aside, let's start talking about where we are going to come up with $1.2 trillion dollars. Or let's say half that as a start - $600 billion.

The momentum of this movement will solve the land challenges - that is the easy part to me.

$600 billion...plus the manufacturing capacity to build millions and millions of turbines.

According to this article on Wikipedia - "Wind Power in Texas", "The Wildorado Wind Ranch is located near Amarillo and consists of 161 MW of wind turbines (70 Siemens Mk II turbines each with a rating of 2.3 MW). These turbines have the capacity to meet the electricity demand of more than 50,000 households."

I'm not sure of the conversion from MW to MWh, but if it's linear, that would mean it takes seventy one [71] 2.3 MW turbines to generate 161 MW of power. It seems to me from driving by Wildorado, that there are more than 71 turbines, but let's go with that figure.

We need 10% from wind (remember, I am going with half of the 20% figures to start out) - so 500 billion kWh. 161 MW = mega is 1,000,000 right? Kilo is 1,000. So 161 million kWh?

I'm lost now. Any engineers out there care to help?

I'm trying to figure out how many 2.3 MW turbines it will take to provide 500 billion kWh....? Let's just say that's a lot of turbines that need to manufactured - not to mention the manufacturing facilities that need to be built to do it. I'm sure the production capacity is not there right now.

Also, to get your head around the dollars involved, a $250 million dollar construction project is huge - like Coors Field (baseball stadium) in Denver. $4.8 billion is the final cost of the Denver International Airport - and I think it took 10 or 12 years to build it. So, $600 billion dollars is huge - the equivalent of building 125 huge airports.

So, now I have my head around the problem...did this help you at all?

Brother, can you spare 22 terawatts?

I'm dredging up some old blog posts from my PickensPlan profile...

I just ran across a good article on ReasonOnline by Ronald Bailey "Brother, can you spare 22 terawatts?" - with great "big picture" figures from Daniel Nocera, a professor at MIT. He looks at current figures, and extrapolates them out to the year 2050 with a global population base of 9 billion.

He also compares world energy consumption at three levels: 1] U.S. levels; 2] Western European levels; and 3] Indian subcontinent levels. I find this very useful in getting my head around the "quality of life" and "living standards" issues.

Here's an excerpt from the article:

However, Daniel Nocera, a professor of chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, writes a sobering analysis of the challenge of supplying adequate energy to the world in 2050. In his article, "On the Future of Global Energy" in the current issue of Daedalus (unfortunately not online), Nocera begins with the amount of energy currently being used on a per capita basis in various countries and then extrapolates what that usage implies for a world of 9 billion people in 2050. For example, in 2002 the United States used 3.3 terawatts (TW), China 1.5 TW, India 0.46 TW, Africa 0.45 TW and so forth. Totaling it all up, Nocera finds, "the global population burned energy at a rate of 13.5 TW." A terawatt equals one trillion watts.

Nocera calculates that if 9 billion people in 2050 used energy at the rate that Americans do today that the world would have to generate 102.2 TW of power—more than seven times current production. If people adopted the energy lifestyle of Western Europe, power production would need to rise to 45.5 terawatts. On the other hand if the world's 9 billion in 2050 adopted India's current living standards, the world would need to produce only 4 TW of power. Nocera suggests, assuming heroic conservation measures that would enable affluent American lifestyles, that "conservative estimates of energy use place our global energy need at 28-35 TW in 2050." This means that the world will need an additional 15-22 TW of energy over the current base of 13.5 TW.

Here is Ronald Bailey's conclusion:

Maybe Nocera is right that solar power is the way to go, but history teaches us to scrap the Apollo Project model for technology R&D. Federal bureaucrats are simply not smart enough to pick winning energy technologies. Instead, eliminate all energy subsidies, set a price for carbon, and then let tens of thousands of energy researchers and entrepreneurs develop and test various new technologies in the market. No one knows now how humanity will fuel the 21st century, but Apollo and Manhattan Project-style Federal energy research projects will prove to be a huge waste of time, money and talent.

I agree, we need to keep the Federal government out of this. They haven't managed to come up with a comprehensive energy policy, and they have managed to screw up virtually every aspect of "government".

Playing with math :: Carbon Dioxide Emissions :: MY MATH IS OFF!

THE MATH IS OFF IN THIS POST - SEE THE CORRECTED VERSION HERE

I was looking for data on total U.S. energy usage - something to validate the 5 terawatt figure I have rolling around in my head - when I ran across another troubling figure.

Annual CO2 emissions (from fossil fuels) in the U.S. are estimated this year at 5,981.5 million metric tons or tonnes. A tonne is 1000 kilograms or 2205 pounds.

I pull up a blank Excel spreadsheet to start doing the math - simple unit conversions.

So that's 5,981,500,000,000 or five trillion, nine hundred eighty one billion, five hundred million tonnes.

In pounds, that equals 13,189,207,500,000,000 pounds of carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere each year. Thirteen quadrillion, blah, blah, blah pounds.

I decide to convert this into units I can get my head around.

The curb weight of one Ford Expedition is give or take 5500 pounds.

That equates to 2,398,037,727,273 [two trillion, three hundred ninety eight billion, thirty seven million, seven hundred twenty seven thousand, two-hundred seventy-three] Ford Expeditions [by weight, not volume], a figure that's still difficult to comprehend. Try writing a check out for that amount! Ha!

A Ford Expedition takes up a footprint of roughly 110.70 square feet. Those 2.398 trillion Ford Expeditions parked side to side, bumper to bumper, would cover 9,522,176 (nine million five-hundred twenty-two thousand one hundred seventy-six) square miles.

Still meaningless?

Imagine the State of Vermont covered solid with Ford Expeditions - in one layer. Or, try Travis County, Texas covered 10 layers deep with Ford Expeditions.

That's just for one year. The annual amount will continue to grow each year to 6800 million tonnes in 2030.

Just figure we are adding another layer of Ford Expeditions to the State of Vermont each year. In twenty years it would be twenty layers deep. Travis County would be 200 layers deep, or 1200 feet deep with Ford Expeditions.

That's just emissions for the United States.

Ready to reduce your carbon footprint now?

Yeah, that's it, you got it - go ahead and screw in your little fluorescent twisty bulb thingies. Bring your cloth sacks to the grocery store and don't use their plastic bags. String a clothesline. Set the thermostat to sweat in the summer and shiver in the winter. Upgrade your old fridgerator to an Energy Star model. Sell your car and ride your bike. Hell, go ahead and sell both cars. Sell your house or condo and move into a teepee, or a yurt. Erect a solar PV panel to power your computer and tiny refrigerator. Tend your energy usage to zero.

Go ahead and do it, do your part. It still won't be enough to make a difference. Why not? Because there are five billion other people on the planet who will never do it.

Houston, we have a problem.

Sustainable Energy :: Without the hot air :: a book by David J.C. Mackay

My prior post referenced a link that MsHedgehog (thanks mshedge!) sent me with regard to someone running the hard numbers on energy/sustainability. The guy who wrote it is David J.D. Mackay, who is also publishing a book titled "Sustainable Energy :: Without the Hot Air". Mr. Mackay is a professor in the Department of Physics at Cambridge University.

The book is actually available free, in rough draft, in the form of PDF files (color and printable black and white versions) that you can download. There is also a four page Executive Summary.

7MB Color Version :: PDF Download

Executive Summary :: 4 pages :: PDF Download

Main Website :: www.withouthotair.com

And, he's got a blog.

Magical Thinking :: Tending Towards Zero

Thanks to LimerickTango for this link...

Some actual hard numbers on saving energy to digest...short and sweet...

http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2008/06/magical_thinking.html


And here is another that Ms.Hedgehog sent me several days ago...more in depth...

Heavyweight physics prof weighs into climate/energy scrap



My thought is that we all really need to be thinking in terms of "tending towards zero" in terms of our energy usage.

Here's why. I have a friend who has an earth sheltered passive solar house at about 8,700 feet in elevation in Colorado. They have a couple of wood stoves, some thermal mass for heat storage/release, and propane for the cooking range and as a backup heat source. It's a nice house in the Sante Fe southwest territorial style, with saltillo tile floors and stucco walls. Nice and warm and bright and cozy and homey. Probably about 1,500 square feet.

Their electricity bill in the winter? About $25.00. 100 years ago, hell, less than that - most folks were living happy, healthy, productive lives with ZERO energy. ZERO carbon footprint.

So, I know it can be done. There are lots of people today who are living completely off the grid. We've been brainwashed into thinking it's the American Dream/capitalist way to use energy - lots of it - more more more, better better better. More appliances (although more energy efficient), a wine cooler, a mondo SubZero, a snowmelting system for your driveway and your roof, blah, blah, blah, yadda, yadda, yadda. I've built some houses where the appliance budget - ONLY the appliance budget mind you - has been $50,000. We've been brainwashed and advertised into an economic system designed to separate us from our money. The middle and lower classes have found that it's been taking 110% percent of your income just to make ends meet. Hence the credit crunch/crisis/crash.

That's why people using little/no energy, living off the grid, have been branded as "strange", "hippies", "unAmerican", "pinko commie fags". I think it's actually the most American and patriotic thing you can do to try to conserve the Earth's resources. Walk the walk and talk the talk. I was watching "The Matrix" last night, for the 93rd time, and caught something Morpheus said. (paraphrasing) "There's a difference between 'knowing' the path and 'walking' the path..."

Think ZERO and you will be taking BIG steps in the RIGHT direction. We just need to get about 1 billion folks to start thinking ZERO.

Walk the path. Be a ZERO HERO. Hell, I might even try to sell some t-shirts.

Which also goes to this - one of my favorite sayings - by Ghandi - "BE the change you wish to see in the world..."