Showing posts with label "Global Energy". Show all posts
Showing posts with label "Global Energy". Show all posts
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Haynesville
http://www.youtube.com/haynesvillefilm
Release Date ::
Available now on DVD at www.HaynesvilleMovie.com OR on iTunes
Genre ::
Documentary
Studio ::
Three Penny Productions
About ::
Three lives. A nation's thirst for energy. And the find that could change it all.
PLOT OUTLINE ::
"Haynesville: A Nation's Hunt for an Energy Future" is a documentary chronicling the discovery of the largest natural gas field in the United States (and maybe the world - valued at $1.75 trillion dollars). The film examines the historic find in the backwoods of Louisiana, a formation called the "Haynesville Shale," from the personal level as well as from the higher perspective of the current energy picture and energy future.
As the Haynesville boom erupts, we cover three personal stories directly affected by the find: A single mother taking it upon herself to become an activist and environmentalist for her community, an African American preacher who believes that God delivered the Haynesville to make him and his budding congregation rich and a salt-of-the-earth outdoorsman finding himself conflicted as he weighs losing his land because an oil company wants to make him a millionaire.
From the higher perspective, we look at the current energy situation and what something the scale of the Haynesville (170 trillion cubic feet or the equivalent of 28 billion barrels of oil) could mean to the energy picture.
Environmentalists, academics and oil and gas folks explore the idea of trying to find cleaner energy sources and how this natural gas could possibly bridge the country to a renewable energy future.
Directed By ::
Gregory Kallenberg
Produced By ::
Gregory Kallenberg, Mark Bullard
Sunday, October 10, 2010
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/
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/
Saturday, May 8, 2010
A Basic Call to Consciousness
A little something I ran across whilst Googling to find out the percentage of the U.S. population [6% of world population] versus the the percentage of world energy resources we use [40%]...I'll need to double check, but I think we are a smaller percentage now, and use a larger percentage of resources...these figures were from 1978...gotta run...
The Haudenosaunee Message to the Western World
from Basic Call to Consciousness
The Haudenosaunee, or the Six Nations Iriquois Confederacy, has existed on this land since the beginning of human memory. Our culture is among the most ancient continuosly existing cultures in the world.
In the beginning, we were told that the human beings who walk about on the Earth have been provided with all the things necessary of life. We were instructed to carry a love for one another, and to show a great respect for all the beings of this Earth. We are shown that our life exists with the tree life, that our well-being depends on the well-being of the vegetable Life, that we are close relatives of the four-legged beings. In our ways, spiritual consciousness is the highest form of politics....
The original instructions direct that we who walk about on the Earth are to express a great respect, an affection, and a gratitude toward all the spirits which create and support Life. We give a greeting and thanksgiving to the many supporters of our own lives-the corn, beans, squash, the winds, the sun. When people cease to respect and express gratitude for these many things, then all life will be destroyed, and human life on this planet will come to an end....
Our essential message to the world is a basic call to consciousness. The destruction of the Native cultures and people is the same process which has destroyed and is destroying life on this planet. The technologies and social systems which have destroyed the animal and the plant life are also destroying the Native people. And the process is Western Civilization....
The processes of colonialism and imperialism which have affected the Haudenosaunee are but a microcosm of the processes affecting the world. The system of reservations employed against our people is a microcosm of the system of exploitation used against the whole world. Since the time of Marco Polo, the West has been refining a process that has mystified the peoples of the Earth.
The majority of the world does not find its roots in Western culture or traditions. The majority of the world finds its roots in the Natural World, and it is the Natural World, and the traditions of the Natural World, which must prevail if we are to develop truly free and egalitarian societies.
It is necessary, at this time, that we begin a process of critical analysis of the West's historical processes, to seek out the actual nature of the roots of the exploitative and oppressive conditions which are forced upon humanity. At the same time, as we gain understanding of those processes, we must reinterpret that history to the people of the world. It is the people of the West, ultimately, who are the most oppressed and exploited. They are burdened by the weight of centuries of racism, sexism, and ignorance which has rendered their people insensitive to the true nature of their lives.
We must all consciously and continuously challenge every model, every program, and every process that the West tries to force upon us. Paulo Friere wrote, in his book, the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, that it is the nature of the oppressed to imitate the oppressor, and by such actions try to gain relief from the oppressive condition. We must learn to resist that response to oppression.
The people who are living on this planet need to break with the narrow concept of human liberation, and begin to see liberation as something which needs to be extended to the whole of the Natural World. What is needed is the liberation of all the things that support Life-the air, the waters, the trees-all the things which support the sacred web of Life.
We feel that the Native peoples of the Western Hemisphere can continue to contribute to the survival potential of the human species. The majority of our peoples still live in accordance with the traditions which find their roots in the Mother Earth. But the Native peoples have need of a forum in which our voice can be heard. And we need alliances with the other peoples of the world to assist in our struggle to regain and maintain our ancestral lands and to protect the Way of Life we follow.
We know that this is a very difficult task. Many nation states may feel threatened by the position that the protection and liberation of Natural World peoples and cultures represents, a progressive direction which must be integrated into the political strategies of people who seek to uphold the dignity of Man. But that position is growing in strength, and it represents a necessary strategy in the evolution of progressive thought.
The traditional Native peoples hold the key to the reversal of the processes in Western Civilization which threaten unimaginable future suffering and destruction. Spiritualism is the highest form of political consciousness. And we, the Native peoples of the Western Hemisphere, are among the world's surviving proprietors of that kind of consciousness. We are here to impart that message.
Taken from:
A Basic Call to Consciousness, Akwesasne Notes, Mohawk Nation, 1978 (revised edition, 1981, third printing 1986).
The whole book is available on line at cinetopia.net, what follows is a summary of the book, numbers refer to page numbers in the book.
1 Male and female leaders chosen from clans, must be by unanimous vote. Leaders must possess both political and spiritual integrity. They are chosen for life, but can be removed for acting against the will of the people. "It is the belief of our people that all elements of the Natural World were created for the benefit of all living things and that we, as humans, are one of the weakest of the whole Creation, since we are totally dependent on the whole Creation for our survival."
8 Governments formed to establish tranquility. Not just law and order, but peace. Peace blends power, reason, and righteousness. People with the purest and most unselfish minds can have righteousness - when they put their minds and emotions in harmony with the flow of the universe and the intentions of the Good Mind or the Great Creator. Toss out thoughts of prejudice, privilege, or superiority. Recognize that Creation is intended for the benefit of all equally.
Reason is used to settle complicated issues without the use of force. Force should only be used in defense against force. 9 Power to enact true peace is the product of a unified people on the path of righteousness and reason. Five nations joined together, and their separate lands were joined, to eliminate hunting disputes. 10 Peacemaker assigned people to clans, and their relationships were so close that they didn't marry others in the same clan of another nation.
11 They created advanced participatory democracy, not representative. Peoples and individuals were recognized. So were folks who were not members of the host nation - as long as they observed the rules of non-aggression and didn't try to create factionalism among the people.
47 People in Six Nations saw that vertical hierarchy creates conflicts, so they organized society to avoid it. Lands were held in common to avoid conflict. Anyone who entered Haudenosaunee land was guaranteed safety. Universal rules about the taking of game. 48 Haudenosaunee have long term perspective, which sees modern man as an infant - the elders see the young child is committing incredibly destructive folly. 49 We believe that all living things are spiritual beings. We walk about with great respect, for the Earth is a very sacred place.
50 Euros began domesticating, herding, and breeding animals. Previously, humans depended on the reproductive powers of nature - now they took this power themselves. 51 First came pottery kilns, then ovens that could smelt metals. Iron used for tools to cut trees, made into charcoal, to make metals. Iron plow, pulled by domesticated horses. Fewer people needed on the land, displaced - rise of cities, trade, the end of the European forest. 52 Western civilization is on a death path, and this culture has no viable answers.
53 It is typically the nature of the oppressed to imitate the oppressor. We must continuously challenge and resist every program and process of the oppressors. 54 The Haudenosaunee constitution - the Great Law of Peace, is the oldest functioning document in the world, which contains freedom of speech and religion, the rights of women, separation of powers, checks and balances. Colonists learned this stuff from natives.
57 "The dispossession of the Native people was accomplished by the Europeans in the bloodiest and most brutal chapter of human history. They were acts committed, seemingly, by a people without conscience or standards of behavior." US and Canadian governments continue to deny genocide. 64 Euros stimulated conflicts between natives. Natives got into fur trade, out of necessity, to get guns to protect themselves. 65 Missionaries sent in, carrying message, splitting off individuals from families, families from villages, villages from nations, one by one. 74 Colonizers tell political histories - King Dudley conquered Smithtown in 1600. Way more important is techno history - agriculture, domestication, irrigation.
75 "The current crisis which the world is facing is not difficult for people to understand. In the Western Hemisphere, the United States with six percent of the world's population, uses 40 percent of the world's energy resources. The world's supply of fossil fuels is finite, and it is estimated that within 30 years, at the present rate of consumption, the peoples of the world will begin to run out of some of those sources of energy, especially petroleum and natural gas. As the planet begins to run short of cheap energy, it is predictable that the world market economy will suffer and the people of the world who are dependent on that economy will suffer likewise. The reality of world population growth is placed beside the reality of the current relationship of energy resources and food production, it becomes obvious that worldwide famine is a real possibility."
77 Liberation movements don't understand the problem - the need to become independent of the world economy. It doesn't matter if Death Corp or the People's Revolutionary Cooperative grows the sugar - export crops don't meet the needs of the indigenous population.
"It will be obvious to many non-Western peoples that it is the renewable quality of earth's ecosystem which makes life possible for humans beings on this planet, and that if anything is sacred, if anything determines both quality and future possibility of life for our species on this planet, it is the renewable quality of life."
78 "The renewable quality - the sacredness of every living thing, that which connects human beings to the place which they inhabit - the quality is the single most liberating aspect of our environment. Life is renewable and all the things which support life are renewable, and they are renewed by a spiritual element that connects us to reality and the manifestation of an eagle or a mountain snowfall - that consciousness was the first thing which was destroyed by the colonizers."
"Many of our communities are struggling against colonialism in all of its forms. We have established food coops, survival schools, alternative technology projects, adult education programs, agricultural projects, crafts programs, and serious efforts at cultural revitalization are underway." (published in Akwesasne Notes,"Rooseveltown:New York", 1978).
The Haudenosaunee Message to the Western World
from Basic Call to Consciousness
The Haudenosaunee, or the Six Nations Iriquois Confederacy, has existed on this land since the beginning of human memory. Our culture is among the most ancient continuosly existing cultures in the world.
In the beginning, we were told that the human beings who walk about on the Earth have been provided with all the things necessary of life. We were instructed to carry a love for one another, and to show a great respect for all the beings of this Earth. We are shown that our life exists with the tree life, that our well-being depends on the well-being of the vegetable Life, that we are close relatives of the four-legged beings. In our ways, spiritual consciousness is the highest form of politics....
The original instructions direct that we who walk about on the Earth are to express a great respect, an affection, and a gratitude toward all the spirits which create and support Life. We give a greeting and thanksgiving to the many supporters of our own lives-the corn, beans, squash, the winds, the sun. When people cease to respect and express gratitude for these many things, then all life will be destroyed, and human life on this planet will come to an end....
Our essential message to the world is a basic call to consciousness. The destruction of the Native cultures and people is the same process which has destroyed and is destroying life on this planet. The technologies and social systems which have destroyed the animal and the plant life are also destroying the Native people. And the process is Western Civilization....
The processes of colonialism and imperialism which have affected the Haudenosaunee are but a microcosm of the processes affecting the world. The system of reservations employed against our people is a microcosm of the system of exploitation used against the whole world. Since the time of Marco Polo, the West has been refining a process that has mystified the peoples of the Earth.
The majority of the world does not find its roots in Western culture or traditions. The majority of the world finds its roots in the Natural World, and it is the Natural World, and the traditions of the Natural World, which must prevail if we are to develop truly free and egalitarian societies.
It is necessary, at this time, that we begin a process of critical analysis of the West's historical processes, to seek out the actual nature of the roots of the exploitative and oppressive conditions which are forced upon humanity. At the same time, as we gain understanding of those processes, we must reinterpret that history to the people of the world. It is the people of the West, ultimately, who are the most oppressed and exploited. They are burdened by the weight of centuries of racism, sexism, and ignorance which has rendered their people insensitive to the true nature of their lives.
We must all consciously and continuously challenge every model, every program, and every process that the West tries to force upon us. Paulo Friere wrote, in his book, the Pedagogy of the Oppressed, that it is the nature of the oppressed to imitate the oppressor, and by such actions try to gain relief from the oppressive condition. We must learn to resist that response to oppression.
The people who are living on this planet need to break with the narrow concept of human liberation, and begin to see liberation as something which needs to be extended to the whole of the Natural World. What is needed is the liberation of all the things that support Life-the air, the waters, the trees-all the things which support the sacred web of Life.
We feel that the Native peoples of the Western Hemisphere can continue to contribute to the survival potential of the human species. The majority of our peoples still live in accordance with the traditions which find their roots in the Mother Earth. But the Native peoples have need of a forum in which our voice can be heard. And we need alliances with the other peoples of the world to assist in our struggle to regain and maintain our ancestral lands and to protect the Way of Life we follow.
We know that this is a very difficult task. Many nation states may feel threatened by the position that the protection and liberation of Natural World peoples and cultures represents, a progressive direction which must be integrated into the political strategies of people who seek to uphold the dignity of Man. But that position is growing in strength, and it represents a necessary strategy in the evolution of progressive thought.
The traditional Native peoples hold the key to the reversal of the processes in Western Civilization which threaten unimaginable future suffering and destruction. Spiritualism is the highest form of political consciousness. And we, the Native peoples of the Western Hemisphere, are among the world's surviving proprietors of that kind of consciousness. We are here to impart that message.
Taken from:
A Basic Call to Consciousness, Akwesasne Notes, Mohawk Nation, 1978 (revised edition, 1981, third printing 1986).
The whole book is available on line at cinetopia.net, what follows is a summary of the book, numbers refer to page numbers in the book.
1 Male and female leaders chosen from clans, must be by unanimous vote. Leaders must possess both political and spiritual integrity. They are chosen for life, but can be removed for acting against the will of the people. "It is the belief of our people that all elements of the Natural World were created for the benefit of all living things and that we, as humans, are one of the weakest of the whole Creation, since we are totally dependent on the whole Creation for our survival."
8 Governments formed to establish tranquility. Not just law and order, but peace. Peace blends power, reason, and righteousness. People with the purest and most unselfish minds can have righteousness - when they put their minds and emotions in harmony with the flow of the universe and the intentions of the Good Mind or the Great Creator. Toss out thoughts of prejudice, privilege, or superiority. Recognize that Creation is intended for the benefit of all equally.
Reason is used to settle complicated issues without the use of force. Force should only be used in defense against force. 9 Power to enact true peace is the product of a unified people on the path of righteousness and reason. Five nations joined together, and their separate lands were joined, to eliminate hunting disputes. 10 Peacemaker assigned people to clans, and their relationships were so close that they didn't marry others in the same clan of another nation.
11 They created advanced participatory democracy, not representative. Peoples and individuals were recognized. So were folks who were not members of the host nation - as long as they observed the rules of non-aggression and didn't try to create factionalism among the people.
47 People in Six Nations saw that vertical hierarchy creates conflicts, so they organized society to avoid it. Lands were held in common to avoid conflict. Anyone who entered Haudenosaunee land was guaranteed safety. Universal rules about the taking of game. 48 Haudenosaunee have long term perspective, which sees modern man as an infant - the elders see the young child is committing incredibly destructive folly. 49 We believe that all living things are spiritual beings. We walk about with great respect, for the Earth is a very sacred place.
50 Euros began domesticating, herding, and breeding animals. Previously, humans depended on the reproductive powers of nature - now they took this power themselves. 51 First came pottery kilns, then ovens that could smelt metals. Iron used for tools to cut trees, made into charcoal, to make metals. Iron plow, pulled by domesticated horses. Fewer people needed on the land, displaced - rise of cities, trade, the end of the European forest. 52 Western civilization is on a death path, and this culture has no viable answers.
53 It is typically the nature of the oppressed to imitate the oppressor. We must continuously challenge and resist every program and process of the oppressors. 54 The Haudenosaunee constitution - the Great Law of Peace, is the oldest functioning document in the world, which contains freedom of speech and religion, the rights of women, separation of powers, checks and balances. Colonists learned this stuff from natives.
57 "The dispossession of the Native people was accomplished by the Europeans in the bloodiest and most brutal chapter of human history. They were acts committed, seemingly, by a people without conscience or standards of behavior." US and Canadian governments continue to deny genocide. 64 Euros stimulated conflicts between natives. Natives got into fur trade, out of necessity, to get guns to protect themselves. 65 Missionaries sent in, carrying message, splitting off individuals from families, families from villages, villages from nations, one by one. 74 Colonizers tell political histories - King Dudley conquered Smithtown in 1600. Way more important is techno history - agriculture, domestication, irrigation.
75 "The current crisis which the world is facing is not difficult for people to understand. In the Western Hemisphere, the United States with six percent of the world's population, uses 40 percent of the world's energy resources. The world's supply of fossil fuels is finite, and it is estimated that within 30 years, at the present rate of consumption, the peoples of the world will begin to run out of some of those sources of energy, especially petroleum and natural gas. As the planet begins to run short of cheap energy, it is predictable that the world market economy will suffer and the people of the world who are dependent on that economy will suffer likewise. The reality of world population growth is placed beside the reality of the current relationship of energy resources and food production, it becomes obvious that worldwide famine is a real possibility."
77 Liberation movements don't understand the problem - the need to become independent of the world economy. It doesn't matter if Death Corp or the People's Revolutionary Cooperative grows the sugar - export crops don't meet the needs of the indigenous population.
"It will be obvious to many non-Western peoples that it is the renewable quality of earth's ecosystem which makes life possible for humans beings on this planet, and that if anything is sacred, if anything determines both quality and future possibility of life for our species on this planet, it is the renewable quality of life."
78 "The renewable quality - the sacredness of every living thing, that which connects human beings to the place which they inhabit - the quality is the single most liberating aspect of our environment. Life is renewable and all the things which support life are renewable, and they are renewed by a spiritual element that connects us to reality and the manifestation of an eagle or a mountain snowfall - that consciousness was the first thing which was destroyed by the colonizers."
"Many of our communities are struggling against colonialism in all of its forms. We have established food coops, survival schools, alternative technology projects, adult education programs, agricultural projects, crafts programs, and serious efforts at cultural revitalization are underway." (published in Akwesasne Notes,"Rooseveltown:New York", 1978).
Thursday, April 22, 2010
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]
Saturday, March 27, 2010
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.
Monday, November 23, 2009
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?
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".
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".
Saturday, October 24, 2009
Easy Like Water
Easy Like Water is a feature documentary about floating schools, solar power, and the fate of the earth.
In Bangladesh, solar-powered floating schools are turning the front lines of climate change into a community of learning. As the water steals the land, one man's vision (Architect Mohammed Rezwan) is re-casting the rising rivers as channels of communication, and transforming peoples lives.
More info at www.easylikewater.com
For me, stories like this give me hope that humanity can rise above the floodwaters of petty squabbling and full blown military action, eschew the politics of power for the power of the sun and the wind, and eventually find that the profits of lives and lifetimes lived are about community and family and friends, art and music and creativity, literature and education, and not about capital gains and living the luxe life. Human endeavor is not about money.
I, for one, remained convinced that capital gains and profiteering remain the root source of the largest environmental challenge this planet and its occupants will ever face. I hope that three billion of us can figure that out very soon, for then, the tides will change. Spread the word my friends.
Come to think of it, see if you can get the documentary shown in your community. Here is the trailer.
In Bangladesh, solar-powered floating schools are turning the front lines of climate change into a community of learning. As the water steals the land, one man's vision (Architect Mohammed Rezwan) is re-casting the rising rivers as channels of communication, and transforming peoples lives.
More info at www.easylikewater.com
For me, stories like this give me hope that humanity can rise above the floodwaters of petty squabbling and full blown military action, eschew the politics of power for the power of the sun and the wind, and eventually find that the profits of lives and lifetimes lived are about community and family and friends, art and music and creativity, literature and education, and not about capital gains and living the luxe life. Human endeavor is not about money.
I, for one, remained convinced that capital gains and profiteering remain the root source of the largest environmental challenge this planet and its occupants will ever face. I hope that three billion of us can figure that out very soon, for then, the tides will change. Spread the word my friends.
Come to think of it, see if you can get the documentary shown in your community. Here is the trailer.
Monday, April 20, 2009
The Long Emergency :: A book by James Howard Kunstler
This morning, I happened across this on the bookshelves in my office - I bought it a while back, but haven't yet read it. "The Long Emergency - Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century"
"If you give a damn, you should read this book." - THE INDEPENDENT
"This is a frightening and important book." - TIME OUT CHICAGO
"It used to be that only environmentalists and paranoids warned about the world running out of oil and the future it could bring: crashing economies, resource wars, social breakdown, agony at the pump. Not anymore...America's dependence on oil is too pervasive to undo quickly, [Kunstler] warns...In the meantime, we'll have our hands full dealing with...the soaring temperatures, rising sea levels and mega-droughts brought by global climate change. Not long ago, a Jeremiah like Kunstler would have been dismissed as a kook...As brilliant as it is baleful...and we disregard it at our peril." - THE WASHINGTON POST
"What sets The Long Emergency apart...is its comprehensive sweep - its powerful integration of science and technology, economics and finance, international politics and social change, along with a fascinating attempt to peer into a chaotic future. Kunstler is such a compelling and sometimes eloquent writer that it is hard to put the book down." - AMERICAN SCIENTIST
"Funny, irreverent, and blunt." - THE GLOBE AND MAIL
Rolling Stone ::: Article condensed from the book
Books.Google.com
Also note that Kunstler has a new book out - titled "World Made by Hand - A novel of America's post-oil future". I'll have to get my hands on that one.
"If you give a damn, you should read this book." - THE INDEPENDENT
"This is a frightening and important book." - TIME OUT CHICAGO
"It used to be that only environmentalists and paranoids warned about the world running out of oil and the future it could bring: crashing economies, resource wars, social breakdown, agony at the pump. Not anymore...America's dependence on oil is too pervasive to undo quickly, [Kunstler] warns...In the meantime, we'll have our hands full dealing with...the soaring temperatures, rising sea levels and mega-droughts brought by global climate change. Not long ago, a Jeremiah like Kunstler would have been dismissed as a kook...As brilliant as it is baleful...and we disregard it at our peril." - THE WASHINGTON POST
"What sets The Long Emergency apart...is its comprehensive sweep - its powerful integration of science and technology, economics and finance, international politics and social change, along with a fascinating attempt to peer into a chaotic future. Kunstler is such a compelling and sometimes eloquent writer that it is hard to put the book down." - AMERICAN SCIENTIST
"Funny, irreverent, and blunt." - THE GLOBE AND MAIL
Rolling Stone ::: Article condensed from the book
Books.Google.com
Also note that Kunstler has a new book out - titled "World Made by Hand - A novel of America's post-oil future". I'll have to get my hands on that one.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
On Design :: What is our intention as a species?
Here's a TED talk from Architect William McDonough on infinite, or cradle-to-cradle design. In it, he says the "design strategy" for humanity should be this:
"Our goal is a delightfully diverse, safe, healthy and just world, with clean air, water, soil and power - economically, equitably, ecologically and elegantly enjoyed."
Sounds good to me.
I had heard something about China burning up ALL their coal and using ALL their topsoil, simply to produce (clay) bricks build shelter to house their growing population.
I guess this is where it came from. It looks like McDonough and his team have developed and implemented a viable workaround - and moved the farm land to the roofs of the city.
It appears some of us are moving in the right direction, we just need to pick up the pace.
"Our goal is a delightfully diverse, safe, healthy and just world, with clean air, water, soil and power - economically, equitably, ecologically and elegantly enjoyed."
Sounds good to me.
I had heard something about China burning up ALL their coal and using ALL their topsoil, simply to produce (clay) bricks build shelter to house their growing population.
I guess this is where it came from. It looks like McDonough and his team have developed and implemented a viable workaround - and moved the farm land to the roofs of the city.
It appears some of us are moving in the right direction, we just need to pick up the pace.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Time for drastic action against global warming?...!
Here's a follow up article on MSNBC to my prior post on the 1,000 year effects of the last 100 years of burning fossil fuels...talking about the "what-if's" of the "do nothing" option...
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Deep deep doo doo
Photo by alex.tango.fuego...For the past couple of weeks, I've been thinking about an article (from 2006) I read in the New Yorker - letting it roll around up there and trying to figure out what I was going to say about it in here. Now that the scientific concept of this article is out in the media - the concept that the damage of global warming has, in effect, been done - I figured I would go ahead and write about it.
In less than one hundred years, fewer than twenty-five percent of the world's population has irreversibly changed our climate. Starting today, we could park every car, shutter every factory, and cease and desist the burning of coal and natural gas for our electricity, and it would take hundreds of years for our climatological systems to equilibrate to their natural order. The report in the media is saying one thousand years - but who really knows? It's definitely not years in scale, common sense tells us this. It's certainly not decades of recovery, but most likely centuries.
What's it to you? Some people might be tempted to say "Well, if we can't reverse the trend, then why do anything about it? Let's just keep on keepin' on." Harsher weather extremes will be the most rapidly evident manifestation. Bigger, more deadly, more frequent hurricanes born of a longer hurricane season. Spring thunderstorms that spawn more tornados. Tornadic activity in places that havent' experienced it in the past. Continued drought. These weather extremes will effect agriculture and food supplies.
Look for water rationing on the horizon, then entire cities completely running out of water. Dust bowl conditions leading to desertification of larger and larger areas. Acidification of the oceans. Continued reductions and diversity of fish populations. Melting of the Arctic ice cap. The breakup of the Antarctic ice shelf. Rising sea levels. Species extinction and the unforeseen ripples that will cause. The list goes on and on.
What struck me yesterday listening to this on NPR, is that if the industrialized world stopped everything today, it would still not be enough. The reality (which I've actually known for roughly 32 years now) is that there are too many people on this blue marble, using too many resources, producing too much waste, burning too much fossil fuel, to support a sustainable way of life. Sustainable as in the one thousand year time frame. We are short-timers, short-sighted, a short-minded bunch.
Are we so cocooned in our luxury high thread count sheets, so consumed with consuming, so involuntarily under the spell of avarice, that we don't care what happens ten or twenty or fifty or one hundred years from now?
I don't know what it all means. I don't pretend to have the solutions. I just know that somewhere in the last one thousand years, humankind collectively chose the unbalanced path. We choose the unsustainable path. We choose the path of least resistance, and highest degree of comfort, that causes the most damage. Most people are unaware. Some have their heads in the sand. Most don't or won't care. They'll continue with their pursuit of the almighty dollar and the American dream. I doubt that we can, as a global society, make the hard choice that are upon us. But then, I'm a pessimist.
Or is it evolution? Is this the natural course of things, of human existence on this planet, that we will be ultimately responsible for our own extinction?
I'm not the least bit worried about this economic crisis. We are just seeing the tip of the fiscal destabilization iceberg. What we see today is an ice cube compared to what lies ahead. It's actually a good thing. It's making us think about frugality in life. It's making us think about more important things in life.
There are bigger things that one trillion dollars to think about. There is the future of humanity...hopefully the human heart, soul and spirit will prevail...hopefully...hope...
Here is the article on MSNBC.
Here is the article, "The Darkening Sea", from the New Yorker.
Stay tuned for my "The end of life as we know it..." series.
Wednesday, January 7, 2009
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.
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.
Saturday, August 2, 2008
Brother, can you spare 22 terawatts?
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 to date, and they have managed to screw up virtually every aspect of "government", all while wasting our tax dollars.
Plus, they would probably give the contract to Halliburton and put Dick Cheney in charge.
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 to date, and they have managed to screw up virtually every aspect of "government", all while wasting our tax dollars.
Plus, they would probably give the contract to Halliburton and put Dick Cheney in charge.
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