Things you all should know about energy and climate change.

OK , there is a LOT of confusion about energy. Really there is. Let me help you all out by explaining a few things in a way that isn't overly confusing.

First, global warming/climate change caused in part or in total by humans is BAD. Humans are contributing to this in part or total by digging up or drilling for carbon based fuels (oil, coal, natural gas) that have been locked out of the planets atmospheric loop in our soil and rock for in some cases BILLIONS of years.

Simply put if you want our planet to revert to the hot swampy largely flooded place that lizards used to dig on... burn all that stuff back into the atmosphere and be happy. I personally would prefer to keep the moderate planet we historically have had because it allows farmers to raise crops and feed us. Changing weather means failed crops. Failed crops equal war, disease, and famine. This is happening as we speak.

Once people get scared enough, which I hope should be happening say NOW, they start to do something about the problems. Solutions are usually easy and in hindsight usually elegant. This is really the case now.

Let's start with liquid fuels. We have become dependent on easy to store and use liquid fuels for our cars, ships, aircraft, and trains. Logically, when we determine which way to go with a alternative to petroleum based fuels we should look at which fuel is used by the most various devices mentioned. The answer is simply enough diesel. Ships, trains, buses, trucks, and yes jet aircraft all use one grade or another of diesel. Even some cars use diesel. This would indicate to me that the easiest transition for us to make that would effect the most areas of the transportation industry would be switching to biodiesel.

This makes sense for many reasons. Oil producing crops are a wide ranging group going from legumes like peanuts and soybeans to inedible crops that utilize desert wastelands like jojoba. In my mind however the biggest factor is competition for foodstuffs. When you squeeze out the oils, you are still left with most of the foodstuffs.

Unlike using grain to make alcohol, pressing the oil out of grains and legumes is already done. With soybeans, it is part of the process of making all those soy products. Corn, same thing... first squeeze out the oil. You are still left with the 80% or more of the foodstuffs.

They even have fuel cells now that run on nasty old diesel. No need to try to store hydrogen gas in your car safely to run a fuel cell. This would actually work better with biodiesel because it is a purer product. Diesel is just a group of hydrocarbons that happen to evaporate and condense out of oil stock between a certain pair of temperatures (between 200°C (392°F) and 350°C (662°F) ). It also includes all the other crap like sulfur that evaporates with it. Biodiesel is at worst the purified oils of certain specific plants. Much easier to use, and for that matter predict the performance of.

Since plants use the sun to make all this fuel, you are really using old school biotechnology to store and use solar energy in a liquid form. You are also doing this without digging up EXTRA carbon out of the ground. You are using what is called a closed carbon cycle. This is sort of like using rechargeable batteries.

With a closed carbon cycle you grow your energy source (wood, biomass, plant based oils) using CO² from the atmosphere as your carbon source, the sun as your energy source, and water as your hydrogen source to make hydrocarbons and liberate oxygen into the atmosphere. This is then recombined with the liberated oxygen at a later date to release the stored solar energy as heat and work. This is basically how life works on most all levels. We would essentially be putting our machines into the life cycle of the planet rather than working against the life cycles by dumping petrochemicals, ground source methane, and coal into it.

Diesel gets a bad rap for being polluting. The stuff they pump out of the ground with all that sulfur in it is nasty. Biodiesel is vastly different. It burns cleaner, they can use catalytic converters on it if needed because there is nothing in vegetable oils that would ruin the catalyst like there is in petrodiesel. You could even make injector control computers that recognized the different pure oils and would adjust for a more perfect burn. Stuff like that is what computers are good at.

So now we have done away with gasoline, jet fuel, petrodiesel. We have even done away with grain based alcohol that competes with humans and livestock for foodstuffs. Good for us!

Lets now look at how to get rid of one of the biggest cancer causing radiation hazard in the world today, and a major contributor to global warming. No, not nuclear power (which has hazards of it's own). Coal.

According to Oakridge National Laboratories (they know a thing or two about these things) if you live down wind of a coal fired power plant you receive over 100 times the radiation dose of a person living down wind of a nuclear power plant operating within NRC maximum allowable standards. The stuff coal plants emit are also nastier and more durably radioactive than anything a nuclear reactor is allowed to vent. The amounts are truly staggering. Coal is essentially low grade uranium and thorium ore, and burning it to ash just tends to concentrate it. There are of course other nasty heavy metals concentrated out into the ash.

Don't believe me, read it yourself at http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text/colmain.html to read the Oakridge laboratories own report. Coal is killing us. I almost choked when President Obama brought up “clean coal” early in his presidency as a positive thing. There is no clean coal. Coal is SO nasty in all ways it should be illegal to mine and burn.

So, what do we change here to make coal plants safer? Quit burning coal, and switch to a easily available alternative fuel. Biomass briquettes. Basically small “presto logs” made from agricultural waste.

Corn, wheat, soybean, cotton farmers (just to name a few) mow down tons more stalks than they actually harvest in product. If you tell farmers that you'll give them another $20 per ton for the stalks (which is half what coal is going for) they would be very interested. If you told them you would come and get it with your own harvesting rigs that would follow right behind their harvesters they would be ecstatic. You get around 8 tons per acre of corn. Easily you are leaving 5 times that amount behind as stock, cob, and leaf matter. That is at a bad guess 40 tons of usable biomass. At $20 a ton you are talking $800 an acre more profit for a farmer. Lets say he's a small farmer and only has 120 acres in corn. That's a additional $86,000.00 per crop harvest. I would let someone haul away my trash for that. Heck, buy it at per ton price and I will even plant crops with a higher biomass yield.

Let's get the farmer even MORE involved in the profits. Say as a farmer I sell my crops through a co-op that pre-processes the products. They extract oil for biodiesel production, then sell the other products such as soy flour, soy proteins, etc. How about as part of the co-op membership I get to re-buy the biodiesel at production cost? Better still get enough back to generously cover energy usage to grow the crop for free, then be able to buy extra as needed at cost?

Even hog farmers could profit from this if they raise corn, send it off to extract the oil, and have processed feed returned to them for the pigs. Then make the extra bit per acre from the cornstalks to boot.

That biomass can be pelleted or pressed to briquettes suitable in size to fit any combustion application. Power plants, home heating, factory boilers, you name it. It can even be “gasified” like they did in the old days pre-natural gas into what they called process gas to replace natural gas.

We really have no energy shortage. We just have a lack of will backed by a engineered lack of information. We can keep our lifestyles, cut out deadly pollution, and make ourselves permanently energy independent. Shoot, there is even money to be made on a grass roots and industrial level by shifting things around.

Taxes and the 545 people responsible

The article below is completely neutral ...not anti republican or democrat.

Charlie Reese, a retired reporter for the Orlando Sentinel has hit the nail directly on the head, defining clearly who it is that in the final analysis must assume responsibility for the judgments made that impact each one of us every day.

It's a short but good read. Worth the time. Worth remembering!

545 vs. 300,000,000

EVERY CITIZEN NEEDS TO READ THIS AND THINK ABOUT WHAT THIS JOURNALIST HAS SCRIPTED IN THIS MESSAGE. READ IT AND THEN REALLY THINK ABOUT OUR CURRENT POLITICAL DEBACLE.


Charley Reese has been a journalist for 49 years.
545 PEOPLE--By Charlie Reese

Politicians are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them..

Have you ever wondered, if both the Democrats and the Republicans are against deficits, WHY do we have deficits?

Have you ever wondered, if all the politicians are against inflation and high taxes, WHY do we have inflation and high taxes?

You and I don't propose a federal budget. The president does.

You and I don't have the Constitutional authority to vote on appropriations. The House of Representatives does.

You and I don't write the tax code, Congress does.

You and I don't set fiscal policy, Congress does.

You and I don't control monetary policy, the Federal Reserve Bank does.

One hundred senators, 435 congressmen, one president, and nine Supreme Court justices equates to 545 human beings out of the 300 million are directly, legally, morally, and individually responsible for the domestic problems that plague this country.

I excluded the members of the Federal Reserve Board because that problem was created by the Congress. In 1913, Congress delegated its Constitutional duty to provide a sound currency to a federally chartered, but private, central bank.

I excluded all the special interests and lobbyists for a sound reason. They have no legal authority. They have no ability to coerce a senator, a congressman, or a president to do one cotton-picking thing. I don't care if they offer a politician $1 million dollars in cash. The politician has the power to accept or reject it. No matter what the lobbyist promises, it is the legislator's responsibility to determine how he votes.

Those 545 human beings spend much of their energy convincing you that what they did is not their fault. They cooperate in this common con regardless of party.

What separates a politician from a normal human being is an excessive amount of gall. No normal human being would have the gall of a Speaker, who stood up and criticized the President for creating deficits..... The president can only propose a budget. He cannot force the Congress to accept it.

The Constitution, which is the supreme law of the land, gives sole responsibility to the House of Representatives for originating and approving appropriations and taxes. Who is the speaker of the House? Nancy Pelosi. She is the leader of the majority party. She and fellow House members, not the president, can approve any budget they want. If the president vetoes it, they can pass it over his veto if they agree to.

It seems inconceivable to me that a nation of 300 million can not replace 545 people who stand convicted -- by present facts -- of incompetence and irresponsibility. I can't think of a single domestic problem that is not traceable directly to those 545 people. When you fully grasp the plain truth that 545 people exercise the power of the federal government, then it must follow that what exists is what they want to exist.

If the tax code is unfair, it's because they want it unfair.

If the budget is in the red, it's because they want it in the red ..

If the Army & Marines are in IRAQ , it's because they want them in IRAQ

If they do not receive social security but are on an elite retirement plan not available to the people, it's because they want it that way.

There are no insoluble government problems.

Do not let these 545 people shift the blame to bureaucrats, whom they hire and whose jobs they can abolish; to lobbyists, whose gifts and advice they can reject; to regulators, to whom they give the power to regulate and from whom they can take this power. Above all, do not let them con you into the belief that there exists disembodied mystical forces like "the economy," "inflation," or "politics" that prevent them from doing what they take an oath to do.

Those 545 people, and they alone, are responsible.

They, and they alone, have the power..

They, and they alone, should be held accountable by the people who are their bosses.

Provided the voters have the gumption to manage their own employees...

We should vote all of them out of office and clean up their mess!

Charlie Reese is a former columnist of the Orlando Sentinel Newspaper.

What you do with this article now that you have read it......... Is up to you.

This might be funny if it weren't so darned true.




Accounts Receivable Tax
Building Permit Tax
CDL license Tax
Cigarette Tax
Corporate Income Tax
Dog License Tax
Excise Taxes
Federal Income Tax
Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA)
Fishing License Tax
Food License Tax
Fuel Permit Tax
Gasoline Tax (currently 44.75 cents per gallon)
Gross Receipts Tax
Hunting License Tax
Inheritance Tax
Inventory Tax
IRS Interest Charges IRS Penalties (tax on top of tax)
Liquor Tax
Luxury Taxes
Marriage License Tax
Medicare Tax
Personal Property Tax
Property Tax
Real Estate Tax
Service Charge Tax
Social Security Tax
Road Usage Tax
Recreational Vehicle Tax
Sales Tax
School Tax
State Income Tax
State Unemployment Tax (SUTA)
Telephone Federal Excise Tax
Telephone Federal Universal Service Fee Tax
Telephone Federal, State and Local Surcharge Taxes
Telephone Minimum Usage Surcharge Tax
Telephone Recurring and Nonrecurring Charges Tax
Telephone State and Local Tax
Telephone Usage Charge Tax
Utility Taxes
Vehicle License Registration Tax
Vehicle Sales Tax
Watercraft Registration Tax
Well Permit Tax
Workers Compensation Tax

STILL THINK THIS IS FUNNY? Not one of these taxes existed 100 years ago, & our nation was the most prosperous in the world.

We had absolutely no national debt, had the largest middle class in the world, and Mom stayed home to raise the kids.

What in the hell happened? Can you spell 'politicians?'

I hope this goes around THE USA at least 100 times!!! YOU can help it get there!!!

GO AHEAD - - - BE AN AMERICAN!!!

ps If you do the right thing and pass this on -which is entirely up to you - please do the right thing and highlight and delete any addresses you receive with it. Thanks

Water

Water is life. Scientists claim we are "carbon based" life forms. I beg to differ. All life on this planet is based on hydrogen, period. The most common hydrogen molecule in, on, or around us is of course water. I have heard humans described many ways, but the most physically correct description is "bags of dirty water". It makes up in pure form 55 to 60 percent of our bodies, and if you break down the fats and other hydrocarbons the percentage is of course higher.

For our planet water is the core of our cooling system. The suns heat/light is absorbed by the oceans directly, reflected by our snow/ice fields, and re-radiated back to space by evaporation/condensation in the water cycle by storms of all kinds save dust storms. These storms also bring life giving water inland for use by plants which make food from it, sunlight (we are all solar powered), and carbon dioxide.

Life uses water to cool itself, dissolve needed chemicals, move them around, and manufacture food in one of it's most basic forms (sugars plants make from water and carbon dioxide).

Everything, and I do mean everything, living on this world depends on water. Everything further depends on water "doing it's job" so to speak and arriving in predictable quantities for the area any given life form is adapted to. Too little water and you have drought. Too much water you have floods and glaciers forming depending on what the season is, etc. When the water cycle is disturbed, it is BAD for life. Period. No politician can declare it otherwise. No life can hide from the effects. Smoke and mirrors don't work because as grandpa said, the weather don't care.

Global warming isn't making beach life nicer by making it warmer further north on the coasts. It is warming our oceans. El Niño and La Niña are the most obvious results of this. The ocean cooling currents are changing to throw this heat into space. Since storms are the method that the oceans use to cool themselves, they change the weather. Wetter some places, drier others, it is a shift in the basic atmosphere/ocean patterns we call weather. Now I will state the obvious, this is bad. When you change the predictability of the water cycle in any way you make it hard for life to survive almost everywhere. It doesn't matter if you irrigate, because drought dries up lakes and water tables. Doesn't matter if you build levies, because flooding is happening in places that aren't predictable.

Places like China are losing crop land to drought and desert every year.  Places in the west and midwest that caused the 30's dust bowls are again in sever drought. Western Canada's grain lands haven't pulled off a crop in a long time due to epic drought. South of the equator, Australia (which is a dry place at best) is having a epic drought. I'm not making this up, google it.

Water is of course mostly fluid. You say "Hello Mr. Obvious, nice of you to tell me that.". Understand that is key to the next issue. Rising sea levels. The oceans are rising, and flooding the land. It is displacing people. You look at LA and New York and say "Really?". I say look to the equator.

The earth is spinning, this gives us that nice day night thing. It also tends to flatten out the planet into a nice oblate spheroid (sphere squished at top and bottom). The earth is mostly fluid, so tends to bulge around the middle as it spins. This is also where most of the "extra" water from global warming is going. Lohachara island, in India’s part of the Sundarbans where the Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers empty into the Bay of Bengal was one of the first to go. The interesting part is you can google this, but instead of ocean rising you have to look it up as "sinking islands". The islands are NOT sinking. Around the tropics and equator the oceans are rising far more and faster than in the northern hemisphere because of the simple rule plumbers follow when laying sewer pipe, water flows down hill.  Because of the earths spin and centrifugal force on a planetary scale, that huge expanse of ocean around the globes equatorial bulge is "down hill". Thus, the equator water will get deeperest fasterist. No excuses, no buts, physics. That is also where we are losing islands.

I personally think there are other farther reaching consequences. You change ANYTHING on a balanced spinning ball and there are always consequences. Period, physics, no mercy, no buts. Do I know what all of them are? Nope, not even close, dunno. That said, I can put on my tinfoil hat and get all weird on you by making a couple educated guesses.

First, it could change the very length of our seasons. Over a long period of time it could even out some of the wobble our planet goes through. Long term thing likely, but spinning thingies display some interesting behavior. Anyone who has played with gyros knows that one which is wobbling (precessing as the science folk call it) can with little warning suddenly straiten out. Suddenly for a object as relatively large and slow as the earth can still cover quite a few years, but the process would be very disturbing for us living on the outside of the dirtball none the less. Quakes, volcanoes, you know... bad things.

The next and more subtle change all that water (read also "weight" and "pressure") could do is break things. The earths crust and oceans are relatively thin compared to the overall planet. They basically float on the gooey center of the earth. The moon pulls a bulge of water (and to a lesser extent land) up as it orbits us causing a effect called tides. The moon roughly orbits mostly around the equator. The most water is also around the equator. The weight of all that melted water is (once again physics, no mercy, no buts) around the equator. That weight shift by my humble estimation, assisted by the moon's tides, is going to mess up the earths already cracked up crust. Apocalypse? Likely not. But the ring of fire volcanoes and faults all over the planet should get far more active. Oops, look around! Faults and volcanoes HAVE been going nuts all over the world in a increasing manner for over a decade!

So, water... that stuff that makes the highest mountains tremble with fear because only it can bring them down with it's relentless nature... the very staff of life... bringer of flood, feast, famine, plenty, civilization, and social collapse throughout mankind's history. I could write a whole (big) book just on the planetary social, political, physical, and environmental yin and yang of water. For now however I will leave you with this small snippet to mull over.  Let the migraine begin.

Ice cubed

All over the planet, with just a few exceptions, our ice is melting.  "So?" you say.  Well, not good.

Large parts of Asia above northern India, and areas of South America, rely on glacial ice for the majority of their fresh water.  To be sure, they have quite a bit of rain which would make even "dried up" rivers run occasionally.  However the buffer that held their water instead of dams and lakes was vast stores of glacial ice.

So, just to start with, losing our northern hemisphere glaciers will cut down on the reliable annual fresh water supply of vast land areas.  This will make agriculture to say the least difficult, especially for rice based cultures that rely heavily on water.

Ice also is white.  By it's nature it is a great reflector of light and heat.  Take away large areas of white (what scientists call lowering the albedo or making things darker/less reflective) allows the earth to absorb and convert to heat more light.  So losing our north polar ice cap during summer (when light hits it almost 24 hours a day) makes the earth absorb vastly more heat.

The ice we see is also not the worst to lose.  In the vast areas of the north there are huge frozen plains called the tundra.  This is earth so cold on average that even in summer it is frozen all year just a few inches beneath the soil.  This layer is called the permafrost.  Perma = always and frost = well, frozen.  Well, it isn't always frozen anymore.

The increased warmth and ultraviolet I mentioned earlier have melted it deeper and deeper each year.  Stuff, organic debris of all kinds, has built up in the north in that permanent freezer simply not decomposing for hundreds of thousands of years.  This decomposition has the potential to release more methane and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than mankind would ever be capable of.

So, imagine a freezer that has stored food and accumulated "stuff" for a few years suddenly the victim of a summer power failure.  If you open it after sitting a few days the rot and decay will make you wish you had thought better of the idea.

Well folks, the permafrost is melting and the rot has set in.  They are losing whole houses to sink holes in Alaska caused by permafrost melting deep under the surface.  Don't just trust me, google it.  The greenhouse gasses released by that melt and decay of OLD organic matter make the tipping point argument moot.  We didn't reach a tipping point in the carbon dioxide and methane levels as much as we started a whole new process adding to it at speeds we haven't even begun to correctly account for.

What is surprising about the ice melting at the south pole is the apparent shock it is causing among scientists.  More energy is hitting the poles during their long almost 24 hour summer days.  Hmmm, that makes things melt.  Wow, big chunks the size of states break away and float off.  Huge amounts of melted fresh water is tunneling strait down through the ice to bedrock and flowing away under vast thick ice sheets.

I wonder if any of that melted water is flowing into geological faults under all that ice and melting long frozen earthquake faults... pretty likely.  If the ground under all that ice shakes, with lubricating water flowing between the rock and ice, will vast sheets of ice slide down hill into the ocean?  Maybe.  Would that be bad?  Am I going to buy land in Florida in the near future?  No, I think not.  A shack in any quaint coastal fishing village?  Nope.

Well, enough about ice.  I might not sleep tonight very well.

First and most worrisome issue, UV (Ultraviolet)

Back in the day, before global warming stole the headlines, people were worried about the ozone layer. CFC's had been spewed into the atmosphere by leaky air conditioning units (home and car), spray cans that used it as a nice chemically neutral propellant for lovely modern conveniences like hair spray, cheese whiz, and anything else they could possibly push out a nozzle.

Realistically that has not changed a bit. The ozone layer is still depleting. CFC's take time to make it up there, and they figured that we would not peak in ozone depletion until 2012. After that point, it would take over 50 years for the damage to start diminishing. So, all told, we are looking at 53 years of peak ozone depletion in our future, before it even begins to lower.

Now I will explain a few simple things about ultraviolet light/radiation. First, it carries with it far more raw energy than visible or infrared light. The comparison is, if a lumen of infrared were to equal a AA battery in energy the same amount of ultraviolet would equal a car battery. So, a little bit of ultraviolet goes a long way.

So, now when I talk about ozone depletion letting say 15% more ultraviolet get to the ground you should understand that the sun would have to get a LOT brighter in the visible light range to equal that 15%. Now, you have to understand that when light hits something it gets either reflected, or absorbed. Ultraviolet has a third available function as anyone who has seen florescent art knows, it can have its frequency changed into visible or other frequencies. So, just like any other energy, it doesn't just vanish it gets changed into infrared after a few shifts. So, you get heat.

Now, anyone from the coasts know that you can still get a sunburn on a cloudy or foggy day since the UV just cuts right through water vapor. It also penetrates the first few feet of water, heating our lakes, oceans, and ice sheets deeper than the other light hitting it.

Now, you know why the ice sheets have been going away faster than scientists can account for it. The biggest holes in the ozone layer are at the poles. This is one reason why the poles have shown more heating than the equator. There are other reasons, but this is a major one.

If you apply this to the equator, you see why the land temperature has stayed pretty stable, yet the oceans are warming alarmingly.

So, since I don't want to put anyone to sleep with excessive information I will leave this particular subject and move on to the next. I might refer back to here since everything is tied together in this world, but now you have the basic UV lowdown.

Global warming, global cooling, ozone depletion, desertification, environmental tipping points and many more issues are worrying folks all over the planet. Rightly so. We as the human race have for the last 661 or so years have been on a upward spiral of population growth and industrialization.

Let me put that in perspective for everyone. Around 1348 AD a major change in how humanity was managed came around. The Black Plague swept through Europe and the Middle East wiping out 25% to 50% of the human population on average, in some isolated places the death tolls were in excess of 90%. Most of the deaths occurred in dense population centers (cities and densely populated rural areas).

To fill in for now dead monks, the church began teaching laymen to read and write. Next up came the movable type press, books, information and the industrial revolution.

We have been consuming as if there is no limit to our resources. Cutting down forests, digging and burning coal, pumping oil out of the ground and burning it as if that was a good idea. All of this has led us to a point where we have gone past a number of environmental tipping points.

In this blog I will attempt to explain a bit of this to you all in ways that should allow you to knit it all together. The essential part of this is that change has gotten to the point that one way or another we are in trouble.

Ask a farmer what he calls "bad weather". He will usually tell you that bad weather is any type that keeps him from bringing off the crop he happens to grow. No matter which way climate change goes in YOUR area change is bad. If it suddenly gets drier, bad. Wetter, bad. Colder, bad. Climate change will be different for any given area, and even any given season.

So, what it all boils down to is the weather is getting bad already. Farmers are having issues pulling a crop off now as you read this. You see it in the news every day. What you don't see is reporting on the global effects on food supplies. For some reason American news services seem to not be reporting the food riots, failed crops, and extended droughts currently occurring all over the world.

In any case, I will try to compile here what the changes are and how they relate to the over all changes.