Kyoto to Copenhagen... Any improvement?

Copenhagen is a beautiful city...one that was well prepared to accept the international delegates for the recent conference on Global Warming that had hoped to replace the Kyoto Protocols that have been modestly ...hell, poorly protecting our planet. So, did the world realize that our pollution was a problem and that we must act now to keep the impact of Humankind on the state or our planet from changing the face of the Earth?

The problem that Kyoto tried to address was climate change, and more specifically, the speed at which the earth appears to be warming up. The term Global Warming has become a battle cry... on one side is the group that feels man has made a mess of things and that we have caused the earth to warm at an alarming rate...melting ice and placing us on a road that will destroy our world...or at least make it damn near unbearable in most places... then there are those who feel this climatic shift is part of a natural cycle and that it is not really Global Warming, just a cycle and that the arguments presented by its proponents are not supported by scientific evidence at all. Remember, the US did not support the Kyoto Protocols.

So now we move to Copenhagen 2009... and again, but with much more animation, ask the same questions. The answers were not, however, quick to come...and there are many world wide who feel we have again failed.

The two largest polluters are China and the United States...followed by India and others... but these two super economies feel that they have to take their time to slow their carbon dumping in order to protect their populations from the impact on employment, especially in this recessionary time.

HEY....LISTEN UP!

There is only one Earth and we are polluting it past its capacity to survive. We don't have time to delay here. Kyoto did not work...and not it is questionable if Copenhagen has any chance of succeeding.

Now there were some promises. President Obama committed billions of dollars to third world nations to help them cope, and there was an 18% reduction here and later on a 25% reduction there... but not now and not fully committed. From my perspective I would say "Forget global warming...it pollution that we need to address"... things like air and water pollution must be corrected if we are going to effectively manage this part of Earth's history.

So what can we do? Simple... this is a Republic.... Talk to your representatives...tell them what you think must happen... we need to make real strides in correcting our environment or our Grand Children will not know Snow... forget the Northern and Southern Ice Caps...they won't even know snow.

OK...so what do you think...

WAUSAU, Wis. (Sept. 27) -- Waterways across the upper Midwest are increasingly plagued with ugly, smelly and potentially deadly blue-green algae, bloomed by drought and fertilizer runoffs from farm fields, that's killed dozens of dogs and sickened many people.

Aquatic biologists say it's a problem that falls somewhere between a human health concern and a nuisance, but will eventually lead to more human poisoning. State officials are telling people who live on algae-covered lakes to close their windows, stop taking walks along the picturesque shorelines and keep their dogs from drinking the rank water.

The shame here is that our farmers who are causing this could make changes to their processes that would yield real improvements here.. improvements that must be made or this tragic condition will extract a price that we are not going to like... including birth defects and potentially life shortening illness... even death...from the toxic reaction to these algaes.

The blue-green algae pictured here is proliferating throughout the North Central States...but is just as likely in other regions, especially as we see changes in our weather patterns. We need to appreciate that our actions will cause reactions. And we need to take steps to correct these issues... correct them through process change that eliminates the run off and prevents this from happening all together.

Antarctic Glaciers Melting Faster Than Thought!

A Look At The Antarctic

• Antarctica is a continent about 1 ½ times bigger than the United States and is surrounded by water.
• It is Earth’s Southernmost landmass, overlying the South Pole.
• About 90% of the ice on Earth is located in Antarctica. These are large, thick ice sheets that normally move at Glacial speeds
• Sea Ice Surrounding Antarctica roughly doubles the continent’s size during its winter.
• The highest peak on the continent is the Vinson Massif at 16,077 feet which is about 600 miles from the South Pole.
• Temperatures at the South Pole reach 140 degrees below zero Fahrenheit.
• Antarctica has penguins but no polar bears...and scientific research centers from nations all over the world.
• Together, all of the Glaciers in West Antarctica are loosing 114 billion tons of ice per year because of the rapid melting reported…this is much greater then the new snow fall that would replace it.
• It is also more than equivalent to the current mass loss from the whole of the Greenland Ice Sheet!

The oceans are getting bluer...due to a loss of Oxygen rich plankton, and deeper due to the Polar meltdown... we have little time to reverse this effect.

How big is a WATT? or...more important...a MegaWatt?

The United States has achieved a 25Megawatt of wind generated power...but what does that mean?

Is that a day...an hour...a week or month...even a year? Well when we talk about power generation we are talking about an hourly output, So when we say that we generate 25-Megawatts we mean that we have an average hourly output of that level ... averaged over the year...which accounts for high and low speed revolutions on the wind generators.

Now with that aside...what is a Watt? Simply stated in basic electrical terms a Watt is the energy needed to do work...and it is the result of Volts generated multiplied by the current flow reported in Amphere hours (or amps). If we are generating 25-Megawatts we have 113636.36 Amps at 220 average volts.

Well, we are getting closer...but is there a visual we can create? Yes...lets talk light bulbs...say 100 Watt incandescent light bulbs... if you have 25,000,000 watts and we devide it by 100 we would find out just howmany bulbs we could illuminate with this power source...

So 25000000/100 equals 250000 light bulbs glowing brightly...

Electricity consumption by 107 million U.S. households in 2001 totaled 1,140 billion kWh so you can see that 25Megawatts is not that powerful a source...

At 25GW+ we are number one wind generator, but...

The United States passed Germany in 2008, becoming the world’s number one in wind power installations, according to a report by the Global Wind Energy Council, while global wind capacity rose 28.8%.

“The 120 GW of global wind capacity in place at the end of 2008 will produce 260 TWh and save 158 million tons of CO2 every year,” said Steve Sawyer, Secretary General of the GWEC.

Wind power installations in the U.S. added 8.4GW of capacity, bringing the country’s total to 25GW, passing Germany, which previously held the record at just under 24GW, said the GWEC.
25GW is more than enough power to keep the lights on in five million houses.

The Global Wind Energy Council is forum for the wind energy industry.

This increased capacity came before President Obama, who has promised to boost renewable energy production, even stepped foot in the White House.

The report also notes that the wind projects finished last year, added 35,000 new jobs to the U.S. economy. This brings the national total to 85,000 in that industry.

So...is being number one important enough, or do we need to do more? First off, wind is a meaningful source of energy...but it has mechanical issues that result in lost power in both low wind and high wind...too slow or too high to manage the torque on the systems. These issues need to be overcome using engineering and materials that will provide longlife turbines.

If 25GW produces the energy for 5 million homes then our goal should be closer to 2500GW...and the power for entire regions. Next step...making it happen!

What causes carbon emmissions?

A wide variety of things cause the release of carbon emmissions into our atmosphere. Many of these things we never think about...like fertilizer factories and concrete factories...like the one pictured here.

One of the reasons we can clearly link air pollution to global warming...or lets just say changes in the weather...is that a great deal of pollution puts carbon into our atmosphere and results in CO2 suspension that starts the green-house blockage that we keep talking about.

Do we have to stop using cement? No, but we do need to find a way to trap that minute carbon burst that happens...and is so difficult to filter...when we mix the ingredients needed for concrete.

As the sky lightened this morning, blacks to grays, grays to greens...I watched with interest as the leaves became more familiar in my window.

Here we are in winter, with our days shortened...our occasional cool period...while much of the rest of America braces against the wind and shields themselves from what may be the coldest winter to recall.

Is this the result of Global warming or is this its antithesis?

And now you see why I focus on pollution and not Global warming... it is easier to define our situation of planet peril by what is making life more difficult, rather than declaring an irrefutable 'scientific fact' that isn't irrefutable at all. Many of our problems, no mater their long term impact, come from our blatant disregard of our planet and our willingness to pollute and let the next generation or the one after that handle the mess we have caused.

Oceans will not clean themselves, nor will the air be filtered in some mysterious way...while the Earth may heal through its natural forces, we need to help by reducing the ills that we have brought forth. We need to stop our polluting cycle...of casting off things and materials, waste and sludge...and stop expecting nature to cleanse the toxins from our soil.

Now is the time to solve our problems. Now, not later... if not now then perhaps never.

Scott

Supporting his platform

Our President is showing that he is committed to saving the environment...and I am truly behind him. Where do you stand?

Reports today suggest that it will take up to a thousand years to correct our global warming issues...Should we reduce the pollution that we suffer, or should we just learn to adapt?

William Wallace commented...

Every man dies, not every man lives!

So, how do PV Cells work anyway?

We take for granted that a PV, or PhotoVoltaic Cell will generate electricity...but how does this process work?

First we need to recall that energy can be converted from one form of energy to another...So just like Chemical Energy which exists in a battery can create electircal energy as a byproduct when the acid reacts with the led or carbon (wet or dry) within the cell, so can the sun's light rays create electricity when the rays cause the crystal structures of the PV to resonate.

Yes, that's it...the crystal structure of the PV Cell receives the light energy (sun light) and the cell is excitated (vibrates due to the frequency of the light) and it resonates, which causes the cell, which is wired, to release electrical energy in a very low DC signal. This energy is ampliphied through the use of many cells in a PV Bank of panels (Basic electrical theory here, Ohm's Law...) and by putting some of this structure in Parallel we raise the voltage...and then by tying these banks in series we raise the apmlitude. Oh, generally this is a DC circuit, or Direct Current, but we can take tap the circuit and make it an AC (Alternating Current) circuit through the use of a converter.

So the creation of electricity is really just a conversion from light energy (a frequency) to electircal energy and it can either be used as it is produced or saved to a battery system or put back on the Grid (commercial electrical supply net).

There are some drawbacks...like you have to design a storage system (battery) that will be able to support you during darkness and even poor weather. You also can't grow tall shade trees as they will block the sun from hitting the pannels...and preventing the sun from working with the panels. Shade will reduce the performance of the system by 60% or more!

And as with most energy conversion technologies, there may be some heat shedding from the system as these panels focus sunlight on their hearts. Heat, as a side effect, may reduce the effectiveness of the process...that is the crystals may work less effectively if they can't easily release this heat, so the use of pannels that are raised off of the roof or mounted in a stand alone pattern is critical to equalizing system temperature.

There are several types of PV Cells, but generally they are made of some type of Silicone, and then they are cut, treated appropriately, and wired to optimize their performance.

Following the Green

With about half of our nation bathed in sunlight everyday, and a significant section of the United States located south of the general snow line...it is a wonder that we are not generating solar power by the Triliwatt...let alone the Megawatt... after all, think of all those roof tops in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Southern California, Florida, even Alabama and Mississippi...

There are millions of buildings with many millions of square feet facing south...and most are just soaking up the sun with no PV generation going on at all.

But take heart everyone...there is a project that is about to get underway in March that will put Megawatts on the grid in Orlando Florida. The Orange County Convention Center's North/South facing center (one of three key centers in the complex) is situated to effectively exploit the sun and generate more power then other commercial sites in the Southeast...if not all of the US and most of the world.

But don't stop there. There are three planned, and about to be executed, solar farms being initiated in Florida by Progress Energy which will make Florida second only to California in the commercial production of solar power for the grid. Solar may not be the only answer...but it is one of the answers that we need to acknowledge if we are going to take hold of our destiny and generate the energy that we need to keep the United States in the forefront of World development and growth in the century ahead.

Are we on the right track? Have you told anyone?

These two questions are to you...

1. Are we on the right track?
2. Have you told anyone?

You see, we are on our way to a second Trillion Dollar bail out...and as we are not on the gold standard ... that is, as we simply declare that the dollar has value... well, that money is coming out of thin air and it means debt up to our eyes...debt that your children and my children will have to pay.

Not even in office and Obama is declaring that it has to be done... and he may be right, but this is going to be a real risk that we each will carry for several decades even if it works...

so:
1. Are we on the right track?
2. Have you told anyone?

You owe it to yourself, your children, and to America to come up with an opinion on the first question and then to go ahead and tell your President Elect and your Senators and Congress men (women too...not cutting you out here) just how you feel about the debt that we are about to enter into... and the debt that President Bush put us into as well...oh, and how you think it should be controlled and what it should be used for!

Take action now... be part of the solution.

Heal the Oceans

In the 1770s, when Bostonians threw bales of tea into their harbor, we believed our oceans to be pristine and that they could cleanse themselves. Mistakenly industrialized-man held to that thought and poured his waste into the sea.

Our ignorance began a process, one followed worldwide today, of polluting our waterways…and devastating our oceans with chemicals, heavy metals, toxins, and high-nitrate waste from farming and community runoff. We are only now getting the full picture of what we have done, and we have yet to take effective action to slow, let alone reverse this tragedy.

The earth held less than 1-billion people in 1800, but by 1975 we were at 4,086,500,000, and at the turn of the century we reached Six billion with increasing waste and pollution affecting our oceans. We project over 9-Billion sharing this planet by 2050…how much pollution then?

We no longer have the luxury of time. Coral reef communities are dead and dissolving, aquatic species are dying… we must act now. National and global action needs to be taken to stop polluting our seas. Not just treaty… physical action to prevent pollution. States need to act locally, Nations must enforce within their boarders and the Community of Nations must come together to clean our oceans and return them to health.

Simply put, as a vacation play-land, Florida can not survive without clean oceans. As a State, we must take the lead to enact enforceable antipollution regulations, and we must push our Nation to lead the world in environmental wellness by eliminating the discharge of human and industrial waste into our oceans.

Each of us can make a difference. One man can surly stand against the tide…if his purpose is true. Demand action from your State and National representatives, focus local authorities on eliminating pollution, reach out to our children and teach them the importance of environmental protection and don’t sit quietly by. Demand change now…

Within our lifespan we will need to feed 3-Billion more. The seas hold the answer, but only if we have acted.

Thanks Mr. President...better late then never...

Thanks Mr. President, the oceans deserve our protection and declaring specific ocean areas within the control of the United States to be protected National Monuments is a true act of conservation...it is greatly appreciated.

In fact this is not the first time that President Bush has taken steps to preserve a portion of America's seas by declaring them national monuments, so well done sir... our seas are beholding to you.

Now, lets take a look at just what we can do to help the seas and oceans heal, it's about time we did. And considering that it takes so much more to preserve our ocean born natural resources it is about time that we acted to make a difference. It is a simple fact, we can't make it for too much longer without healthy seas.

Vanishing Tigers...

The estimated world wide Tiger population is between 6370 and 8920 living in the wild. While these might strike you as low numbers…after all the Indian Tiger and subspecies are on the endangered species list… it turns out that some research facilities call these numbers way high…and estimate that they may be as low as 2000 and that almost all organizations working to resolve this problem project that the big cat population addressed here will be gone (extinct) by the year 2025!!!

In fact it appears that there are more tigers confined in zoos world wide then are free in their native environments. We are infringing on them through pollution, encroaching on their territories, and building in their habitat…and soon, like so many other grand animals, they will be gone.

Big Auto ... what do they owe us?

Al Gore (Gore tells Newsweek) doesn't want a White House job, but he does have advice for Barack Obama: Use the bailout plan to transform the Big Three automakers. As vice-president, Gore rolled out a billion-dollar program to pay for fuel-efficient Detroit vehicles—"but as soon as they felt they were off the hook, they pulled the plug and walked away," Now Obama can transform Michigan into a hybrid electric car hub, he says.

The price of Gas...

Here we are, its a new year and the price of gas is down...wow...that's great. So, start up those SUVs and let's hit the road!

There is very little in the Universe that is shorter then the memory of the general American population... in a crush one moment, then over it the next. But it is time to focus on the facts and to take steps into our future. The total amount of oil in the ground... that is recoverable oil... is less by millions of gallons per day...hell, less then millions of gallons per hour!

The world is a small place with well defined natural resources...and as there have been no planetary reversals...no new swamps and dinosaurs to crush and churn into oil...well...the total amount of oil reserves will never be more than it is today and therefore the cost of these reserves, when facing a normal economy, or one of growth, will increase as supply drops and demand remains the same or grows. Our current pricing of oil ...at around $50 a barrel... has been driven down by low demand and a higher then needed (competitive demand) production level. This is a temporary dip, not a longterm thing...oil is not renewable and as it becomes more scarce its price will most assuredly rise to the $100+ level per barrel again, and probably not too far down the road.

The only thing that can impact this is a removal of fossil fuels as the primary source of energy for transportation and reduced use of it for electrical power. If we reverse the demand curve for these fuels we will see a stabilization of price per unit as these resources are turned to meet other industrial demands, like the production of plastics and acrylics. Oh, the price of oil will go up, but at a slower rate and with less impact on the economic environment in developed and developing nations.

Our selection of other resources to meet our general energy needs will effect the price demanded for oil, and extend its useful life span by decades or perhaps centuries. Oh, and there are positive side effects to be gained... less pollution, improved energy supplies delivered by renewable fuels...and perhaps less global warming! And for the inventers and corporate bodies who create these new channels...there is increased profit and new jobs here and worldwide.

But with our memory so short, I guess we have forgotten the crisis... Oil is back and we have happy days...but watch out, OPEC is going to lower production again at their next meeting in two weeks, and again after that...so, maybe we should do something? Perhaps...