Clean & Green
« Older Entries | Newer Entries »Don’t Worry, BP Happy!
[ Add A Comment ]Posted on February 22, 2011 by admin in Clean & Green
Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011Solar Power? Plastic Bags? The Oil In The Gulf? A roundup of clean and green topics you don’t have to be worried about, or already aren’t.
One of the hardest things about being an environmental activist must be keeping up with whatever it is that you’re supposed to be being active about. First the world’s heating up. Then it’s not. Then it is again. And now, after several years of alarm about the perils of plastic bags – at least a dozen countries have banned them outright according to the single serving site called which countries have banned plastic bags.blogspot.com – the UK environment agency has some pending report saying they’re not so bad after all. Their report focuses on carbon footprint issues though, and curiously overlooks other key issues. One of which is that we use at least a half billion of the things a year, and they have a predicted lifespan of (at the very minimum) a couple hundred years. Another of which is that in many countries the issue is as much related to health or simple aesthetics. When I was in Kenya a few years ago for instance, you could always tell when you were nearing a town, because the plastic bag litter density seemed to increase proportionately with your distance from the town center. So would you like paper, or plastic? Well, you’ll have more time to ponder that now, because according to Ray Kurzweil, you also no longer have to worry about solar energy progress. We’ll be all set in twenty years. Which is good, because in the same article, he also says we’re gonna live forever. And forever is long enough to watch a lot of flip-flops on oil spill concerns. Because you know that Deepwater spill you stopped worrying about? You can start again. About the only positive turnabout recently was on pharmaceuticals in the water supply. No, the problem hasn’t gone away, but now at least it’s okay if there’s Ecstasy in it. Maybe it’s time someone raised a stink about that whole methane assprint of cow farts thing again. It’s been a while.
Is It Hot In Here? Or Is It Just 97% Of Scientists?
[ Add A Comment ]Posted on February 9, 2011 by admin in Clean & Green
Wednesday, February 9th, 2011I’ve finally given up on being even slightly tolerant of climate change denial. Bring it. I will shred you. And toss you from the shores of Tuvalu.
Recently, I made a big mistake in how I framed some thoughts on the politics and terminology of “global warming”. I suggested there was some wiggle room regarding what the exact cause of ALL climate change over the last century might be. It seemed reasonable to accept the idea that we can’t know with ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY how important the impact of industry has been on climate change, and perhaps more importantly, that maybe we needed to stop calling it “global warming”, simply as a political strategy. There are, after all, a bunch of scientists who question man’s influence on climate change. But after a lot of dialogue (mostly with some otherwise intelligent friends who work in energy) and a little more light research, I now realize that there’s some truth to the old adage “give them an inch and they’ll take a mile”, and in this case, it’s more like “give them 3% and they’ll destroy all organic life on Earth”. There’s just no being reasonable with climate change deniers any more; virtually all of them need a good bitchslappin’ with the facts, and some duct tape applied to the mouths of those who won’t just shut up about it and face the unavoidable facts. And here’s where you can find them. The facts, I mean. Not the deniers. How about NASA? They don’t call them “rocket scientists” for nothing, you know. If you want to deny global warming, I’ll be glad to listen to you. As soon as you send a man to the Moon and back. Until then, please shut the fuck up. And how about the Union of Concerned Scientists? Their board is comprised of top scientists from academia, government, AND the private sector, many of them educated at schools like Harvard, Cornell, and Columbia University. So after you send that man to the moon and back, I wanna see at least three PhD’s too. Oh, and for those of you who are tired of listening to these weathertards, and need some simple retorts to their ignorant claims, try How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic or Skeptic Arguments and What the Science Says, which between them list over 200 arguments, in language simple enough for even the most persistently ignorant to understand. And if that’s not enough, even Prince Charles is calling shenanigans, and he’s next in line for the bloody throne of England, for cryin’ out loud. Hardly what you’d call liberal treehugger material. We need to keep this idiotic tide at bay. I’d like to visit Tuvalu some day.
Unlimited Oil Supply From A Bacterium?
[ Add A Comment ]Posted on January 19, 2011 by admin in Clean & Green
Wednesday, January 19th, 2011A biotech firm has patented a bacterium that essentially consumes carbon dioxide, water, and sunlight, and excretes fossil fuels. But is an unlimited supply of fossil fuels the way to a cleaner, more efficient future?
A friend once told me that he used to work in a warehouse, and one day all the guys he worked with were sitting around talking about what they would do if they won the lotto. They started making jabs at each other, joking about really expensive things they would do to mess up each others’ work day. Eventually, with no sense of irony or humor whatsoever, one of the guys said “Yeah? Well I’d buy my OWN damn hi-lo so I wouldn’t have to share it with you jerks anymore”. This story sprang to mind the other day when I read that a biotech firm called Joule Unlimited received a patent last fall for genetically modified E. coli bacteria that needs only sunlight, carbon dioxide and water to enable it to excrete ethanol or hydrocarbon fuel. You read that right. A germ that lives on CO2, water and sunlight, and craps gasoline. Of course, it’s not that simple; there’s still a need to refine the compounds it excretes into usable fuels, but the company claims that once production is established, it will be able to produce 20,000 gallons of biofuel per acre per year, at a price that is competitive with conventional fossil fuels. To frame this in way that one can more easily visualize, they claim that they would be able to provide for all of the United States’ fuel needs annually in an area the size of the Texas panhandle. Okay. Who knows if this is actually true; we hear about some kind of miracle solution to the world’s energy problems about every year or so. But assuming it is true, WHY ON EARTH would you focus this kind of engineering genius and the resources required to create AN ENDLESS SUPPLY OF FOSSIL FUEL? To me it sounds a lot like that guy at the warehouse. The idea that using just sunlight, CO2 and water, we can create usable energy is kind of miraculous, isn’t it? I mean, except for the part where that energy eventually comes from petroleum again, which could create the pollution that blocks the sun that….oh, never mind. I’m no engineer, but it seems to me that the road to a cleaner, more efficient future wouldn’t be paved with a limitless supply of oil. Feel free to enlighten me if I’m spewing a geyser of ignorance here.
BP Makes Ugly Oil Spill Stains Disappear With Magical Corexit
[ 3 Comments ]Posted on January 13, 2011 by admin in Clean & Green
Thursday, January 13th, 2011No one knows the long-term effects of Corexit, the toxic dispersant used to clean up the Deepwater Oil Spill, but one short-term effect seems to be invisibility in the media.
 This is part two of our Gulf Oil Spill Weather Report . The forecast still calls for widely scattered blamestorming, with high-pressure greenwashing continuing through 2050. |
After spending about an hour looking for information on the long-term effects of Corexit, the dispersant used during the BP Deepwater oil spill in the gulf last year, I’m convinced that it not only does a great job of making oil disappear from sight, it also magically leaves few traces of itself in the media. The unfortunate thing about the fact that it does such a great job of making oil disappear from sight is that it apparently accomplishes this by just shoving it underwater, making it nearly impossible to ascertain its effects on human or sea life. Which in my view, makes it more of a public relations tool than an oil cleanup tool. I’ve been perplexed for some time about why – after being told to stop by the EPA to stop using it – that BP chose to dump over a million gallons of a substance known to be horrifically toxic into the gulf, especially when there were more effective, less toxic options available. Well, the fact that the company that makes Corexit was started by Exxon, meaning the shareholders of both the energy company that caused the spill and the company tasked with cleaning it up would profit certainly explains part of it. But another critical part of why BP was probably so emphatic about using it was simple PR. No one seems know what the long-term effects of Corexit are, nor do they seem to know what the long term effects of oil on the ocean bottom are. I guess we’ll be finding out in the coming years, because that’s where a lot of it remains. I can’t imagine oil on the ocean bottom is a good thing; last I knew, the bottom of the ocean was still directly connected to the top of it by a bunch of water. Part of Corexit’s disappearing act was made possible by the fact that Nalco, the company that makes it, was way ahead in the PR game, plucking the best of DC’s revolving door lobbyist talent way back in June. And it’s interesting to note that one of the key points in the government’s Oil Spill Commission report on the disaster highlights one very significant fact – not only do the agencies assigned to regulating oil drilling lack the teeth to enforce any useful safeguards, they’re out-gunned and out-financed by an industry that is magnitudes ahead of them in technology and knowledge as well. The first video production from the commission’s report is below; it views a bit like a damage control piece for US regulatory agencies. Read the rest of this entry »
Global Warming And Ebola Economics
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on January 2, 2011 by admin in Clean & Green
Sunday, January 2nd, 2011I don’t mind all this global warming stuff as long as the air doesn’t stink. I just don’t understand why Democrats hate science and Republicans love filthy air so much
Some of my views on environmental issues tend to vex my liberal treehugger friends, and cause my more conservative friends to chuckle, thinking that I’m somehow “on their side”. At the heart of this occasional confusion between me and my friends is the issue of the nearly-useless term “global warming”. I say “nearly-useless” because the term has become so politicized as to be rendered devoid of any clear meaning. This little rift became apparent recently when a liberal friend shared the startling image at left, which shows the arctic sea ice at the north pole over nearly thirty years, from September 1979 to September 2007. As you can see, there’s been a rather shocking loss of arctic sea ice! Things like this are the most obvious irrefutable evidence that the Earth is getting warmer, and one can only conclude that someone who claims otherwise has either not done their research, or is an utter moron. Or of course, a liar with vested interests. What got my friends going recently was the fact that I said I wouldn’t mind some global warming if it ended winters in Michigan, because then I would not only not have to move, but Michigan’s sputtering economy could enjoy explosive revenue growth from its hundreds of miles of suddenly-warm-enough beaches. Adding that the Earth is going to warm up someday anyway, so it might as well be now. This little bit of semi-serious humor started a debate that went on for some time, mostly because someone used the term “global warming”. Someone whom I must hasten to remind you was not me. You see, I’m not convinced that the industrial revolution and the last century’s air pollution are the only cause of the Earth warming up. We had an ice age without man-made pollution, and the planet has gone through plenty of other dramatic changes without the help of the combustion engine and coal-generated electricity. But that doesn’t mean I don’t think that the energy or motor industries shouldn’t be heavily regulated to control emissions. In my opinion the big mistake on this topic was a political one, when Democrats made this a key issue, and branded it as “global warming”. Which then gave industry a handy language mechanism to fight being regulated. As in this New American piece that references a lot of honest science but then crumbles through logical fallacy to conclude with the bizarre statement that the “intent of global-warming alarmists is to set up an energy-regulating global government and an international carbon-trading market worth billions”. Absolute facts on the broader topic of what’s causing the recent rise in temperature are not likely to be obtainable; even many scientists will admit this. In spite of the Union of Concerned Scientists solid stance that man is directly responsible for current global climate trends, the fact is that when you ask a larger group of scientists, their answers – although in agreement that man has some influence – will depend on whether they’re meteorologists, climatologists, or geologists, and so on. But when you say “greenhouse gas emissions cause global warming so we should regulate them”, you’re sunk. Because then the argument is no longer about whether industry should stop dumping pollutants into our air because it’s just plain stupid, and bad for our air, it becomes about whether or not it causes “global warming”. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for the “survival of the fittest” underpinnings of capitalism, until “the fittest” becomes an absolute monopoly, as in the case of energy companies and oil cartels. Because organisms as large as BP – or even Microsoft, Google, or NewsCorp – become less like a healthy part of an economic ecosystem and more like an Ebola virus that doesn’t care if it kills its host. And in this case, the host is you and me, and the air we breathe. Maybe we should stop trying to regulate greenhouse gas emissions because they cause global warming and start regulating them simply because cleaner industry simply makes sense. Read the rest of this entry »