VACOALBLOG

Cost of Fed regulations

2007-07-11T12:36:00.000-04:00

Cost of Federal Regulation Exceeds $1 Trillion

Americans Burdened by Governments 10,000 Commandments�

Washington, D.C., July 9, 2007 A new Competitive Enterprise Institute report on federal regulation finds that the cost of federal regulations on consumers topped $1 trillion last year, nearly 10 percent of U.S. gross domestic product.

In Ten Thousand Commandments: An Annual Snapshot of the Federal Regulatory State, author Clyde Wayne Crews, Jr. examines the whopping costs and burdens imposed by federal regulations. Among the report�s findings:

Given that 2006 government spending reached $2.654 trillion, the hidden tax of regulation now approaches half the level of federal spending itself.

Regulatory costs are more than quadruple the $248 billion budget deficit.

The number of new regulations declined but is still well into quadruple digits.

In 2006, agencies issued 3,718 final rules, a 6 percent decline from 2005.

New regulations by federal agencies outpace actual laws passed by Congress, indicating that considerable lawmaking power is delegated to unelected agencies.

While regulatory agencies issued 3,718 final rules, Congress passed and the president signed into law 321 bills in 2006.

Regulatory costs exceed the amount of wealth already extracted from Americans in the form of income taxes.

Regulatory costs exceed the estimated 2006 individual income taxes of $998 billion and dwarf corporate income taxes of $277 billion.

Regulatory costs exceed 2004 corporate pretax profits of $1.059 trillion.

The solution to the crushing level of federal regulations on the lives and livelihoods of American workers? The report urges a series of reforms to make the cost of regulation more transparent and accountable to the people. For example, Congress should commission a third-party review of the costs and benefits of regulations. And Congress should be required to vote on agency rules before they become binding.

Crowd upset with envio's and bureaucrats

2007-06-27T14:40:00.000-04:00

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-clearance26jun26,0,2914697.story?coll=la-home-center

Crowd aims fury at regional panel
Land use agency is criticized for failing to allow adequate clearing of combustible materials.

By Eric Bailey and J. Michael Kennedy, Times Staff WritersJune 26, 2007
SOUTH LAKE TAHOE — The mood of the crowd jammed into the meeting room was angry.Many had lost their homes to the forest fire that swept through the Sierra Nevada just south of Lake Tahoe.They said they were angry at bureaucrats and environmentalists who made cutting of trees and clearing of land difficult. There was always too much red tape, they said, and now it was too late.In all, a crowd of nearly 2,000 people descended on the South Tahoe Middle School auditorium Monday night, wanting to be heard in the face of their losses.And if there was an object of scorn in the crowd, it was the Tahoe Regional Planning Agency, a powerful bi-state environmental land use agency charged with managing the resources of the basin.When a speaker mentioned the agency, the crowd responded with a chorus of boos. "What a joke!" yelled one man. The wrangling began in earnest over the assignment of blame, including arguments over whether federal and state forest managers had made their tree clearing rules too strict in the face of pressure by environmentalists. A common sentiment Monday was expressed by Jerry Martin, a bartender at the Horizon Casino Resort, whose house was still standing, although eight others around it had burned to the ground. He said U.S. Forest Service rules regulating the harvesting of dead trees were too stringent for those living next to government land."I hate to get political, but environmentalists wouldn't let us cut down the dead trees," he said.The amount of fuel in the Tahoe Basin has reached critical levels after years of discord among environmentalists and government agencies over how to thin forests and reduce the fire threat. And it has led to predictions of a devastating wildfire because the basin is one of the areas with the most fire starts in the Sierra Nevada.More than 21,000 acres of Tahoe land have been cleared to guard against wildfires, at a cost of $50 million, but an additional 67,000 acres need to be cleared and thinned."It's like painting the Golden Gate Bridge," said Julie Regan, a spokeswoman for the regional planning agency. "Once you're finished at one end it's time to start again on the other."In April, the U.S. Forest Service finally settled on a 10-year plan to thin and burn 38,000 acres of land to reduce the risk of catastrophic wildfires. But the plan had little effect on the homes in the community of Meyers, where most of Sunday's fire damage occurred. Regan said only 462 acres within the Angora fire boundary had been treated for fuel reduction because it was low on the priority list. Sgt. Don Atkinson of the El Dorado County Sheriff's Department said heavy growth in the area, especially manzanita plants, contributed to the danger. He said fire officials request that underbrush be cleared at least 30 feet from residences."Sometimes people do it and sometimes people don't," he said. "There's a lot of residences where manzanita grows right up to the house, and that's unfortunate. It's very flammable and it's got oils and stuff in it that really tend to drive a fire."But the people at the meeting Monday said that regional planning agency regulations were the source of much of the problem when it came to clearing the land.A man got up and said, "I've lived here 35 years. Is this going to open TRPA's eyes?" The room erupted into cheers and applause.Regan said that of the 1,300 parcels in the neighborhood that sustained the most damage, only 274 were new or remodeled — and therefore more likely to have cleared "defensible space." "The majority of homes in Lake Tahoe have not completed defensible space," she said.She also said part of the reason may be that residents don't realize that no permit is necessary to cut down dead trees on private property."It's important to relay the message that homeowners can cut a tree down without a permit," she said. "If they want to cut down trees, all they have to do is call their fire districts," she said.Lauri Kemper of the Lahontan Regional Water Quality Control Board said most people in the basin are reluctant to clear out trees. "I've lived here for 22 years and folks like their trees," she said. "They like it for the habitat and the beauty they create."
eric.bailey@latimes.commichael.kennedy@latimes.comBailey reported from South Lake Tahoe, Kennedy from Los Angeles. Times staff writer Lee Romney and the Associated Press contributed to this report

Every thing you want to know about coal is in this artical!

2007-06-23T21:32:00.000-04:00

The Daily Star
Committed to PEOPLE'S RIGHT TO KNOW
Vol. 5 Num 1088
Sat. June 23, 2007

Coal -- the energy resource for 21st centuryDr. Rafiqul IslamWorld's population is expected to reach over 8 billion by 2030, from its current level of 6.4 billion and consequently global energy demand will grow by almost 60 percent by 2030 and rise to 16.5 billion tones of oil equivalent per year.
Fossil fuels and in particular coal will meet up this challenge in future. Nuclear energy though provides a significant proportion of energy in some countries, but in general it faces serious public opposition.
Renewable energies are growing fast, but make up only a small part of global energy production -- the International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts that by 2030 only 14 percent of total energy demand will be met from renewable sources. In fact its not wise to depend on a single source of energy.
Coal can play a unique role in meeting the demand for a secure energy supply. Coal is globally most abundant and economical as well of all fossil fuels, which can be used for both power generation and industrial applications.
The production and utilization of coal is based on well-proven and widely used technologies. Coal faces environmental challenges. However, research efforts into improving the efficiency of coal fired electricity generation and technologies for carbon capture and storage offer routes to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Coal reserves are significantly more abundant and much more widely and evenly dispersed than other fossil fuels.
The top five coal producing countries are: China, US, India, Australia and South Africa. All these countries use their indigenous coal as the primary fuel for electricity generation and all except India have a sizeable coal export market.
The world currently consumes over 5500 million tones of coal for use in power generation, steel production, cement manufacture, as a chemical feedstock and as a liquid fuel (IEA, 2005a).
Where there is a forecast of depletion in the supply of oil and gas in next 50 years coal may serve the purpose for next 150 years or more and by then new and renewable sources of energy will find wide market.
Coal can be converted to liquid and gaseous fuels to substitute for oil and ultimately to less depend on imported oil -- South Africa has a well-established coal-to-liquids industry, and China is currently adopting this technology.
China wants to cut down its oil import dependence by building a commercial scale direct coal liquefaction plant in Inner Mongolia, which will produce around 50,000 barrels a day of finished gasoline and diesel fuel.
Overall costs for coal-based power stations are usually lower than from other sources and utilization of coal for electricity generation should be a key choice. At present almost 40 percent of global electricity generation is based on coal (IEA, 2005b). The generation technologies are well established.
Not only the developing nations but developed nations also face power crisis and the solutions for that has been recognized as utilisation of more coal in power plants.
Renewable energy can reduce dependency on finite energy sources and remove some of the risk on oil import dependence.
Hydropower provides many countries with a substantial amount of their electricity needs; however, when weather conditions deviate from normal, severe problems such as the blackouts experienced in Brazil and New Zealand can occur.
New Zealand's crises in 1998, 2001 and 2003 occurred as a result of an over dependency on a single energy source -- hydro power. There has been now a four-fold increase in coal fired electricity generation (IEA, 2005b).
In California due to severe energy crisis in 2000-2001 a 1300-mile transmission system to generate 12000 MW of electricity -- 6000 MW from coal fired gasification (IGCC) plants and 6000 MW from wind power -- has been in plan.
In September 2003 Italy suffered a nationwide blackout, which had an impact on its total population of 57 million people. Much of Italy's electricity is imported. The bulk of Italy's own generation is from oil-fired power stations.
Due to the increasing cost of oil and a need for new and diversified power generation, many of these stations are being converted to gas or coal fired plants. Enel, Italy's largest generator, aims to double its coal fired capacity to over 10,000 MW, or 50 percent of its generating portfolio. The Italian government has also eased regulations on building new power plants and sought to encourage greater investment in the electricity sector.
In Bangladesh the only commercial energy resource that mainly supports power generation in the country at present is natural gas. About 70 percent of power generation depends on natural gas.
As per the forecast of Petrobangla, the total remaining gas reserve would meet the country's projected energy demand upto 2015. So discovery of additional gas fields or alternative sources of fuel could meet up this challenge. Coal discoveries of the north-western part of the country, with its total estimated mineable reserves of 1400 Mt (which is approximately 37 Tcf of natural gas in terms of heat value) seemed to have solved this problem.
Considering that many countries in the world have between 40 percent to 60 percent of their electricity generation using coal, Government of Bangladesh should take prompt action for a rapid increase in generation of coal fired electricity, which will ultimately have the effect of enhancing the energy security of the country.
Future power plants in the country may be set up on dual fuel system using coal and gas for the sake of better energy security. This would save and conserve Bangladesh's reserve of natural gas, and prevent the dependence on oil import for power generation.
Coal production should be at such a rate that its availability in the country for a period of at least 50 years can be confirmed.
China, manufacture small-scale power plants in the range 3 to 5 MW operating on coal, and these technologies can also be promoted in our country for electricity supply in remote and rural areas.
It is important to understand the environmental impacts of mining, processing, and utilization of coal.
The choice of mining method is largely determined by the geology of the coal deposit. Underground mining currently accounts for about 60 percent of world coal production, although surface mining is more common in several important coal producing countries like in Australia where it accounts for about 80 percent, in the US 67 percent. In India also surface mining is given importance. Surface mining or opencast mining is only economic when coal seam is near the surface.
Opencast mines damage a large land surface area, displace people from their ancestral homesteads and cause agricultural losses. But the method is cost effective, recovery is high around 90 percent, comparatively better in safety aspects and is considered to be a modern method.
Surface mining requires large areas of land to be temporarily disturbed. This raises a number of environmental challenges, including soil erosion, dust, noise and water pollution, and impacts on local biodiversity. But modern technology considerably reduces these problems. The idea is to select proper technology.
Mine subsidence can be a problem with underground coal mining, whereby the ground level lowers as a result of coal having been mined beneath. Steps are taken in modern mining operations to minimise these impacts. Good planning and environmental management minimises the impact of mining on the environment and helps to preserve biodiversity. Computer simulations can be undertaken to model impacts on the local environment. The findings are then reviewed as part of the process leading to the award of a mining permit by the relevant government authorities.
Whether coal is to be extracted by Opencast or by Underground methods of mining the selected method is to acknowledge the need to reduce environmental impact and to provide security of supply, deliver environmental and social goals and promote competitive energy markets.
Environmental issues related to coal processing include water quality issues such as acidic drainage, slurry impoundment discharges, physical disturbances, and gob fires.
The environmental impacts of coal use, mostly for electric power, include harmful emissions and solid waste disposal. Emissions of concern include sulfur and nitrogen oxides that lead to acid rain; particulate matter that causes haze; mercury and its health impacts; and carbon dioxide as greenhouse gas and its potential to change climate.
Methane (CH4) is a gas formed as part of the process of coal formation. It is released from the coal seam during mining operations. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas. Methane from coal seams can be utilised rather than released to the atmosphere.

Dr. Rafiqul Islam is Professor, Dept. of Applied Chemistry & Chemical Technology, Dhaka University.

Wise Co. power plant focus of protest

2007-06-23T21:12:00.000-04:00

Planned Wise County, Va., coal-fired power plant will be focus of Monday protest

Saturday, Jun 23, 2007 - 01:45 AM

By Amy Hunter
E-mail
A parcel of land in Southwest Virginia has become the focus of a statewide debate, and on Monday protesters will take their message to Richmond – No new power plant in Wise County.
Up to 200 people are expected to gather in front of Dominion Power’s Richmond headquarters on Monday to protest construction of a coal-fired plant in Wise County they say would pollute the community and do more harm than good.
But Dominion officials maintain the plant’s benefits outweigh its negatives.
"It will create hundreds of jobs," said Dan Genest, Dominion spokesman.
Protest organizer Hannah Morgan, and fellow protesters, want Dominion to take the estimated $1 billion allocated for the plant and invest it in conservation efforts and renewable energy.
Mike Ewall, founder of Energy Justice, a national organization that works with communities under threat of pollution, said the biggest problem is the burning of waste coal.
"It’s a mixture of coal and rock that you have to burn a lot more of to generate the same amount of energy of regular coal," he said. "And it creates a lot of ash that has to be dumped somewhere."
The ash, Ewall said, can seep into the ground with rain and contaminate ground water. Plus, burning waste-coal increases greenhouse pollution and emit PAH’s, a category of chemicals that cause cancer.
"Companies use it because its cheaper," he said.
Genest said the company is aware global warming is an important issue, but because coal-burning accounts for 50 percent of U.S. energy needs, coal-fired plants will be a nationwide necessity for decades.
"You can’t do it all through conservation and renewable energy," said Genest.
He said the Wise County plant will use clean coal technology that helps reduce pollution.
"It’s a new generation of power plant. It’s like comparing an Oldsmobile to a hybrid today."
Genest said Dominion is working with researchers at Virginia Tech to find cleaner ways to meet the state’s energy needs, while using the best clean-coal technology available today.
Despite contentious disagreement on both sides, they do agree on one thing – Power plants create jobs, and job creation is a boon for the economy.
ahunter@bristolnews.com (276) 645-2531

Footnote;
I must state for the record that 199 of the 200 protesters are misguided rich kids from up north who have no idea where their power comes from. "Shave the whales"...see I was young once and all mixed up... er I mean "save the whales". Its been a few years since my college days trying to save the world so I have to think about what allI was against. They just protest long enough to get their picture taken then they jump back in their BMW's and feel great about themselves. The understand how the press works to some extent but ignore the facts about energy use in America as well as their own use of 33 pounds of coal a day required to keep those printers running for their mis-guided flyer's.

90% of carbon dioxide can be removed!

2007-06-23T21:08:00.000-04:00

E.ON to build pilot plant for CO2 capture
The method is currently being developed by Alstom, the power generation specialist.

Saturday, June 23, 2007

E.ON will be testing a new process in Sweden that can be used to remove up to 90 per cent of the carbon dioxide (CO2) from power plant flue gases.
The method is currently being developed by Alstom, the power generation specialist. E.ON and Alstom have now agreed to continue developing the technology at E.ON’s power plant at Karlshamn to a stage where it can be used in the actual environment of a power plant. The pilot plant at Karlshamn is to start trial operation in early 2008.
"For E.ON, carbon dioxide capture from power plants is one of the key technologies in tackling the global climate change problem. This is why E.ON is pushing the development of different processes in all markets as part of its technology initiative. In its quest for the best technology, the company is investigating various solutions in a number of parallel projects," the company said.
The method to be used at Karlshamn is based on the technology that involves the use of ammonia to capture the carbon dioxide. The key advantage is that this cleaning process uses less energy than other CO2 removal processes, so its impact on the overall efficiency of the power plant is relatively low. Experts expect the first almost CO2-free commercial power plants to come on line in 15 to 20 years.
As part of a carbon capture and storage initiative, efforts are currently underway worldwide to remove carbon dioxide (CO2) from the flue gases of power plants for safe storage. Three technologies are under development: Pre-combustion capture, Post-combustion capture and Oxyfuel technology.
The pre-combustion involves the use of a gasification process to convert the coal into a fuel gas which is stripped of its CO2 before combustion in a combined-cycle power plant to produce electricity.
In the post-combustion capture CO2 is removed from the flue gas stream by solvent washing, whereas the Oxyfuel process uses pure oxygen instead of air for the combustion of coal or natural gas, so the flue gases produced consist mainly of CO2 and water, which makes CO2 removal relatively easy.
EnerPub provides premium global energy news and analysis, "the news that moves the world."

Failure to set up Coal Power Plants in time as planned by the experts also caused severe damage to the economy of the country.

2007-06-23T21:03:00.000-04:00

Failure to set up Coal Power Plants in time as planned by the experts also caused severe damage to the economy of the country.

Could this happen here? YOU BET.

The Sunday Times / On line
Financial Times

Major reasons for Lanka’s debacle
(Joint press release issued by the Chairman of the Joint Business Forum (JBIZ), Nimal Perera)
Until the late 1950s Sri Lanka had been an economically sound, self-sufficient country in Asia. Having fought together to gain independence, every community lived in harmony until the new language policy was introduced. It was a known fact that our country was looked at as a model by countries like Singapore to develop theirs in that era. Further to that our country was proud to have had one of the best-managed Railway systems and also the Public Service in the world. We did not have an Executive President, a large Cabinet and Provincial Councils at that time. The country was well governed by the House of Representatives comprised of high caliber personalities headed by the Prime minister. They were well supported by equally efficient and well-respected Government Agents. They never meddled with the law of the country. It looks like that the changes done subsequently to the Administrative and Legislative Structures and constitution had not been beneficial to the country. The situation now is in a highly deteriorated state in every aspect. We give below the Per Capita Income of two Asian countries and Sri Lanka for 1960 and 2006 just to indicate at what pace our country has moved.
What has gone wrong? Many accept that the war, high cost power generation, the language policy, preferential voting system, corruption and waste and deterioration of the law and order situation have caused the downfall of our country.
What has gone wrong? Many accept that the war, high cost power generation, the language policy, preferential voting system, corruption and waste and deterioration of the law and order situation have caused the downfall of our country.
WarThe 24-year-old war has done the biggest damage to the country both socially and economically. Every leader in power has vowed that terrorism would be crushed militarily. Military assistance from India was also obtained and now 24 years have gone by, more than 50,000 people have lost their lives, more than 100,000 people have got disabled, more than 500 billion rupees have gone down the drain and billions worth of properties have got destroyed. These still continue and our lives have become more and more miserable and uncertain. Although the leaders were always in favour of a negotiated settlement, they always succumb to the terrorist’s tactics of provocation. The war situation has also created room for the deserters and arms and ammunitions to move freely through out the country resulting in escalation of violence and crime. The sufferings the citizens have to go through, the battering the economy get, the destruction of property and moreover the loss of human lives should come to an end immediately if the country is to prosper. Budget approval for defense expenditure for the year 2007 was Rs 100 billion where as in a no war situation it should have been around Rs 30 billion. If the peace prevails, the country could easily save at least Rs 70 billion annually. This would enable the government to reduce the excessive taxes and other levies and thereby lower the COL. Had the billions of rupees spent on war utilized for the development process, by now the country would have had many new highways, many flyovers in major cities, many power plants and an highly improved transport system making the life of the people comfortable.
Expensive power generation Failure to set up Coal Power Plants in time as planned by the experts also caused severe damage to the economy of the country. Ironically our decision makers went for the most expensive method of power generating using expensive fuel when other developed and affluent countries resort to low cost methods. As a result of high cost of power many industrial ventures struggled to survive and some collapsed as they became uncompetitive. This has also become a big burden to the country’s economy as the country's biggest expenditure is for purchase of fuel which is being used mainly for power generation. Last year alone the country has spent Rs 220 billion to import petroleum products out of which around 70% totalling Rs 154 billion have been for power generation. Had the proposed coal power plants been set up in time as per the plans, the country could have easily saved more than Rs 100 billion spent on fuel annually. These wasted funds during past many years could have been utilized to reduce the burden on the economy. It is commendable that the government has already made arrangements to commence the Norochcholai Coal Power Plant and Kotmale hydro power project. What is important now is to fast track these projects and to take immediate action to set up the other plants in the locations already earmarked in Trincomalee and Hambanthota.
Language Policy It is a known fact that India is fast growing because of the IT and BPO Industry. With the growth of the IT Industry many cities like Chennai and Bangalore also developed. The secret behind the success of this industry is the high standard of English. After gaining independence the Indian leaders, continued to maintain the English standards without compromising the international medium of expression for pseudo nationalism. English is also an official language there. The level of English standard and English pronunciation in our country was of a much higher standard than our neighboring countries. In the good old days even a lower level employee in a government organization could converse in English. But leaders of our country for short term political gain neglected the English education and introduced a new language policy in late 50s. Poor rural youth suffered from this new policy as they were deprived of the English education making them unemployable mainly in the private sector. This compelled them to seek employment in the state sector using political influence and this was one of the reasons why state institutions are over staffed, politicized and have become less productive and unviable.
Preferential voting systemAnother major reason for the debacle of the country is the present preferential voting system. This system is not benefiting the country or its people. This system has paved the way for many unsuitable candidates to come into the parliament. They have lowered the status of the Parliament from a standard of a supreme, sacred place to the standard of a fish market. This electoral system has only increased the government expenditure (225 MPs for about 140 electorates). They interfere with the law and order enforcement in the country, functions of the Police and other government institutions and protect the criminals thus increasing the crime rate and corruption. These unprincipalled politicians prevent high calibre people in the public sector to perform impartially. They are the main root cause for deterioration of the discipline in the country, collapse of the important government institutions and downturn of the economy. They are also responsible for the destruction of the environment such as cutting down the forests, filling up of marshy lands, etc.
Dishonest and incapable politicians who get rejected from the electorate for not serving the people could still get into the parliament with this preferential voting system. Our country could afford only a lean parliament and a lean cabinet. If this happens many issues will get solved considerably.
Another white elephant in the present system is the Provincial Councils. It duplicates many functions, incurs heavy expenditure and has become a burden to the country’s economy. Income generated by provincial councils in 2006 was Rs 19.5 billion and the expenditure was estimated to be Rs 94.5 billion! It would be more beneficial to the country if the state of District Secretary (Government Agent) level is strengthened by way of giving them more authority, sending them for management training and provide better remuneration.
Corruption and wasteEveryday there are allegations by the citizens and the COPE report reveals many instances of corruptions within political circles from local authority level upwards and also in many state institutions. This is also a major reason for the downturn in the economy as the amounts involved are estimated to be large enough to make a huge adverse impact. Further substantial amounts of funds are getting wasted as the inefficient politicians are not very much concerned about the public funds. The amounts wasted on abandoned partially built roadways (such as Airport expressway), government buildings, abandoned CTB buses, railway compartments and other vehicles in government organizations including in ministries are colossal and values once again should be in billions of rupees. Sadly none is responsible. The general practice (of ruling party politicians) is to always blame the previous regime for the deficits but those in power continuous with the same mistakes.
Law and order situationThe law and order situation of the country has hit the rock bottom with the escalation of abductions, brutal killings and extortions and the irony is that most of these are happening in highly secured city. When many vehicles are being stopped two three times at the security check points, its baffling how the abductors are always getting away. The Police Department has become highly ineffective due to politicization. These are the end results of preferential voting system and the protracted war in the country.
LeadershipThe leader of a country should be brave enough to take correct decisions and bring about the necessary changes and may call for a referendum if necessary, in order to put the country on the right track. Short term he may become unpopular mainly within political circles but in the longer term he would be worshipped by the masses. It is high time that all stakeholders look hard at the current situation and unite to urge the leadership to take corrective measures. We also should urge the leaders of the political parties to select respectable people from the electorates who are educated and capable enough to govern a country. There are many capable personalities within the country who are willing to assist and facilitate in finding solutions to country’s woes if they are called upon to do so like in South Africa and Ireland.

Rate hike for power plants

2007-06-23T20:57:00.000-04:00

Charleston Gazette

June, 2007
Power plants allowed rate hike

On Friday the West Virginia Public Service Commission approved an $85.5 million rate increase for Appalachian Power and Wheeling Power to continue the funding of scrubbers at Appalachian Power’s Mountaineer and John Amos plants.
With the 10 percent increase effective July 1, customers using 1,000 kilowatt-hours per month will see their bills increase from $58.87 to $64.55.
The increase is part of a July 2006 order that allows the utility to annually adjust rates for the construction, fuel and purchase power costs. In total, rates will increase 16 percent by 2009.
Appalachian Power, a unit of American Electric Power, is spending more than $1.4 billion to build scrubbers to help reduce sulfur dioxide emissions to comply with federal and state clean-air laws.
The scrubber at the Mountaineer plant went online in early 2007, and the first scrubber at the John Amos plant will begin operation in 2008.
Of the $85.5 million increase, about $28.5 million will cover scrubber construction costs as well as costs of a transmission line from Wyoming County to Virginia. In addition, $54.8 million is for fuel costs and purchased power.
The PSC also approved an additional $2.2 million increase to help Appalachian Power fund the rehabilitation of four small electric utilities in McDowell County that the company will take over on July 1.

coal carries on and keeps digging

2007-06-03T20:05:00.000-04:00

Coal industry keeps digging as pressure rises over climate changeBy MATTHEW BROWN
WRIGHT, Wyo. - Every second of every day the oversized shovels of the Black Thunder mine claw another three tons of coal from the arid plains of eastern Wyoming.
Sprawled across 20,000 acres, Black Thunder produces more coal than any other mine in the Western Hemisphere. America's thirst for the fuel it provides is larger still: more than 1.1 billion tons consumed in 2006, or almost four tons per person.
But after years of steady growth, spurred by the rising cost of coal's main competitor, natural gas, the industry faces an increasingly uncertain future.
Each ton of coal burned emits more than two tons of carbon dioxide, the prime contributor to global warming. Environmentalists and some policymakers are calling for the country to wean itself from coal by investing in wind, biofuels and other energies and levying new taxes on carbon emissions. In the interim, they want mandates for cleaner power plants.
Yet coal could prove a habit hard to break.
Companies like Arch Coal, the owner of Black Thunder, supply the fuel for more than half the country's electricity. And with the industry's backing, Capitol Hill lawmakers led by U.S. Sen. Craig Thomas, R-Wyo., and House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., are pushing to recast coal's image _ from climate change culprit to promising "alternative fuel" that could ease dependence on foreign oil and possibly provide an exit plan for the global warming quandary.
Think of it as diet coal: A new wave of coal-fired power plants would capture carbon dioxide to prevent its release into the atmosphere. Other plants would use a process perfected by the Nazis to convert the black rock into diesel or jet fuel, to reduce imports of foreign oil.
Both technologies remain untested in the United States on a wide commercial scale. Thomas said that's why the government needs to step in and spur their development through loans to industry and a mandate for 21 billion gallons a year of coal-derived liquid fuels by 2022.
"We're going to be looking at new sources of energy and indeed we should be," said Thomas, whose state leads the nation in coal production. "What we need to be equally concerned with is what we're going to do now, for the next 15 years or so. Coal is one of the largest fossil fuel resources we have."
Thomas' efforts on behalf of industry stumbled in April, when his proposal was defeated on a party-line vote during a Senate Energy Committee debate over an ethanol bill. He plans to try again in June when the bill hits the Senate floor.
But a neighbor to the north, Democratic Sen. John Tester of Montana, is now saying coal should not expect a free ride. Tester said in a recent interview that any coal-to-liquids plant supported by federal dollars must include technology to capture and store carbon. The plants are projected to cost billions of dollars, making federal backing key to moving forward.
"They can do it with private backing if they want. But if they want public dollars they have to do carbon capture and sequestration. That has to be part of the conversation," Tester said.
Tester said he also wants coal-based fuels to be at least 20 percent cleaner than traditional petroleum fuels. Environmental groups say even then coal-to-liquids proposals are a distraction from the need to convert to more sustainable energy sources.
Still, from the vantage of the Black Thunder mine, it is hard to imagine coal's future dimming anytime soon.
Out of a gaping pit gouged deep into Wyoming's Powder River Basin, an endless procession of house-sized dump trucks haul away boulders of coal extracted from a 70-foot thick seam. From there, it is crushed into smaller chunks, loaded onto rail cars and shipped to power plants across the country.
The mine is one of more than a dozen along the eastern edge of the Powder River coal seam, which accounts for about 40 percent of the nation's coal production.
"In front of us are millions and millions and billions of tons of coal," said Arch Coal Vice President Greg Schaefer. "There is 200 years worth of coal here at present consumption. It's an incredible resource."
The Department of Energy forecasts coal's share of the energy market will increase to almost 60 percent over the next 25 years. Unless cleaner technologies are adopted to lower carbon emissions, that will spur an environmental "catastrophe," said David Hawkins, director of the climate center at the Natural Resources Defense Council and a former senior official at the Environmental Protection Agency.
Yet to replace 90 gigawatts of additional electricity _ the amount the Department of Energy says will come from 151 new or proposed coal power plants _ would require 60,000 wind turbines or 100 mid-sized nuclear plants.
"There's just nothing that comes in at the scale of coal over the foreseeable future," said James Bartis, a RAND Corporation researcher specializing in energy issues.
But Hawking said that argument should not be extended to coal-to-liquids, which he described as a worse polluter than conventional fuels. He said it would take up to 250 million tons of additional coal production every year to reach Thomas' 21 billion gallon annual mandate.
In the last three years, lobbying expenses by the coal industry more than tripled, from $2 million in 2004 to almost $7 million last year, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. Much of the money has been funneled through Americans for Balanced Energy Choices and a related organization, the Center for Energy and Economic Development (CEED).
Until recently, one of CEED's main goals was to cast doubt on global warming and coal's contribution to the problem. As the science behind climate change has gained traction with policy makers and the public, that message has shifted, said CEED vice president Ned Leonard.
"We can't even get in the door to speak to a governor or a regulator if we're saying, 'First of all, we don't think this is even happening,'" Leonard said. "You can no longer get away with talking generically about voluntary action."
What that means for coal production, and the steady march of the Black Thunder Mine across eastern Wyoming, could be decided by Congress in coming weeks.
"Over the next 20 years, the question is not whether the industry will go down," said Bartis. "It's how much will it go up."
A service of the Associated Press(AP)

Air Force and Ky coal

2007-06-03T19:57:00.000-04:00

Coal States See Boon in USAF Alt-Fuel Push
By WILLIAM MATHEWS

Coal dug from deep in Kentucky’s rugged mountains generates some $4 billion a year for the state’s economy, helping to lift it to the position of ninth-poorest among the 50 United States.
With 120 million tons mined in 2006, Kentucky coal production is down from its peak of 180 million tons in 1990. But a new customer for Kentucky coal could bring an economic boost to the beleaguered state.
And Rep. Geoff Davis, R-Ky., thinks he has found that customer — the U.S. Air Force.
A Davis amendment to the 2008 Defense Authorization Act would give the Air Force $10 million to accelerate testing of jet fuel made from coal.
In 2006, the service tested coal-based synthetic fuel and ultimately flew a B-52 bomber on a blend of standard jet fuel and the coal-based liquid.
The Air Force plans to begin testing the fuel soon in a C-17 cargo plane, a service spokeswoman said.
Davis hopes that once the Air Force adopts coal-based jet fuel, so will commercial airlines. The potential benefits are broader than just more jobs and increased income for his home state.
“Kentucky has the unique opportunity to be part of the solution to our nation’s energy crisis by turning coal into liquid fuel,” the congressman said.
The Air Force may be essential to Kentucky’s success.
It will take billions of dollars to build a “coal-to-liquid” plant able to meet the Air Force’s fuel needs. It would cost many times that much to meet airline needs. No one is willing to make that investment unless there is an assured, profitable market for the synthetic fuel.
But no market will develop until there are plants turning out fuel.
Davis’ answer is the Air Force.
“The Department of Defense is the single largest consumer of fuel in the United States and the Air Force consumes over 50 percent of the fuel used by the military,” he said.
Seeking Reliable Supply
The Air Force burns 2.6 billion gallons of jet fuel a year, said Paul Bollinger, special assistant to the service’s assistant secretary for installations, environment and logistics. Ensuring that it has a reliable fuel supply is a key Air Force concern, he said.
The Air Force hopes to spend $38 million on synthetic fuel research and testing in 2008, but only $1 million was requested in the 2008. The remainder is an “unfunded priority,” Bollinger said. So the $10 million in Davis’ amendment is significant.
If the Air Force becomes a reliable synthetic fuel consumer, that could justify investment in coal-to-liquid plants, which could, in turn, “accelerate development of the technology and production capacity needed for large-scale commercial deployment of this type of alternative fuel,” Davis’ amendment says.
To push the Air Force further in that direction, Davis proposed a separate amendment permitting the service to sign purchasing contracts lasting as long as 25 years for buying coal-based fuel.
However, Davis withdrew that amendment after being told that House budgeting rules would count its cost as “mandatory spending” that would have to be offset by cutting an equal amount of money elsewhere in the budget. “We did not have an offset to offer,” a Davis aide said.
Davis isn’t alone in this endeavor.
In January, he and another coal-state congressman, Rep. Nick Rahall, D-W.Va., introduced the Coal-to-Liquids Fuel Promotion Act of 2007.
The legislation would provide tax breaks and loan guarantees for building coal-to-liquid plants. That bill, which also contains coal-to-liquid research money for the Air Force and authority to sign 25-year fuel purchase contracts, awaits committee action.
A similar bill was introduced in the Senate by Sens. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., and Barak Obama, D-Ill. Illinois produced about 32 million tons of coal in 2005.
Environmental Concerns
Growing support for coal-to-liquid fuel is sparking alarm among environmentalists, who warn that the fuel and the process that makes it produce twice as much carbon dioxide as petroleum-based fuel. That makes coal-to-liquid — or CTL — disastrous for global warming, said Alice McKeown of the Sierra Club.
Using more coal also means more strip mining, which environmentalists say is destroying the landscape in Kentucky, West Virginia and elsewhere. And the CTL process consumes prodigious amounts of water.
“We think it’s misguided. It’s not really a smart solution for our energy future,” McKeown said. “We should not be using government money to jumpstart this industry.”
Other government action, such as increasing the mileage requirements on automobiles, would reduce petroleum consumption, which would be environmentally beneficial and make more fuel available to the Air Force, she said.
Bollinger said the Air Force is very conscious of the possible environmental impacts of producing liquid fuel from coal.
“Our secretary has stated from day one that we are going to be good environmental stewards,” he said. “I’ve done an extensive amount of work with other agencies that control and regulate these areas.”
The carbon dioxide produced by the CTL can be captured and sequestered — essentially buried deep underground. Coal can be mixed with biomass to reduce the net CO2 output of the process and mining can be done in environmentally benign ways, he said.
Davis, too, says he is “committed to ensuring the environmental integrity of these fuels and have advocated that any future fuels produced from coal are as good or better than the environmental footprint of the fuels they are designed to replace.”
But the matters of national security and the economy cannot be disregarded, he said. The nation cannot afford to ignore the potential of coal, considering the absence of viable alternatives, he said. •
E-mail: bmatthews@defensenews.com

Save the birds

2007-06-03T19:48:00.000-04:00

Bill aims to curb wind farms to spare birds
House panel chairman wants to protect flying wildlife from giant turbines
The Associated Press

UpdateTimeStamp
WASHINGTON - Birds and bats have a powerful advocate in the new Congress, and he is making the wind energy industry nervous.Rep. Nick Rahall, chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, is pushing legislation that would more strictly regulate wind energy to protect birds, bats and other wildlife killed when they fly into the giant turbines.Wind energy advocates say the bill could significantly cripple the burgeoning industry and they brand the measure as “anti-wind.”A release from the American Wind Energy Association last month said Rahall’s plan could “essentially outlaw” the generation of electricity from new wind power plants in the United States.Political debate over wind projects has intensified as the industry has seen major growth in recent years. According to the association, wind power is growing 25 percent to 30 percent annually.Congress has encouraged this renewable energy as oil prices have skyrocketed, creating incentives for the industry and promoting its benefits. But some lawmakers are concerned about the effects on wildlife.Rahall’s proposal, included in a larger energy bill, would direct the Fish and Wildlife Service to publish standards for siting, construction and monitoring of wind projects so that they do not harm wildlife. Violators could go to prison.After opposition from some members of his committee, Rahall has said he will revisit the legislation. The wind provisions are “not locked in stone,” he said.Still, Rahall, D-W.Va., believes more regulation would be a good idea.“I suspect that wind projects are on a regular basis in violation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act and the Endangered Species Act, yet no enforcement action is being taken,” he said at a recent hearing on the issue.Frank Maisano, a spokesman for wind developers in the Mid-Atlantic region, says the industry has frequent discussions with government regulators and environmental groups.Rahall “is throwing out the entire haystack because there’s a needle in there somewhere,” he said. “There are plenty of checks on the system that are making us develop in a smart way.”Some in coal-rich West Virginia disagree.John Stroud, the co-chairman of Mountain Communities for Responsible Energy, is fighting a wind power project in Rahall’s district, saying it will spoil scenic views and endanger bats.“Something like this is greatly necessary because these concerns are generally ignored,” Stroud says. “Most states don’t have much regulation.”John Kostyack, senior counsel for the National Wildlife Federation, says his group is working with Rahall to fine-tune the legislation.“We think that any energy company, even in an industry we strongly support, needs to grow responsibly,” he said,Last month, a National Research Council panel said the risk to birds and bats is not yet completely understood. That report also noted that wind farms could generate up to 7 percent of U.S. electricity in 15 years.It is unclear if Rahall’s position could pass muster in the Senate.A spokesman for Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., who is chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, said the senator is supportive of the industry and will remain so.GOP Sen. John Thune, who has introduced legislation that would give the industry more incentives, was more blunt.“This proposal is badly misguided and is a step in the wrong direction,” said Thune of South Dakota, one of the windier states. “Congress should not be blocking the development of one of the nation’s cleanest energy resources ... I will fight any efforts to stymie its development because of unfounded concerns for bats and birds.”

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Nuke's! ! Greenpeace dont want no stinking Nuke's

2007-05-28T17:05:00.000-04:00

Greenpeace calls for abandoning plans for more N-plants

Tuesday, May 29, 2007-->Web posted at: 5/26/2007 8:11:13Source ::: Reuters
london • Britain could slash its carbon emissions and secure its future energy supplies quickly and cheaply by abandoning plans to build more nuclear power plants, according to Greenpeace.
By betting on nuclear, Britain is also setting a bad example to the rest of the world, senior Greenpeace UK energy and climate change adviser, Robin Oakley, said.
In less time and with less money than it takes to build new nuclear reactors, or try out ways of burying emissions from dirty power plants, the government could hit its energy goals by using proven technology available now.
“We are much better off focusing on the things that we know will work and deliver results fast,” Oakley said.
“The key ones are efficiency, going after decentralised energy to make the system more efficient, and bringing on renewables as quickly as possible,” he said in an interview. Government ministers previously opposed to atomic energy, including Trade and Industry Secretary Alistair Darling, have warmed to it as the threat of climate change has grown, arguing that it offers clean power and cuts reliance on imported gas.
Apart from safety and waste disposal concerns, Greenpeace argues that nuclear is expensive, impractical and slow to offer a solution to either problem.
“It’s a technology that only generates electricity at a time when we need to be reducing emissions and dealing with energy questions right across the board including heat and transport,” Oakley said.
Instead, Britain should be cutting energy use while building lots of small combined heat and power (CHP) plants that are more energy efficient because they pipe the heat given off from electricity production to homes and businesses.
“You get a more secure electricity supply if you have got a more diverse range of sources, as you woulds have under a decentralised energy system,” Oakley said.
CHPs can burn various fuels from organic matter to coal or gas. And as they can be up to 95 per cent efficient, whatever they burn means less emissions per unit of energy produced.
“They deliver immediate results, they are cheaper to deploy and they give you a much bigger impact on reducing gas use and reducing emissions than nuclear power, which can’t be delivered within the next decade,” Oakley said.
Oakley cited government figures showing the UK could build enough CHP plants to produce about twice the electricity that the nuclear industry does today, about 20 percent, in less time than it would take to replace its existing nuclear plants. Backed up by wind, wave and tidal power, CHPs and energy efficiency can make nuclear power irrelevant, he added.

Australian bet on clean coal

2007-05-28T17:00:00.000-04:00

Australian bet on clean coal risks climate change

Monday, 28 May 2007, 1:39 pm
Article: Michael Peck
Australia’s energy security policy undermines its climate change targets
Australian bet on clean coal risks climate changeby Michael Peck
The Australian Labor Party (ALP) is counting on clean coal technology (CCT) to achieve long term energy security by exploiting Australia’s huge coal reserves. This is a high risk policy given the enormous challenge of CCT which captures carbon dioxide and buries it in exhausted oil or gas fields. It suggests that the ALP, like the current Howard Government, is in thrall to the fossil fuel lobby.
A major theme of Labor leader Kevin Rudd’s April 27 speech to the 2007 annual ALP Conference was that Australia ‘desperately needs a government engaged in the business of long term solutions.’ Rudd identified ‘long term energy security’ and ‘climate change’ as two major challenges facing the nation over the next decades.[1] Ten days before Rudd’s speech, Senator Chris Evans, Shadow Minister for National Development, Resources and Energy, outlined the direction of ALP’s energy policy in his speech ‘Where Does Energy Policy Have To Go’ to the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association Conference.
Noting Australia’s oil production was in decline with limited future prospects, Evans stated that Australia is ‘facing a profound shift in the source of our liquid fuels, which has major implications for our energy security in the future.’ Australia ‘faces a trade deficit in oil and condensate of up to $27 billion in 2015 … compared to a deficit of just under $4 billion in 2005.’ According to Evans the key issue is Australia’s reliance ‘on overseas sources, including the Middle East, for up to 80 per cent of its oil’ leaving the country exposed to potential disruptions to supply and price shocks. [2] He defined Australia’s energy security challenge as developing ‘a secure supply of alternative liquid fuels over the medium to long term.’ This would be achieved by diversifying sources of liquid transport fuels through ‘development of gas-to-liquids, coal-to-liquids and biofuels.’
Evans also touted the ALP’s $500 million National Clean Coal Initiative, noting that Australia’s ‘immense reserves and the importance of our coal exports mean that the development of CCT must be a strategic energy priority.’ Under Labor then, Australia will be doing the same as it is now under the Liberal-National Coalition: pinning its hopes on CCT. Australia generates 79% of its electricity from coal[3]. Using coal to generate electricity and converting coal (or gas) to liquid fuel are high CO2 emission processes. CCT can be applied to all of them, however, CCT reduces power plant efficiency and requires, according to a recent MIT study, 27% to 37% more coal for the same energy output.[4]
The problem with CCT is the huge scale on which it must be applied. Canadian energy researcher Vaclav Smil calculates that if just 10% of global CO2 emissions were to be sequestered, this would mean burying annually about 6,000 million cubic metres of compressed CO2 gas. This is larger than the annual volume of oil extracted globally – a bit less than 5,000 million cubic metres in 2005. This means creating an industry that would, every year, force underground a volume of compressed gas larger than the volume of crude oil extracted globally by the petroleum industry. Noting that the oil industry’s infrastructure and capacity has been put in place over a century, Smil concludes that ‘such a technical feat could not be accomplished within a single generation.’ [5]
Smil also notes that the same 10% reduction in CO2 emissions could be achieved by improving energy efficiency. Reducing the average annual US per capita energy consumption – roughly twice the affluent EU level – by about 40% would cut global carbon emissions by at least 2,500 million tonnes. This is nearly 10% of the 28,000 million tonnes emitted globally in 2005.
Australia is the world’s largest coal exporter, and the Howard government has repeatedly stated that it will not ratify the Kyoto protocol because of the importance of protecting Australia’s energy exports. In his recent book ‘Scorcher: The dirty politics of climate change’, Clive Hamilton, Executive Director of the Australia Institute, argues that the Howard government believes Australia’s future prosperity and strength as nation depend on one factor above all others: Australia’s ability to increase energy exports to Asia. This belief explains its refusal to ratify Kyoto. In July 2006 John Howard even stated that he wanted Australia to become an ‘energy superpower.’ Hamilton also exposes the powerful influence of the ‘greenhouse mafia’ – a group of extremely well-connected lobbyists mainly from the Coal and Aluminium industries – on Australia’s environmental and energy policies[6].
In pursuit of its vision, which is no higher than remaining Asia’s coal mine, the Howard Government’s low ambition has been to undermine international cooperation to address climate change. In stark contrast, Rudd wants to take action on climate change by setting an ambitious CO2 emission reduction target of 60 per cent by 2050. Polls indicate this would have popular support. Rudd has also outlined a new vision for Australia that looks beyond the resource boom to new prosperity based on education and technology. He’s stated: ‘I don’t want to be a prime minister of a country that doesn’t make things any more.’
The ALP’s long term energy policy is high risk because it is reliant on technology barely out of the laboratory, which may not work on a large scale, and even if it does, may take a century to become established. It therefore collides squarely with the ALP’s ambitious 2050 CO2 emission reduction target. The ALP’s long term energy policy is high on hope and, if it fails, will have delayed any action to reduce Australia’s high coal consumption and CO2 emissions. The ‘greenhouse mafia’ would approve.
********
[1] SMH (2007) ‘I’m Kevin. I’m here to help’, Sydney Morning Herald, 27 April 2007, [Online], Available: http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/im-kevin-im-here-to-help/2007/04/27/1177459928740.html [27 April 2007].
[2] EVANS (2007) ‘Where Does Energy Policy Have to Go’, Speech to the 2007 Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association Conference, Labour eHerald, 17 April 2007, [Online], Available: http://www.chrisevans.alp.org.au/news/0407/respeeches17-01.php?print=on [27 April 2007].
[3] IEA (2004) ‘Electricity/Heat in Australia in 2004’, International Energy Agency, [Online], Available: http://iea.org/Textbase/stats/electricitydata.asp?COUNTRY_CODE=AU, [12 May 2007].
[4] MIT (2007) The Future of Coal: Options for a carbon-constrained world - An Interdisciplinary MIT Study, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, [Online], Available: http://web.mit.edu/coal/ [18 March 2007].
[5] SMIL, V. (2006) Energy at the Crossroads: Background notes for a presentation at the Global Science Forum Conference on Scientific Challenges for Energy Research, OECD Conference on Scientific Challenges for Energy Research, Paris, 2006, [Online], Available: http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~vsmil/pdf_pubs/oecd.pdf [11 December 2006].
[6] HAMILTON, C. (2007) Scorcher: the dirty politics of climate change, Melbourne, Black Inc. Agenda.

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© 2007 Michael PeckMichael Peck is a post graduate student in International Studies at the University of Sydney

Plant a tree then jet to Cancun ; Leave no carbon foot print

2007-05-28T16:51:00.000-04:00

Plant a tree, jet to Cancun? Offset schemes not that simple

Kingsport Times News
The Associated Press
ALBANY, N.Y. -- If you plant some trees, is it OK to drive an Escalade?
The question isn't as silly as it sounds. People worried about global warming increasingly are trying to "offset" the carbon dioxide -- the leading greenhouse gas -- they spew into the atmosphere when they drive, fly or flick on a light. One idea popular with the eco-conscious is to have trees planted for them. You get to keep driving and flying, but those trees are supposed to suck in your trail of carbon.
Whole forests have been funded by tree-loving celebrities like Leonardo DiCaprio and Coldplay, and more modest packages tailored to typical consumers are proliferating.
But some researchers say planting trees -- while a good thing -- is at best a marginal solution to global warming. Still others decry tree planters who continue to jet off to Cannes, drive their SUVs or generally fail to reduce their fuel-hungry lifestyle. To those critics, plantings and other carbon offsets are like the medieval practice of selling indulgences to wash away sins: It may feel good, but it doesn't solve much.
"The sale of offset indulgences is a dead-end detour off the path of action required in the face of climate change," says a report by the Transnational Institute's Carbon Trade Watch.
Groups that offer tree offsets typically rely on Web calculators requiring users to type in how many miles they drive, how much electricity they use and how far they fly. Figure out how much CO2 someone is responsible for (output), compare it to the work average trees can do (input), and you have a formula for neutralizing a person's "carbon footprint."
While the band Coldplay famously funded 10,000 mango trees in India to soak up emissions related to the production of a CD, the average consumer can get off far easier. For $40, Trees for the Future will plant 400 trees in a developing country to handle your car emissions. In June, Delta Air Lines will allow online ticket buyers to help offset emissions of their flights through tree plantings in the U.S. and abroad: $5.50 for domestic round trips, $11 for international.
"It's easy to do and it makes a big difference," said Jena Thompson of the Conservation Fund, Delta's partner and one of many groups that will plant trees on your behalf.
The science is sound: Trees take in carbon dioxide as part of photosynthesis and store the carbon. But even conservationists caution it's not as simple as planting a sapling so you can crank up the air conditioning without guilt.
Offset groups use averages to estimate how much carbon a given tree or forested acre can capture. For instance, the nonprofit Conservation Fund figures that each tree planted captures less than 11/2 tons over 100 years.
To put that in perspective, consider that about 7.3 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide was produced from the burning of fossil fuels worldwide in 2003, the most recent estimate available.
And how much carbon dioxide a tree can soak up varies, said John Kadyszewski of Winrock International, a nonprofit that works on environmental projects. A huge California redwood might have 30 tons of carbon stored while a 100-year-old pine might have less than a ton.
"Trees are all different," said Kadyszewski, coordinator for ecosystem services for Winrock, "and the amount of carbon in the tree depends on how old it is and where it's growing and what kind of tree it is."
Kadyszewski notes that most of the calculators use conservative numbers, meaning they're not likely to exaggerate benefits. The Conservation Fund and Carbonfund.org both say they plant more than enough trees to deliver on promised offsets.
There are other potential problems, however. Some researchers suggest forests in the snowy North might actually increase local warming by absorbing sunlight that would otherwise be reflected into space. And dead, decaying trees release some of that captured carbon back into the atmosphere.
Maybe most importantly, some researchers say it's simply not possible to plant enough trees to have a significant effect on global warming.
Michael MacCracken, chief scientist at the nonpartisan Climate Institute in Washington, said tree-planting has value as a stopgap measure while society attempts to reduce greenhouse gases. But University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver fears tree offsets could steal the focus of a problem that requires technological advances and behavioral changes.
"The danger is that you could actually think you're solving a problem," Weaver said. "It makes you feel good. It makes you feel warm and fuzzy, like changing a couple of light bulbs. But the reality is it's not going to have a significant effect."
Eric Carlson of the tree-planting nonprofit Carbonfund.org notes that his group does not promote trees as the only solution to climate change. Participants also can purchase offsets that support projects aimed at expanding renewable energy or improving energy efficiency.
Carlso bristles when critics focus on the perceived hypocrisies of the jet-setting, tree-planting rich people.
He fears the indulgence argument shifts the focus from what normal, everyday people can do to fight global warming: Cut down on electricity and gasoline use, support renewable energy and, yes, plant trees.
"You can find pluses and minuses to all the offset options," Carlson said, "but the worst thing is to do nothing."

Conaress vs. OPEC

2007-05-25T12:40:00.000-04:00

Senate to grapple with OPEC in wake of House bill passage
By Elana Schor
(TheHill.com) May 24, 2007
Several senators are eyeing next month’s energy bill as a vehicle to confront the powerful Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) over high gas prices, setting the stage for another veto battle with the White House.The House approved its version of the so-called “NOPEC” bill, which empowers the Department of Justice to bring antitrust lawsuits against the OPEC alliance in U.S. court, by a lopsided and veto-proof margin on Tuesday. For the dozen backers of the Senate’s bipartisan NOPEC bill, a summer of pressure at the pump may provide the perfect opening.

“We should send a resounding message,” Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) said yesterday. “Time is precious on the floor in terms of the schedule, so [the question is] if we can simplify the process and streamline it, and not lose our ability to capitalize on the momentum created by the House action.”After a prolonged war-funding debate that saw Republicans pledging to sustain any White House veto, the NOPEC bill — and a gasoline price-gouging measure the House passed yesterday — offers Democrats a greater chance of snaring enough GOP votes to override President Bush.The White House has issued veto threats on the NOPEC bill, warning that the potential to sue oil-producing nations such as Iran, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia could spark diplomatic and economic retaliation. Yet Republicans are likely to stray from Bush, attracted to the political hay that can be made from blasting OPEC members that many lawmakers consider enemies of the U.S. “Republican support of OPEC legislation would dovetail very well with their desire to take the heat off domestic oil companies,” one Senate Democratic aide said.Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), unveiling the energy legislation with Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) and several senior Democrats, said she would gauge support for the NOPEC bill and coordinate with leaders before determining her floor strategy.Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), who this week became the third Judiciary Committee chairman in five years to sign off on the NOPEC bill, had stronger words in his floor statement: “It is long past time for this bill to become law.” Antitrust laws cover foreign businesses engaged in alleged price-fixing behavior while exempting foreign governments, he noted.Sen. Herb Kohl (D-Wis.), the bill’s lead author, said in a statement after the House vote that he would push to attach NOPEC to the next appropriate legislation the Senate takes up.Any congressional embrace of OPEC lawsuits would have ripple effects for U.S.-Russia relations as well. The roiled Russian foreign ministry this week accused the House bill of violating international law, and Russian energy minister Viktor Khristenko dubbed the NOPEC bill “a violation of states’ sovereign rights” and “a public PR stunt,” according to Russia & CIS, a daily business journal.“That speaks for itself,” another Senate Democratic aide said of the Russian response, adding that Moscow’s aggravation is unlikely to make bill supporters reverse their positions. The bill’s most influential opponent may be the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where Vice President Bruce Josten wrote to House members this week predicting a “domino effect” if the NOPEC bill becomes law over Bush’s objections.“Under such a legal regime, the United States and all its agents throughout the world could be tried before a foreign court for any activity that the foreign state wishes to make an offense,” Josten wrote. Anticipating next month’s energy debate, Senate Democrats launched a new website at democrats.senate.gov/energy to educate members and constituents about the package. Energy and Natural Resources Committee Chairman Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.) previewed several changes he hopes to make on the floor, including greater environmental protections for renewable fuels and an energy tax package that Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) is pushing to complete in time to pass.

Non fuel use of coal

2007-04-14T19:37:00.000-04:00

April, 2007
Project to tap coal potential

SHASHANK SHEKHAR
Dhanbad, April 12: Central Fuel Research Institute (CFRI) here and the BHU have jointly taken up a research project to explore the possibility of producing “fullerenes” from coal.
Fullerenes are chemical compounds, which were discovered in 1985 and only the USA has been able to produce Carbon Nano Tubes from graphite and that too in laboratory conditions. It is expensive and priced at Rs 1.28 lakhs for 10 grams, said CFRI director S.K. Srivastava.
The unique structure of fullerenes give them high tensile strength, high electrical conductivity, high resistance to heat and relatively lower susceptibility to chemical activities.
Scientists, excited over the development of fullerenes with their unique electronic, chemical and mechanical properties, believe this is going to be path-breaking and cylindrical fullerenes or nanotubes could be put to various uses including defence and medicinal purpose. The common gas cylinders in use today, they believe, will weigh far less if fullerenes can be used in their manufacture.
The three-year research project has received a grant of Rs 2 crore from the government, which is equally keen to explore the possibility of producing fullerenes from coal, found in abundance in this part of the country.
The CFRI director said the project is the brainchild of one of their brilliant scientists, Ashis Ghosh, and he exuded confidence that the scientists will have the desired breakthrough within the period prescribed. BHU scientist O.N. Srivastava will be collaborating with Ghosh on the project, he added.
CFRI, he said, has already drawn global attention by its pioneering research on the non-fuel usages of coal and the production of engineering plastic out of coal.
With the research on fullerenes, he said, CFRI has joined a select band of research institutions in the world engaged in the high-technology area of fullerenes and nanotubes.
“We are sure to succeed and prove that we are inferior to none as promising scientists are putting their best in this work,” said Srivastav.

There's Green in that Coal

2007-04-14T19:34:00.000-04:00

Peabody Energy: There's Green in Coal

Posted on Apr 12th, 2007 with stocks: BTU

Todd Sullivan submits: America has a growing demand for electricity and is currently the largest consumer of electricity in the world. In our homes, our businesses and industries, Americans spend more than $210 billion on electricity each year. In fact, electricity and food are the two largest commodities bought and sold in America.
Electricity demand has continued to increase since the 1970s. While we are more efficient in our use of energy, demand has grown largely due to the introduction of new technologies — such as the Internet — which consumes about 8 percent of U.S. energy. Between 1970 and 1999, electricity use grew by more than 130 percent, and will continue to climb: According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration [EIA], America's energy demand is anticipated to grow over 45 percent in the next 20 years.
What is the main fuel for all this electricity? Coal. It fuels about 40% of the world's electricity and over half of America's electricity (this amount continues to climb annually), which is more than all other sources combined.
Other than electricity, what are some additional uses of coal?
• Coal liquefaction offers promise for nations that are rich in coal, yet scarce in oil. There are four plants in the United States and South Africa currently using coal as feedstock to create liquid fuels. A plant using more than 6 million tons of coal annually could produce more than 3.6 million barrels of diesel and Naptha annually, making diesel liquefaction competitive at $35 to $40 per barrel oil prices. China has earmarked $15 billion for coal-to-diesel-fuel conversion plants and has targeted replacing 10 percent of its oil imports with coal-liquified oil by 2013.
• Partial oxidation - gasification - combines feedstock, oxygen and steam to produce a synthesis gas that is cleaned of impurities. Syngas can be used as a fuel to generate electricity and steam or as a chemical building block for the petrochemical and refining industries. The gasification process converts feedstock such as coal, crude oil, petroleum-based materials or gases into marketable fuels and products.
• Syngas from gasification historically has been used as a feedstock for the production of chemicals, accounting for nearly one-half of syngas use worldwide in the late 1980s. World gasification capacity grew by 50 percent during the 1990s, with more than 40 plants coming on line.
• Today, there are approximately 155 commercial gasification plants in development, construction or operation around the world in 28 countries in North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia. When operational, these facilities will provide the energy equivalent of more than 770,000 barrels of oil per day.
How to invest and make money on coal?
Just as investing in alternative fuels begins and end with Archer -Daniels Midland (ADM), commercial roofing and insulation with Owens Corning (OC) and paint and coatings with Sherwin Williams (SHW), investing in coal begins and ends with Peabody Energy (BTU) . Since their initial public offering on May 22, 2001, at $28 per share, or $7 per share on a split-adjusted basis following the March 2005 and February 2006 two-for-one stock split, shares hit a high of $75 in May of 2006. Since then, shares have fallen steadily (40%) to their current level of $45 despite growing earnings last year 60% . The world's largest public coal company, their products fuel approximately 10 percent of America's and 3 percent of the world's electricity.
So, how much coal does Peabody have? If you converted their coal into each one of the following energy sources, Peabody's reserves would provide :
• Enough electricity to provide all the U.S. electricity demands for five years• More that 10 times the total U.S. natural gas uses• Diesel fuel: enough to fuel the U.S. truck fleet for 42 years• Hydrogen: enough to replace all oil in U.S. transportation for 6+ years
BTU has not traded in a PE range this low since early 2003, when its stock traded for a split adjusted $9 a share. Since that period, it has grown earnings from 25 cents a share to $1.92 last year (680%) and dividends have grown from 11 to 24 cents a share (118%). Since 2001, shipments of coal have grown from 194 million tons to 240 million tons in 2006 and in 2006, its worldwide coal sales were 38% greater than their closest competitor. In the U.S., Peabody's shipments were 22% of all U.S. coal shipments and 80% greater than the closest competitor. They clearly dominate the coal market both nationally and internationally.
The Future
So, now that we know where we are, we need to figure out where coal and BTU are going. Let's take a look at both worldwide demand and demand here at home in the U.S. The EIA estimates that 115 gigawatts of coal fueled electricity will come on line worldwide in the next three years and by 2030, an additional 156 gigawatts will come online in the U.S. These uses by themselves will require an additional 500 million tons of coal annually. This does not include additional coal demand for the other uses previously mentioned.
Currently BTU has a 1 billion ton backlog of orders with contract ranging from 1 to 19 years, with an average of five years. All long term contract have "price re-opener" provisions in them which protects BTU from a profit squeeze should input costs rise unexpectedly.
BTU is currently is in the process of building 3,100 megawatts of electrical generation capabilities in two locations at BTU owned mining sites. This will enable BTU to become a "minimal cost" electrical producer at these locations as they would be using their own coal to produce the electricity they would then resell.
Debt grew by $1.7 billion in 2006 as this money was used to purchase Excel Coal in Australia and repay its debt. The acquisition makes BTU that largest coal producer in that country also and provides BTU a lower cost basis to export coal to Asia and China, whose demand for it is surging. The Australian mines primarily produce "metallurgical coal." This high BTU coal is primarily used for the production of steel and is highly sought after by China. Selling for about $100 a ton (vs. approx. $26 a ton for all other coal), BTU estimates it will sell an additional 3 to 6 million tons of this in 2007 vs. 2006 providing about $500 million in additional revenue with no added cost.
For 2007 BTU is predicting 265 to 285 million tons of coal shipments for a 10.4% to 18.7% increase over 2006.
Pricing
From 1990 to 1999, the price of coal declined from $1.38 per million BTU's to $ .91 per million BTU's. Since 1999, that trend has reversed and prices have risen to $1.15 in 2005 and the EIA estimates this price will continue to rise to $1.84 by 2030.
Geopolitical Considerations
The news this week made reference to, but did a lousy job of covering the "summit" of natural gas producers. These nations are attempting to band together and create an OPEC like cartel for the sale of natural gas. The U.S. is not one of these nations, and the formation of an organization like this would only be done for one reason: to raise the price of natural gas.
This event, should it come to fruition, would be monumental to the coal industry. It would create a huge demand for reliable, low cost fuel for the production of electricity and more plants and other industries would move from natural gas to coal as their main fuel source. I anticipate that these nations will form this alliance and Peabody and its shareholders will be the main unintended beneficiary of it.
So, all this now has us considering buying shares of a company that is the world leader in its industry, with increasing demand and pricing power for its products selling at historically low levels... valueplay, anyone?

Progress Energy seeks new approach

2007-04-14T19:24:00.000-04:00

Progress seeks new strategy
by Nanci Bompey, NBOMPEY@CITIZEN-TIMES.COM

ASHEVILLE — Progress Energy said Wednesday that officials realize the proposed power plant in Woodfin was perceived in the public as a done deal, and they may take a different approach with similar deals.
Progress Energy spokesman Ken Maxwell said while the company publicly announced a $1-per-year lease on public land to build the oil-burning power plant and there were numerous occasions for public input, the building of the $72 million “peak” power plant was seen as certain by many people in the community.
“We may look at this differently in the future,” Maxwell said.

The utility’s response came after a Woodfin board voted last week to deny Progress Energy a conditional-use permit for the 130-megawatt plant that would serve about 150,000 power customers during peak demand periods.
Many residents spoke in opposition to the plant at the board meeting, saying it was harmful to people’s health and the environment, and would cause property values to drop.
Progress Energy said the plant is needed to replace power that the company now buys from another utility provider and that it has to build the plant in order to provide reliable power to the region.
Progress Energy representatives said they have not yet decided if they will appeal the ruling in court, go back to the board with new information or look at building the plant elsewhere.
The company has 30 days from the April 2 ruling to appeal the board’s decision. Even with a successful appeal, Progress still must win an air quality permit and prove need for the plant before the Utilities Commission in the fall.

Cleanest power plant in the U.S.A.

2007-04-14T19:20:00.000-04:00

Polk power plant one of the cleanest in the country

Last Edited: Thursday, 12 Apr 2007, 8:51 PM EDT
Created: Thursday, 12 Apr 2007, 8:51 PM EDT

This power plant in Polk County is getting world-wide attention for its clean-burning technology.

MULBERRY - A power plant in Polk County may become a power player in the struggle to combat global warming. Tampa Electric Polk Power Station is in an isolated area south of Mulberry, and a lot of people are making the trek there looking for answers.
"We have had a number of visitors, literally around the world, to learn about this technology," said Rick Morera, a spokesman for Tampa Electric.
The power station is known as one of the cleanest plants in North America. It emits very little air pollution, and is ready to raise the bar even higher. It is set to cut carbon dioxide emissions, which are suspected of causing global warming, to lower levels than ever before.
"It's not a trivial thing to consider carbon dioxide removal," said Mark Hornick, general manager at the Polk Station.
Carbon dioxide is produced as a by-product of burning the coal.
Experts expect the federal government to tighten up regulations on coal burning plants like the one in Polk, within the next few years.
"We'll be ready," Hornick said.
If the plant's state of the art technology was retrofitted, its carbon dioxide emissions could be cut by almost ninety percent. It also has plans to build a new unit within the next few years that would produce very little Co2.

Coal vs. Environmental Concerns

2007-04-14T19:07:00.000-04:00

Coal fueling environmental collision course
Apr 13, 2007
Honolulu Advertiser, Opinion
COMMENTARY
By Ronald Brownstein
Utilities deciding on new plants that could undermine U.S. policy
An ominous collision is approaching between Washington's legislative and regulatory agenda and the investment plans of the nation's largest utilities. Unless these blueprints are aligned, meaningful progress against global warming could be foreclosed for years, or even decades.
Mandatory limits on carbon dioxide and other gases that contribute to global warming appear inevitable after a U.S. Supreme Court decision last week. By ruling that greenhouse gases qualified as air pollutants under the Clean Air Act, the court virtually required the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate them — and increased the likelihood that Congress will impose limits as well. But with President Bush opposed to compulsory reductions, none is likely until he leaves office.
Many utilities accept the inevitability of restraints on greenhouse-gas emissions, but most won't act unless they are required to act. And while Washington delays in establishing such requirements, utilities are making investment decisions that could undermine whatever strategy the nation finally adopts.
With demand for electricity expected to rise by about one-sixth through 2015, utilities are betting heavily on coal, even though it generates more carbon dioxide per unit of heat than oil or natural gas. Coal is attractive to utilities because it is plentiful and cheap. But coal is inexpensive largely because power plants are not required to capture the carbon they produce. Coal-fired plants contribute half the electricity produced in the United States but four-fifths of the carbon emissions associated with electrical generation. Coal-fired plants, in fact, contribute almost one-third of all the carbon emissions the United States generates — roughly as much produced by every car and truck on the road. No future federal effort against global warming could succeed without slashing those coal-related emissions.
Yet the Department of Energy recently reported that U.S. utilities are planning to build 150 more coal-fired power plants through 2030, with nearly half slated for operation by 2011. Utilities say they have no alternative to meet the growing demand, but power plants operate for 50 years. By relying too heavily on coal to meet their near-term supply challenge, utilities could threaten progress against global warming for decades.
"The biggest threat to a rational global warming policy is we delay acting two to four years and utilities build a lot of new sources that make it impossible to take action," said Bruce Nilles, a Sierra Club attorney.
Technological advances may someday reduce that danger. Researchers are exploring systems that capture carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants and sequester the gas underground. But these efforts are nascent: The largest project, in Norway, is storing only about one-third as much carbon as an average coal plant produces.
Some public figures, such as former Vice President Al Gore, 2008 Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards and outspoken NASA climate scientist James Hansen, want to ban new coal-fired plants until this clean coal technology is proved. That's probably more than the economy could bear. But until research demonstrates the technological and economic feasibility of "capture and sequester" systems, officials should seek to limit new coal plant construction to the bare minimum.
One precedent that states could apply is the new California law prohibiting purchase of electricity from plants that generate substantial greenhouse-gas emissions. Democratic Sens. Barbara Boxer of California and Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico recently sent a useful signal by warning that any federal global-warming legislation was unlikely to "grandfather" heavily emitting coal plants completed before its passage.
Even the utility industry should think twice; conventional coal plants built today inevitably will face expensive retrofitting to meet future emission standards. American Electric Power Co., a large Midwest utility, last month announced plans for the first capture-and-sequester retrofits on existing coal plants. But Michael G. Morris, company chairman and chief executive, says the better approach is to build all-new plants "from this point forward addressing the global warming issue."
As Morris notes, that would require fresh thinking from state regulators, who currently don't allow utilities to pass on the cost of limiting carbon emissions, because federal law doesn't require it. It would also require sacrifice from consumers. Wind and solar could fill some of the gap if utilities slow their planned additions in coal-fired power while cleaner technologies are tested. But any turn from coal would also demand conservation, likely enforced through higher prices for electricity.
Moving away from conventional coal too abruptly might disrupt the economy. But sticking with it too long would surely doom our efforts to stabilize the environment. The best formula would be to accelerate research on technologies that promise cleaner coal — and to slow the deployment of conventional coal plants until that research catches fire.
Ronald Brownstein is the Los Angeles Times' national affairs columnist.

Safety Fines To Double

2007-03-26T19:41:00.000-04:00

Mine Safety Fines to Double Under New Regulation
Mar 24, 2007

RedOrbit
kward@wvgazette.com
Total fines for mine safety violations would more than double, to almost $32 million a year nationwide, under a new rule finalized Thursday by the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration.
But fines charged to the industry's largest operators could actually decline, compared to the original proposal MSHA published last year, according to estimates made public with the release of the final rule.
While MSHA refused an industry request and generally raised fees across the board, agency officials also backed off several parts of the original proposal issued in the wake of last year's deadly year in the coalfields.
United Mine Workers President Cecil Roberts generally praised the final rule, but said he remains worried about how MSHA will implement it.
"It remains to be seen if MSHA will actually shift its general attitude from 'compliance assistance' to being strict enforcers of the law," Roberts said in a prepared statement.
Carol Raulston, a spokeswoman for the National Mining Association, said her group had hoped MSHA would scale back the rule to include only fine increases required by Congress in a reform bill passed last year.
That law established a new maximum fine of $220,000 for "flagrant" health and safety violations and a penalty of $5,000 to $60,000 for operators who fail to promptly report serious accidents, but under pressure after the Sago Mine disaster and a string of other deaths, MSHA did a much broader rewrite of its penalty regulations.
The rule rewrites a set of tables that set penalty "points" for violations, based on various factors, including the company size, compliance history and violation seriousness.
Under the final rule, total fines for all mining sectors would increase, if officials assume no additional compliance, from $24.9 million a year to $69.3 million, slightly more than under the original MSHA proposal.
MSHA projected its overall increase in penalties would force more coal operators to comply with the law more frequently. Overall, the agency said, total violations are expected to drop by nearly one- fourth.
When this change is accounted for, MSHA projects total fines assessed per year would increase from $14.7 million to $31.8 million.
Total fines for the very largest operators - those with more than 500 workers - would drop compared to the original proposal, from $7.4 million to $5.7 million.
For the next largest category - operators with between 20 and 500 workers - total penalties would increase slightly over the proposed rule, from $46.7 million to $49.4 million.
In its Federal Register notice, MSHA analyzed several industry examples that indicate the final rule is not as severe as last year's proposal:
* At one Jim Walter Resources mine in Alabama, the proposed rule would have increased total 2005 penalties form $66,000 to $379,000. The final rule increases them to $334,000, about 12 percent less.
* At another Jim Walter mine, last year's proposal would have increased total fines from $129,000 to $421,000. This week's final rule would increase them to $344,000, about 18 percent less.
* At a Peabody Energy mine, the original MSHA proposal would have increased the average fine for a serious violation from $576 to $3,996. The final rule would increase the fine to $2,902, about 27 percent less.
Among other changes, MSHA backed off its original proposal for increasing penalty points based on mine size. Instead of a maximum of 20 points for mines with more than 2 million tons a year of coal produced for example, the final proposal gives similar-sized operators 15 points. That is still an increase over the 10 points allocated to those size operators under current rules.
MSHA eliminated the single shift penalty, which assigned automatic fines of $60 to the most common and less serious violations.
Under the change, these violations will instead be processed through the normal assessment procedure.
MSHA also reduced from 24 months to 15 months to period of time that will be examined in determining whether operators have a history of violations.
Also, in its new addition to the penalty formula meant to take into account repeat violations of the same safety standards, MSHA decided to base its analysis on the number of citations per inspection day rather than just the raw number of citations.
MSHA did not agree to industry requests that this new part of the formula only consider violations inspectors deem to be "significant and substantial."
To contact staff writer Ken Ward Jr., use e-mail or call 348- 1702

USA #2 and we like it, China top polluter

2007-03-26T19:37:00.000-04:00

China on brink as No. 1 polluter
Mar 24, 2007

Washington Times

Emma Graham-Harrison and Gerard Wynn

China is on course to overtake the United States this year as the world's biggest carbon dioxide producer, according to estimates based on Chinese energy data.
The finding might pressure Beijing to take more action on climate change.
China's emissions rose by about 10 percent in 2005, a senior U.S. scientist estimated, while Beijing data shows fuel consumption rose more than 9 percent in 2006, suggesting China would easily outstrip the United States this year, long before a forecast.
Taking the top spot would put pressure on China to do more to slow emissions as part of world talks on extending the United Nations' Kyoto Protocol on global warming beyond 2012.
Thirty-five developed nations have agreed to cut emissions in accordance with Kyoto and they want others, especially the United States and China, to do more. China and India were not included in the pact because they are considered developing countries, which was one reason the United States did not sign it.
"It looks likely to me that China will pass the United States [in emissions] this year," said Gregg Marland, a senior staff scientist at the U.S. Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, which supplies data to governments, researchers and nongovernmental organizations worldwide.
"There's a very high likelihood they'll pass them in 2007."
Carbon dioxide is produced by burning fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas for heat, power and transportation. Many, but not all, scientists say it is a key contributor to global warming.
Mr. Marland used fossil fuel consumption data from oil company BP to calculate China's carbon dioxide emissions in 2005 at 5.3 billion tons, versus 5.9 billion for the United States, with respective growth in 2005 of 10.5 percent and less than 0.1 percent.
In 2006, Chinese fuel consumption rose 9.3 percent to the equivalent of 2.4 billion tons of coal that year, the deputy head of the office that advises China on energy policy, Xu Dingming, said on Thursday.
This was faster than BP's estimate of a 9 percent rise in China's oil, gas and coal consumption in 2005, to 1.45 billion tons of oil equivalent.
The International Energy Agency (IEA), which advises 26 developed countries, said in November that China would overtake the United States as the world's biggest carbon dioxide emitter before 2010 if current trends continued.
China's Office of the National Coordination Committee on Climate Change said it could not comment on either forecast, as it did not have a reliable estimate of the country's emissions.
"These figures are very complicated; we don't have an estimate of [carbon dioxide] for such a recent date," said an official who declined to be named. "We have just set in motion our national reporting plan ... but it will not be done for two or three years."
U.N. data for 2003 put the United States at the top with 23 percent of world carbon dioxide emissions and China second with 16.5 percent. But U.S. residents were far bigger producers, at 20 tons per capita versus China's 3.2 tons and a world average of 3.7.
China argues that wealthy nations are responsible for most of the greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere and should lead the way in cutting emissions.
More economic growth and fuel use translates into higher emissions, particularly in China, which gets around 70 percent of its energy from coal, the highest carbon-producing fuel.
Mr. Marland estimated a plus or minus 15 to 20 percent error in the Chinese data versus a 5 percent U.S. margin.
China's rapid rise of carbon emissions is threatening to outweigh efforts by the European Union and others to slow climate change. EU leaders said earlier this month they would cut the bloc's greenhouse gases by at least one-fifth by 2020.
But China between now and 2015 will build power-generating capacity equal to the entire existing capacity in the 27-nation European Union, the IEA estimates.
China's sconomic growth has been fueled largely by burning coal, and it is still building power plants at an unprecedented rate. Last year, it added about 100 gigawatts of new generators, approaching France's entire capacity, most of them coal-burning ones.

Copyright © 2007 News World Communications, Inc. All rights reserved.

Judge says mt top removal illegally

2007-03-26T19:03:00.000-04:00

Judge: Corps coal permits illegal
Mar 23, 2007
St Paul Pioneer Press
PAM RAMSEY Associated Press Writer
CHARLESTON, W.Va.- A federal judge ruled Friday that the Army Corps of Engineers illegally issued permits for four mountaintop removal mines without adequately determining whether the environment would be harmed.
U.S. District Judge Chuck Chambers rescinded the permits, which allow four mines operated by Massey Energy Co. to fill nearby valleys with dirt, rocks and other material removed to expose coal seams.
The Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition and two other environmental groups had sued to force the corps to perform more extensive environmental reviews before granting valley fill permits for the mines.
The corps had maintained that more extensive reviews weren't necessary for the permits.
Chambers remanded the permits to the corps for further consideration.
Messages left after hours for the corps and for Richmond, Va.-based Massey were not immediately returned.
The issue of mountaintop removal and valley fills has been argued in state and federal courts in the region for nearly a decade. Coal operators claim the practice is an efficient way to expose seams in mountainous coalfields.
Environmentalists call the technique destructive and point to a 2005 study that said mountaintop removal and valley fills had buried 1,200 miles of headwater streams in Appalachia.
The corps had argued that mitigation techniques, including restoring streams, would offset any harmful effects. Chambers, however, said the agency
failed to assess the full impact of destroying headwater streams within a watershed.
"The evidence to date shows that the Corps has no scientific basis—no real evidence of any kind—upon which it bases its decisions to permit this permanent destruction to streams and headwaters," said Steve Roady, a lawyer with Washington-based Earthjustice, which represented the environmental groups.
Bill Raney, president of the West Virginia Coal Association, said he had not read the ruling and had no immediate comment. The association had intervened in the lawsuit.
On the Net:
Massey Energy: http://www.masseyenergyco.com/
West Virginia Coal Association: http://www.wvcoal.com/
Corps of Engineers: http://www.usace.army.mil/

Media scare on warming, the truth steps fwd

2007-03-23T12:17:00.000-04:00

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4520665474899458831

Global Warming, “the biggest scam of modern times”

“The Great Global Warming Scandal”, that’s the name of a recent television documentary aired in Britain. The documentary is directed by filmmaker Martin Durkin.

The film by Mr. Durkin takes on another point of view as opposed to the premise outlined in former Vice President Al Gore's Oscar-winning documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," which presents a dreadful picture of how modern society has created a buildup in greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and how they are affecting the global climate to such an extent that there will be disastrous consequences for us all.

In a recent article in the “Washington Times” Mr. Durkin said, concerning Al Gores film "It's very rare that a film changes history, but I think this is a turning point, and in five years the idea that the greenhouse effect is the main reason behind global warming will be seen as total bunk". He believes that Al Gores film will change history but not in the way Al Gore will necessarily like. Durkin supports the thesis that global warming is the biggest man-made scam ever created in modern times and Al Gore will be remembered as the leader of a shakedown.

The television documentary condemns man-made global warming as a myth that has become "the biggest scam of modern times."

Mr. Durkin in the Washington Times article, rejects the concept of man-made climate change, calling it "a lie ... the biggest scam of modern times." The truth, he says, is that global warming "is a multibillion-dollar worldwide industry, created by fanatically anti-industrial environmentalists, supported by scientists peddling scare stories to chase funding, and propped up by compliant politicians and the media."

I can’t help but think that the current movement to save the earth by shutting down on the American manufacturing base and all the coal fired power plants in the country that will save us all from ruin is reminiscent of the McCarthyism movement. Only this time the basic “fear premise” comes from people who have prostituted science instead of a social theory like communism. Still it has creped into the American political system with the help of some modern day McCarthy’s like Al Gore and presents just as grave a danger to the nation’s future. I refer to all this as a movement because the fanatical preaching of the greenhouse effect going to destroy the earth, is like a puritanical religion. These people are (and are dragging a lot of misguided kids along with them) worshiping the earth as opposed to GOD.

The documentary by Mr. Durkin features an impressive group of experts, in climatology, oceanography, meteorology, biogeography and paleoclimatology and come from prestigious institutions such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Pasteur Institute in Paris, the Danish National Space Center and universities and other schools in London, Ottawa, Jerusalem, Alabama, Virginia and Winnipeg, Canada. So what do they say might be the reason the earths temperature is changing?

The Washington Times article states a couple different points of view; One of the filmmaker's scientists, paleontologist professor Ian Clark of the University of Ottawa, says that global warming could be caused by increased activity on the sun, such as massive eruptions, and that ice-core samples from Antarctica show that, in fact, warmer periods in Earth's history have come about 800 years before rises in carbon dioxide levels. Mr. Clark's findings appear to contradict the work of other scientists, who have used similar ice-core samples to illustrate that raised levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have accompanied the various global warming periods."The fact is that [carbon dioxide] has no proven link to global temperatures," says Mr. Durkin. "Solar activity is far more likely to be the culprit."Scientists in the Channel 4 documentary cite what they claim is another discrepancy involving conventional research, saying that most of the recent global warming occurred before 1940, after which temperatures around the world fell for four decades.Mr. Durkin's skeptical specialists view this as a flaw in the official view, because the worldwide economic boom that followed the end of World War II produced more carbon dioxide, and therefore should have meant a rise in global temperatures -- something he says did not happen."The Great Global Warming Swindle" also questions an assertion by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's report, published last month, that it was backed by some 2,500 of the world's leading scientists.Another of Mr. Durkin's professors, Paul Reiter of Paris' Pasteur Institute, an expert in malaria, calls the U.N. report a "sham" because, he says, it included the names of scientists -- including his own -- who disagreed with the report and who resigned from the panel."That is how they make it seem that all the top scientists are agreed," he says. "It's not true."Mr. Reiter says his name was removed only after he threatened legal action against the panel. The report itself, he adds, was finalized by government appointees.Yet another expert in the Durkin documentary, Philip Stott, professor emeritus of biogeography at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, is more circumspect."The [climate] system is too complex to say exactly what the effect of cutting back on [carbon dioxide] production would be or, indeed, of continuing to produce [carbon dioxide].""The greenhouse effect theory worried me from the start," Mr. Stott says, "because you can't say that just one factor can have this effect."

"Al Gore might have won an Oscar," says Durkin, "but the film is very misleading, and he (Gore) has got the relationship between carbon dioxide and climate change the wrong way around."

More Gore

2007-03-20T18:23:00.000-04:00

Whose Ox Is Gored?

The media discover the former vice president's environmental exaggerations and hypocrisy.The media are finally catching up with Al Gore. Criticism of his anti-global-warming franchise and his personal environmental record has gone beyond ankle-biting bloggers. It's now coming from the New York Times and the Nashville Tennessean, his hometown paper that put his birth, as a senator's son, on its front page back in 1948, and where a young Al Gore Jr. worked for five years as a journalist.
Last Tuesday, the Times reported that several eminent scientists "argue that some of Mr. Gore's central points [on global warming] are exaggerated and erroneous." The Tenessean reported yesterday that Mr. Gore received $570,000 in royalties from the owners of zinc mines who held mineral leases on his farm. The mines, which closed in 2003 but are scheduled to reopen under a new operator later this year, "emitted thousands of pounds of toxic substances and several times, the water discharged from the mines into nearby rivers had levels of toxins above what was legal."
All of this comes in the wake of the enormous publicity Mr. Gore received after his documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" won an Oscar. The film features Mr. Gore reprising his famous sighing and lamenting how the average American's energy use is greedily off the charts. At the film's end viewers are asked, "Are you ready to change the way you live?"
The Nashville-based Tennessee Center for Policy Research was skeptical that Mr. Gore had been "walking the walk" on the environment. It obtained public records showing that for years Mr. Gore has burned through more electricity at his Nashville home each month than the average American family uses in a year--and his consumption was increasing. The heated Gore pool house alone ran up more than $500 in natural-gas bills every month.
Mr. Gore's office responded by claiming that the Gores "purchase offsets for their carbon emissions to bring their carbon footprint down to zero." But CNSNews.com reports that Mr. Gore doesn't purchase carbon offsets with his own resources, and that they are meaningless in terms of global warming.
The offset purchases are actually made for him by Generation Investment Management, a London-based investment firm that Mr. Gore co-founded, and which provides carbon offsets as a fringe benefit to all 23 of its employees, ensuring that they require no real sacrifice on the part of Mr. Gore or his family. Indeed, their impact is also highly limited. The Carbon Neutral Co.--one of the two vendors that sell offsets to Mr. Gore's company, says that offset purchases "will be unable to reduce greenhouse gas emissions . . . in the short term."

The New York Times last week interviewed many scientists who say they are alarmed "at what they call [Mr. Gore's] alarmism on global warming." In a front-page piece in its science section, the Times headline read "From a Rapt Audience, a Call to Cool the Hype."
The Times quoted Don Easterbrook, an emeritus professor of geology at Western Washington University, as telling hundreds of experts at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America that "I don't want to pick on Al Gore. But there are a lot of inaccuracies in the statements we are seeing, and we have to temper that with real data." Mr. Easterbrook made clear he has never been paid by any energy corporations and isn't a Republican.
Even James Hansen, a scientist who began issuing warning cries about global warming in the 1980s and is a top adviser to Mr. Gore, concedes that his work may hold "imperfections" and "technical flaws." Other flaws are more serious, such as Mr. Gore's depiction of sea level rises of up to 20 feet, which would cause Florida and New York City to sink below the surface.
Sober scientists privately say such claims are exaggerated. They point to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body that released its fourth report on global warming last month. While it found humans were the main cause of recent global warming, the report also indicated it was a very slow-moving process. On sea levels, the U.N. panel reported its s best high-end estimate of the rise in sea levels by 2100 was three feet. The new high-end best estimate is less than half the previous prediction, which was still far below Mr. Gore's 20 feet. Similarly, the new report shows that the panel's 2001 report overestimated the human influence on climate change since the Industrial Revolution by at least one-third.
In an email message to the Times, Mr. Gore defended his work as fundamentally accurate. But it's increasingly clear that far from the "consensus" on global warming we are told exists, scientists are having a broad and rich debate on many aspects of it. Nearly two decades after Mr. Gore first claimed that "we face an ecological crisis without any precedent in historic times," we don't know if that is really true.

Then there is the Gore zinc mine. Mr. Gore has personally earned $570,000 in zinc royalties from a mine his father bought in 1973 from Armand Hammer, the business executive famous for his close friendship with the Soviet Union and for pleading guilty to making illegal campaign contributions during Watergate. On the same day Al Gore Sr. bought the 88-acre parcel from Hammer for $160,000, he sold the land and subsurface mining rights to his then 25-year-old son for $140,000. The mineral rights were then leased back to Hammer's Occidental Petroleum and the royalty payments put in the names of Al Gore Jr. and his wife, Tipper.
Gore spokeswoman Kalee Kreider claims the terms of the 30-year Occidental lease agreement gave the Gores "no legal recourse" to get out of it. She said the Gores never thought about selling the land and would not comment on whether they ever tried to void the lease. "There is a certain zone of privacy once people go into private life," Ms. Kreidler said. She said critics of the arrangement should realize it should be viewed in a "1973 context, not a 2007 context. . . . There was a different environmental sensibility about all sorts of things."
But what about a 1992 context? That is the year Mr. Gore published "Earth in the Balance," in which he wrote: "The lakes and rivers sustain us; they flow through the veins of the earth and into our own. But we must take care to let them flow back out as pure as they came, not poison and waste them without thought for the future." Mr. Gore wrote that at a time when he would be collecting zinc royalties for another 11 years.
The mines had a generally good environmental record, but they wouldn't pass muster either with the standard Mr. Gore set in "Earth in the Balance" or with most of his environmentalist friends. In May 2000 the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation issued a "Notice of Violation" notifying the Pasminco mine its zinc levels in a nearby river exceeded standards established by the state and the federal Environmental Protection Agency. In 1996 the mine twice failed biomonitoring tests designed to protect water quality in the river for fish and wildlife. "The discharge of industrial wastewater from Outfall #001 [the Caney Fork effluent] contains toxic metals (copper and zinc)," the analysis stated. "The combined effect of these pollutants may be detrimental to fish and aquatic life."
The Gore mines were no small operations. In 2002, the year before they shut down, they ranked 22nd among all metal-mining operations in the U.S., with total toxic releases of 4.1 million pounds. A new mine operator, Strategic Resource Acquisition, is planning to reopen the mines later this year. The Tennessean reports that just last week, Mr. Gore wrote SRA asking it to work with a national environmental group as it makes its plans. He noted that under the previous operator, the mines had, according to the environmental website Scorecard, "pollution releases from the mine in 2002 [that] placed it among the 'dirtiest/worst facilities' in the U.S." Mr. Gore requested that SRA "engage with us in a process to ensure that the mine becomes a global example of environmental best practices." The Tennessean dryly notes that Mr. Gore wrote the letter the week after the paper posed a series of questions to him about his involvement with the zinc mines.

Columnist Steven Milloy recalls talking with Mr. Gore in 2006 about the 1997 Kyoto Protocol he helped negotiate as vice president. "Did we think Kyoto would [reduce global warming] when we signed it? . . . Hell no!" said Mr. Gore, according to Mr. Milloy. The former vice president then explained that the real purpose of Kyoto was to demonstrate that international support could be mustered for action on environmental issues. Mr. Gore clearly believes that the world hasn't acted with enough vigor in the decade since Kyoto, which may explain his growing use of the global-warming hype that concerns many mainstream scientists.
Mr. Gore has called the campaign to combat global warming a "moral imperative." But Mr. Gore faces another imperative: to square his sales pitches with the facts and his personal lifestyle to more align with what he advocates that others practice. "Are you ready to change the way you live?" asks Mr. Gore's film. It's time people ask Mr. Gore "Are you ready to change the way you live, as well as the way you lecture the rest of us?"

ALGORE energy use brings up some points

2007-03-19T17:06:00.000-04:00

A publication of the ENVIRONMENTAL CONSERVATION ORGANIZATION

The eco-logic power house

Scientific Smackdown: Skeptics Voted The Clear Winners

By Marc Morano

March 19, 2007

Just days before former Vice President Al Gore’s scheduled visit to testify about global warming before the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works, a high profile climate debate between prominent scientists Wednesday evening, March 14, ended with global warming skeptics being voted the clear winner by a tough New York City, before an audience of hundreds of people.
Before the start of the nearly two-hour debate, the audience polled 57.3% to 29.9% in favor of believing that Global Warming was a “crisis”, but following the debate, the numbers completely flipped to 46.2% to 42.2% in favor of the skeptical point of view. The audience also found humor at the expense of former Vice President Gore’s reportedly excessive home energy use.
After the stunning victory, one of the scientists on the side promoting the belief in a climate "crisis" appeared to concede defeat by noting his debate team was ‘pretty dull" and at "a sharp disadvantage" against the skeptics. ScientificAmerican.com’s blog agreed, saying the believers in a man-made climate catastrophe “seemed underarmed for the debate and, not surprising, it swung against them."
The New York City audience laughed as Gore became the butt of humor during the debate.
"What we see in this is an enormous danger for politicians in terms of their hypocrisy. I’m not going to say anything about Al Gore and his house. But it is a very serious point," quipped University of London emeritus professor Philip Stott, to laughter from the audience.
The audience also applauded a call by novelist Michael Crichton to stop the hypocrisy of environmentalists and Hollywood liberals by enacting a ban on private jet travel.
"Let’s have the NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council), the Sierra Club and Greenpeace make it a rule that all of their members, cannot fly on private jets. They must get their houses off the [power] grid. They must live in the way that they’re telling everyone else to live. And if they won’t do that, why should we? And why should we take them seriously?" Crichton said to applause audience. (For more debate quotes see bottom of article)
The debate was sponsored by the Oxford-style debating group Intelligence Squared and featured such prominent man-made global warming skeptics as MIT scientist Richard Lindzen, the University of London emeritus professor of biogeography Philip Stott and Physician turned Novelist/filmmaker Michael Crichton on one side.
The scientists arguing for a climate ‘crisis’ were NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt, meteorologist Richard C.J. Somerville of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Brenda Ekwurzel of the Union of Concerned Scientists. The event, which was moderated by New York Public Radio’s Brian Lehrer, debated the proposition: "Global warming is not a crisis.”
Skeptics Dramatically Convinced Audience
The skeptics achieved the vote victory despite facing an audience that had voted 57% in favor of the belief that mankind has created a climate "crisis" moments before the debate began.
But by the end of the debate, the audience dramatically reversed themselves, and became convinced by the arguments presented by the skeptical scientists. At the conclusion, the audience voted for the views of the skeptics, by a margin of 46.2% to 42.2%. Skeptical audience members grew from a pre-debate low of 29.9% to a post debate high of 46.2% - a jump of nearly 17 percentage points. [Link to official audience voting results]
[Link to full debate pdf transcript]
Scientist Concedes Debate To Skeptics
NASA’s Gavin Schmidt, one of the scientists debating for the notion of a man-made global warming "crisis" conceded after the debate that his side was ‘pretty dull’ and was at "a sharp disadvantage." Schmidt made the comments in a March 15 blog posting at RealCilmate.org.
"…I'm afraid the actual audience (who by temperament I'd say were split roughly half/half on the question) were apparently more convinced by the entertaining narratives from [Novelist Michael] Crichton and [UK’s Philip] Stott (not so sure about Lindzen) than they were by our drier fare. Entertainment-wise it's hard to blame them. Crichton is extremely polished, and Stott has a touch of the revivalist preacher about him. Comparatively, we were pretty dull," Schmidt wrote.
‘Advantage: Climate Contrarians’
The ScientificAmerican.com’s blog also declared the global warming skeptics the clear winner of the debate in a March 15 post titled: "Debate Skills? Advantage: Climate Contrarians."
"The proponents [of a climate crisis] seemed underarmed for the debate and, not surprisingly, it swung against them, particularly when Schmidt made the fatal debating error of dismissing the ability of the audience to judge the scientific nuances," ScientificAmerican.com’s David Biello wrote.
The advocates of climate alarmism "were faced with the folksy anecdotes of Crichton and the oratorical fire of Stott," Biello wrote at ScientificAmerican.com.
Biello concluded, "…the audience responded to Crichton's satirical call for a ban on private jets, more than Ekwurzel's vague we need to throw ‘everything we can at the climate crisis.’ By the final vote, 46 percent of the audience had been convinced that global warming was indeed not a crisis, while just 42 percent persisted in their opinion that it was."
Biello also criticized climate "crisis" advocate Richard Somerville as "perplexed" and "hardly inspiring."
Skeptics ‘Very Popular’
Debate participant Schmidt lamented that the evening turned into one of futility for believers in a man-made global warming catastrophe.
"Crichton went with the crowd-pleasing condemnation of private jet-flying liberals - very popular, even among the private jet-flying Eastsiders present, and the apparent hypocrisy of people who think that global warming is a problem [of] using any energy at all."
Schmidt continued, "Stott is a bit of a force of nature, and essentially accused anyone who thinks global warming is a problem. of explicitly rooting for misery and poverty in the third world. He also brought up the whole cosmic ray issue, as the next big thing in climate science."
Schmidt appeared so demoralized that he mused that debates equally split between believers of a climate ‘crisis’ and scientific skeptics are probably not “worthwhile” to ever agree to again.
Selected Quotes from the climate debate from transcript: [Link to full debate pdf transcript]
Skeptical quotes from Novelist Michael Crichton:
"I would like to suggest a few symbolic actions that might — might really mean something. One of them, which is very simple: 99% of the American population doesn’t care, is ban private jets. Nobody needs to fly in them, ban them now. And, and in addition, [APPLAUSE] "Let’s have the NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council), the Sierra Club and Greenpeace make it a rule that all of their members, cannot fly on private jets. They must get their houses off the [electrical] grid. They must live in the way that they’re telling everyone else to live. And if they won’t do that, why should we? And why should we take them seriously? [APPLAUSE]"
"I suddenly think about my friends, you know, getting on their private jets. And I think, well, you know, maybe they have the right idea. Maybe all that we have to do is mouth a few platitudes, show a good, expression of concern on our faces, buy a Prius, drive it around for a while, and give it to the maid, attend a few fundraisers, and you’re done. Because, actually, all anybody really wants to do is talk about it."
"I mean, haven’t we actually raised temperatures so much that we, as stewards of the planet, have to act? These are the questions that friends of mine ask, as they are getting on board their private jets to fly to their second and third homes. [LAUGHTER]"
"Everyday, 30,000 people on this planet die of the diseases of poverty. There are, a third of the planet doesn’t have electricity. We have a billion people with no clean water. We have half a billion people going to bed hungry every night. Do we care about this? It seems that we don’t. It seems that we would rather look a hundred years into the future, than pay attention to what’s going on now. I think that's unacceptable. I think that’s really a disgrace."
Skeptical quotes of University of London’s emeritus professor of biogeography Philip Stott:
"What we see in this is an enormous danger for politicians in terms of their hypocrisy. I’m not going to say anything about Al Gore and his house. [LAUGHTER] But it is a very serious point."
"In the early 20th century, 95% of scientists believed in eugenics. [LAUGHTER] Science does not progress by consensus, it progresses by falsification and by what we call paradigm shifts."
"The first Earth Day in America claimed the following, that because of global cooling, the population of America would have collapsed to 22 million by the year 2000. And, the average calorie intake of the average American would be wait for this, 2,400 calories, (would be good if it were.) [LAUGHTER] It’s nonsense, and very dangerous. And what we have fundamentally forgotten is simple primary school science. Climate always changes."
"Angela Merkel the German chancellor, my own good prime minister (Tony Blair) for whom I voted - let me emphasize, arguing in public two weeks ago, as to who in Annie-get-the-gun style could produce the best temperature. ‘I could do two degrees C," said Angela.’ ‘No, I could only do three," said Tony.’ [LAUGHTER] Stand back a minute, those are politicians, telling you that they can control climate to a degree Celsius.”
“And can I remind everybody that IPCC that we keep talking about, very honestly admits that we know very little about 80% of the factors behind climate change. Well let’s use an engineer; I don’t think I’d want to cross Brooklyn Bridge if it were built by an engineer who only understood 80% of the forces on that bridge. [LAUGHTER]”
Skeptical quotes of MIT’s Professor of Atmospheric Science Richard Lindzen:
"Now, much of the current alarm, I would suggest, is based on ignorance of what is normal for weather and climate."
"The impact on temperature per unit carbon dioxide actually goes down, not up, with increasing CO2. The role of anthropogenic greenhouse gases is not directly related to the emissions rate or even CO2 levels, which is what the legislation is hitting on, but rather to the impact of these gases on the greenhouse effect."
"The real signature of greenhouse warming is not surface temperature, but temperature in the middle of the troposphere, about five kilometers. And that is going up even slower than the temperature at the surface."

Copyright © 2007 Freedom.org. All rights reserved.

Limousine Liberal Hypocrisy

2007-03-18T17:11:00.000-04:00

Limousine Liberal Hypocrisy

Friday, Mar. 16, 2007 By CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER

Goldman Sachs has been one of the most aggressive firms on Wall Street about taking action on climate change; the company sends its bankers home at night in hybrid limousines.

--The New York Times, Feb. 25

Written without a hint of irony--if only your neighborhood dry cleaner sent his employees home by hybrid limousine--this front-page dispatch captured perfectly the eco-pretensions of the rich and the stupefying gullibility with which they are received.
Remember the Leonardo DiCaprio and Al Gore global-warming pitch at the Academy Awards? Before they spoke, the screen at the back of the stage flashed not-so-subliminal messages about how to save the planet. My personal favorite was "Ride mass transit." This to a conclave of Hollywood plutocrats who have not seen the inside of a subway since the moon landing and for whom mass transit means a stretch limo seating no fewer than 10.
Leo and Al then portentously announced that for the first time ever, the Academy Awards ceremony had gone green. What did that mean? Solar panels in the designer gowns? It turns out that the Academy neutralized the evening's "carbon footprint" by buying carbon credits. That means it sent money to a "carbon broker," who promised, after taking his cut, to reduce carbon emissions somewhere on the planet equivalent to what the stars spewed into the atmosphere while flying in on their private planes.
In other words, the rich reduce their carbon output by not one ounce. But drawing on the hundreds of millions of net worth in the Kodak Theatre, they pull out lunch money to buy ecological indulgences. The last time the selling of pardons was prevalent--in a predecessor religion to environmentalism called Christianity--Martin Luther lost his temper and launched the Reformation.
A very few of the very rich have some awareness of the emptiness--if not the medieval corruption--of ransoming one's sins. Sergey Brin, zillionaire founder of Google, buys carbon credits to offset the ghastly amount of carbon dioxide emitted by Google's private Boeing 767 but confesses he's not sure if it really does anything.
Which puts him one step ahead of most other eco-preeners who actually pretend that it does--the Goracle himself, for example. His Tennessee mansion consumes 20 times the electricity used by the average American home. Last August alone it consumed twice as much power as the average home consumes in a year. Gore buys absolution, however. He spends pocket change on carbon credits, which then allow him to pollute conscience-free.
What is wrong with this scam? First, purchasing carbon credits is an incentive to burn even more fossil fuels, since now it is done under the illusion that it's really cost-free to the atmosphere.
Second, it is a way for the rich to export the real costs and sacrifices of pollution control to the poorer segments of humanity in the Third World. (Apparently, Hollywood's plan is to make up for that by adopting every last one of their children.) For example, GreenSeat, a Dutch carbon-trading outfit, buys offsets from a foundation that plants trees in Uganda's Mount Elgon National Park to soak up the carbon emissions of its rich Western patrons. Small problem: expanding the park encroaches on land traditionally used by local farmers. As a result, reports the New York Times, "villagers living along the boundary of the park have been beaten and shot at, and their livestock has been confiscated by armed park rangers." All this so that swimming pools can be heated and Maseratis driven with a clear conscience in the fattest parts of the world.
The other form of carbon trading is to get Third World companies to cut their emissions to offset Western pollution. The reason this doesn't work--and why the carbon racket is a farce--is that you need a cap for cap-and-trade to work. Sulfur dioxide emissions in the U.S. were capped, and the trading system succeeded in reducing acid rain by half. But even the Kyoto treaty doesn't put any cap on greenhouse gases in China and India, where billions of these carbon credits are traded. Sure, you can pretend you're offsetting Western greenhouse pollution by supposedly cleaning up a dirty coal plant in China. But China is adding a new coal plant every week. You could build a particularly dirty "uncapped" power plant, then sell hundreds of millions in carbon credits to reduce it to a normal rate of pollution. The result? The polluter gets very rich. The planet continues to cook. And the Gores of the world can feel virtuous as they burn up the local power grid.
If Gore really wants to save the planet, he can try this: Turn off the lights. Ditch the heated pool. Ride the subway. And spare us the carbon-trading piety.

ALGORE likes the profits from Zinc mine

2007-03-18T16:14:00.000-04:00

If I have to say the word hypocrite one more time when I have to use this guys name I am going to be sick.

Environmentalist Gore allowed zinc mine

By Bill Theobald, Gannett News Service

CARTHAGE, Tenn. — Al Gore has profited from zinc mining that has released millions of pounds of potentially toxic substances near his farmstead, but there is no evidence the mine has caused serious damage to the environment in the area or threatened the health of his neighbors.
Massive white mountains of leftover rock waste are evidence of three decades of mining that earned Gore $570,000 in royalty payments for the mineral rights to his property.
New owners plan to start mining again later this year, after nearly four years of inactivity. In addition to bringing 250 much-needed jobs to rural middle Tennessee, mine owners will resume paying royalties to some residents who, like Gore, own land adjacent to the mine and leased access to the zinc under their property.
Gore has yet to be approached by the new owner, Strategic Resource Acquisition, said his spokeswoman Kalee Kreider, and he and wife, Tipper, have not decided whether they will renew their lease. It was terminated when the mine closed in 2003.
Last week, Gore sent a letter asking the company to work with Earthworks, a national environmental group, to make sure the operation doesn't damage the environment.
"We would like for you to engage with us in a process to ensure that the mine becomes a global example of environmental best practices," Gore wrote.
Victor Wyprysky, the company's president and chief executive officer, did not respond to requests for comment on the letter.
The letter was sent the week after Gannett News Service posed questions to the former vice president about his involvement with the mine.
Previous mine owners released toxic substances into waterways above the allowable levels several times in the eight years before the mine closed.
But state regulators consider those permit violations minor and monitoring reports provide a clean bill of health for the rivers in the area, which are a source of drinking water. Community leaders and health officials recall no health problems ever associated with the mining.
But now that the mine is reopening and Gore's status as an environmentalist has grown, some of Gore's neighbors see a conflict between the mining and his moral call for environmental activism.
"Mining is not exactly synonymous with being green, is it?" said John Mullins, who lives in nearby Cookeville.
At the same time, the Caney Fork Watershed Association, which works to conserve and improve the waterways in the area, has heard no concerns from its members about the mine's reopening.
"The operation has a record of vigilance in not operating to harm the environment, and we certainly hope that the renewed operation will maintain this record," John Harwood, with the association, said in a written statement.
The Gores bought the land near the mines from his parents on Sept. 22, 1973, the same day his father bought it from Occidental Minerals, a subsidiary of Occidental Petroleum, and leased the mineral rights back to the company.
Kreider said the terms of the 30-year lease provided the Gores "no legal recourse" even if they had wanted to cancel it. The Gores, she said, would not comment on whether they tried to pursue legal action to void the lease. She said they never considered selling the land.
Kreider said the Gores received $20,000 a year in royalties for 27 years and $10,000 per year in three years.
During the 1980s, the mine was the largest zinc-producing mine in the country.
In the five-year period from 1998-2003, before the mines were shuttered, more than 19 million pounds of toxic substances were released into the air, water and land, according to the Environmental Protection Agency's Toxic Release Inventory data. Most of that was zinc pulled from the ground during mining.
Gore noted in his letter that, according to tallies on Scorecard, a website run by environmentalists, "pollution releases from the mine in 2002 placed it among the 'dirtiest/worst facilities' in the U.S."
Most of the improper discharges from the mines into nearby rivers and streams involved higher than allowed levels of zinc.
One of those waterways was the Caney Fork River, which Gore used as a backdrop in his Oscar-winning documentary on global warming, "An Inconvenient Truth."
The Gores won't speculate on whether they will refuse to renew their lease if the new owners don't follow their request to work with the environmental group, Kreider said. They do plan, she said, to encourage their neighbors to join their effort.
Also to be decided is what to do about the leases on two parcels owned by Albert Gore Sr., which Gore eventually will inherit when his parents' estates are settled.
Contact Bill Theobald at wtheobal@gns.gannett.com.

AEP to install carbon capture technologies

2007-03-17T11:05:00.000-04:00

Nation's largest coal-burning utility will capture carbon at two plants

Mar 15, 2007
Greenwire
One of the nation's largest power producers announced plans today to install carbon-capture technologies on coal-fired power plants in West Virginia and Oklahoma.
American Electric Power of Columbus, Ohio, said it would add post-combustion carbon dioxide scrubbers that use chilled ammonia to remove CO2 from flue gases. Tests of the technology will begin this summer at a small power plant in Wisconsin.
"With Congress expected to take action on greenhouse gas issues in climate legislation, it's time to advance this technology for commercial use," said AEP Chairman Michael Morris in a statement.
AEP also said it had reached agreement with Babcock & Wilcox Co. to assess the effectiveness of "oxy-coal" technology at snaring CO2. If it works, the technology would be used at another AEP plant between 2012 and 2015.
Morris is expected to provide further details of AEP's plans at the Morgan Stanley Global Electricity & Energy Conference today in New York.
AEP's announcement comes the day after the Massachusetts Institute of Technology released a report saying coal could continue as a viable energy source so long as government and industry work to widely deploy carbon capture and storage technologies (Greenwire, March 14).
The announcement garnered favorable reviews from both industry lobbyists and environmental groups who have been pushing coal-fired utilities to act aggressively to reduce greenhouse gases like CO2.
"We think it's very significant," said Jim Owen, a spokesman for the Edison Electric Institute. "I think everyone recognizes that carbon capture and storage is a critical piece of the long-term climate change equation. It's a needed piece of technology that we're going to have to have available and deployable to get to much deeper reductions in CO2 emissions."
Owen said AEP's announcement will likely spur similar action from other major coal-fired utilities, which until now have been slow to embrace CO2 controls, particularly for existing plants. "One of the most important things about what AEP is doing is it keeps coal in the fuel mix," he said. "That's really the bottom line."
Scott Segal, a Washington attorney and senior lobbyist for coal-fired utilities, said AEP's announcement demonstrates that deployment of new carbon-capture technology is "the key to responsible carbon policy." But he warned, "Government policy cannot be based on purely hypothetical applications when there is still serious work to be done on capture and sequestration."
And Emily Figdor of the advocacy group U.S. Public Interest Research Group said AEP's announcement was "very encouraging." But she said that to effectively address global warming, such technologies would need to be added to all existing coal plants. "If we can do it," she said.
Carbon capture technology
AEP said it will install the carbon capture system -- designed by Alstom Power Systems of Knoxville, Tenn. -- on a 30-megawatt test unit at its 1,300-megawatt Mountaineer Plant in New Haven, W.Va. The company expects to trap and store up to 100,000 metric tons of CO2 per year there. Carbon storage will occur in deep saline aquifers on the plant site, the company said.
Alstom said it has demonstrated the potential to capture over 90 percent of CO2 using its chilled ammonia approach at lower cost than other carbon-capture technologies. The technology should be applicable to both new and existing plants through retrofitting, officials said.
Bob Hilton, Alstom's director of business development, said the chilled ammonia carbon capture process has been under development for about three years, and that its first commercial test will begin this summer on a 5-megawatt slipstream unit at a Wisconsin power plant.
If the West Virginia validation test goes well, a second application is planned for AEP's Northeastern Station in Oologah, Okla., on a 450-megawatt coal-fired unit. The company hopes the technology will be commercially viable at the Oklahoma power plant by late 2011.
The Alstom-designed system isolates CO2 by chilling flue gases in the combustion cycle, recovering large volumes of water which can be recycled. Once isolated, the CO2 is collected on an absorber much like that used in systems that reduce sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions, officials said.
In a release, Babcock & Wilcox's parent company, McDermott International Inc., said its oxy-coal combustion process, once fully developed, "is expected to result in near-zero emissions from coal-fired electric-generating facilities."
Oxy-coal combustion uses pure oxygen for the coal combustion, and nitrogen that comes in with the air is eliminated, according to McDermott. The resulting flue gas "is a relatively pure stream of CO2 that is ready for capture and sequestration or alternative uses such as enhanced oil recovery," the company said.
Morris said AEP's 100-year track record of innovation in power generation "makes us very comfortable with taking action on carbon emissions and accelerating advancement of the technology."
Senior reporter Darren Samuelsohn contributed to this report

Energy Bills going up in TX

2007-03-17T10:33:00.000-04:00

Energy bill meeting gets heated

By JESSICA SAVAGE @ The Daily Sentinel
Thursday, March 15, 2007
ZAVALLA — Tempers flared, emotions ran high and a few curse words were uttered as more than 100 area residents packed Zavalla City Hall Thursday night to voice concerns over high energy bills.
Representatives from TXU Electric Delivery, TXU Energy, Stream Energy and two state legislators' offices addressed questions in an open forum lasting more than three hours.
In an article that ran in Monday's edition of The Daily Sentinel, several Zavalla residents said their energy usage had doubled and, in some cases, tripled since TXU Delivery installed digital meters three months ago.
Joan and Hubert Roebuck received an electricity bill for $1,111.79 this month.
"It's a bunch of malarkey. That is just impossible ... It's outrageous," said Joan Roebuck in an interview last week.
Not one representative at the meeting could explain why.
But representatives from TXU Delivery assured consumers the meters are accurate.
"We feel good about the meters," said Chris Shine, a representative of TXU Delivery, in an interview hours before the town meeting.
He and David Collier, TXU area manager for Angelina and Nacogdoches counties, said the recent backlash is stemming from misinformation and confusion.
"The meter has fallen victim because it is the most tangible thing to blame," Shine said in an earlier interview. "Consumers need to look at rates. They have gone up."
Shine dispelled rumors that digital meters are calculating usage higher than the mechanical meters had.
"One is not more accurate," he said.
He compared the difference of mechanical and digital meter to that of a car odometer. No matter if a vehicle reads the rate of speed digitally or mechanically, both give the same output, he said.
As the meeting progressed, consumers grew more agitated, insisting digital meters are to blame.
"Obviously (the problem) is related to meter usage ... Rate is irrelevant. It's consumption that needs to be evaluated," said Fred Graham of Nacogdoches. "If (the problem) were isolated you wouldn't have a meeting of this size."
One man in the audience seemed satisfied after he reached an agreement with TXU Delivery to have his meter removed and tested by an independent company. Of course, he and TXU Delivery had to agree on which company could test the device.
Others voiced concern about how they were going to afford the electricity bill until the problem is resolved.
"We cannot afford to live if we have to pay those bills," said one woman. "What are you going to do if we have to shut down our entire town because we can't afford the bills?"
Representatives from TXU Energy, a retail provider, handled its customers' complaints one by one at the meeting. Those not able to be at the meeting are asked to call the company and request a payment plan until the meter issue is resolved.
A representative from Stream Energy attempted to calm customers.
"We're working with TXU closely to figure out what we can do," said Trei Henri.
One statement in Monday's article was inaccurate. TXU Delivery officials said the company is currently conducting an internal audit of its 80,000 digital meters recently installed in Angelina and Nacogdoches counties. The audit is expected to ensure county residents and businesses are receiving accurate billing information regarding their usage. Two-thirds of the audit is complete.
"I don't think you should monitor yourselves," said one man at the meeting.
Preliminary results show some customers have been billed for the usage of other customers. TXU Delivery said the glitch, as it refers to as crossed meters, is not widespread.
"There have been a few incidents, but not many," Collier said. He did not know, off-hand, how many customers had fallen victim to crossed meters. In a previous interview, Collier said the number of crossed meters discovered was not many.
Susan Sowards, district director for state representative Jim McReynolds' office, and Dawn Glover of Sen. Robert Nichols office attended the meeting to offer a local support network for constituents unsure of how to file complaints.
Recent TXU news
On Monday, the Public Utility Commission of Texas released a report by Potomac Economics Ltd., which said TXU Corp. manipulated wholesale energy prices, causing electricity rates to rise 15.5 percent in 2005. The energy giant earned $20 million in profits off the $70 million it collected from consumers during a four-month summer period that year, the report stated.
TXU Corp. recently reported it earned a 33-percent increase in profits for its fourth-quarter results on Feb. 28, despite mild winter weather and lower than average consumer usage. Its net income grew to $475 million from $356 million in the year-earlier quarter, according to a report from The Associated Press. The company has attributed its improved results to lower operating costs.
The company has recently agreed to a $32 billion buyout led by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. and Texas Pacific Group. The transaction could take six to nine months to be approved by shareholders and federal regulators, Collier said.
To file a complaint
Information from the Public Utility Commission of Texas advised energy consumers to do the following before filing a complaint with the commission.
* First, contact your electric or telephone company. Provide the company with a detailed description of the problem and all the necessary facts. The company should investigate your concern and let you know what action it plans to take.
* Then, if you do not hear from the company within a reasonable time, or if you are not satisfied with the company's action, you can file a complaint with the Customer Protection Division at the PUC.
To file a complaint: call 1-888-782-8477 or 512-936-7120; send a fax to 1-512-936-7003; or visit http://www.puc.state.tx.us/ocp/complaints/filing.cfm.

Find this article at: http://www.dailysentinel.com/news/content/news/stories/2007/03/16/zavalla.html

Congress needs to act on clean coal technology

2007-03-17T10:11:00.000-04:00

March 17, 2007

NY TIMES

Editorial

Taming Fossil Fuels
Each day seems to bring news of another prominent convert to the cause of requiring mandatory reductions in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Each day also seems to bring news of technological advances that would make it possible to achieve those reductions without serious economic damage. Put all these glad tidings together, and Congress has all the reasons it needs to move quickly to regulate global warming emissions here at home, thus setting an example for the world.
Last week the chief executives of America’s largest automobile companies — General Motors, Ford, Chrysler and Toyota North America — pledged to support mandatory caps on carbon emissions, as long as the caps covered all sectors of the economy. They delivered their promise to a House committee run by John Dingell — the crusty Michigan Democrat who is another convert to the cause and has taken to describing the global warming threat with phrases like “Hannibal is at the gates.”
Meanwhile, dozens of major institutional investors organized by Ceres, a coalition of investors and environmentalists, will gather in Washington on Monday to offer support for mandatory controls. The group will include Calpers, the huge California state pension fund with a history of making environmentally friendly investments, and Merrill Lynch, whose credentials are less impressive.
The news on the technology side is also good — particularly several recent announcements about coal. The first came from TXU, a huge Texas utility where the bidders have agreed to drop plans to build 11 old-fashioned coal-burning power plants. TXU has now announced that it will build two experimental plants intended to capture carbon dioxide before it escapes into the atmosphere. American Electric Power, another large utility, has also announced that it will build a coal-fired plant based on slightly different technology but with the same intended result: capturing carbon.
The importance of these projects cannot be overstated. As a report released Wednesday by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology observed, coal produces more than 30 percent of America’s carbon dioxide emissions. It is also a huge problem in China, where the equivalent of one large coal-fired power plant is being built each week, using antiquated methods. Unless coal can be tamed, the game is essentially lost.
But while technology will play an indispensable role, the lead authors of the M.I.T. report, writing in The Wall Street Journal, argue that the most effective way to reduce emissions is to attach a significant price to carbon emissions, either as a carbon tax or through a cap-and-trade program of the sort now embodied in various legislative proposals in Congress. Forcing people to pay to pollute would do more than any other known incentive to bring new technologies to commercial scale. That is the task before Congress

AEP to partner to build the worlds first clean coal power plant

2007-03-16T19:48:00.000-04:00

Alstom and American Electric Power sign agreement to bring CO2 capture technology to commercial scale by 2011
(2007-03-16)
By: Alstom
15 March 2007
Alstom and American Electric Power (AEP) today signed a Memorandum of Understanding to bring Alstom's chilled ammonia process for CO2 capture to full commercial scale of up to 200 MW by 2011. This is a major step in demonstrating post-combustion carbon capture. The technology has the great advantage versus other technologies of being fully applicable not only for new power plants, but also for the retrofit of existing coal-fired power plants.
The project will be implemented in two phases. In phase one, Alstom and AEP will jointly develop a 30 MWth product validation plant that will capture CO2 from flue gas emitted from AEP's 1300 MW Mountaineer Plant located in New Haven, West Virginia. It is targeted to capture up to 100,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year. The captured CO2 will be designated for geological storage in deep saline aquifers at the site. This pilot is scheduled for start-up at the end of 2008 and will operate for approximately 12-18 months.
In phase two, Alstom will design, construct and commission a commercial scale of up to 200 MW CO2 capture system on one of the 450 MW coal-fired units at its Northeastern Station in Oologah, Oklahoma. The system is scheduled for start-up in late 2011. It is expected to capture about 1.5 million tonnes of CO2 a year, commercially validating this promising technology. The CO2 captured at Northeastern Station will be used for enhanced oil recovery.
Alstom's post-combustion process uses chilled ammonia to capture CO2. This process dramatically reduces the energy required to capture carbon dioxide and isolates it in a highly concentrated, high-pressure form. In laboratory testing sponsored by EPRI and others, Alstom's process has demonstrated the potential to capture over 90% of CO2 at a cost that is far less expensive than other carbon capture technologies. The isolated CO2, once captured, can be used commercially or stored in suitable underground geological sites.
Philippe Joubert, President of Alstom Power Systems, said: "We are extremely proud that AEP has chosen Alstom's clean coal technology for this major project. Our partnership with AEP will result in the world's first clean coal power plant and will be applicable not only for new plants but also for existing power plants".

Energy Demand vs. Desire to cut Pollution

2007-03-12T12:43:00.000-04:00

Coal, Congress clash
Growing energy demand collides with desire to cut pollution levels

By Steven Mufson
The Washington Post
March 10, 2007

COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa - From the top of a new coal-fired power plant with its 550-foot exhaust stack poking up from the flat western Iowa landscape, MidAmerican Energy Holdings chief executive David L. Sokol peered down at a train looping around a sizable mound of coal.
At this bend in the Missouri River, with Omaha visible in the distance, the new MidAmerican plant is the leading edge of what many people are calling the "coal rush." Due to start up this spring, it will probably be the next coal-fired generating station to come online in the United States. A dozen more are under construction, and about 40 others are likely to start up within five years -- the biggest wave of coal plant construction since the 1970s.
The coal rush in America's heartland is on a collision course with Congress. While lawmakers are drawing up ways to cap and reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, the Energy Department says as many as 150 new coal-fired plants could be built by 2030, adding volumes to the nation's emissions of carbon dioxide, the most prevalent of half a dozen greenhouse gases scientists blame for global warming.
Plants could offset CO2 reductionsEven after a pledge last month by a consortium of private equity firms to shelve eight of 11 planned coal plants as part of their proposed $45 billion buyout of TXU, the largest utility in Texas, many daunting projects remain on drawing boards. Any one of the three biggest projects could churn out more carbon dioxide than the savings that a group of Northeast states hope to achieve by 2018.
Utility executives say that the coal expansion is needed to meet rising electricity demand as the U.S. population and economy grow. Coal-fired plants provide half the electricity supply in the country.
"A lot of congressmen ask me, 'Dave, why are you building that coal plant?' " says MidAmerican's Sokol. "And I say, 'What are my options?' "
Sokol says he wants to help customers improve efficiency by 10 percent. His holding company, which is more than 80 percent owned by Berkshire Hathaway, includes the utility PacifiCorp in the Northwest and Rocky Mountains as well as MidAmerican; together they generate 16.7 percent of their power from renewable resources. The Iowa subsidiary alone gets 10 percent from renewables. Between 2000 and 2005, the company cut the amount of carbon emitted for every unit of energy generated by 9 percent.
Cleaner technology still in test stageBut half of that reduction in the rate of emissions was offset by higher overall output. Electricity demand in Iowa is growing at a rate of 1.25 percent a year, and Sokol says that until new technologies become commercial or nuclear power becomes more accepted, coal is the way to meet that demand.
It remains unclear how Congress will cope with this problem. Although climate-change experts hope that new technology will deliver a way to capture and store carbon dioxide produced by coal plants, that technology remains in the pilot stage; it could take another decade before it is proven.
Companies say the new coal plants are better than old ones, though both use the same approach: pulverizing coal, then burning it in huge boilers to power giant turbines. The new $1.1 billion MidAmerican facility will be one of the nation's biggest, with 790 megawatts of capacity. Its boilers and pulverizers will devour 400 tons of coal every hour, 3.5 million tons a year, Sokol says. Combined with an existing plant next door, it will require a fresh train of coal every 16 to 17 hours; each train will be nearly 1.5 miles long and lug 135 cars about 650 miles from Wyoming's Powder River Basin.
CO2 can’t be scrubbedWhile newly constructed plants cough up a tiny fraction of the pollutants environmental regulators have focused on in the past -- sulfur dioxide, mercury and nitrogen oxides -- they emit only 15 percent less carbon dioxide. They do that simply by being more efficient. Scrubbers like those used to extract other pollutants from a plant's exhaust don't exist for carbon dioxide.
Environmentalists worry that the new pulverized-coal plants, built to last 40 to 50 years, will saddle the country with high greenhouse-gas emissions for decades. Peabody Energy, for instance, has proposed two giant 1,500 megawatt plants, one for western Kentucky and one for southern Illinois.
"Each of these coal plants is making bad global-warming policy, project by project," says Bruce Nilles, a Madison, Wis.-based Sierra Club lawyer who is fighting the Midwest plants. "It's a high priority to convert these investments in coal plants into something cleaner and smarter."
If coal plants must be built, environmentalists prefer integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) plants that they say will make it easier later to capture carbon dioxide and store it underground. Only a handful of those are being planned.
"We're making investment decisions today that will make it impossible in 2020 to get the next increment of [greenhouse gas] reduction," Nilles says.
Cleaner plants, higher cost. But the IGCC plants can add as much as $200 million to construction costs; only two are operating today. Companies that make the plants, such as Siemens and General Electric, aren't willing to guarantee certain levels of performance, utility executives say. Referring to GE's chief executive Jeffrey R. Immelt and GE's "ecomagination" ad campaign, one utility executive who spoke on condition of anonymity because his company might still do business with GE said, "I think Immelt's ecomagination got away from him."
(GE is the parent company of NBC Universal, which is a partner in MSNBC.com.)
State regulators, who give thumbs up or down to coal plant proposals, worry mostly about reliability and costs to consumers. In the 1990s, many utilities built natural-gas-fired plants, but in the past two years gas prices have soared. Now, coal backers say that coal is cheaper than other fuels such as natural gas.
One wrinkle: The cost of building coal plants is climbing as demand for engineers and equipment rises. In December, Westar Energy, the largest electric utility in Kansas, shelved its plan to add a 600- to 800-megawatt coal-fired plant. Greg A. Greenwood, vice president of generation construction at Westar, said that in the previous 18 months the estimated construction cost had soared $400 million.
Imposing projectsEnvironmentalists and many economists argue that the price of coal plants is higher when environmental costs are included.One of the Sierra Club's targets has been a $2.2 billion project belonging to We Energies, part of Wisconsin Energy. In the town of Oak Creek, just south of Milwaukee, the company has carved 6 million cubic yards of earth from a bluff along Lake Michigan to create a bowl for two 615-megawatt coal-fired power plants, the first due to open in 2009. Trucks and workers are crawling over the site; five enormous boilers stand side by side, waiting for duty. Cranes lean in over the steel scaffolding, and a completed exhaust stack points into the winter sky.
The plan for the plants was hatched after a hot 1997 summer, when the utility came close to ordering rolling blackouts to deal with heavy electricity demand. The state had not built a new power plant since 1984, and the crisis helped ensure a unanimous vote by the Wisconsin Public Service Commission for more coal plants.
But the Oak Creek project sparked a range of protests that landed it before the state Supreme Court, which ruled 4 to 3 in favor of the plant. Construction began the next day.
Cutting CO2 too big a burden?We Energies chief executive Gale E. Klappa says the trimming of greenhouse gas emissions is a worldwide problem and asks why We Energies should voluntarily shoulder the burden. "You could black out the state of Wisconsin . . . and it would not make a difference in the CO2 levels of the world," he says.
Klappa says new coal plants have benefits. He spreads a piece of paper on his conference table. It shows the amount of carbon dioxide emitted for each megawatt-hour of energy dropping by 12.5 percent from 1990 through 2011 after the new coal plants come online. Another sheet of paper, however, shows that with higher electricity output, We Energies' total emissions of carbon dioxide will grow 76.6 percent.
"With significant investment and technology, we can bend the line down, but getting the level down to 1990 levels is a huge challenge not only for us, but for society as a whole," Klappa says.
Nilles says that We Energies has made only a feeble attempt to slow the 2 percent a year growth in energy demand. Klappa says that he aims to reduce demand by 55 megawatts, just 1 percent.
Nilles says that the model for electricity expansion is the municipal utility in Springfield, Ill., which negotiated a plan with the Sierra Club after the group had stopped three coal plants in the state. Under the plan, the utility will increase the money spent on energy efficiency tenfold, shut down two old coal plants, improve pollution controls at three others, buy enough wind-powered energy to meet 20 percent of its needs, and build a new cleaner coal plant. However, its capacity -- and thus its carbon dioxide emissions -- will increase.
While some of the Sierra Club members in Springfield weren't satisfied, Nilles says "for a state capital in the middle of coal country, the symbolism [of the agreement] is huge. How do you quantify that?"
© 2007 The Washington Post Company

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17492068/

Problems with building a coal fired power plant

2007-03-06T20:29:00.000-05:00

I still say it may take the lights going out to wake the silent majority up. History shows when they do it is a over reaction. Like maybe bringing back the "rack" for all those who put behind the 8-ball. I'm kidding, I'm kidding. Well ok maybe not but there will be some tee'ed off mass'es out there when it starts happening, and it will. I really do think grown up's should be in change of the power supply and grid.

US coal-fired power plant plans up in smoke?

Mon Mar 5, 2007 8:00AM EST

By Steve James
NEW YORK, March 4 (Reuters) - The future of coal-fired power plants is seen so tied up by legal challenges from green groups, that it could slow, or even thwart, plans to use America's abundant coal supplies to generate its growing electricity needs.
The recent decision by Texas utility TXU Corp. to scrap eight of 11 planned coal-fired plants to gain environmental support for its leveraged buyout, has thrown the growth prospects of the coal-mining industry into doubt.
In a country where approximately half the electricity consumed is generated by coal, TXU's move adds fuel to the debate over whether environmental concerns about coal's contribution to global warning should trump economic necessity.
"Litigation is continuing and it's going to be tough to get new coal-fired plants out of the gate," said Richard Price, who follows the coal industry for Westminster Securities.
"Retrofits of existing plants to reduce emissions will probably get done. But new plants? I am beginning to be skeptical," said Price.
Ian Synnott, an analyst with Natexis Bleichroeder, said TXU's decision pushes back some near-term plans. "There are still a number proposed, but they would have to scale back.
"If you were a coal company looking at TXU plants coming on, with 30 million tons, you may slow down your growth, but it is not a death blow by any means."
Another analyst, who declined to be identified, said: "Environmental regulations on carbon emissions I believe will slow down the construction of new coal-fired plants."
LITIGATION "EVERY STEP OF THE WAY"
Price said Peabody Energy Corp has been unable to build two coal-fired plants for several years, as opposition by environmental groups has tied up the plans in courts.
North Carolina just approved one of two planned 800-megawatt coal-fired power units Duke Energy wants to build, but only four U.S. plants have come on line since 2000, even though 155 were built between 1980 and 1999.
"The Sierra Club and other groups are litigating every step of the way," said Price. "It's an arduous process and no matter who wins, someone will appeal."
Getting plants approved takes 12-24 months, he said, followed by 2-3 years for construction. "I don't see any favorable impact for coal in that time frame."
There are 160-170 new U.S. power plants on the drawing board. Coal-based plants account for 50 percent of U.S. electric power and are predicted to increase their share to about 57 percent by 2030, according to the Energy Information Administration. That would bring U.S. coal production to 1.78 billion tons by 2030 from 1.1 billion tons in 2004.
"Environmentalists are pushing really aggressively and I was surprised how strong it was in Texas and it caught the market by surprise," said Synnott. "It raises question marks about the long-term outlook for coal. But I don't see it changing the outlook for coal as a low-cost alternative."
The key, many analysts say, is how quickly "clean-coal", carbon-capturing technology is developed for the new generation of power plants. Also coal gasification and coal-to-liquid technology is still a few years off.
"Until new technology makes coal-burning cleaner in 3-5 years, it's gonna be real tough to get new plants built," said Price.
CALL FOR A MORATORIUM ON COAL PLANTS
NASA climate scientist James Hansen recently called for a halt to building all coal-fired power plants until technology allows for the capture of emissions from burning coal.
"There should be a moratorium," Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, told the National Press Club, "Until we have that clean coal power plant, we should not be building them."
The mining industry acknowledges not all plants currently planned will get built. "We encourage conservation and a diverse mix of energy sources," said Carol Raulston, spokeswoman for the National Mining Association, which represents America's mining companies.
While the industry is working to promote public policies for cleaner air, "we still believe coal will be required for at least half of our electricity needs," Raulston told Reuters.
And with electricity demand growing by about 1 percent per year, analysts believe the country will have to accept more coal-fired plants. Synnott noted that some under construction and due for completion in 2010 to 2012 will add 11,000 megawatts (MW) of capacity. Current U.S. capacity is about 1 million MW.
"There are still opportunities to build new coal-fired plants, which are less expensive than natural gas," he said. "(But) We will need to see carbon control through regulations and a significant incentive to develop carbon capturing technology.
"You will probably still see the potential for long-term demand from new coal-fired plants. It just gets pushed out a bit," said Synnott.
© Reuters 2006.

Global Warming a Scandal

2007-03-06T19:53:00.000-05:00

Global warming labeled a 'scam'
Mar 6, 2007
Washington Times,

Al Webb

LONDON -- With a packet of claims that are almost certain to defy conventional wisdom, a television documentary to be aired in Britain this week condemns man-made global warming as a myth that has become "the biggest scam of modern times."
The program titled "The Great Global Warming Scandal" and set for screening by TV Channel 4 on Thursday dismisses claims that high levels of greenhouse gases generated by human activity causes climate change. Instead, the program suggests that the sun itself is the real culprit.
The documentary, directed by filmmaker Martin Durkin, is at odds with scientific opinion as outlined in a United Nations report in February, which blames mankind for global warming.
In his program, Mr. Durkin rejects the concept of man-made climate change, calling it "a lie ... the biggest scam of modern times."
The truth, he says, is that global warming "is a multibillion-dollar worldwide industry, created by fanatically anti-industrial environmentalists, supported by scientists peddling scare stories to chase funding, and propped up by compliant politicians and the media."
Channel 4 says that the program features "an impressive roll-call of experts," including nine professors, who are experts in climatology, oceanography, meteorology, biogeography and paleoclimatology.
It also says the experts come from prestigious institutions such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Pasteur Institute in Paris, the Danish National Space Center and universities and other schools in London, Ottawa, Jerusalem, Alabama, Virginia and Winnipeg, Canada.
"It's very rare that a film changes history," says Martin Durkin, "but I think this is a turning point, and in five years the idea that the greenhouse effect is the main reason behind global warming will be seen as total bunk," he says.
His program collides sharply with the premise outlined in former Vice President Al Gore's Oscar-winning documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth," which presents a bleak picture of how a buildup in greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide affects the global climate, with potentially disastrous consequences.
"Al Gore might have won an Oscar," says Mr. Durkin, in a preview of the documentary, "but the film is very misleading, and he has got the relationship between [carbon dioxide] and climate change the wrong way around."
One of the filmmaker's experts, paleontologist professor Ian Clark of the University of Ottawa, says that global warming could be caused by increased activity on the sun, such as massive eruptions, and that ice-core samples from Antarctica show that, in fact, warmer periods in Earth's history have come about 800 years before rises in carbon dioxide levels.
Mr. Clark's findings appear to contradict the work of other scientists, who have used similar ice-core samples to illustrate that raised levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have accompanied the various global warming periods.
"The fact is that [carbon dioxide] has no proven link to global temperatures," says Mr. Durkin. "Solar activity is far more likely to be the culprit."
Scientists in the Channel 4 documentary cite what they claim is another discrepancy involving conventional research, saying that most of the recent global warming occurred before 1940, after which temperatures around the world fell for four decades.
Mr. Durkin's skeptical specialists view this as a flaw in the official view, because the worldwide economic boom that followed the end of World War II produced more carbon dioxide, and therefore should have meant a rise in global temperatures -- something he says did not happen.
"The Great Global Warming Swindle" also questions an assertion by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's report, published last month, that it was backed by some 2,500 of the world's leading scientists.
Another of Mr. Durkin's professors, Paul Reiter of Paris' Pasteur Institute, an expert in malaria, calls the U.N. report a "sham" because, he says, it included the names of scientists -- including his own -- who disagreed with the report and who resigned from the panel.
"That is how they make it seem that all the top scientists are agreed," he says. "It's not true."
Mr. Reiter says his name was removed only after he threatened legal action against the panel. The report itself, he adds, was finalized by government appointees.
Yet another expert in the Durkin documentary, Philip Stott, professor emeritus of biogeography at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, is more circumspect.
"The [climate] system is too complex to say exactly what the effect of cutting back on [carbon dioxide] production would be or, indeed, of continuing to produce [carbon dioxide]."
"The greenhouse effect theory worried me from the start," Mr. Stott says, "because you can't say that just one factor can have this effect."
"At the moment, there is almost a McCarthyism movement in science where the greenhouse effect is like a puritanical religion, and this is dangerous," he says

Dominion sells 3 power plants

2007-03-06T19:37:00.000-05:00

March 6, 2007, 12:53PM

Dominion Sells 3 Power Plants

2007 The Associated Press

RICHMOND, Va. — Utility operator Dominion Resources Inc. said Tuesday that it completed the sale of three natural gas-fired generation facilities for an undisclosed sum.
The facilities were bought by an entity jointly owned by Tenaska Power Fund LP and an affiliate of Warburg Pincus LLC. Proceeds will be used to pay down debt, according to the company.
The plants include Pleasants, a 313-megawatt facility in St. Mary's, W. Va.; Armstrong, a 625-megawatt facility in Shelocta, Pa.; and Troy, a 600-megawatt facility in Luckey, Ohio.
Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC advised Dominion on the sale.
Dominion shares rose 68 cents to $84.50 in afternoon trading on the New York Stock Exchange

TX wants to burn trees instead of coal.

2007-03-06T19:25:00.000-05:00

Now maybe its just me but it seems that it will take a lot of tree waste to keep this baby going. How many trees must die before the enviro wackos allow TX to burn coal? I think it will take a few brown outs and even black outs to get the silent majority out of the lazy boy rocker and down to city hall to out number the small vocal group of self proclaimed social dictators.

03/06/07 - Nacogdoches

New Power Plant in TX?

by Josh Ault
Nacogdoches County is about to set records. The largest power plant in the country fueled by wood is going to be built.
Today members of Nacogdoches Power, LLC meet with NEDCO to discuss the plans. The new plant will be built on a 130-acre site in the Sacul Community. It will be the first of it's kind in Texas. The plant will use timber and paper waste to generate electricity. The facility will help improve air and water quality, reduce the generation of greenhouse gases and contribute to national and regional energy security.
Vice President of Nacogdoches Power, Tony Callendrello, said Nacogdoches County was a perfect fit for the new plant. He said East Texas is known for its forest industry, and the new plant will bring great economic growth. "We will be generating about five hundred jobs. When you consider all the loggers, truck drivers, and others who will be supplying fuel to this plant and what's important is that those dollars will stay in the local community".
The 100-Megawatt biomass-fired power plant is scheduled to begin construction in June. The entire plant should be complete by 2009.

Lets just build power plants in Vietnam if we cant build them here !

2007-03-06T19:21:00.000-05:00

U.S. funds power plant construction in Vietnam

The United States has offered a non- refundable aid of 332,900 U.S. dollars to Vietnam, helping it develop a power project in northern Quang Ninh province.
The fund will be used to handle legal issues of the project on building a coal-fired plant with planned capacity of 1,000-1,200 MW with estimated investment of 1.2 billion dollars, Vietnamese Deputy Industry Minister Do Huu Hao said at the granting agreement signing ceremony here Tuesday.
A joint venture between the Vietnam National Coal and Mineral Industries Group and the AES Corporation of the United States will implement the power project under the form of Build-Operate- Transfer (BOT).
The plant, Mong Duong II, is scheduled to operate in 2011 or 2012.
Vietnam's electricity demand is forecast to annually grow 15-16 percent until 2010, according to the country's Industry Ministry.
It plans to increase its electricity capacity to 25,000-26,000 MW in 2010 from 11,400 MW in 2005, meeting demand for its socio- economic development.
Source: Xinhua

Baltic Countries going Nuclear

2007-03-06T19:15:00.000-05:00

POWER SUPPLY INDEPENDENCE
Baltic Countries Are Building Nuclear Power Plant
Prime Ministers of Poland and Lithuania signed an agreement on co-building of new nuclear power plant
Prime Ministers of Poland and Lithuania signed an agreement on co-building of new nuclear power plant. The value of the project is 4 billion euro.
The nuclear power plant will be built in Lithuani, in the town of Ignalina, and the building should be finished by 2015, bankamagazine.hr says.
Powersupply independence from Russia
Intensive negotiations between two countries lasted till the end of 2006. This project makes it possible for unhindered development of economy and power supply independence from Russia.
The new power plant will replace two nuclear reactors located in Lithuania, one of which was already closed down, and the same is planned for the other one within the period of two years.
It was agreed that Lithuania's part in the ownership will be 34 per cent, while Poland, Latvia and Estonija will have 22 %.

BIG OIL out BIG CORN in !

2007-03-06T18:30:00.000-05:00

Published March 6, 2007

ASSOCIATED PRESS/ENERGY DEPARTMENT FILE PHOTO

Dethroning 'Big Oil' to crown 'Big Corn'";

By ANDREW MOYLANSpecial to the Register
It pays to be friendly with the majority party in Congress. The proof is in the new energy bill that recently passed the House during the Democrats' "100-hour" agenda. The CLEAN Energy Act of 2007, a contrived political acronym for "Creating Long-Term Energy Alternatives for the Nation," has been portrayed as ending preferences for so-called "Big Oil" - a familiar victim on the left-wing's whipping post. In truth, what the bill does is raise taxes to subsidize a lesser-known but growing conglomerate: "Big Corn"The first main component of the bill raises taxes and fees paid to the federal government by oil and gas companies. It does so by eliminating tax deductions instituted by Congress to spur domestic exploration activities and by raising royalties paid for oil exploration in offshore areas under federal control. The net effect of these policies is, of course, a $14 billion tax increase on oil companies.If Democrats want a reduction in our dependence on foreign oil, tax increases are not the way to go. History tells us that vengeful tax hikes on the oil industry serve no economic purpose. In 1980, Congress instituted a windfall profits tax to punish the energy industry. The result, according to a Congressional Research Service study, was a drop in domestic oil production of 3 to 6 percent and an increase in oil imports of 8 to 16 percent. According to the Tax Foundation, the average effective tax rate on major oil and gas companies is roughly 38.3 percent, as opposed to a rate of 32.3 percent for the market as a whole. This is hardly the profile of an industry failing to pay its "fair share."A second provision establishes the "Strategic Energy Efficiency and Renewables Reserve." What that means in English is that the $14 billion in additional taxes on the oil industry will be dumped into a slush fund from which Congress can subsidize what are defined as "clean domestic renewable energy resources." This fund would exist above and beyond the normal budget, which already includes significant spending on politicians' favorites like ethanol and "clean coal" technology.Democrats would have you believe that they are breaking the link between special interests and energy policy. If Pelosi, Reid, and company really wanted to do so, they'd hold their legislation up to a mirror and acknowledge that it looks no better than the energy bill that the GOP ushered to passage in 2005.Furthermore, the federal government has a dismal record of subsidizing successful alternative-energy programs. Simply stated, members of Congress are all thumbs in trying to point out emerging technologies, because they distribute funding based on political concerns rather than sound science.The Carter years brought us the $2 billion boondoggle called the "Synfuels" program, which sought (and failed miserably) to produce alternatives to petroleum. The Clinton administration hatched the $1.1 billion Partnership for a New Generation of Vehicles whose main focus, diesel technology, has since fallen out of favor as an inherently dirtier fuel. The technology that we use today to improve mileage and lower emissions (hybrid drive trains, cylinder shutdown, etc.) is more often the result of private companies in search of profits, not government agencies in search of PR plaudits.A recent federal favorite is corn-based ethanol, which is subsidized by taxpayers at roughly $2 billion per year (not counting tariffs and government-usage mandates that prop up an artificial market for the commodity). Despite acknowledgement that ethanol from this source won't fuel energy independence, it enjoys heavy government support because of powerful Midwestern members of Congress who do the bidding of farmers in their districts.The Democrats have passed a bill that may lead to greater dependence on foreign oil and higher costs at the pump. A sound energy policy means keeping taxes low, eliminating government meddling, and allowing the market to determine which technologies merit significant investment. President Bush and members of Congress ought to know that bureaucracies and energy policy mix like ... well, oil and water.

ANDREW MOYLAN is government-affairs manager for the 350,000-member National Taxpayers Union, a non-partisan citizen group founded in 1969 to work for lower taxes and smaller government at all levels. Its Web site is www.ntu.org.

Democrats have new energy plan

2007-03-03T14:59:00.000-05:00

House Democrats unveil new energy plan

By Chris BaltimoreReutersThursday, March 1, 2007; 4:03 PM
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday unveiled a bill that would spend about $15 billion to double U.S. automobile fuel efficiency, expand ethanol distribution and build more mass transit.
The so-called "Program for Real Energy Security Act," to be introduced next week, is the second energy bill Democrats have proposed since taking control of Congress in January.
The House in January passed a bill that would roll back energy industry tax breaks and force companies to pay more drilling royalties, valued at $14 billion over a decade. That bill has not seen action in the Senate yet.
The new bill, backed by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and about 100 other lawmakers, could form the basis of energy legislation House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants to call for a vote before the chamber recesses in August.
The bill would fund research into ways to double U.S. automobile fuel efficiency, focusing on hydrogen, fuel cells, plug-in hybrids and other high-tech ideas. It would give grants to build more public transit and commuter rail systems, Hoyer said.
It also would reimburse companies for installing new pumps at service stations to dispense gasoline blended with 85 percent ethanol, as well as tanks to hold the fuel, which because of its corrosive properties cannot be stored with gasoline blended only from crude.
Rep. Joe Barton of Texas, senior Republican on the House Energy Committee, called the bill a "starting point for real energy legislation," but criticized Democrats for not backing more supply-oriented ideas like drilling for oil in Alaska or the offshore waters where energy exploration is now banned.
"We'll need to sort out costs and benefits, see what can be accomplished without forcing people to change the way they live, and figure out how new technologies can be made affordable," Barton said.
The bill takes a different tack than a plan proposed by President George W. Bush in January which calls for Congress to require a five-fold increase in ethanol use by 2017.
"It's very nice to produce biofuels but if we can't deliver them to energy users, they won't be helpful," Hoyer said.
Boosting the so-called "renewable fuels standard" to require more ethanol use and requiring U.S. automakers to make more fuel-efficient cars are "possible add-ons" to the bill, he said.
Hoyer said the bill also would offer a stimulus to help rail freight shippers build more tanker cars to transport ethanol. Railroads and tanker trucks are the primary way of transporting ethanol, which cannot be shipped in the U.S. pipeline network.
© 2007 Reuters

AlGORE is posing as an activist, like most of them.

2007-03-03T14:47:00.000-05:00

An inconvenient truth: Gore's energy bill

Our View

Posted: 3/1/07
Mick Swasko ColumnistDeanne St. John ColumnistEric Strand ColumnistMary Yurgil Editor in ChiefThe think tank, Tennessee Center for Policy Research has accused former Vice President and star of the Academy Award winning documentary, "An Inconveniet Truth," Al Gore, with what many would consider to be a massive monthly energy bill.Records show that last year Al and Tipper Gore paid a monthly average of $1,359 in electric bills and $1,080 in gas bills for their 20-room Nashville mansion and poolhouse. Averaged together, the Gores paid almost $30,000 in gas and electric bills in 2006, the equivalent of 221,000 kilowatt-hours and more than 20 times the national average.The news of the Gore's above-average energy consumption comes in the wake of Gore's Oscar for "An Inconvenient Truth," which chronicles the current and future environmental destruction caused by global warming.While a spokesperson for the Gore's did not deny the figures, she said that "the bottom line is that every family has a different carbon footprint. And what Vice President Gore has asked is for families to calculate that footprint and take steps to reduce and offset it."The spokesperson also said that the Gores are in the process of installing solar panels on their home and taking other measures to reduce their carbon foortprint.The issue at hand here is whether the former Vice President's energy consumption constitutes a contradiction in the face of his now rampant environmental activism. The president of the Tennessee Center believes that it does."If this were any other person with $30,000-a-year in utility bills, I wouldn't care," said Drew Johnson. "But he tells other people how to live and he's not following his own rules."Social and political activism has become very popular amongst celebrities recently.It is not uncommon for award show acceptance speeches to now include a brief overview of a hot-button issue such as global warming or AIDS. And while it is commendable that celebrities use their power to address subjects that concern us all, it does seem hypocritical that those who literally embody excessive consumption should preach to millions about conservation.Just by attending the Oscars, Al Gore is in a way supporting this excess. The Academy Awards are well known for stretch limos, elaborate and expensive parties, and of course, the goody bag consisting of dinner reservations, cell phones and iPods that every attendee recieves upon arrival.None of this is to imply that Al Gore must give up his mansion or stop dabbling in the Hollywood lifestyle.But if he wants to be a legitimate spokesperson for global warming like he claims he does then he should take drastic measures to cut his level of energy consumption. He cannot have it both ways. He must choose between being an activist or being a celebrity posing as an activist.
© Copyright 2007 The Daily Vidette

More thots on TX power suppy

2007-03-03T13:23:00.000-05:00

March 2, 2007,
AMTXU intends to scrap plans for 8 coal-fired plants, but other utilities likely to fill void
By TOM FOWLERCopyright 2007 Houston Chronicle

TXU ends plans for 8 coal plants; void will be filled
Other suitors are interested in buying TXU
Energy forecast -->
TXU's plans to cut eight of 11 new coal plants in Texas may appear to leave a hole in the state's future power supply, but it's unlikely to remain unfilled for long, say market observers.
Texas is one of the most attractive markets in the country for building power plants — be they coal, natural gas, wind or even nuclear — thanks to our high growth and high wholesale prices.
Currently there's about 70,000 megawatts of generating capacity on the Texas power grid serving the most populated areas, including Austin, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio, and if all the projects in the development pipeline were built it could more than double the capacity in the coming decades, according to state officials.
Between now and 2012 there's a little more than 10,000 megawatts of power that companies have said they plan to build to meet the state's growing needs. One megawatt can power up to 800 homes.
"The incentive for new plants is already there in Texas," said Denise Furey, a senior director with Fitch Ratings in New York. "The power prices are very high and the reliability issues are serious enough to keep interest high."
A likely sign of things to come is this week's announcement by Calpine that it will add 400 megawatts of capacity to its Deer Park plant and consider more expansions at its other operating plants in Texas.
And NRG Energy, the owner of several plants around Houston, also is expected to announce expansions to its gas-fired plants in the coming months.
Significant revisionUp until about a year ago the state's reserve margin — the difference between the peak power demand and total power supply — was looking pretty good. State power grid operators say the margin should be above 12.5 percent. But the total power supply has been as much as 35 percent higher than the peak demand as recently as 2002, thanks in large part to the boom in new power-plant construction that followed the 1999 deregulation of the state's power markets.
But in June 2006 the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the body that oversees the power grid for most of Texas, made a significant revision to its annual reserve report, increasing Texas' expected economic growth and future power demand. This pushed projections for the reserve margin below safe levels, to 11.4 percent in 2008, 8.5 percent in 2009 and 7.2 percent in 2010.
The ERCOT revision, and an unexpected spike in power demand on April 17 that led to rolling blackouts in parts of Texas, were used as a rallying cry in support of TXU's plan to build 8,200 megawatts of coal powered capacity.
But Texas was not in imminent danger of running out of power, despite the debate about TXU's coal plans in the last year, said Anthony Damiano, power research manager for consulting firm Wood Mackenzie.
ERCOT's reserve margin report is simply a snapshot of the power picture at a given moment that uses very conservative criteria. New power plants aren't added into the equation until they have air permits from state regulators, for example, and for a completed wind power project only 2.6 percent of capacity is included.
The margin also doesn't show the roughly 6,000 megawatts of power plants that have been mothballed but can come back online in an emergency.
''It was more a matter of public perception," Damiano said.
TXU also helped create the need its coal plants were to fill.
The company previously told ERCOT it was planning to retire up to 3,200 megawatts of natural gas-fired capacity from 2007 to 2009. These were older, less efficient and less profitable plants the state's deregulation laws allow companies to take offline if it's shown their absence won't threaten grid integrity.
The reserve margin is usually updated just once a year, but earlier this month ERCOT President and CEO Sam Jones told lawmakers a recalculation of the reserve margin shows the system will remain well above the limit at least until 2009, a year later than the May 2006 report.
Not included in that update, however, is Calpine's plant expansion or TXU's announcement this week that it is willing to bring up to 1,400 megawatts of mothballed power plants back online if ERCOT asks.
Demand could dropSo what will take the place of TXU's previously planned coal plants, at least in the next five years? The best bet will simply be other coal plants and more of what Texas already has in spades — gas-fired plants.
About 71 percent of the state's power capacity is gas-fired, but those plants generated just 46.3 percent of the state's power in 2006 since they are less profitable to operate than coal or nuclear plants.
Of the 10,000 megawatts of capacity that companies have said they will build by 2012 about 4,970 megawatts are expected to come from coal, 2,900 megawatts will come from wind and 2,850 from gas.
But when it comes to longer-term projects under consideration, nuclear power seems to have the greatest interest. ERCOT has received inquiries for up to 25,000 megawatts of new nuclear power, followed by 20,600 megawatts of wind power, 15,900 megawatts of coal and 13,200 megawatts of natural gas.
It's also possible recommendations to expand the state's conservation efforts could cut long-term power plant demand.
tom.fowler@chron.com

Study finds power plant not top source of pollution

2007-03-03T12:50:00.000-05:00

An inconvenient detailBy Dinah Cardin

Friday, March 02, 2007 - Updated: 10:44 AM EST

A new study finds the Salem power plant is not the top source of North Shore’s air pollution – smaller businesses, cars, buses and boats all share the blame.

Since the late ’90s, members of the North Shore environmental group Healthlink have dogged the various owners of Salem’s power plant. Over the years, longtime employees of the plant and the nonprofit group have come to know each other’s names and faces. At public meetings, they have worked together through a number of issues and policy changes.
Healthlink’s Web site even features the trademark smokestacks on Fort Avenue and a photo of men, women and children holding hands as they stare out at the billowing smoke.
The grassroots group was formed in 1998 in response to the coal- and gas-fired power plant and aims to connect the dots, or link, health with the environment. They claim the plant has cut its emissions by 50 percent since their formation. The group considered it a personal victory when the owner of the plant recently agreed to comply with stricter emissions standards set for the dirtiest power plants in the state.
The plant started burning cleaner coal, emitting fewer toxins, in October of 2005 and will be required to provide a long-term plan for operation and environmental compliance by 2008.
Now, the findings of an air quality study in Salem, Beverly and Marblehead, a project three years in the making, show increased rates of asthma, heart disease and many cancers. The final results of the North Shore Air Inventory Report have just been released to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which funded the study.
But these health problems are not solely linked to the 1950s-era power plant. To the group’s surprise, smaller commercial businesses can be blamed almost equally for the release of toxic chemicals into the environment.
Small businesses such as dry cleaners, nail salons and gas stations collectively produce 14 percent of the area’s air toxins, compared to the 15 percent produced by large industrial and manufacturing plants, such as the power plant, says Cindy Keegan, an environmental engineer and Salem resident who headed the project.
“Those with Healthlink don’t want to come out as having been barking up the wrong tree all these years,” says Keegan. “The power plant comes out as the number two priority. We’re just saying yeah, there are other issues. The power plant is still the single cause. That’s what regulators do, that’s what community activists do. It’s a lot easier to push on one door than 5,000.”
The largest amount of pollution in these congested communities is from cars, city buses, boats and even engine-powered machines like lawn mowers and leaf blowers.
As a result, environmental groups are working with the Northeast Transit Planning and Management Association to make commuting by train, bus and car more efficient.
The air quality project began in the fall of 2003 as a result of the failing grades Essex County received in recent years from the American Lung Association’s State of the Air report. The EPA has also shown Essex County to be at high risk for diseases caused by toxic air pollutants. Meanwhile, the Environmental Defense organization rates Essex County among the top 10 percent of dirtiest counties in the U.S.
Funded by a $50,000 Healthy Communities grant from the federal Environmental Protection Agency, the study compiled local data that has not been collectively studied before now.
“We’re saying, ‘HHere’s all the data and we didn’t invent the data,’” says Keegan. “We just took the data directly and tried to spit it back out in a way that was more understandable. It’s not some small slice. It’s everything. The hope is that it’s seen as comprehensive and scientific and a much more level view of the whole picture.”
Healthlink’s study was sort of a “pilot project” of a larger national effort by the EPA, according to MaryBeth Smuts, regional air toxicologist at the EPA’s Boston offices.
Community Actions for a Renewed Environment has been ongoing for three years, she says, and allows members of a community to inventory their pollution sources and compile the data themselves.
Nearly 30 communities across the nation are doing the same sort of study, including the community of Holyoke.
It helps those in the community know where to take action, such as encouraging the construction of bike trails. Sometimes the findings can be a surprise, says Smuts.
“The smokestacks do certainly draw the attention. But when you really hunker down and look at it there are other sources that may not be regulated,” she says.

Survey says
Volunteers examined EPA data, as well as numbers from the state’s health department and the state Department of Environmental Protection. A street-by-street survey of pollution sources was mapped by Salem State College faculty, staff and students, members of Salem Alliance For the Environment, students from Salem High School and members of the Salem Point neighborhood Association.
Healthlink members teamed up with nursing students and faculty from Salem State College to compile health statistics and air toxins.
On the bright side, the findings show a general decline in air pollution in the three communities of Salem, Beverly and Marblehead. However, the populations are more negatively affected, says Keegan.
Salem saw an 81 percent higher rate of asthma-related emergency room visits and hospitalizations for preschool aged children than the rest of the state.
Beverly and Salem both showed increased cardiovascular mortality rates when compared with the rest of the state. Lung cancer incidence and mortality were also elevated in Salem when compared to the rest of Massachusetts.
At a public meeting in November of 2005, some of the power plant’s staff were pleasantly surprised at the comprehensive nature of the then ongoing study, said Keegan, and seemed glad the study wasn’t just pointing the finger at them.
“This is the big picture and yeah, they are a part of it,” says Keegan, who sometimes does environmental consulting for industries and city governments.
Whatever industries are putting into the air, they are wasting, she says: “They don’t want to do that. Whatever is going out as hazardous waste or out the smoke stacks, it’s money out the door.”
When contacted this week, Dominion Energy spokesperson Dan Genest said, “Fossil fired power stations are not the only source of pollution. Any approach to cleaning the environment needs to be holistic. We’re willing to do our part.”
Still, Genest said his company hasn’t had the chance to go over the report in depth. After those at Dominion took “a quick look,” at the published findings on the Web site www.nsair.org, says Genest, they thought it appeared that the data was from 1999 and earlier.
“Since that time, we have made significant reductions in air emissions at Salem power station,” he says, “and those are not captured in this study.”
Through the years, the Salem Harbor Power plant has been deemed the largest pollutant in Essex County and one of five largest polluting power plants in the state.
Despite the report’s results, local environmentalists still point to it as the largest single polluter and say policy changes have been mostly talk with little action.
“Now we are monitoring the plants as they engage in foot-dragging and legal appeals to delay the implementation of the state regulations,” Pat Gozemba, a member of Salem Alliance for the Environment and Heathlink wrote this week in an e-mail.
In the coming months, Healthlink will monitor mercury emissions from the plant as well as watch for compliance with policy changes.
After ranking the sources of dangerous pollutants, Healthlink offers suggestions on their Web site on how to improve air quality to residents, citizen groups and municipal leaders.
For the power plant, they advise residents and municipalities to support renewable energy options and continue to require emission controls and the efficient operation of the plant.

Powerful plans
According to a recent article in Fortune Magazine, more than 150 new coal-fired plants are planned nationwide. Across the country, concerned citizens will try to make sense of increased pollution and looming smokestacks.
In Austin, Texas a judge ruled that Gov. Rick Perry overstepped his authority by putting 15 proposed coal plants on the fast track after hundreds of protesters lined the state capitol steps earlier last month, in favor of wind and solar power. However, TXU Corp. has since decided to scrap plans for eight of those plants after the company was sidetracked by a multi-billion dollar buyout deal.
However, in southwest Missouri, newspapers chronicle the progress of a turbine and generator arriving on barges from Japan, with little mention of those speaking out against a new coal-fired plant.
At least in Salem, the relationship between environmentalists and the power plant is an old and familiar one, with clear and defined roles on each side. The future of the plant and its policies continue to play out in local and state politics.
Environmental groups were thrilled when Gov. Deval Patrick signed the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative shortly after he took office in January. Former governor Mitt Romney declined signing the agreement to reduce emissions between New England and the Mid-Atlantic states for fear it would drive up consumer electric bills.
Though they were both big backers of Patrick during the governor’s race, Mayor Kim Driscoll and Rep. John Keenan scrambled to issue a joint statement, calling for the governor to spare Salem from losing revenue from its number one taxpayer.
Driscoll has just begun renegotiating the tax agreement between the city and Dominion Energy. City leaders fear an emissions cap could make the plant less valuable and cut into the city’s revenue.
Still, Driscoll received an award from Salem Alliance for the Environment in December for initiating new city environmental policies. Salem beat out the city of Worcester in a competition for the most energy purchased in National Grid’s GreenUp program. The program promotes the use of clean energy when electric customers pay a little more each month. The mayor has also committed to the purchase of hybrid cars for the city and has created committees to examine transportation and renewable energy.
In the meantime, Healthlink is promoting public transportation and carpooling and the enforcement of anti-idling policies.
They also would like to deter dry cleaners from using harmful chemicals, and educate gas stations about emission reduction. They hope residents will reduce the use of drycleaners or seek green cleaners and reduce travel miles and gas usage.
And though the focus of this study was on outdoor pollution, it seems a whole new study could be conducted just on indoor pollutants from household chemicals, which have proven even more dangerous, says Keegan. Some of the most dangerous toxins found in the study came from an automotive product you could buy right off the shelf, she says.
The group suggests using green alternative products and the use of alternatives to pesticides and other lawn care products, both at home and at local schools.
“Now, I’m starting to feel worse about indoor air pollution,” says Keegan, the mother of a 1-year-old. “What with plastic toys and what they are emitting, baby bottles and toxic chemicals in plastic, you can’t get away from it.”
As for Salem Harbor Station, Keegan says, “The power plant was always saying, ‘We’re not the only game in town.’”

Dinah Cardin is a freelance writer.

NC gets permission to build one of two power plants

2007-03-01T17:36:00.001-05:00

Utilities Commission Gives Duke OK for One of Two Proposed Power Plants

RALEIGH, N.C. – After two years of debate, Duke Energy on Wednesday received approval from the state of North Carolina Utilities Commission to build one of the two coal-fired power plants it has proposed to build west of Charlotte.The commission voted 5-1 to grant Duke a “certificate of public convenience and necessity” to construct one 800-megawatt plant. But even that decision comes with restrictions.Those requirements include the “retirement” of the four existing power-generating units at the Cliffside Unit near the South Carolina border “no later than the date of the commercial operation” of the new unit.Additionally, Duke must “invest” 1 percent of its annual retail revenues from electricity and energy sales in energy efficiency and energy demand programs.Duke reported $4.07 billion in revenues for the quarter ending on Dec. 31.The Charlotte-based energy firm supplies power to some 3.9 million customers. Duke has argued that the two plants are necessary to meet growing demands for energy.Opponents have argued aggressively against Duke’s plan on environmental grounds, saying the new plants would increase pollution.Duke also recently increased its costs projections for the plant to $3 billion.Commissioner Robert Owen Jr. dissented, saying the proposal should have been rejected.The Utilities Commission decision is not the final word on the project. Duke has argued that to build only one plant would be uneconomical. Also, a regulatory permit is still required from the Environmental Protection Agency.Duke has argued against building either a plant fired by natural gas or nuclear power."We view Cliffside as a hedge on any delay in building a nuclear plant, and we also view it as a hedge in never building a nuclear plant," Duke Chief Executive Officer Jim Rogers told Dow Jones Newswires in an interview earlier this month.
Copyright 2007 by WRAL.com. All rights reserved.

TX lets enviros win one for now but now the real questions begin, where will TX get the power it will need

2007-03-01T17:32:00.000-05:00

TXU's Vanishing Plants

Brian Wingfield, 02.28.07, 6:00 AM ET

Forbes

Last April, TXU announced its intention to build 11 new coal-fired power plants in Texas to help offset the state’s soaring demand for electricity, which the company said would fall below reliability levels by 2010 if steps were not taken to meet rising energy needs.
But following the news last week that two private equity groups and Goldman Sachs intend to buy the Dallas-based company for $45 billion, TXU yielded to environmentalists' demands and reduced the number of new plants to just three.
The leveraged buyout announcement, which TXU formally announced Monday, leaves several questions unanswered: Why are 11 plants no longer needed to meet the state's future energy needs? How will the new company meet the increased demand for power? Will new generating capacity be added to Texas' electricity grid? And, really, just how important were the eight canceled plants if they were so easily scrapped?
"Even though TXU's business strategy has changed, the need for power still remains," says Kim Morgan, a TXU spokeswoman. The company still intends to build three of its previously announced coal-fired plants, adding 2,200 megawatts of generation to the grid. This is roughly 25% of the entire capacity that the 11 plants would have added.
TXU also plans to invest $400 million during the next five years in "demand side" management--essentially giving customers the option to cut back on their energy consumption when electricity demand is highest, such as the hottest of summer days. This is usually achieved through the installation in homes of advanced energy meters that can show customers when power rates are highest.
According to Morgan, the three plants that will still be built will help resolve Texas' energy needs for 2010. To ensure the reliability of the electric grid after that date, TXU is planning on building 1500 megawatts of wind generation and is considering building multiple nuclear facilities, though these would not come on line by 2015 at the earliest--too late to resolve the looming power shortage.
In addition, TXU said it could bring back into service several natural gas-fired power plants that are now offline. However, doing so could expose consumers to volatile natural gas prices. The company is already 70% reliant on natural gas. Moreover, its chief executive, John Wilder, said in November that the company probably invested too much in natural gas in the past.
According to Public Utility Commission of Texas spokesman Terry Hadley, "Clearly there’s a need for new generation" in the Texas electricity market, but he adds: "TXU wasn't the only player in terms of adding new generation." Further, Hadley says, there was doubt that 11 plants would even be built due to concerns about the company's potential monopoly power.
In fact, according to the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), the state's grid operator, more than 150 new generation facilities are in the development stage. But ERCOT cannot count on those facilities being built because they do not yet have regulatory permits or agreements to interconnect with other parts of the electric grid. In a preview earlier this month of its future energy needs, ERCOT predicted that it would not meet its reliability standards by 2009. Now that the eight scrapped plants will not be built, this picture becomes even more stark.
So where does this leave TXU? The company's individual business units--which were separated into generation, distribution and retail companies under Texas' deregulation law--will now become even more distinct, with separate boards of directors. The company’s generation business will be known as Luminant Energy, its electric delivery business as Oncor Electric Delivery. Its retail unit will remain TXU Energy.
And returning to the initial questions: Why are eight of 11 plants no longer needed to meet the state's future energy needs, and how will the company meet its increased demand for power? More generation in fact is still needed, but TXU says its diversified power facilities will help offset this demand in a much greener way.
Will new generation be added to Texas’ electricity grid? Certainly, even without TXU's three new plants and burgeoning wind industry. And how important were those eight plants, which have now been scrapped? This is the question that remains to be answered. Certainly consumers are better off environmentally without them. But during the next decade, an estimated six million people are expected to move to Texas. If TXU has to call into service its "mothballed" natural gas plants, or if new generating capacity in the state isn't enough to meet demand--causing prices to skyrocket--those additional facilities would have mattered quite a bit

Sierra Club wins one public will lose

2007-03-01T17:24:00.000-05:00

Appeals court rejects process for KCP&L plant approval
Kansas City Business Journal - 1:10 PM CST Wednesday, February 28, 2007
The Sierra Club won an appeals court victory in its opposition to construction of Kansas City Power & Light Co.'s new 850-megawatt coal-fired power plant near Weston.
On Tuesday, the Missouri Court of Appeals for the Western District reversed an action by the Missouri Public Service Commission on Aug. 23, 2005, approving KCP&L's plan for building the plant, called Iatan 2. KCP&L is a subsidiary of Kansas City-based Great Plains Energy Inc. (NYSE: GXP).
In its ruling, the court said the PSC exceeded its legal authority with the process it created to approve the plant.
"The statutory framework, set forth by the legislature, for obtaining permission to build a new electric plant and increasing rates must be followed," the court said in the ruling.
KCP&L spokesman Tom Robinson said the company is reviewing its options after the court's ruling. The ruling does not require KCP&L to stop construction on Iatan 2, he said.
"Today's decision is a victory for open government, ratepayers and the environment," Melissa Hope, a spokeswoman for Missouri Sierra Club, said in a release. "KCP&L tried to do something outside of the public process to gain approval to build an expensive and dirty coal-burning power plant. That process denied the public the opportunity to participate fully and allowed them to ram through massive rate hikes primarily to pay for their new coal-burning power plant."
Hope said Wednesday that the court's ruling could invalidate a number of proposed KCP&L rate increases intended to help pay for the plant.
The plant is scheduled to be in service for the summer of 2010.

ALGORES environmental hypocrisy

2007-03-01T15:14:00.000-05:00

Gore's Real 'Inconvenient Truth'?

$30,000 Utility Bill

By JAKE TAPPER

http://abclocal.go.com/kfsn/story?section=politics&id=5073282

Feb. 27 - Armed with two years of Al Gore's utility bills, a Tennessee think tank blasts the former vice president for environmental hypocrisy.
Back home in Tennessee, safely ensconced in his suburban Nashville home, Vice President Al Gore is no doubt basking in the Oscar awarded to "An Inconvenient Truth," the documentary he inspired and in which he starred. But a local free-market think tank is trying to make that very home emblematic of what it deems Gore's environmental hypocrisy.
Armed with Gore's utility bills for the last two years, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research charged Monday that the gas and electric bills for the former vice president's 20-room home and pool house devoured nearly 221,000 kilowatt-hours in 2006, more than 20 times the national average of 10,656 kilowatt-hours.
"If this were any other person with $30,000-a-year in utility bills, I wouldn't care," says the Center's 27-year-old president, Drew Johnson. "But he tells other people how to live and he's not following his own rules."
Scoffed a former Gore adviser in response: "I think what you're seeing here is the last gasp of the global warming skeptics. They've completely lost the debate on the issue so now they're just attacking their most effective opponent."
Kalee Kreider, a spokesperson for the Gores, did not dispute the Center's figures, taken as they were from public records. But she pointed out that both Al and Tipper Gore work out of their home and she argued that "the bottom line is that every family has a different carbon footprint. And what Vice President Gore has asked is for families to calculate that footprint and take steps to reduce and offset it."
A carbon footprint is a calculation of the CO2 fossil fuel emissions each person is responsible for, either directly because of his or her transportation and energy consumption or indirectly because of the manufacture and eventual breakdown of products he or she uses. (You can calculate your own carbon footprint on the website www.carbonfootprint.com.)
The vice president has done that, Kreider argues, and the family tries to offset that carbon footprint by purchasing their power through the local Green Power Switch program -- electricity generated through renewable resources such as solar, wind, and methane gas, which create less waste and pollution. "In addition, they are in the midst of installing solar panels on their home, which will enable them to use less power," Kreider added. "They also use compact fluorescent bulbs and other energy efficiency measures and then they purchase offsets for their carbon emissions to bring their carbon footprint down to zero."
These efforts did little to impress Johnson. "I appreciate the solar panels," he said, "but he also has natural gas lanterns in his yard, a heated pool, and an electric gate. While I appreciate that he's switching out some light bulbs, he is not living the lifestyle that he advocates."
The Center claims that Nashville Electric Services records show the Gores in 2006 averaged a monthly electricity bill of $1,359 for using 18,414 kilowatt-hours, and $1,461 per month for using 16,200 kilowatt-hours in 2005. During that time, Nashville Gas Company billed the family an average of $536 a month for the main house and $544 for the pool house in 2006, and $640 for the main house and $525 for the pool house in 2005. That averages out to be $29,268 in gas and electric bills for the Gores in 2006, $31,512 in 2005.
The press release from Johnson's group, an obscure conservative think tank founded by Johnson in 2004 when he was 24, was given splashy attention on the highly-trafficked Drudge Report Monday evening, and former Gore aides saw it as part of a piece, along with an Fox News Channel investigation from earlier this month of Gore's use of private planes in 2000. Last year, a seemingly amateurish Youtube video mocking the "An Inconvenient Truth" turned out to have been produced by slick Republican public relations firm called DCI, which just happens to have oil giant Exxon as a client.
"Considering that he spends an overwhelming majority of his time advocating on behalf of and trying to affect change on this issue, it's not surprising that people who have a vested interest in protecting the status quo would go after him," said the former Gore aide.
Kreider says she's confident that the Gores' utility bills will decrease. "They bought an older home and they're in the process of upgrading the home," she said. "Unfortunately that means an increase in energy use in order to have an overall decrease in energy use down the road."
Gore is not the only environmentalist associated with "An Inconvenient Truth" who has come under fire for personal habits -- and not all the criticism has come from the Right.
Writing in The Atlantic Monthly in 2004, liberal writer Eric Alterman criticized producer Laurie David for her use of private Gulfstream jets. David, he wrote "reviles the owners of SUVs as terrorist enablers, yet gives herself a pass when it comes to chartering one of the most wasteful uses of fossil-based fuels imaginable." New Republic writer Gregg Easterbrook followed up, computing that "one cross-country flight in a Gulfstream is the same, in terms of Persian-Gulf dependence and greenhouse-gas emissions, as if she drove a Hummer for an entire year."
In an interview in 2006, David told ABC News that she was limiting her use of private planes and was flying commercial far more frequently

AlGORE preaches but does not do.

2007-02-28T16:59:00.000-05:00

Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth: A $2,439 per month energy bill

Sachin Kalbag

WASHINGTON, DC: He preaches; evidently, he does not practise.

On Sunday, former US vice-president Al Gore won the Oscar for An Inconvenient Truth, a hard-hitting documentary on global warming and its catastrophic effects.On Tuesday, a Tennessee-based conservative think-tank revealed that the world’s foremost campaigner against global warming and carbon emissions spends 20 times the US national average on his monthly energy bill. Tennessee Centre for Policy Research (TCPR), based in Gore’s home town of Nashville, published findings on Tuesday that Gore’s monthly energy bill averaged $2,439 (approximately Rs 1.1 lakh) a month in 2006.In fact, the group said, Gore’s house uses up more power in one month than an average American home does in a whole year. The group said the figures were provided by the Nashville Electric Service (NES). In his defence, an Al Gore spokesperson said that though the figures were correct, the former vice-president invests in enough renewable energy to make up for his home’s energy consumption.Kalee Kreider said that Gore purchases enough green power such as solar, wind and methane gas to offset almost all of his electricity costs. “Sometimes when people don’t like the message, in this case that global warming is real, it’s convenient to attack the messenger,” she said.The TCPR report said, “The average household in America consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year, according to the Department of Energy. In 2006, Gore devoured nearly 2,21,000 kWh — more than 20 times the national average.Last August alone, Gore burned through 22,619 kWh — guzzling more than twice the electricity in one month than an average American family uses in an entire year. As a result of his energy consumption, Gore’s average monthly electric bill topped $1,359. Since the release of An Inconvenient Truth, Gore’s energy consumption has increased from an average of 16,200 kWh per month in 2005, to 18,400 kWh per month in 2006.Gore’s extravagant energy use does not stop at his electric bill. Natural gas bills for Gore’s mansion and guest house averaged $1,080 per month last year.” TCPR President Drew Johnson said, “As the spokesperson of choice for the global warming movement, Al Gore has to be willing to walk the walk, not just talk the talk, when it comes to home energy use.” The group also called Gore a “hypocrite.” According to NES spokesperson Laurie Parker, however, Gore has been purchasing green power for $432 a month since November. Gore purchases 108 such blocks every month at $4 per block, covering 16,200
© 2005-2007 Diligent Media Corporation Ltd. All rights reserved.

Coal Hard Science

2007-02-28T15:25:00.000-05:00

Cold, Hard Science

By Tom Purcell FrontPageMagazine.com February 27, 2007

"I knew it! I knew that humans are the cause of global warming!" "Ah, yes, you refer to a summary report recently released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It concludes that human actions are 'very likely' the cause of global warming." "Very likely? The summary says there's a 90 percent probability that greenhouse gases, a byproduct of the fossil fuels we burn, are causing the Earth to warm." "Look, it is a fact that the Earth is warming. But the exact cause of the warming has not yet been proven. That is the unfortunate truth." "You're a Republican, aren't you?" "Politics should have nothing to do with science. Scientists are supposed to follow the scientific method. They come up with a hypothesis, then apply a rigorous, objective, measurable process to either prove or disprove it." "Your point?" "How is it that there's a 90 percent chance humans are causing global warming? Doesn't that mean there's a 10 percent chance we've got nothing to do with it? Shouldn't scientists be more precise – that humans are causing all global warming or none of it or 28.3756 percent of it?" "But the atmosphere is incredibly complex. I think you're asking a lot." "Maybe I am, but let me ask you a question. A plane is designed and built based on scientific facts and principles. Would you board a plane if it only had a 90 percent probability of arriving at its destination?" "Not sober. But isn't there a consensus among the world's scientists? Many believe that human activity is the cause of global warming." "The key word is 'believe.' Scientists aren't supposed to believe. They're supposed to prove or disprove. As for consensus, Michael Crichton had some interesting thoughts. He says consensus the first refuge of scoundrels. He talked about it in a speech he gave in 2003." "Michael Crichton the novelist?" "Yes. He's also medical doctor and scientist. He said consensus is the business of politics, not science. He said that the great scientific discoveries have never come about by consensus, but by bold scientists who have struck off on their own. When a thing is proven to be a scientific truth, there's no need for consensus. You never hear somebody say 'a consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2.'" "So what are you getting at?" "It is possible that humans are causing the Earth to warm. It's also possible that it's a natural cycle – the Earth is always warming and cooling. It's possible that the increase in greenhouse gases has nothing to do with global warming. A lot of things are possible, but we need our scientists to uncover the facts – not beliefs or speculation or opinion." "That sounds like a heck of a difficult task." "It surely is. Meteorologists have trouble predicting what the weather will be like in 24 hours. I can't imagine how hard it will be to prove what the climate will be like in 100 years, but that is their burden." "You're tough." "The truth is, we all need to get back to the basics. Journalists should hold scientists to account. There is a lot of fiction out there masquerading as fact and we need our journalists to get and report the truth and nothing but the truth." "I suppose you'll criticize our politicians, too?" "To be sure. Some are purposely clouding the issue to raise campaign dough and curry favor with some voters. The press must hold them to account, too." "What about the rest of us?" "Even if it is proven that we're not causing the Earth to warm, we should act anyhow. Why don't we demand technology that allows cars to get 60 miles to the gallon? We're pumping billions of dollars into oil-producing nations that only mean us harm." "That's no good." "And why in a country as ingenious as ours haven't we already switched to cheap, clean alternatives to gasoline, coal and natural gas? Why not nuclear power? Why not cars that run on fuel cells or some other technology that hasn't even been invented yet?" "Beats me." "And why haven't we invented a technology fueled by our most abundant resource – one that could cleanly power our plants and cars?" "What resource would that be?" "Hot air. I doubt we'll ever have a shortage of that."
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Hillary Clinton wants new coal power plants!

2007-02-28T13:57:00.000-05:00

Clinton pushing 'clean' power plants

Business First of Buffalo - 1:08 PM EST Monday, February 26, 2007

by David Bertola
Business First
Sen. Hillary Clinton unveiled details of the Strategic Energy Fund legislation she will introduce to expand incentives and build clean coal power plants such as the NRG Energy Inc. Huntley facility in Tonawanda.
Clinton, D-NY, said the new plant represents a future that is more environmentally-friendly, cleaner and more dependent on energy, and the time is now for the federal government to be involved in the process.
Clinton, who is seeking to become president, referred to the steps taken at Huntley as "smart," and hopes the bill will result in $50 billion being earmarked for research, development and deployment of new, clean energy. Rather than providing tax breaks for big oil companies, they should be made part of the solution, she said, and more incentives for renewable energy should be in place. The price tag is expensive for sequestering carbon, she said, and the time is now for the federal government to step up and lend its support.
"What's happening at NRG Huntley needs to be happening across the country," she said, referring to NRG Huntley receiving a conditional award of a contract from the New York Power Authority to build the plant.
The project represents a total project cost of approximately $1.5 billion and is scheduled to go into commercial operation in 2013.

Rep. Boucher wants to see coal to liqiud fuel

2007-02-26T13:59:00.000-05:00

Virginia lawmaker wants U.S. to start using liquid fuel from coal

SUE LINDSEYAssociated Press

ROANOKE, Va. - Rep. Rick Boucher believes liquid fuel derived from coal can help the U.S. break its dependence on foreign oil, and as the new chairman of a House Energy subcommittee he hopes to jump-start the process.
Boucher is renewing legislation he first introduced last year that would provide price guarantees to investors to encourage construction of coal-to-liquids conversion plants.
"The greatest challenge that we face in terms of a national energy policy is defining a strategy to move the country away from petroleum as the primary fuel," the southwest Virginia Democrat said in a telephone interview.
An energy policy that reduces dependence on oil is necessary, he said, "both for economic and national security reasons."
Other nations, such as China and South Africa, use motor fuel derived from coal, but so far there are no coal-to-liquids plants in the U.S. More than a dozen are in the planning stages, according to information provided by Michael Karmis, director of the Virginia Center for Coal and Energy Research at Virginia Tech.
Boucher, whose 9th District includes Virginia's coal region, noted that the nation has the largest coal reserves of any in the world.
The technology to convert coal into diesel fuel or gasoline has existed for decades. The Germans used liquefied coal during World War II after the Allies bombed their oil refineries.
Nearly 30 percent of South Africa's fuel today is extracted from coal, but the conversion process is expensive. It can cost up $1 billion to get a coal-to-liquids plant up and running, Karmis said.
Under Boucher's legislation, the price guarantee for coal-to-liquids operations would be tied to the price of oil. Should the oil price fall below a certain level, probably about $40 a barrel, the government would make a payment to the conversion operations. If the price of oil rose above a certain level, probably $75 a barrel, the plant operators would pay the government.
It's likely that neither the government nor coal-to-liquids operations would make payments, Boucher said, but he believes the measure is needed to instill confidence in investors.
"You need some kind of cushioning," Karmis said, "to try to take some of the risk away."
A study last year by the Southern States Energy Board called for coal-to-liquids to supply the greatest share - 29 percent - of alternative fuels needed to erase the nation's dependence on foreign oil by 2030. Alternative fuels would have to supply 60 percent of the fuel that now comes from imported oil.
A greater amount of fuel could be produced from the high-quality coal mined in Virginia, West Virginia and Kentucky than the mineral found in other parts of the country, Karmis said. So far, the only conversion plant planned in the region is in Mingo County, W.Va.

© 2007 AP Wire and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.http://www.kentucky.com

TX fearmongers clouding coal debate.

2007-02-26T13:53:00.001-05:00

Commentary: Misleading fearmongers clouding Texas coal debate

Web Posted: 02/25/2007 01:23 PM CST
Michael E. Webber

In the overheated debate about how Texas will generate future electricity, too many parties are playing fast and loose with the truth — and, in the process, spooking citizens. We need to see past these scare tactics to take an objective look at Texas' energy future.
The propaganda is knee-deep. As the Austin American-Statesman reported, dueling forces are "masquerading as activists" with names such as the Texas Clean Sky Coalition (opposes coal, supported by gas companies) and the Clean Coal Technology Foundation of Texas (supports coal, backed by coal companies). Both sides produce slick, official-sounding fact books, Web sites and guides about what we should really be afraid of in Texas.
Taking a page from recent political campaigns, the pro- and anti-coal forces appeal to some of our basest fears. But instead of politicians taking jabs, these are big energy companies. And while some of them are addicted to oil, coal and gas, they are not addicted to telling the truth.
TXU tried to influence the debate with a 5-inch thick "Fact Book" sent to every state legislator (the biggest waste of paper since the screenplay to "Waterworld") chock-full of false or misleading claims, such as "97 percent of natural gas is from overseas — largely controlled by governments not aligned with U.S. interests." The truth is we import less than 16 percent of our natural gas from overseas, almost all from Canada, hardly a country hostile to the U.S.
TXU's "Fact Book" further claims that competition has caused retail electricity prices in Texas to decrease substantially in 2006. But a Wall Street Journal article on Oct. 27 pointed out that "many Texans are paying 15 cents to 19 cents per kilowatt-hour, about double the national average of eight cents." And now it's reported that TXU is about to ratchet up the rhetoric with its marketing campaign called "Monsters," where monsters in our closets ravage our kids presumably because they don't have enough power to keep the lights on.
The anti-coal groups aren't any better. They raise the specter of doom with intimations that arsenic, lead or radiation will be sprinkled on our food, friends and family, even though these are not toxins highly associated with coal. They stage rallies to fake a grass-roots bearing. Their gripping photos of smudged children were reportedly shot in a Southern California studio, inviting the obvious conclusion that makeup — not coal dust — was the source of the dour faces.
The way out of this mess is to remember, first, that power plants can last 50 years or more and, second, that conservation can be effective immediately to take the edge off of peak power demand. In a matter of months in 2001, California reduced peak power demand by 5 gigawatts without cramping lifestyle or hurting the economy. Texas can implement a similar program, buying ourselves time and avoiding a bad decision that we might regret for decades to come.
That isn't to say coal is the wrong decision for Texas, just that we need to compare it objectively with all the energy options.
The dirty truth is that every power choice — wind, gas, nuclear or coal — has some negative impact in terms of land, air, water, climate or cost. We need more understanding of those trade-offs, and then we can arrive at the right answer together.
Michael Webber is associate director of the Center for International Energy and Environmental Policy in the Jackson School of Geosciences at the University of Texas at Austin.
webber -->
Online at: http://www.mysanantonio.com/opinion/stories/MYSA022607.02O.coalcomment0226.90b625.html

TX fearmongers clouding coal debate.

2007-02-26T13:53:00.000-05:00

Rolling Black Outs in Southern California by 2009

2007-02-24T20:12:00.000-05:00

By LESLIE BERKMANThe Press-Enterprise
A plan to discourage new power plants in Southern California's most polluted communities could lead to rolling blackouts in Riverside, city officials said.
Story continues below

The South Coast Air Quality Management District plans could curtail city plans to build two "peaker" plants that could be used during critical times like summer heat waves when electricity consumption exceeds other available sources.
Without the additional power, "we are going to have rolling blackouts in 2009 or 2010," said David H. Wright, Riverside's public utilities general manager.
The AQMD is considering new rules that could prohibit such plants in the Riverside-San Bernardino area or force utilities and private power developers to pay more to build new ones in the region, under a pollution credit program.
The district, which regulates pollution sources in Los Angeles and Orange counties and parts of Riverside and San Bernardino counties, is struggling to bring the region into compliance with state and federal clean air laws while allowing construction of much-needed power plants in the region.
"We are walking a tightrope," said Chino Mayor Dennis Yates, a member of the air district board and chairman of its stationary source committee. "I don't have the answer, and nobody on our committee has the answer."
In September, the air district agreed to sell pollution-mitigation credits to power plant developers to enable them to build in the four-county region. Pollution credits are created when industries shut down or clean up, resulting in emissions reductions. They can sell those credits to other companies to offset their pollution. However, such credits are scarce in Southern California.
At the urging of utilities, which were unable to find sufficient credits for sale on the open market, the air district decided to temporarily allow power plant developers to buy credits from a reserve of credits that otherwise could be used only for essential public services.
State agencies with responsibility to avert the rolling blackouts like those in the 2001 statewide energy crisis have been pushing for more power plants in Southern California.
But the ability of the district to use the reserve pollution credits has been thrown into limbo by a lawsuit filed by the Natural Resources Defense Council and other environmental groups. The suit alleges that the district's action didn't adequately consider environmental consequences and violated the California Environmental Quality Act.
Air district spokesman Sam Atwood said the agency likely will postpone a hearing scheduled for next week on the proposed power-plant rules after a judge on Wednesday rejected the district's motion to dismiss the lawsuit.
Power plants are prime sources for fine-particle pollution, which has been linked to an array of illnesses. Because Southern California's particulate pollution is the worst in San Bernardino and Riverside counties, the agency wants to limit power plants that produce it particularly in those areas.

Still, Wright said he believes it would be unfair for the air quality district to impose different mitigation costs from zone to zone. The pollution from areas to the west of Riverside are responsible for much of the city's deteriorated air quality.
"It is like the victims are being punished here," Wright said. "Our understanding of the science is the particulate matter levels in Riverside are there from the generation of particulate matter that blows from the west each afternoon."
Yates, Riverside lawyer Jane Carney and Riverside Mayor Ron Loveridge, also air district board members, said Riverside and San Bernardino counties bear responsibility for the region's air pollution because of the Inland region's explosive growth in population and industry.
"The argument that it isn't them polluting is kind of weak," Yates said.
Loveridge said he supports the city's quest to build small power plants that will be used occasionally. But he said he would oppose building major generating plants in Riverside or any other highly polluted community. He also said he accepts the idea of charging more for mitigation credits to build generation plants in Riverside as long as the money is spent to alleviate pollution nearby.
The air district board, prompted by community objections to power plant development, has been trying to devise a way to discourage power plant developers from building in areas where air pollution is already concentrated.
The agency's staff has proposed six alternatives. All of them divide the region into three zones based on concentrations of fine-particle pollution, considered the most serious pollutant produced by power plants. Fine particles can penetrate deep into the lungs and have been linked to increased mortality and reduction in lung capacity.
Zone three, which includes public utilities in Riverside, Colton, Corona, Moreno Valley and Banning has the worst fine-particle pollution in the entire air district. A private company has an application pending for a new power plant in Grand Terrace.
One proposal would virtually prohibit any new gas-fired power plants in zone three by making AQMD pollution credits unavailable. Another would charge twice as much for the credits in zone three than in the least polluted zone.
At stake is whether Riverside will be able to build 96 megawatts of additional power capacity. Wright said a new plant must be built within the city because transmission lines that bring electricity from elsewhere are at full capacity. A new substation that would solve the problem won't be finished for another five to seven years.
The city's first priority is to get the two peaker plants built, Wright said. If necessary, he said, the city would agree to pay a premium. He figured Riverside might have to pay $10 million for pollution credits needed for the $100 million project. That would add 15 to 20 cents a month to the average residential bill in the city, he said.
Riverside is proposing an alternative option that would require power plant developers throughout the basin to pay equal sums for pollution credits at twice the amount already authorized, Wright said.
Colton officials, who are considering building a peaker plant, support Riverside's plan, Colton Electric Utility manager Jeannette Olko said.
The air district staff said the money raised from pollution-credit sales would help pay for clean energy and other measures to reduce pollution wherever the new plants are built in Southern California.
Reach Leslie Berkman at 951-893-2111 or lberkman@PE.com

Greenhouse gas drop, what will ALGORE do now?

2007-02-23T14:46:00.000-05:00

Draft EPA report shows drop in greenhouse
gas growth amid economic boom

A draft report released this week by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
shows overall emissions of greenhouse gasses (GHG) in 2005 grew by less than 1 percent
compared with 2004 emissions. The report also documents an overall emissions increase
of 16 percent between 1990 and 2005, during which time America’s economy grew by 55
percent.
These findings were contained in a draft version of a report entitled Inventory of
U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks: 1990-2005, released by EPA on Feb. 20,
which the agency will accept public comments on for 30 days. EPA is likely to issue
a final version of the report in April.
Specifically, the draft report found that emissions of GHG in 2005 were 0.8 percent

higher than the previous year, down from the 1.4 percent increase
recorded in 2004. Overall, 2005 emissions of the six greenhouse
gasses catalogued were equivalent to 7.262 million metric tons of
carbon dioxide. The study tracked emissions of carbon dioxide,
methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons
and sulfur hexafluoride. The draft study tracks a 2.1 percent
drop in nitrogen oxide emissions from stationar y fossil fuel
sources and a 0.2 percent drop in sulfur dioxide emissions from
these sources.
The draft report notes that 11 percent of 2005 GHG emissions
were offset by carbon sequestration in forests, agricultural soils
and other sources.
The draft report is a catalogue of emissions that the agency
is required to produce and submit under the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC). In a Feb.
20 press release, EPA said it will submit a final inventory report
to the UNFCC secretariat in order to fulfill an annual reporting
requirement.
A copy of the draft report is available at: http://epa.gov/
climatechange/emissions/usinventoryreport07.html.

Gore may be nuts?

2007-02-13T14:56:00.000-05:00

President of Czech Republic Calls Man-Made Global Warming a 'Myth' -

Questions Gore's Sanity

ETCzech president Vaclav Klaus has criticized the UN panel on global warming, claiming that it was a political authority without any scientific basis.In an interview with "Hospodárské noviny", a Czech economics daily, Klaus answered a few questions:Q: IPCC has released its report and you say that the global warming is a false myth. How did you get this idea, Mr President?•A: It's not my idea. Global warming is a false myth and every serious person and scientist says so. It is not fair to refer to the U.N. panel. IPCC is not a scientific institution: it's a political body, a sort of non-government organization of green flavor. It's neither a forum of neutral scientists nor a balanced group of scientists. These people are politicized scientists who arrive there with a one-sided opinion and a one-sided assignment. Also, it's an undignified slapstick that people don't wait for the full report in May 2007 but instead respond, in such a serious way, to the summary for policymakers where all the "but's" are scratched, removed, and replaced by oversimplified theses.• This is clearly such an incredible failure of so many people, from journalists to politicians. If the European Commission is instantly going to buy such a trick, we have another very good reason to think that the countries themselves, not the Commission, should be deciding about similar issues.•Q: How do you explain that there is no other comparably senior statesman in Europe who would advocate this viewpoint? No one else has such strong opinions...•A: My opinions about this issue simply are strong. Other top-level politicians do not express their global warming doubts because a whip of political correctness strangles their voice.• Q: But you're not a climate scientist. Do you have a sufficient knowledge and enough information?•A: Environmentalism as a metaphysical ideology and as a worldview has absolutely nothing to do with natural sciences or with the climate. Sadly, it has nothing to do with social sciences either. Still, it is becoming fashionable and this fact scares me. The second part of the sentence should be: we also have lots of reports, studies, and books of climatologists whose conclusions are diametrally opposite.• Indeed, I never measure the thickness of ice in Antarctica. I really don't know how to do it and don't plan to learn it. However, as a scientifically oriented person, I know how to read science reports about these questions, for example about ice in Antarctica. I don't have to be a climate scientist myself to read them. And inside the papers I have read, the conclusions we may see in the media simply don't appear. But let me promise you something: this topic troubles me which is why I started to write an article about it last Christmas. The article expanded and became a book. In a couple of months, it will be published. One chapter out of seven will organize my opinions about the climate change.• Environmentalism and green ideology is something very different from climate science. Various findings and screams of scientists are abused by this ideology.•Q: How do you explain that conservative media are skeptical while the left-wing media view the global warming as a done deal?•A: It is not quite exactly divided to the left-wingers and right-wingers. Nevertheless it's obvious that environmentalism is a new incarnation of modern leftism.•Q: If you look at all these things, even if you were right ...•A: ...I am right...•Q: Isn't there enough empirical evidence and facts we can see with our eyes that imply that Man is demolishing the planet and himself?•A: It's such a nonsense that I have probably not heard a bigger nonsense yet.•Q: Don't you believe that we're ruining our planet?•A: I will pretend that I haven't heard you. Perhaps only Mr Al Gore may be saying something along these lines: a sane person can't. I don't see any ruining of the planet, I have never seen it, and I don't think that a reasonable and serious person could say such a thing. Look: you represent the economic media so I expect a certain economical erudition from you. My book will answer these questions. For example, we know that there exists a huge correlation between the care we give to the environment on one side and the wealth and technological prowess on the other side. It's clear that the poorer the society is, the more brutally it behaves with respect to Nature, and vice versa.• It's also true that there exist social systems that are damaging Nature - by eliminating private ownership and similar things - much more than the freer societies. These tendencies become important in the long run. They unambiguously imply that today, on February 8th, 2007, Nature is protected uncomparably more than on February 8th ten years ago or fifty years ago or one hundred years ago.• That's why I ask: how can you pronounce the sentence you said? Perhaps if you're unconscious? Or did you mean it as a provocation only? And maybe I am just too naive and I allowed you to provoke me to give you all these answers, am I not? It is more likely that you actually believe what you say.
Developing...

Flowers and climate change

2007-02-13T14:37:00.000-05:00

Valentine bouquets 'are bad for the planet'By Nicole Martin

The Valentine's Day bouquet —
the gift that every woman in Britain will be waiting for next week — has become the latest bête noire among environmental campaigners.
Latest Government figures show that the flowers that make up the average bunch have flown 33,800 miles to reach Britain.
In the past three years, the amount of flowers imported from the Netherlands has fallen by 47 per cent to 94,000 tons, while those from Africa have risen 39 per cent to 17,000 tons.
Environmentalists warned that "flower miles" could have serious implications on climate change in terms of carbon dioxide emissions from aeroplanes.
Andrew Sims, the policy director of the New Economics Foundation, said: "There are plenty of flowers that grow in Britain in the winter and don't need to be hothoused.
"Air freighting flowers half way round the world contributes to global warming.
"You can argue the planes would be flying anyway but the amount of greenhouse gases pumped out depends on the weight of the cargo."
Vicky Hird, of Friends of the Earth, said: "We don't want to be killjoys because receiving flowers can be lovely but why not grow your own gift?"
The figures also revealed that imports of roses from Ethiopia have grown from zero to 130 tons a year since 2003.
Kenya is the second biggest exporter of flowers after the Netherlands, followed by Colombia and Spain.
In total, Britain imports more than £315 million of flowers, with the typical Briton spending £39 a year on them.
"That's very little when you think what we spend on CDs, coffee and even lipstick," said a spokesman for the Flowers and Plants Association.
He said the boom in Third World flowers would help poorer countries to build schools and boost the economy.

Coal-fired debate heats up in Texas

2007-02-11T20:12:00.000-05:00

By Eileen O'Grady

HOUSTON, Feb 9 (Reuters) - Opposition is growing to TXU Corp.'s $10 billion plan to build new coal-fired power plants in Texas as lawmakers and regulators consider measures in the next few weeks that will determine whether the projects can move forward.
Environmental groups have been joined by elected officials and business leaders arguing that TXU's plan to build 11 new coal plants will drastically increase emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, mercury and carbon dioxide, worsening the state's air quality and contributing to global warming.
A public rally to oppose plans by TXU and other developers is set for Sunday on the steps of the state capitol in Austin. Both sides have bought newspaper and TV ads to sway public opinion.
"No one wants all these coal plants the way they have been sprung on Texans," said Jackson Williams, executive director of Texas Clean Sky Coalition, the latest business-based coalition to oppose new coal plants.
The battle pits powerful mayors in Houston and Dallas against Texas Gov. Rick Perry who supports coal development. It pits Texas cities that welcome jobs and taxes the plants will create against communities that want more coal plants only if they use a technology, called gasification, to cut pollution.
Dallas-based TXU said new plants will add generation to keep pace with the state's growing appetite for power in a cost-effective way that uses the best anti-pollution technology available.
Critics say TXU is using old coal technology and only wants to boost profits while adding more pollution to the Texas sky in hopes of beating the deadline for future laws to restrict coal-plant emissions.
"The company will more than double its emissions of carbon dioxide, the primary man-made greenhouse gas, from 55 million tons a year to 133 million tons a year," said Jim Marson, regional director of Environmental Defense in Austin.

OPPOSITION EXCEEDS TXU'S EXPECTATIONS
The showdown begins later this month on two fronts. A regulatory hearing will be held for permits that would allow TXU to build six coal plants. Legislators are meeting to consider a coal moratorium and proposals that would limit power-plant ownership or tighten the air-permit process.
Donna Hoffman, a spokeswoman for the Sierra Club in Texas, said rally organizers hope to convince legislators to endorse a six-month moratorium on coal permits.
A moratorium would derail the governor's effort to expedite Texas' air-permit process. In 2005, as electricity prices soared after two hurricanes disrupted U.S. natural gas production, Perry issued an order to spur coal construction to reduce Texas' reliance on expensive gas.
Opposition to its plan has exceeded TXU's expectations, said spokeswoman Kim Morgan.
"We feel we have put together a strong, positive program for the state to lower prices, supply much-needed power and better air quality," Morgan said.
TXU critics are skeptical of TXU's pledge to cut overall emissions by 20 percent by cleaning up its older coal plants with additional pollution controls.
The only concession made by TXU has been to agree to build some new plants so that equipment can be added to capture carbon emissions in the future.
Investors are watching the growing opposition.
"We had the impression when this was announced that people were a lot more concerned about the high and rising price of electricity in Texas," said Tim O'Brien, a principal with Crow Point Partners, which advises the Boston-based Evergreen Utility and Telecommunications mutual fund which owns TXU shares.

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Fed regulators now say four days of breathable air needed to meet new regs.

2007-02-11T19:45:00.000-05:00

Coal mines must provide 4 days of emergency air under new law

Princeton Daily Clarion, Gibson Countys Newspaper

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) - Underground coal mines must provide up to four days of breathable air to keep miners alive in emergencies such as an explosion or a tunnel collapse, federal regulators announced Thursday.
The requirement is part of a new law enacted after a string of deadly accidents, including the deaths of 12 miners at the Sago Mine in January 2006. If miners cannot evacuate in an emergency, “they need a safe location that maintains an adequate supply of breathable air for them to use while they await rescue,” said Richard Stickler, director of the Mine Safety and Health Administration.
Mine operators have 30 days to submit plans to the agency, which has been criticized by the United Mine Workers labor union and members of Congress for not implementing the law quickly enough after it took effect in June.
A National Mining Association spokesman declined to comment.
Bill Raney, president of the West Virginia Coal Association, said he was concerned the rule would disrupt similar efforts by the state.
The state Office of Miners' Health, Safety and Training is in the process of approving underground shelters that can provide 48 hours of air. Mine operators have until mid-April to submit plans for installing the shelters.
In the Sago accident, one miner was killed in an explosion and 12 others were unable to escape. Eleven died of carbon monoxide poisoning and only one, Randal McCloy Jr., was rescued after more than 40 hours trapped underground.
A company trying to get a mine shelter approved in West Virginia said it supported the 96-hour rule from the beginning.
Ed Roscioli, chief executive of Allentown, Pa.-based ChemBio Shelter Inc., said he wants to give rescuers plenty of time so they don't risk their own lives out of fear that trapped miners have only a few hours of air.

Warming predates modern industry

2007-02-10T19:50:00.000-05:00

College of Wooster speaker: Global warming predates modern industry

Photo By Chris Kick photo William Ruddiman (center), professor of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia and author of the award-winning book “Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum: How Humans Took Control of Climate,” answers questions from students at The College of Wooster about how agriculture changed the climate. Ruddiman was the first speaker in The College’s “Global Climate Change” symposium, which runs through May.
By CHRIS KICK
Staff Writer
WOOSTER -- There's more to global warming than automobile emissions, factory smokestacks, aerosol cans and other industrial innovations of the last couple hundred years, according to William Ruddiman, professor emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia.
Ruddiman on Wednesday presented "Farmers First Altered Climate Thousands of Years Ago" to a full audience inside the Lean Lecture Room at The College of Wooster. He explained it was not the industrial, but rather early farming practices, that first altered the climate and essentially led to the concept of global warming.
"If you came to a scientist, any scientist in my field four or five years ago and (asked) when did humans start to interfere with climate, the answer would come back to it was about 1800 ... That was the conventional wisdom," he said.
But Ruddiman argued the process of change began much earlier, thousands of years earlier, with agricultural practices such as irrigation and deforestation. He reviewed with his audience diagrams of two greenhouse gasses linked to climate change, methane and carbon dioxide, and showed how gaps in their patterns correspond to periods of heavy irrigation and deforestation.
Ruddiman explained methane gas is created from swampy areas like wetlands, where water and vegetation are prevalent and methane gas bubbles out. He showed a trend of methane decreasing until about 5,000 years ago, when it instead turned and began climbing. The reason, according to Ruddiman, was the rise of irrigation, in which Chinese farmers began heavy irrigation of their rice paddies, creating human-made wetlands and thereby more methane.
"An irrigated rice paddy is a wetland," he said. "It's a human-made wetland, not a natural wetland."
As for carbon dioxide, he said some 8,000 years ago, the levels reversed from a downward direction and began climbing, which he attributed to heavy deforestation, based on the logic trees sequester and utilize carbon dioxide.
He addressed large deforestation efforts of the past several thousand years, including a survey during William the Conqueror's era that indicated 90 percent of England had been deforested.
He said deforestation continues today, in places like the Amazon, but emphasized the extreme nature of historical deforestation and the recent efforts of reforestation, which have improved modern forest conditions.
Part of his information is based on core samples of ice that date back almost a million years, he said, in which tiny pockets bubbles of dated air can be analyzed for their methane and carbon dioxide content.
His research focuses on cycles over the past 10,000 years and beyond, and anomalies of those cycles.
"If you have cycles, you have predictability, you have a reason for knowing what should be happening at any period of time," he said.
Ruddiman recognized the effect the industrial period (past 200 years) has had on climate change and said today farming probably affects the climate very little compared to industry, but still emphasized the early influence of agriculture in climate changes.
Had the climate not been altered, he figured we would be experiencing another glaciation (ice age).
"Basically, we're overdue for a glaciation," he said. "If nature had stayed in control we'd be in one right now."
He explained how periods of plagues and war also have shown changes in greenhouse gasses, corresponding to changes in human population. During a question-and-answer session, Ruddiman was asked whether society would have to "kill off half the world" to lower its greenhouse gas level, since the levels apparently decrease with population.
He admitted to being a cynic about the forecast of global warming, but did not endorse killing anyone and instead expressed optimism new technology could find a way to combat the greenhouse gasses, such as microbes that can eat carbon dioxide and omit something other than greenhouse gasses.
Another answer might be engineering an optimal climate for earth, he explained, by tuning earth's climate to an internationally acceptable level. While it may sound like science fiction, it's something he said already is "coming into our capability" and expects to be a major issue over the next decade.
"If we keep going the way that we're going, we're going to make climate roughly as much warmer 200 years from now as the last ice age was colder," he said. "It's as big a deal as the ice age in reverse, and that's absolutely mainstream science."
Asked about the future of climate change and what people can do, he explained it's serious, but said most probably won't change their ways.
"I think we're going to live with a big part of the warming ..." he said. "We just don't have the will to give up our comforts."
Ruddiman is the author of the award-winning book "Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum: How Humans took Control of Climate," which won the 2006 Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science. It's a book explaining human impact on climate, which several in the college's geology department have read.
Jessica Hark, a senior geology major, said there's much talk about whether global warming is something that even exists, but said after listening to Ruddiman, the argument for it is valid.
"Just listening to some of the work that he's done, you could definitely say, you could make the argument that yes, it's valid," she said.
She said the presentation was interesting and valuable, and said his book is very accessible to most readers.
"Anybody could understand it, even if you haven't really been studying geology or science," she said.
Greg Wiles, professor of geology at The College of Wooster and coordinator of Wednesday's presentation, said he also has read Ruddiman's book and said his point of human impact on climate is important.
"I think the main thing is that humans do impact the environment," Wiles said.
Ruddiman's presentation was part of a symposium called "Global Climate Change" and will continue Feb. 20 at 7 p.m. in McGaw Chapel with "Possibilities in Problems: The Good Side of Global Warming," presented by Richard Alley, Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences at Pennsylvania State University. Admission is free and open to the public.
Reporter Chris Kick can be reached at (330) 287-1635 or e-mail ckick@the-daily-record.com.

Letter to editor;
Posted by Loren Eberly 3 hours ago
One needs not be a rocket scientist; to understand; that trees use the oxygen contained in rainwater; to replace oxygen; used to burn fossil fuels; and replace hydrogen in the soil; veggies need to grow. We the stupid, defiant of demands; Of natural law (what Mother Nature, God, or Whatever Power decreed to be the reality of the real world); God, democracy, capitalism, the US Constitution, and free, fair, and affordable commerce; deceived in Sunday schools, public schools, private schools, home schools, colleges, and universities government; of the people, by the people, for the people; successfully; elect legislators and representatives; that support; cementing, blacktopping, and roofing green space; so rainwater cant percolate through soil into aquifer; supporting Nazi stockholders (money marketers); marketing more stock dividends (money); quarterly; in the wholesale and retail price of American automobiles; to honor; American soldiers on Normandy beach. This support for the demise of Natural Law, God, democracy, capitalism, the US Constitution, and free, fair, and affordable commerce: Makes free, fair, and affordable commerce IMPOSSIBLE; Makes balancing every budget IMPOSSIBLE; Makes union workers, consumers, taxpayers, and Americas grandchildrens children LIFE UNAFFORDABLE; and created the $8.5 trillion debt. Americas grandchildrens children are responsible to pay interest with until they are 18 years old. Then pay the debt with the $5.15 per hour labor wage; We the stupid, defiant of demands; Of natural law (what Mother Nature, God, or Whatever Power decreed to be the reality of the real world); God, democracy, capitalism, the US Constitution, and free, fair, and affordable commerce; deceived in Sunday schools, public schools, private schools, home schools, colleges, and universities government; of the people, by the people, for the people; elected legislators and representatives to enact. There is no reason to believe Americas grandchildrens children that go to bed hungry can pay this debt in a hundred million years.

Global warming predates modern industry

2007-02-10T19:46:00.000-05:00

The-Daily-Record.com
College of Wooster speaker: Global warming predates modern industry
15 hours ago
By CHRIS KICK
Staff Writer
WOOSTER -- There's more to global warming than automobile emissions, factory smokestacks, aerosol cans and other industrial innovations of the last couple hundred years, according to William Ruddiman, professor emeritus of Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia.
Ruddiman on Wednesday presented "Farmers First Altered Climate Thousands of Years Ago" to a full audience inside the Lean Lecture Room at The College of Wooster. He explained it was not the industrial, but rather early farming practices, that first altered the climate and essentially led to the concept of global warming.
"If you came to a scientist, any scientist in my field four or five years ago and (asked) when did humans start to interfere with climate, the answer would come back to it was about 1800 ... That was the conventional wisdom," he said.
But Ruddiman argued the process of change began much earlier, thousands of years earlier, with agricultural practices such as irrigation and deforestation. He reviewed with his audience diagrams of two greenhouse gasses linked to climate change, methane and carbon dioxide, and showed how gaps in their patterns correspond to periods of heavy irrigation and deforestation.
Ruddiman explained methane gas is created from swampy areas like wetlands, where water and vegetation are prevalent and methane gas bubbles out. He showed a trend of methane decreasing until about 5,000 years ago, when it instead turned and began climbing. The reason, according to Ruddiman, was the rise of irrigation, in which Chinese farmers began heavy irrigation of their rice paddies, creating human-made wetlands and thereby more methane.
"An irrigated rice paddy is a wetland," he said. "It's a human-made wetland, not a natural wetland."
As for carbon dioxide, he said some 8,000 years ago, the levels reversed from a downward direction and began climbing, which he attributed to heavy deforestation, based on the logic trees sequester and utilize carbon dioxide.
He addressed large deforestation efforts of the past several thousand years, including a survey during William the Conqueror's era that indicated 90 percent of England had been deforested.
He said deforestation continues today, in places like the Amazon, but emphasized the extreme nature of historical deforestation and the recent efforts of reforestation, which have improved modern forest conditions.
Part of his information is based on core samples of ice that date back almost a million years, he said, in which tiny pockets bubbles of dated air can be analyzed for their methane and carbon dioxide content.
His research focuses on cycles over the past 10,000 years and beyond, and anomalies of those cycles.
"If you have cycles, you have predictability, you have a reason for knowing what should be happening at any period of time," he said.
Ruddiman recognized the effect the industrial period (past 200 years) has had on climate change and said today farming probably affects the climate very little compared to industry, but still emphasized the early influence of agriculture in climate changes.
Had the climate not been altered, he figured we would be experiencing another glaciation (ice age).
"Basically, we're overdue for a glaciation," he said. "If nature had stayed in control we'd be in one right now."
He explained how periods of plagues and war also have shown changes in greenhouse gasses, corresponding to changes in human population. During a question-and-answer session, Ruddiman was asked whether society would have to "kill off half the world" to lower its greenhouse gas level, since the levels apparently decrease with population.
He admitted to being a cynic about the forecast of global warming, but did not endorse killing anyone and instead expressed optimism new technology could find a way to combat the greenhouse gasses, such as microbes that can eat carbon dioxide and omit something other than greenhouse gasses.
Another answer might be engineering an optimal climate for earth, he explained, by tuning earth's climate to an internationally acceptable level. While it may sound like science fiction, it's something he said already is "coming into our capability" and expects to be a major issue over the next decade.
"If we keep going the way that we're going, we're going to make climate roughly as much warmer 200 years from now as the last ice age was colder," he said. "It's as big a deal as the ice age in reverse, and that's absolutely mainstream science."
Asked about the future of climate change and what people can do, he explained it's serious, but said most probably won't change their ways.
"I think we're going to live with a big part of the warming ..." he said. "We just don't have the will to give up our comforts."
Ruddiman is the author of the award-winning book "Plows, Plagues, and Petroleum: How Humans took Control of Climate," which won the 2006 Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science. It's a book explaining human impact on climate, which several in the college's geology department have read.
Jessica Hark, a senior geology major, said there's much talk about whether global warming is something that even exists, but said after listening to Ruddiman, the argument for it is valid.
"Just listening to some of the work that he's done, you could definitely say, you could make the argument that yes, it's valid," she said.
She said the presentation was interesting and valuable, and said his book is very accessible to most readers.
"Anybody could understand it, even if you haven't really been studying geology or science," she said.
Greg Wiles, professor of geology at The College of Wooster and coordinator of Wednesday's presentation, said he also has read Ruddiman's book and said his point of human impact on climate is important.
"I think the main thing is that humans do impact the environment," Wiles said.
Ruddiman's presentation was part of a symposium called "Global Climate Change" and will continue Feb. 20 at 7 p.m. in McGaw Chapel with "Possibilities in Problems: The Good Side of Global Warming," presented by Richard Alley, Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences at Pennsylvania State University. Admission is free and open to the public.

Reporter Chris Kick can be reached at (330) 287-1635 or e-mail ckick@the-daily-record.com.

Stronger mine seals needed says gov scientist

2007-02-10T19:37:00.000-05:00

Government calls for stronger mine seals

CHARLESTON, W.Va. Government scientists are calling for stronger seals on underground mines.A report from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health says methane gas explosions could generate nearly 13 times more destructive force than the current federal standard for seals.
Government regulators have been grappling with questions about seals since 12 miners died in a January 2006 explosion at the Sago Mine in West Virginia. Officials say a lightning strike sparked methane gas in a sealed-off section of the mine. The blast shattered alternative seals made of lighter material than traditional concrete block and prompted the federal mine safety agency to increase the standard for seals in July.
But the new standard may have to be significantly revised if NIOSH is correct.
Almost 14-thousand underground seals across the country are built to the old standard.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Air packs and the free market forces.

2007-02-10T19:04:00.000-05:00

Posted on Sat, Feb. 10, 2007
Coal mine air pack makers struggle to meet ordersNew safety rules beginning to take effect

Associated Press
--
MONROEVILLE, Pa. -- At first glance, everything seems to be going well for CSE Corp.
Sales of the emergency air packs CSE pioneered for coal mining are up more than fourfold. And the small, family-owned operation that used to produce about 1,000 air packs a month has orders for 55,000, enough to prompt a small-scale expansion.
But company president Scott Shearer is getting pressure from the federal Mine Safety and Health Administration and even members of Congress. They want to know why CSE and other air pack manufacturers haven't delivered more products in the wake of state and federal legislation that requires thousands of new devices in underground mines.
Congress and coal-mining states such as Kentucky, Illinois and New Mexico pushed to increase emergency air packs following the deaths last year of 19 miners in West Virginia and Kentucky in accidents where air supplies came into question.
"The whole thing has certainly been a huge burden on the whole organization," said Shearer during a recent tour of his suburban Pittsburgh plant.
CSE isn't the only company that produces emergency air packs, but before last year's string of mine fatalities it had about 65 percent of the U.S. market and had made inroads in Australia and South Africa. The other major manufacturers are Prairie, Wis.-based Ocenco Corp. and Draeger Safety in Pittsburgh.
Pat Droppleman, president of No. 2 manufacturer Ocenco Corp., was unavailable for comment. However, the company recently told the West Virginia Office of Miners' Health, Safety and Training that it has a 10-month backlog.
Draeger Safety has 8,500 of its air packs ready to ship, but few if any buyers.
"We had product built and brought in and waiting for the marketplace," said Kent Armstrong, Draeger's national sales manager. Armstrong acknowledges that large mining companies chose Ocenco or CSE years ago and are loath to change, which has made cracking the market hard for Draeger. The company, one of the oldest and biggest in mine and fire safety gear, has made air packs for decades, but hasn't amassed a significant share of the coal mining business.
"The major players have selected," Armstrong says.
Air packs are designed to help miners breathe for one hour. The number of devices to be carried by miners and stored underground vary by state and federal law. The goal is to give miners enough air packs to switch to a new device every 30 minutes as they attempt to escape along designated routes.
There are no national figures that show how many of the estimated 100,000 air packs ordered over the past year have made it into the nation's underground mines. But numbers gathered by West Virginia regulators suggest few have been delivered.
West Virginia has more underground coal production than any other state and the latest accounting shows state operators have ordered more than 39,000 air packs and have 14,615 on hand. The figure includes thousands of air packs in use before 2006.
Kentucky has the most underground coal mines in the nation, but hasn't put any pressure on the air pack makers to meet a July 1 air pack deadline.

© 2007 Belleville News-Democrat and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.http://www.belleville.com

Energy Independence Wall St. Journal

2007-01-23T15:09:00.000-05:00

'Energy Independence'

Jan 23, 2007
Wall Street Journal, Print Edition

DANIEL YERGIN

A cry is being heard across the nation, and loudly so in Washington. It is the call for "energy independence," and it will be at the center of the national energy debate over the next several months, providing the rationale for new policies and expansion of existing ones. Indeed, one might even anticipate a "declaration of energy independence" this July 4.
But what does "energy independence" mean for a $13 trillion economy that uses the equivalent of 50 million barrels of oil every day? Is it realistic and achievable? Or is it rhetorical overreach that will lead, as in the past, to disappointment and cynicism, the kind that drives the cycles of inconsistency in energy policy and leaves the U.S. no less vulnerable? The latter is more likely -- at least without a realistic appraisal of the U.S. position and the country's possibilities. But "energy independence" can provide a constructive framework for policy if it is properly thought through and the realities are recognized.
* * *
With geopolitical turmoil, volatile prices and continuing reminders of the international political power of oil, the concept of energy independence is compelling and deeply appealing. In fact, it has been appealing for quite some time. The idea was introduced by Richard Nixon in November 1973, three weeks after the Arab oil embargo, when he introduced "Project Independence" and pledged that the U.S. would, within seven years, "meet our own energy needs without depending on any foreign energy source." It was a bold assertion but one that puzzled his own advisers. "I cut the reference to 'independence' three times from the drafts, but it kept being put back," recalled Richard Fairbanks, a drafter of the speech. "Finally, I called over, and was told that it came from the Old Man himself." Nixon knew that energy independence was something that Americans would crave after the 1973 oil shock: He deliberately modeled his Project Independence on John F. Kennedy's Apollo goal of getting a man on the moon within a decade.
Back then, the goal may have seemed only somewhat unlikely. After all, when Nixon began his political career after World War II, the country already had a long history of energy independence -- and then some. For it had actually been the world's No. 1 oil exporter; indeed, out of seven billion barrels of oil used by the Allies in World War II, six billion were produced in the U.S. By the late 1940s, the U.S. had become a net importer of oil, although the real surge in imports did not begin until the 1970s.
It proved much easier to get a man on the moon than to make a nation energy independent. In the three and a half decades since Nixon, the U.S. has gone from importing a third of its oil to importing 60%, and that share is set to continue rising. The country is on a similar path for natural gas (which is about 25% of our total energy usage). North American supply has flattened out. Yet large amounts of new natural-gas-fired electric power generation have been added over the last decade, which means that demand will increase. Natural gas is also used in the making of ethanol, adding to the demand growth. This means growing imports of liquefied natural gas -- LNG -- rising from 3% of our current demand to more than 25% by 2020.
All of which suggests that thought needs to be given both to what energy independence means and what can be achieved. For, right now, the U.S. is moving at some speed in the opposite direction, toward greater integration into the global energy markets.
How dependent is the U.S.? If we look at total energy -- including coal, nuclear and a small but growing share from renewables -- the country is over 70% self-sufficient. Oil -- refined into liquid fuels for transportation -- is where most of the current dependence comes from. The risks do not owe to direct imports from the Middle East, contrary to the widespread belief. Some 81% of oil imports do not come from that region. Thus, only 19% of imports -- and 12% of total petroleum consumption -- originates in the Middle East
Our largest source of oil imports is Canada. It's also the source of most of our current natural gas imports, via pipelines. One can hardly say that either Canada or energy imports from Canada constitute a major threat to national security. The energy trade is part of a normal trading relationship with the country with which we're conjoined economically and which just happens to be our biggest trading partner. Our second largest source is Mexico, with which we are also in a dense relationship. Mexico depends upon oil for about a third of total government revenues.
The picture becomes more complex when one turns to our third largest source of oil imports, Venezuela. The once much-discussed "hemispheric energy solidarity" loses much of its resonance when balanced against the "21stcentury socialism" of Venezuela's Hugo Chávez. After all, President Chávez is currently nationalizing the private sector, has on occasion threatened to embargo oil shipments to the U.S., and is putting much effort into fashioning an anti-U.S. alliance, the latest manifestation being the visit of Iranian President Ahmadinejad to Caracas. These are not the actions one normally associates with a good friend or a reliable trading partner.
Yet the source of imports is significant only up to a point. Energy security is a global issue. Although oil around the world varies greatly in terms of physical qualities and transportation costs, there is only one world oil market. So disruptions and loss of supply in one place radiate throughout the global market -- and global politics -- affecting consumers everywhere. Even if the U.S. did not import a drop of oil, it would still be vulnerable to turmoil involving oil outside its borders.
What are the prospects for "energy independence" in the way that Richard Nixon defined it 34 years ago -- that is, 1930s-style "autarky" and total self-sufficiency? Based on where we are today, very small, at least for a couple of decades. In terms of vehicles, as pointed out in our new study on "Gasoline and the American People," only about 8% of the auto fleet turns over every year. So the lead times are long for more efficient vehicles to enter the fleet. Ethanol, derived from corn, is on track to grow to about 10% of our total gasoline pool in a few years. This is certainly not inconsequential; it represents diversification and is equivalent to creating a new Indonesia-level oil-producing country in America's Midwest. But signs are already evident of an upper bound on corn-based ethanol, as the fuel-versus-food trade-off pushes up corn prices, setting off vocal protests from livestock growers and dairy farmers and, in due course, from those who buy breakfast cereals and soft drinks made with high fructose corn syrup.
What about technological advances that provide new answers? There is a "great bubbling" all along the innovation frontier of energy, ranging from conventional energy and efficiency to, especially, renewables, alternatives and "clean tech." Activity this wide-ranging has never been witnessed before. The impact could well be considerable, or even transformative. One would be very hard-pressed today, however, to say when and what form this impact will take.
In the end, if energy independence is presented as self-sufficiency, it will likely fall flat. And, as prices run through their cycles, disappointment will undermine the longer-term commitments that are required for a sound energy future. Today, quite simply, cutting ourselves off from global energy markets is not realistic.
But, if the goal of energy independence is understood differently, to mean energy security -- resilience, robustness, reduced vulnerability -- then it is much more useful.
This kind of definition recognizes that trade, in itself, is not bad. At the same time, it emphasizes the central goal of diversification -- encouraging investment and higher levels of research and development in both alternative and conventional energy sources. It means a new push for energy conservation, higher energy efficiency, lower energy intensity -- a theme that German Chancellor Angela Merkel will make the centerpiece of her agenda as chairman of the G-8 countries later this year. It certainly requires a consistent commitment to pushing the innovation frontier in ways that, eventually, lead to economically competitive alternatives and new technologies.
And it requires an understanding that this kind of energy independence -- as measured in energy security -- actually requires interdependence with other nations, both consumers and producers of energy. Indeed, how we manage our relations with other countries and other regions is a very essential ingredient for our own energy well-being.
Mr. Yergin, chairman of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, is writing a book on energy and geopolitics

China and coal production

2007-01-23T15:07:00.000-05:00

China to control coal production, revamp industry vital to power supply
Jan 23, 2007
Florida Times Union

SHANGHAI, China — China will consolidate coal mines and boost output of good quality coal while controlling overall production, the country's planning agency says in a five-year blueprint for the industry.
Total production will be capped at 2.6 billion tons annually by 2010, the National Development and Reform Commission said in a report posted on its Web site.
China is the world's biggest producer and consumer of coal, with output last year at 2.33 billion tons compared with demand of 2.25 billion tons. The country exports some of its low grade coal and imports high grade coking coal to meet the needs of its steel industry.
Coal, which now fuels about 70 percent of China's power output, will remain the country's main energy source, the report said. It largely confirms industry guidelines announced earlier.
"The key mission during the period is to control output, form big players, consolidate small and medium-size suppliers and eliminate those with low recovery rates and poor safety," the commission said.
China's coal mining industry is highly fragmented, with tens of thousands of small mine operators. In recent days state media reported that the government also plans to consolidate the industry by requiring that operations in any single coal field be controlled by only one company, to help improve technology and safety in the notoriously perilous industry.
In 2005, small mines accounted for just over 1 billion of China's total coal output. By 2010, planners expect small mines to provide only 700 million tons of total supply, the report said.
With demand for coal driving up prices, the industry is booming. But mines are unlicensed and ignore safety and labor rules.
At least 4,746 people were killed in floods, fires, explosions and other mishaps at mines last year, making China's mining industry the world's deadliest by far, although the total official figure was a decrease from the average fatality rate of 6,000 a year in recent years.

"Texas time," ticks on coal decision !

2007-01-22T18:06:00.000-05:00

Ticking away

by kathy williams

herald democrat

Time. It’s the focal point in the discussion among the groups opposed to building 18 coal-fired power plants in Texas and those advocating such construction.
Opponents say the governor’s executive order putting the plants on a fast-track to gaining a permit doesn’t give them sufficient time to conduct testing and raise money to mount a defense. These opponents also say the plants, including one in Savoy in Fannin County, will pollute the atmosphere for up to 50 years. And the plants can’t be built in time to solve the energy crunch predicted as early as next year. Opponents have sued Gov. Rick Perry, contending his executive order exceeded his constitutional authority and impinged on the authority of the judiciary.
TXU, which is seeking permits to build 11 pulverized coal plants, non profits TXU and other coal and power companies have created, along with the president of Texas Association of Business, say the time to act is now or face the prospect of power shortages in 2008-2009. However, the soonest TXU’s plants would be online is 2010.
Environmental Defense is one of the organizations the Texas State Office of Administrative Hearings admitted as a party to the case considering TXU’s request for a permit to operate the plant. Colin Rowan, director of regional communications for Environmental Defense said Texans do need to act, but his organization has a plan to avert power shortages without further damaging the environment.
Bill Hammond, president of Texas Association of Business, held a press conference in Sherman Friday to advocate the use of coal as a fuel source for producing electricity. Hammond called TXU’s planned plants “new generation” and if built they would ensure Texas meets its energy needs, including recommended 12.5-percent reserves, in the upcoming years. Hammond was on a statewide press conference tour touting TAB’s “Don’t Leave Texas in the Dark: Fuel Diversity is Key to Texas Future Energy Demands.” The report calls for a greater use of coal and nuclear energy to fuel Texas electrical generators.
“Texas is facing a looming energy crisis — and we should and must deal with it today,” states written material Hammond gave to the two reporters who attended the press conference. “To maintain our status as the best place to live, work and raise a family, we must attain additional sources of reliable and affordable energy — and quickly. To ignore this problem, risks undermining Texas job creation, crippling our economy and enduring more of the blackouts our state already has struggled with. None of these is an acceptable scenario.”
The Electric Reliability Council of Texas is responsible for running the state’s electricity grid. In its forecasts of growth in population and use of electricity, ERCOT recommends a reserve margin of 12.5 percent of peak demand. This year, Texas has reached new peaks in both summer and winter demand, the latter unofficially set Tuesday, according to a press release from Thomas Kleckner, corporate communications director for TXU. Even with these records, ERCOT predicts the margin can be maintained until 2008-2009.
Hammond said the rolling brownout Central Texas experienced in April “admittedly was an extremely rare set of circumstances. But it’s the canary in a coal mine. Year-to year demand in August of ’05 to August of ’06 grew by 5 percent. And then we expect some 6 million additional Texan by 2015.”
Environmental Defense’s Rowan said, that’s just the point.
“There’s this 2008-2009 issue that TXU doesn’t address,” Rowan said. “So what we did in our report was we asked energy experts to look at energy efficiency programs across the country. Now what we mean by energy efficiency is not just telling people to put a blanket on and turn down their heaters; we mean systemic changes that would be made to the electrical system that would improve the transfer of electricity and make our system more efficient.”
Rowan said Environmental Defense’s plan also would ask the Legislature to mandate more efficient appliances and changes in the way industry uses the electricity grid. These and other changes proposed in ED’s plan are feasible and “would keep Texas above the 12.5 margin for two years and beyond that we could find about 700 megawatts of additional energy from clean resources to keep us above the 12.5 percent reserve margin for another two years.”
Rowan emphasized that the “major message for that entire analysis is that we have time to figure this out. We do not have to rush and build 11 or 19 coal-fired power plants that will last for another 50 years. We don’t have to decide that right now, we can implement these energy efficiency measure that will save consumers money, use less energy to reduce our pollution, give us time to make wiser, more educated decisions about our energy future.”
On another front, Houston attorney Jim Blackburn filed a lawsuit against the governor saying Perry’s executive order to fast-track the permitting process for TXU’s and eight other coal-fired power plants violates the law and the constitution. Blackburn represents Citizens Organizing for Resources and Environment, the local group that opposes TXU’s plans to build a coal-fired plant in Savoy. Blackburn said in a telephone interview Friday that he represents CORE in both the contested hearing before the State Office of Administrative Hearings and in the lawsuit against Perry.
CORE is joined by three other groups in the lawsuit against Perry, which Blackburn filed in a Travis County state district court.
“The suit charges that the Texas Legislature created SOAH as an independent judicial agency within state government and that the governor lacks the authority to direct the manner in which SOAH conducts its hearings,” a press release from the four organizations states. “The suit also charges that the Texas Constitution prevents such interference with judicial functions.”
Blackburn explained that the statute governing SOAH “creates an independent judicial branch within the executive branch, which is weird, but the statutes itself basically guarantees the independence of this agency. And what the governor has done is he has issued an executive order and the judges have interpreted the executive order to take away their discretion to grant additional time to prepare for a complex hearing.”
Blackburn said typically in complex cases, judges allow additional time for discovery (getting information from opposing sides.)
“Typically, there’s time to hire computer modelers, for example, to monitor the air pollution that will impact the health of the people surrounding the plant and bring in health experts to talk about the health impacts of those numbers.
“You’re dealing with citizens groups that are not generally equipped to do this type of work — having to both raise money, go and hire not only attorneys, but experts and commissioning these studies.
“What the governor’s order does is take away basic due process rights that we otherwise have under state law.”
Blackburn said this is not only a due process argument but a big property rights case in addition to a challenge of the governor’s extension of power.
“These are farmers and ranchers, who for the most part live in the country, that are trying to defend their property and their health and they’re not being allowed a fair chance to do that. And if nothing else, we are going to strike a blow to try to tell the governor we don’t think it’s right.”
Across the Red River, the Oklahoma Department of Environmental Quality has written to SOAH saying it is concerned “that the proper notices of the draft permits were not provided to the agency (DEQ). Under (Texas law) applicants for the proposed electric generation units should have provided notice to any air pollution control agency of any nearby state in which air quality may be adversely affected by the emissions from the new or modified facility. DEQ has not receive such notice. Because proper notice was not made, DEQ requests that these comments be fully considered as timely by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality and the State Office of Administrative Hearings.”
The Oklahoma environmental protection agency said it is concerned particularly about concentrations of ozone coming north from Texas. The letter says Oklahoma fears such pollution might put that state in a non-attainment status in regard to federal Clean Air Act provisions. DEQ asks that SOAH require studies to show that the cumulative effects of all the plants that affect Oklahoma be conducted before TXU’s permits are granted.
The two judges currently hearing the Savoy case and five others, which it combined into one large case in December, wrote back to DEQ that Texas’ rules require that a company seeking a permit must furnish a copy and affidavit of its newspaper notices to “the air pollution control agency of any nearby state in which air quality may be adversely affected by the new or modified facility.”
The letter continues, “While the rule places the onus on the applicant to provide this information, in the case of Valley Steam (Savoy plant) application, the modeling provided by the applicant and found acceptable by the ED (TCEQ’s executive director) staff demonstrated that levels of modeled criteria pollutants at the state line, with one exception, were at or below (legallty acceptable levels). ... Therefore the ED did not consider Oklahoma to be adversely affected.”
So far, the Oklahoma agency has not further responded. Blackburn said he is hopeful of raising this issue during the contested hearing.

Global Warming Oversold?

2007-01-22T14:21:00.000-05:00

Experts fear they've oversold global warming

Jan 22, 2007

Houston Chronicle
ERIC BERGER

Scientists long have issued the warnings: The modern world's appetite for cars, air conditioning and cheap, fossil-fuel energy spews billions of tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, unnaturally warming the world.
Yet, it took the dramatic images of a hurricane overtaking New Orleans and searing heat last summer to finally trigger widespread public concern on the issue of global warming.
Climate scientists might be expected to bask in the spotlight after their decades of toil. The general public now cares about greenhouse gases, and with a new Democratic-led Congress, federal action on climate change may be at hand.
Problem is, global warming may not have caused Hurricane Katrina, and last summer's heat waves were equaled and, in many cases, surpassed by heat in the 1930s.
In their efforts to capture the public's attention, then, have climate scientists oversold global warming? It's probably not a majority view, but a few climate scientists are beginning to question whether some dire predictions push the science too far.
"Some of us are wondering if we have created a monster," says Kevin Vranes, a climate scientist at the University of Colorado.
Vranes, who is not considered a global warming skeptic by his peers, came to this conclusion after attending an American Geophysical Union meeting last month. Vranes says he detected "tension" among scientists, notably because projections of the future climate carry uncertainties — a point that hasn't been fully communicated to the public.
The science of climate change often is expressed publicly in unambiguous terms.
For example, last summer, Ralph Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences, told the U.S. House Committee on Energy and Commerce: "I think we understand the mechanisms of CO2 and climate better than we do of what causes lung cancer. ... In fact, it is fair to say that global warming may be the most carefully and fully studied scientific topic in human history."
Vranes says, "When I hear things like that, I go crazy."
Nearly all climate scientists believe the Earth is warming and that human activity, by increasing the level of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide, has contributed significantly to the warming.
But within the broad consensus are myriad questions about the details. How much of the recent warming has been caused by humans? Is the upswing in Atlantic hurricane activity due to global warming or natural variability? Are Antarctica's ice sheets at risk for melting in the near future?
To the public and policymakers, these details matter. It's one thing to worry about summer temperatures becoming a few degrees warmer.
It's quite another if ice melting from Greenland and Antarctica raises the sea level by 3 feet in the next century, enough to cover much of Galveston Island at high tide.
Models aren't infallible
Scientists have substantial evidence to support the view that humans are warming the planet — as carbon dioxide levels rise, glaciers melt and global temperatures rise. Yet, for predicting the future climate, scientists must rely upon sophisticated — but not perfect — computer models.
"The public generally underappreciates that climate models are not meant for reducing our uncertainty about future climate, which they really cannot, but rather they are for increasing our confidence that we understand the climate system in general," says Michael Bauer, a climate modeler at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, in New York.
Gerald North, professor of atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University, dismisses the notion of widespread tension among climate scientists on the course of the public debate. But he acknowledges that considerable uncertainty exists with key events such as the melting of Antarctica, which contains enough ice to raise sea levels by 200 feet.
"We honestly don't know that much about the big ice sheets," North says. "We don't have great equations that cover glacial movements. But let's say there's just a 10 percent chance of significant melting in the next century. That would be catastrophic, and it's worth protecting ourselves from that risk."
Much of the public debate, however, has dealt in absolutes. The poster for Al Gore's global warming movie, An Inconvenient Truth, depicts a hurricane blowing out of a smokestack. Katrina's devastation is a major theme in the film.
Judith Curry, an atmospheric scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has published several research papers arguing that a link between a warmer climate and hurricane activity exists, but she admits uncertainty remains.
Like North, Curry says she doubts there is undue tension among climate scientists but says Vranes could be sensing a scientific community reaction to some of the more alarmist claims in the public debate.
For years, Curry says, the public debate on climate change has been dominated by skeptics, such as Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and strong advocates such as NASA's James Hansen, who calls global warming a ticking "time bomb" and talks about the potential inundation of all global coastlines within a few centuries.
That may be changing, Curry says. As the public has become more aware of global warming, more scientists have been brought into the debate. These scientists are closer to Hansen's side, she says, but reflect a more moderate view.
"I think the rank-and-file are becoming more outspoken, and you're hearing a broader spectrum of ideas," Curry says.
Young and old tension
Other climate scientists, however, say there may be some tension as described by Vranes. One of them, Jeffrey Shaman, an assistant professor of atmospheric sciences at Oregon State University, says that unease exists primarily between younger researchers and older, more established scientists.
Shaman says some junior scientists may feel uncomfortable when they see older scientists making claims about the future climate, but he's not sure how widespread that sentiment may be. This kind of tension always has existed in academia, he adds, a system in which senior scientists hold some sway over the grants and research interests of graduate students and junior faculty members.
The question, he says, is whether it's any worse in climate science.
And if it is worse? Would junior scientists feel compelled to mute their findings, out of concern for their careers, if the research contradicts the climate change consensus?
"I can understand how a scientist without tenure can feel the community pressures," says environmental scientist Roger Pielke Jr., a colleague of Vranes' at the University of Colorado.
Pielke says he has felt pressure from his peers: A prominent scientist angrily accused him of being a skeptic, and a scientific journal editor asked him to "dampen" the message of a peer-reviewed paper to derail skeptics and business interests.
"The case for action on climate science, both for energy policy and adaptation, is overwhelming," Pielke says. "But if we oversell the science, our credibility is at stake."
eric.berger@chron.com

Do the math on gobal warming

2007-01-19T13:51:00.000-05:00

January 16, 2007
Why Global Warming is Probably a Crock

By James Lewis
American Thinker
As a scientist I've learned never to say "never." So human-caused global warming is always a hypothesis to hold, at least until climate science becomes mature. (Climate science is very immature right now: Physicists just don't know how to deal with hypercomplex systems like the earth weather. That's why a recent NASA scientist was wildly wrong when he called anthropogenic warming "just basic physics." Basic physics is what you do in the laboratory. If hypercomplex systems were predictable, NASA would have foolproof space shuttles --- because they are a lot simpler than the climate. So this is just pseudoscientific twaddle from NASA's vaunted Politically Correct Division. It makes me despair when even scientists conveniently forget that little word "hypothesis.")
OK. The human-caused global warming hypothesis is completely model-dependent. We can't directly observe cars and cows turning up the earth thermostat. Whatever the human contribution there may be to climate constitutes just a few signals among many hundreds or thousands.
All our models of the earth climate are incomplete. That's why they keep changing, and that's why climate scientists keep finding surprises. As Rummy used to say, there are a ton of "unknown unknowns" out there. The real world is full of x's, y's and z's, far more than we can write little models about. How do you extract the human contribution from a vast number of unknowns?
That's why constant testing is needed, and why it is so frustrating to do frontier science properly. Science is difficult because nature always has another surprise in store for us, dammit! Einstein rejected quantum mechanics, and was wrong about that. Newton went wrong on the proof of calculus, a problem that didn't get solved until 1900. Scientists are always wrong --- they are just less wrong now than they were before (if everything is going well). Check out the current issue of Science magazine. It's full of surprises. That's what it's for.
Now there's a basic fact about complexity that helps to understand this. It's a point in probability theory (eek!) about many variables, each one less than 100 percent likely to be true.
If I know that my six-sided die isn't loaded, I'll get a specific number on average one out of six rolls. Two rolls of the die produces 1/6 x 1/6 = 1/36. For n rolls of the die, I get (1/6) multiplied by itself n times, or (1/6) to the nth power. That number becomes small very quickly. The more rolls of the die, the less likely it is that some particular sequence will come up. It's the first thing to know in any game of chance. Don't ever bet serious money if that isn't obvious.
Now imagine that all the variables about global climate are known with less than 100 percent certainty. Let's be wildly and unrealistically optimistic and say that climate scientists know each variable to 99 percent certainty! (No such thing, of course). And let's optimistically suppose there are only one-hundred x's, y's, and z's --- all the variables that can change the climate: like the amount of cloud cover over Antarctica, the changing ocean currents in the South Pacific, Mount Helena venting, sun spots, Chinese factories burning more coal every year, evaporation of ocean water (the biggest "greenhouse" gas), the wobbles of earth orbit around the sun, and yes, the multifarious fartings of billions of living creatures on the face of the earth, minus, of course, all the trillions of plants and algae that gobble up all the CO2, nitrogen-containing molecules, and sulfur-smelling exhalations spewed out by all of us animals. Got that? It all goes into our best math model.
So in the best case, the smartest climatologist in the world will know 100 variables, each one to an accuracy of 99 percent. Want to know what the probability of our spiffiest math model would be, if that perfect world existed? Have you ever multiplied (99/100) by itself 100 times? According to the Google calculator, it equals a little more than 36.6 percent.
The Bottom line: our best imaginable model has a total probability of one out of three. How many billions of dollars in Kyoto money are we going to spend on that chance?
Or should we just blow it at the dog races?
So all ye of global warming faith, rejoice in the ambiguity that real life presents to all of us. Neither planetary catastrophe nor paradise on earth are sure bets. Sorry about that. (Consider growing up, instead.)
That's why human-caused global warming is an hypothesis, not a fact. Anybody who says otherwise isn't doing science, but trying to sell you a bill of goods.
Probably. James Lewis is the nom de plume of an academic scientist. He blogs at Dangerous Times.Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2007/01/why_global_warming_is_probably.html at January 19, 2007 - 01:51:05 PM EST

Card check bill, what is it?

2007-01-19T12:34:00.000-05:00

This is a few months old but is informative none-the-less about what is going on in Congress.

September 10, 2006

Tom Vilsack, Rallying Dems 'Round an Anti-Democracy Cause

National Assoc of Manufacturers;

Interesting piece by David Broder in today's WaPo, praising Iowa Governor and likely Presidential candidate Tom Vilsack and the issue he has found to rally diverse elements of the Democrat party. The good news for the Dems is that Vilsack has rallied them -- from the Democratic Leadership Council to the AFL-CIO. The bad news for the Dems is that the issue is the anti-democracy "card check" bill that's bouncing around the Congress. The bill would allow unions to gain recognition of an employee group short of an election. In being so blatantly against secret ballot elections, the bill is as flagrantly anti-democracy as they come.
The way it works under current law (the same law that saw the unions expand their ranks in the 50's, 60's and 70's) is that if a union wants to represent a given workforce, they need to get "authorization cards" signed by 30% of that workforce. What union organizers do, of course, is, uh, visit people face-to-face and, uh, urge them to sign the cards. Some have even used the word "intimidation" in describing this process. Imagine that. If they get enough cards, they have an election. Whaddaya know? A bunch of people who, uh, voluntarily signed those cards end up voting against the union. And so "Foul!" cry the unions. Their proposal -- since they keep losing elections -- is to lower the bar. In other words, how 'bout we just let the union win if we can get enough people to, uh, voluntarily sign cards that say, "I want to join a union"?
As unions have seen their numbers dwindle, they have found everyone on earth to blame but themselves. Remember that for 8 years of the Clinton Administration -- friendly to labor -- their numbers continued to sink. The card check bill -- that flies under the misnomer, "Employee Free Choice Act" -- is championed by Rep. George Miller (D-CA) who will be chair of the Education and Workforce Committee if the Democrats take control of the House.
How ironic would it be if America -- champions of democracy all over the globe -- abandoned secret ballot elections right here at home? Mark us down as pro-democracy. We continue to favor secret ballot elections. Let's hope Tom Vilsack can rally the Dems around an issue that smells just a little more like democracy.

Posted by Pat Cleary at September 10, 2006 12:00 PM

Weather Channel wants to snuff out free thots?

2007-01-19T08:57:00.000-05:00

Weather Channel Climate Expert Calls for Decertifying Global Warming Skeptics

January 17, 2007

Posted by Marc Morano 202-224-5762 marc_morano@epw.senate.gov (8:50pm ET)

The Weather Channel’s most prominent climatologist is advocating that broadcast meteorologists be stripped of their scientific certification if they express skepticism about predictions of manmade catastrophic global warming. This latest call to silence skeptics follows a year (2006) in which skeptics were compared to "Holocaust Deniers" and Nuremberg-style war crimes trials were advocated by several climate alarmists.

The Weather Channel’s (TWC) Heidi Cullen, who hosts the weekly global warming program "The Climate Code," is advocating that the American Meteorological Society (AMS) revoke their "Seal of Approval" for any television weatherman who expresses skepticism that human activity is creating a climate catastrophe.

"If a meteorologist can't speak to the fundamental science of climate change, then maybe the AMS shouldn't give them a Seal of Approval. Clearly, the AMS doesn't agree that global warming can be blamed on cyclical weather patterns," Cullen wrote in her December 21 weblog on the Weather Channel Website. [Note: It is also worth taking a look at the comments section at the bottom of Cullen’s blog, very entertaining.] See: http://climate.weather.com/blog/9_11396.html This latest call to silence skeptics of manmade global warming has been the subject of discussion at the annual American Meteorological Society’s Annual conference in San Antonio Texas this week. See: http://www.ametsoc.org/meet/annual
"It's like allowing a meteorologist to go on-air and say that hurricanes rotate clockwise and tsunamis are caused by the weather. It's not a political statement...it's just an incorrect statement," Cullen added. [Note to Cullen: Hurricanes (Cyclones) in the Southern Hemisphere do rotate clockwise. Also, Cullen and the media have ignored the growing climate skepticism by prominent scientists see: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=E58DFF04-5A65-42A4-9F82-87381DE894CD ]
Cullen’s call for decertification of TV weatherman who do not agree with her global warming assessment follows a year (2006) in which the media, Hollywood and environmentalists tried their hardest to demonize scientific skeptics of manmade global warming. Scott Pelley, CBS News 60 Minutes correspondent, compared skeptics of global warming to "Holocaust deniers" and former Vice President turned foreign lobbyist Al Gore has repeatedly referred to skeptics as "global warming deniers." See: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.Facts&ContentRecord_id=A4017645-DE27-43D7-8C37-8FF923FD73F8 & http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=E58DFF04-5A65-42A4-9F82-87381DE894CD
Cullen Featured Advocate of Nuremberg-Style Trials for Climate Skeptics
In addition, Cullen’s December 17, 2006 episode of "The Climate Code" TV show, featured a columnist who openly called for Nuremberg-style Trials for climate skeptics. Cullen featured Grist Magazine’s Dave Roberts as an eco-expert opining on energy issues, with no mention of his public call to institute what amounts to the death penalty for scientists who express skepticism about global warming. See: http://epw.senate.gov/fact.cfm?party=rep&id=264568

Cullen’s call for suppressing scientific dissent comes at a time when many skeptical scientists affiliated with Universities have essentially been silenced over fears of loss of tenure and the withdrawal of research grant money. The United Nations Inner Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) process has also steadily pushed scientists away who hold inconvenient skeptical views and reject the alarmist conclusions presented in the IPCC’s summary for policymakers. See: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=21CC88EC-CCA6-4A61-8C2E-78FA8DE4850D

Cullen also participated in the New York premiere of the fictional Hollywood global warming disaster film The Day After Tomorrow in 2004 and has routinely promoted celebrity environmental views. See: http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewSpecialReports.asp?Page=%5CSpecialReports%5Carchive%5C200504%5CSPE20050414a.html & http://press.weather.com/index.php/press_releases/109.html The Weather Channel, which has billed itself as itself as the "pre-eminent provider of weather information," also served as a consultant to The Day After Tomorrow and allowed the use of its name and logo in the movie.
Broadcast meteorologists (TV weatherman) skeptical of climate alarmism have -- up until now -- been unburdened to speak out on climate issues. Cullen’s call for decertification by the AMS can only serve to intimidate skeptics and further chill free speech in the scientific community. Stripping the "Seal of Approval" from broadcast meteorologists could affect their livelihoods, impact their salaries and prestige. TV weathermen are truly the last of the independent scientists and past surveys have shown many of them to be skeptical of manmade global warming claims. Their independence is being threatened now. For more info on the background of the AMS seal, see: http://www.ametsoc.org/amscert

Intimidating scientists with calls for death trials, name calling and calls for decertification appears to be the accepted tactics of the climate alarmists. The real question is: Why do climate alarmists feel the need to resort to such low brow tactics when they have a compliant media willing to repeat their every assertion without question. See: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.Facts&ContentRecord_id=3EE352B0-5D2E-4CC0-BD6B-304E3F6E0E2D

The alarmists also enjoy a huge financial advantage over the skeptics with numerous foundations funding climate research, University research money and the United Nations endless promotion of the cause.
Just how much money do the climate alarmists have at their disposal? There was a $3 billion donation to the global warming cause from Virgin Air’s Richard Branson alone. The well-heeled environmental lobbying groups have massive operating budgets compared to groups that express global warming skepticism. The Sierra Club Foundation 2004 budget was $91 million and the Natural Resources Defense Council had a $57 million budget for the same year. Compare that to the often media derided Competitive Enterprise Institute’s small $3.6 million annual budget.

In addition, if a climate skeptic receives any money from industry, the media immediately labels them and attempts to discredit their work. The same media completely ignore the money flow from the environmental lobby to climate alarmists like James Hansen and Michael Oppenheimer. (ie. Hansen received $250,000 from the Heinz Foundation and Oppenheimer is a paid partisan of Environmental Defense Fund)
The alarmists have all of these advantages, yet they still feel the need to resort to desperation tactics to silence the skeptics. Could it be that the alarmists realize that the American public is increasingly rejecting their proposition that the family SUV is destroying the earth and rejecting their shrill calls for "action" to combat their computer model predictions of a "climate emergency?" See http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.Speeches&ContentRecord_id=07F23E38-D271-4300-AC40-90C84A49134A

That may be the real Inconvenient Truth. After all, even the UN is reportedly downgrading man’s impact on the climate by 25% and now concedes that cow "emissions" are more damaging to the planet than C02 from cars. See: http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.Facts&ContentRecord_id=8EA35336-7E9C-9AF9-7025-4B6CD20B983A

Related Links:

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=f339c09a-802a-23ad-4202-611ef8047a6bINHOFE SPEECH ON POLAR BEARS AND GLOBAL WARMING

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.Facts&ContentRecord_id=8EA35336-7E9C-9AF9-7025-4B6CD20B983A
UN DOWNGRADES MAN'S IMPACT AND COW 'EMISSIONS' MORE DAMAGING THAN CO2 FROM CARS

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.Facts&ContentRecord_id=8F5C9829-C459-4D17-89BB-3E3B04D8D444
SENATOR INHOFE ANNOUNCES PUBLIC RELEASE OF "SKEPTIC’S GUIDE TO DEBUNKING GLOBAL WARMING"

http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=PressRoom.PressReleases&ContentRecord_id=1997BFAC-3722-416E-9FB8-32A396031D73
INHOFE SAYS NEW UN ASSESSMENT PROVES FEARS OF MANMADE CATASTROPHIC GLOBAL WARMING ARE ‘UNSUSTAINABLE’

Pelosi to tackle energy

2007-01-19T08:00:00.000-05:00

It would appear since Obama has taken up the energy issue as his own everybody wants to get in on the act. I understand ALGORE is being considered as the chair for this ad hoc committee. Its a good time to have Congressman Boucher there as Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce. I think if I was a front runner for Pres in 2008, I would pick Rick now for my V-P running mate.

Pelosi creates panel to tackle energy bill

Thu Jan 18, 2007 4:37pm ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said on Thursday she is creating a special committee to prepare a package of legislation to address the nation's energy needs and global warming.

"I have asked the chairs of the relevant committees to hold hearings and pass legislation so that by the Fourth of July we can have a package of legislation to truly declare our energy independence," Pelosi, a California Democrat, told reporters at a news conference.
She spoke as debate was under way on the House floor over a Democratic bill to end certain subsidies to the oil industry and use the money to promote new forms of energy.
Pelosi said she was forming "a select committee on energy independence and global warming. Its purpose will be to communicate with the American people on this important issue."

She predicted House passage of the oil industry subsidies bill and said, "Today is a start. It's just a beginning, this legislation that will be passed ... By the Fourth of July, we will have good news to report."
© Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved.

China and future technology

2007-01-18T21:01:00.000-05:00

Monday, January 08, 2007

China's Coal Future

To prevent massive pollution and slow its growing contribution to global warming, China will need to make advanced coal technology work on an unprecedented scale.

By Peter Fairley
A visitor arriving in Shanghai immediately notices China's technological conundrum. Through the windows of the magnetically levitated train that covers the 30 kilometers from Pudong International Airport to Shanghai at up to 430 kilometers per hour, both the progress the country is making and the price it is paying for it are apparent. Most days, a yellow haze hangs over Shanghai's construction frenzy. Pollution is the leading cause of death in China, killing more than a million people a year. And the primary cause of pollution is also the source of the energy propelling the ultramodern train: coal.
To keep pace with the country's economic growth, China's local governments, utilities, and entrepreneurs are building, on average, one coal-fired power plant per week. The power plants emit a steady stream of soot, sulfur dioxide, and other toxic pollutants into the air; they also spew out millions of tons of carbon dioxide. In November, the International Energy Agency projected that China will become the world's largest source of carbon dioxide emissions in 2009, overtaking the United States nearly a decade earlier than previously anticipated. Coal is expected to be responsible for three-quarters of that carbon dioxide.
And the problem will get worse. Between now and 2020, China's energy consumption will more than double, according to expert estimates. Ratcheting up energy efficiency, tapping renewable resources with hydro dams and wind turbines, and building nuclear plants can help, but--at least in the coming two decades--only marginally. Since China has very little in the way of oil and gas reserves, its future depends on coal. With 13 percent of the world's proven reserves, China has enough coal to sustain its economic growth for a century or more. The good news is that China's leaders saw the coal rush coming in the 1990s and began exploring a range of advanced technologies. Chief among them is coal gasification. "It's the key for clean coal in China," says chemical engineer Li Wenhua, who directed advanced coal development for Beijing's national high-tech R&D program (better known in China as the "863" program) from 2001 through 2005.
Gasification transforms coal's complex mix of hydrocarbons into a hydrogen-rich gas known as synthesis gas, or "syngas." Power plants can burn syngas as cleanly as they can natural gas. In addition, with the right catalysts and under the right conditions, the basic chemical building blocks in syngas combine to form the hydrocarbon ingredients of gasoline and diesel fuel. As a result, coal gasification has the potential both to squelch power plants' emission of soot and smog and to decrease China's growing dependence on imported oil. It could even help control emissions of carbon dioxide, which is more easily captured from syngas plants than from conventional coal-fired plants.
Despite China's early anticipation of the need for coal gasification, however, its implementation of the technology in power plants has lagged. The country's electricity producers lack the economic and political incentives to break from their traditional practices.
In contrast, large-scale efforts to produce liquid transportation fuels using coal gasification are well under way. China's largest coal firm, Shenhua Group, plans to start up the country's first coal-to-fuels plant in 2007 or early 2008, in the world's most ambitious application of coal liquefaction since World War II. Shenhua plans to operate eight liquefaction plants by 2020, producing, in total, more than 30 million tons of synthetic oil annually--enough to displace more than 10 percent of China's projected oil imports.
China's progress in constructing coal-conversion plants puts it far ahead of the United States, where coal gasification is still recovering from a damaged reputation. Gasification demonstration programs initiated in the U.S. after the energy crises of the 1970s were orphaned when oil and gas prices plummeted in the 1980s. That left many with the impression that the technology itself was unreliable (see "Carbon Dioxide for Sale," July 2005). In China, by contrast, oil never looked cheap, and coal has never lost its shine.
Coal and Cashmere
Northern China is fast becoming the epicenter of China's energy industry. The leading draw is the Shenfu Dongsheng coalfield, a 31,000-square-kilometer solid layer of shallow coal that stretches from the northern tip of China's Shaanxi Province to the southern edge of Nei Mongol, or Inner Mongolia. The Dongsheng field's estimated reserve of 223.6 billion tons of coal makes it the world's seventh largest; efforts to convert much of that coal to transportation fuels could make it the world's most profitable.
Until recently, Inner Mongolia's coal capital, Erdos, was largely untouched by the modern world, bounded by mountain ranges and the Great Wall to the south and by the Yellow River to the north. Its isolation is now over, thanks to freshly poured highways and new rail lines rolling over its fissured hills and steep valleys. An airport should open this year.
Erdos's GDP doubled between 2001 and 2004, largely because of coal, chemicals, and cashmere (Erdos supplies a quarter of the world's cashmere). To reach the coalfields, you drive 40 minutes south of the city, passing a 1950s-era mausoleum for Genghis Khan, the 13th-century warrior who conquered much of Asia. As you approach the dry floodplain of the Wulanmulun River, the imposing infrastructure of a dozen coal mines, including some of the world's largest and most mechanized, leaps out of the barren landscape. The region is also home to several hundred smaller, less modern mines (gases and cave-ins kill at least 6,000 Chinese coal miners a year). Miners on their day off zip by on mopeds, three or four to a vehicle, racing past 40-ton trucks heaped with coal. Along the highway, coal-sorting terminals load railcars destined for power plants and ports on the industrialized east coast.
None of that infrastructure and activity, however, prepares a visitor for Shenhua's coal-to-fuels complex, which rises from a plateau cut into the hills. It is an impressive site, with its own coal-fired power plant, gasification plants, and two massive reactors where coal will be liquefied, each weighing 2,250 metric tons (Shenhua claimed the world hoisting record when it lifted the reactors into place last June). Flush from a $2.95 billion IPO in 2005 and $5 billion in annual revenues from its integrated mines, railroads, and power plants, Shenhua is rapidly expanding its operations. It sold 113 million metric tons of coal in just the first half of 2006, nearly matching the previous year's total. If Shenhua maintains that pace this year, it may become the world's largest producer of coal.
China's government in Beijing created Shenhua a decade ago to bring economies of scale and modern technology to bear on the Dongsheng coalfields. The company's $1.5 billion coal-to-fuels plant is an expression of that strategy--a facility so technically ambitious that many experts, Chinese and Western alike, doubted it would ever be built.
The production of transportation fuels from coal dates to early-20th-century Germany, where chemists developed two approaches to converting coal's solid long-chain hydrocarbons into the shorter liquid hydrocarbons found in motor fuels. (Nazi Germany, with little access to oil, relied heavily on these processes to fuel its highly mechanized army and air force, producing gasoline, diesel, and aviation fuel from coal.) Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch invented the better known of the two approaches in the 1920s. Fischer-Tropsch synthesis reduces coal to syngas, a mixture of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. A catalyst, often cobalt, then causes the carbon and hydrogen atoms to reconnect into new compounds, such as alcohols and fuels. Fischer-Tropsch synthesis is conventional chemistry today: in South Africa, for example, Johannesburg-based Sasol built Fischer-Tropsch coal-to-oil plants to ensure the country's fuel supply during the trade boycotts of the apartheid years; and by swapping in different catalysts, China's coal-to-chemicals gasification plants have employed Fischer-Tropsch for decades to yield products such as synthetic fertilizers and methanol.
Shenhua's plant, in contrast, chose Fischer-Tropsch's lesser-known rival, invented by Friedrich Bergius a decade earlier. Though used extensively by the Nazis, Bergius's process was subsequently abandoned. The process has come to be known as direct liquefaction, because it bypasses the syngas step. In direct liquefaction, the bulk of the coal is pulverized and blended with some of the plant's synthetic oil, then treated with hydrogen and heated to 450 °C in the presence of an iron catalyst, which breaks the hydrocarbon chains into the shorter chains suitable for refining into liquid fuels.
Direct liquefaction produces more fuel per ton of coal than Fischer-Tropsch synthesis. Experts at the Chinese Coal Research Institute in Beijing estimate that the process captures 55 to 56 percent of the energy in coal, compared to just 45 percent for Fischer-Tropsch. However, direct liquefaction is also far more complicated, requiring separate power and gasification plants to deliver heat and hydrogen and considerable recycling of oil, hydrogen, and coal sludge between separate sections of the plant. And breaking down hydrocarbons to just the right length requires exquisite control of the operating conditions and a consistent coal supply.
Shenhua redesigned the process over the last five years to boost efficiency and reduce waste but, at the same time, increased its complexity. And the company is taking a huge engineering and economic risk by pursuing so novel a technology on such a vast scale.
By the end of this year, Shenhua hopes to be pumping out 20,000 barrels of synthetic oil per day, nearly 500 times as much as its pilot plant in Shanghai produces. According to Jerald Fletcher, a natural-resource economist at West Virginia University in Morgantown, the Erdos plant constitutes a $1.5 billion experiment that could only take place in China. "It would be hard to get that kind of commitment of funds in the West without a more proven technology," says Fletcher. Eric Larson, an expert in energy technology and modeling at Princeton University, puts it more bluntly: "It doesn't make a lot of sense to build a huge plant like that, because it may not work."
But for the Chinese government, the rewards could be worth the risk. Despite its 2005 IPO of some assets, Shenhua remains a largely state-owned firm, and the direct-liquefaction plant serves a critical state interest: energy security. "No matter how big the cost, Shenhua will build it," says Zhou Zhijie, a gasification expert at East China University of Science and Technology's Institute of Clean Coal Technology in Shanghai. "China's government will support this project until the liquid flows."
Of course, if the new plant works, Shenhua stands to earn a substantial profit. The company predicts that its synthetic oil will turn a profit at roughly $30 a barrel, though many analysts say $45 is more realistic. (The U.S. Department of Energy's most recent price forecast predicts that crude oil will dip to $47 a barrel in 2014, then climb steadily to $57 a barrel in 2030.) Hedging its bets, Shenhua has also entered a preliminary agreement with partners Shell and Sasol concerning several similar-sized or bigger Fischer-Tropsch fuel plants in Northern China, which would start up in 2012.
Shenhua's Chinese coal competitors, too, are already breaking ground on their versions of coal-to-fuel plants. The Yankuang coal group, the second-largest coal producer in China, is planning a Fischer-Tropsch fuel plant near Erdos that will use a proprietary gasifier and catalyst.
Beyond the risks inherent in the large-scale deployment of unproven technology, the gasification building boom also is an environmental gamble. Indeed, what may ultimately check China's coal-to-oil ambitions is water. China's Coal Research Institute estimates that Shenhua's plant will consume 10 tons of water for every ton of synthetic oil produced (360 gallons of water per barrel of oil), and the ratio is even worse for Fischer-Tropsch plants. Last summer, China's National Development and Reform Commission, the powerful body charged with regulating China's economy and approving large capital projects, issued a warning about the environmental consequences of the "runaway development" of synthetic-oil and chemical plants, which it said will consume tens of millions of cubic meters of water annually.
That prediction sounds particularly ominous in northern China, where water is scarce. Erdos is a mix of scrub and desert whose meager water supplies are already overtaxed by population growth and existing power plants. Zhou Ji Sheng, who as vice manager of ZMMF, one of Shenhua's Erdos-based competitors, is seeking financing for a gasification project, acknowledges that water scarcity could put an end to coal gasification in the area. "Even though we have so much coal, if we have no water, we will just have to use the traditional way--to dig it out and transport it," he says. "Water is the key factor for us to develop this new industry." Zhou says his firm plans to supplement its water supply by building a 120-kilometer pipeline to the Yellow River. But evaporation from hydroelectric reservoirs, the increased demand of growing cities and industries, and the effects of climate change mean that in the summer, the Yellow River barely reaches the sea.

Carbon Power
While China's desire to end its dependence on foreign oil is helping to drive huge capital investments in liquefaction technology, the country's power producers are moving much more slowly to take advantage of coal gasification. What they, like their American counterparts, are missing is an incentive to upgrade from conventional pulverized-coal plants to the more expensive gasification plants. According to Li Wenhua, the former 863 program manager (who now directs gasification research in China for General Electric), Chinese industrialists perceive pulverized-coal plants as a license to print money. "People say you shouldn't call it a power plant; it's a money-making machine," says Li. As yet, no power company has been willing to be the first to hit the off switch.
Ironically, China's move to a more open economy has hampered efforts to deploy more innovative technologies. In the 1990s, it looked as if China's power sector was headed for its own gasification revolution. In 1993, China's leading power engineering firm, China Power Engineering Consulting in Beijing, began designing the country's first gasification power plant. The monopoly utility of the era, the State Power Corporation, planned to build the commercial-scale plant in Yantai, a thriving seaport not far from the Bohai Sea. The Yantai plant was to be the beginning of a transition to cleaner coal technology, says Zhao Jie, the plant's designer, now vice president of China Power Engineering. "China wanted to take a cleaner and more efficient way to produce power," says Zhao. Instead, the demonstration plant she designed went on a roller-coaster ride to nowhere. Design work was temporarily halted in 1994 when the cost of the technology was deemed unacceptably high, revived in the late 1990s, and then cut adrift after 2002 by the breakup of the State Power Corporation.
The Yantai power plant was based on integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) technology. IGCC plants resemble natural-gas-fired power plants--they use two turbines to capture mechanical and heat energy from expanding combustion gases--but are fueled with syngas from an integrated coal gasification plant. They're not emissions free, but their gas streams are more concentrated, so the sulfurous soot, carbon dioxide, and other pollutants they generate are easier to separate and capture. Of course, once the carbon dioxide--the main greenhouse gas--is captured, engineers still need to find a place to stow it. The most promising strategy is to sequester it deep within saline aquifers and oil reservoirs. In preliminary analyses, Chinese geologists have estimated that aging oil fields and aquifers could absorb more than a trillion tons of carbon dioxide--more than China's coal-fired plants would emit, at their current rate, for hundreds of years.
The Huaneng Group, a power producer based in Beijing, has pulled together a consortium of power and coal interests (Shenhua included) called GreenGen to build the first Chinese IGCC demo plant by 2010; like the related FutureGen project organized by the U.S. Department of Energy, GreenGen is to start with power production, then add carbon capture and storage. China's vice premier, Zeng Peiyan, made an appearance at GreenGen's ceremonial debut last summer, indicating Beijing's support for the project.
The problem is that IGCC plants still cost about 10 percent to 20 percent more per megawatt than pulverized-coal-fired power plants. (And that's without carbon dioxide capture.) China's power producers--much like their counterparts in the United States and Europe--are waiting for a financial or political reason to make the switch. In part, what's been missing is regulation that penalizes conventional coal plants. And China's environmental agencies lack the resources and power to make companies comply even with regulations already on the books. Top officials in Beijing admit that their edicts are widely ignored, as new power plants are erected without environmental assessments and, according to some sources, without required equipment for pollution control.
Even advocates of IGCC technology expect that its widespread deployment in China will take at least another decade. Indeed, Du Minghua, a director for coal chemistry at the Chinese Coal Research Institute, predicts that it will be 2020 before application of IGCC technology begins in earnest.
Waiting to Inhale
Despite such pessimistic predictions, China's vast experience with advanced coal technologies and its proven ability to implement new technologies at a startling pace provide ample room for optimism. When you're racing into Shanghai at one-third the speed of sound on a train supported by an electromagnetic force field, it's hard to believe that a country capable of such an engineering feat will continue to ignore the deadly pollution engulfing its cities.
To some analysts, the switch to clean-coal technology seems almost inevitable. "China has to rely on coal for future electricity and fuel needs, and it will eventually have to cap its CO2 emissions," says Guodong Sun, a technology policy expert at New York's Stony Brook University who has advised the Chinese government on energy policy. "Gasification is one of a very few technologies that can reconcile those conflicting scenarios at reasonable cost."
Still, the timing of such a technology transition is very much in question. Will China really wait until 2020 to start the process of cleaning up its coal-fired power plants? The answer will depend, ultimately, on when China begins to feel that using coal gasification to generate electricity is as urgent as using it to produce transportation fuels--when the costs of air pollution become as worrisome as the costs of relying on foreign oil.

Peter Fairley, a Technology Review contributing writer, traveled to China in October.
Copyright Technology Review 2007.

Texas Size Coal Debate

2007-01-18T14:22:00.000-05:00

Texas Size Coal Debate

Reflects National Need for BalancedEnergy Policy

(Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (ABEC). Should you have any questions, please feel free to send an email to Membership@BalancedEnergy.org or call us on the toll-free line, 1-877-358-6699. )

A growing population (estimated to be 68 percent larger in 2010 than 2000) and booming economy spell good news for Texas, but with that growth comes an increased demand for electricity.Texans already use more electricity than any other state, and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas projects that demand for electricity will rise 20 percent over the next nine years and over 40 percent by 2025. Currently, there are not enough power plants in the state to produce the electricity that will be needed in the near future. That means new plants must be built.Right now, 17 modern coal-fueled power plants have been proposed in the state, some of which will replace older, more costly and polluting plants that will be retired. There is a lot of controversy about whether these new coal plants can deliver the cleanest and most reliable electricity for Texas' growing needs.With the demand for electricity expected to rise nationally, the debate in Texas reflects the broader discussion about pursuing a balanced U.S. energy policy. As you continue to follow—and hopefully participate—in the debate on this issue, Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (ABEC) wants to share some facts that you might not know:Adding more coal to America's energy mix can help ensure reliable, affordable power—and still ensure that we improve air quality and protect the environment. Here's why:
Coal is affordable, averaging one-third the cost of petroleum and natural gas.
The price of coal is relatively stable. It doesn't fluctuate up and down—mostly up—like the price of oil and natural gas do.
Coal is abundant. We have a 250-year supply (at the rate of current use) right here in the U.S.
Electricity from coal is cleaner than ever and getting continuously cleaner with advancing technologies.
New power plants built today are, on average, at least 80 percent cleaner than existing ones, which have also become much cleaner over the past two decades. This includes the new plants on the drawing board in Texas and in other states across the country.
Within the near future, new power plants will utilize advanced technology that may be able to produce electricity with near zero emissions of air pollutants and CO2. Cutting-edge technologies are being developed to trap CO2 before it enters the atmosphere.
Both older and newer power plants must meet increasingly strict federal and state environmental regulations. It's smart to rely on a mix of energy sources, including renewables, to satisfy the growing demand for electricity. Clean, affordable, domestic coal is an essential part of that mix. We also should use electricity as efficiently as possible in our homes, businesses and factories. You can take part in the energy debate. One of the ways you can do this is by learning as much as you can, and then sharing that information with your friends, colleagues, and elected officials. You can find additional information on the websites listed below.
http://www.magnetmail1.net/ls.cfm?r=0&sid=1815480&m=260906&u=KSB_Crea&s=http://www.BalancedEnergy.com
http://www.magnetmail1.net/ls.cfm?r=0&sid=1815481&m=260906&u=KSB_Crea&s=http://www.LearnAboutCoal.com
http://www.magnetmail1.net/ls.cfm?r=0&sid=1815482&m=260906&u=KSB_Crea&s=http://www.CleanCoalFoundation.org
http://www.magnetmail1.net/ls.cfm?r=0&sid=1815483&m=260906&u=KSB_Crea&s=http://www.doe.gov
http://www.magnetmail1.net/ls.cfm?r=0&sid=1815484&m=260906&u=KSB_Crea&s=http://www.doe.gov
http://www.magnetmail1.net/ls.cfm?r=0&sid=1815485&m=260906&u=KSB_Crea&s=http://www.epa.gov

Anxiety over the weather ?

2007-01-16T17:04:00.000-05:00

America Goes Insane Over the Weather

By Alan CarubaCNSNews.com Commentary from the National Anxiety CenterJanuary 15, 2007

It's official. America is now totally insane over the weather.Even the Weather Channel that used to simply provide reasonably accurate, short-term information about the weather is now telling everyone we're doomed because global warming is going to destroy the Earth. Why not just rename it the Al Gore Channel? The weather used to be the concern primarily of farmers and ranchers. It determines how well or not crops would grow and herds will thrive. As America became more urbanized, the rest of the population wanted to know whether to bring an umbrella or what to wear. Now it is a source of daily anxiety over the fate of the Earth.To make matters worse, people are being told and actually believing that what they do or not can affect the weather in ways to keep the seas and temperatures from rising. It is no longer the domain of the sun, the oceans, volcanoes and clouds. These puny things are nothing compared to what kind of car you drive or what you use to heat your home.That is a definition of insanity. It is so far removed from reality that Hollywood has to conjure up films showing New York under miles of snow or so-called documentaries demanding that industry must come to a stop in order to save the Earth.I suggest we need to save the Earth from the legions of fear mongers who are seeking to control our lives for the crime of having abundant food, longer life spans, technological and scientific advances, or that permits you to get on a jet and be anywhere in the world within hours. We take for granted that trucks, the heart's blood of an economy, will deliver anything you purchase on Monday by the following Wednesday. Try to imagine our nation without cars?Let me provide an example of how far we have come since I was a child nearly seventy years ago. We had an icebox, not a refrigerator. A man would come and provide a big block of ice to keep food cool for a day or so. Air conditioning meant opening the window and turning on a fan. Washing clothes involved using a washboard and then hanging them out to dry in the sun. There was no television, no computers, no iPods, and no cell phones. Milk was delivered by a horse-drawn wagon during World War II because gas was scarce. Polio crippled thousands of people, including then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.Do you really want to return to those "good old days"? In essence, that is exactly what the Global Warming Gestapo wants to inflict on every American these days.The single most insipid phrase that any environmentalist or politician says is "climate change" because they actually believe humans are responsible for the change and ignore the fact that climate is always in a state of change.None of us can read a newspaper or a magazine, or turn on the radio or television, without being told that we are just years, if not months, from the horror of global warming. A few weeks ago Colorado was digging out from three horrendous blizzards the likes of which have not been seen in a lifetime, while the East Coast had temperatures in the 70s.The definition of weather and climate is "chaos."Mother Nature has a message for you: Get out of the way! Here comes a flood, a blizzard, a tornado, a tsunami, a hurricane, a wildfire or an earthquake. Get out of the way!The wisest climatologists who study weather trends over hundreds of years have no idea why mini-Ice ages or warming spells occur and meteorologists with access to the most sophisticated computer models cannot tell you with any certainty what the weather in your area will be a week from now!In Congress, the newly empowered Democrats are getting ready to impose an insane program of "caps and credits" on so-called greenhouse gas emissions that is straight out of the UN's Kyoto Protocol that totally exempts China and India, home to more than two billion of the six billion people on Earth.Meanwhile, those same greenhouse gases are being emitted globally by millions of livestock that are responsible for 9% of anthropogenic CO2 (Carbon dioxide) emissions, 37% of methane emissions, 64% of ammonia emissions, and 65% of global nitrous oxide.When you add in the methane and other emissions of the world's swamps and forests, and all the chemicals emitted by the world's active volcanoes, plus the fact that every human on Earth exhales two pounds of CO2 every day, the notion of crippling every element of the nation's economy to "control" such things is, well, insane.Carbon dioxide is not a "pollutant" no matter how many times Speaker Pelosi, Senator Boxer, Governor Schwarzenneger and a legion of global warming alarmists say it is. It exists in the Earth's atmosphere and, other than the oxygen that keeps us alive, is the single most important part of our environment because all vegetation, forests and crops, depend on it.Is there more of it around? Yes, since 1850 the Earth's population has increased 600%! Is it a bad thing? No. The Earth has had periods of far higher CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere and life thrived.Right now, that eminent body of scientists, the Supreme Court of the United States, is deciding whether CO2 is a pollutant. That is insane.Finally, during the last 100 years, the average global temperature has increased less than one degree centigrade. Some places like the poles remain encased in ice and snow all year. Other places like the deserts remain arid all year.What we do not lack is a legion of "scientists" who cannot wait to run out in the streets and announce that their research conclusively proves we are doomed. We have others who run around saying that our weather is unusual or getting worse. It's the weather! The weather is always in a state of change.Are we supposed to return to the days when virgins were thrown into volcanoes or hearts were cut from living bodies in order to appease the gods that "control" the weather? Or are we all going to fall victim to those in Congress and elsewhere who insist we ruin our lives in order to achieve "control" over the weather?It's the weather! Get over it!

(Alan Caruba writes "Warning Signs," a weekly column posted at the Internet site of The National Anxiety Center.)

Copyright 2006, Alan CarubaCopyright 1998-2006 Cybercast News Service

China to get Americaan jobs

2007-01-14T18:46:00.000-05:00

Losing to the Greens

By Robert D. NovakMonday, December 25, 2006; A29

"I've never seen industry so deathly afraid of the current politics surrounding climate change policy," a Bush administration environmental official told me. With good reason. As Democrats take control of Congress, once-firm opposition to the green lobby's campaign of imposing carbon emission controls is weak.
Panicky captains of industry have themselves largely to blame for failing to respond to the environmentalists' well-financed propaganda operation. One government official says "industry appears utterly helpless and utterly clueless as to how to respond." But the Bush administration itself is a house divided with support for greens and severe carbon regulation inside the Energy Department, reaching up to the secretary himself.
None of this necessarily means climate change will become law during the next two years, with President Bush wielding his veto pen if any bill escapes the Senate's gridlock. Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, reassuming chairmanship of the Energy and Commerce Committee after a dozen years' absence, will try to protect the automotive industry from draconian regulation. But over the long term, industry is losing to the greens.
The stakes are immense, as shown by the impact of the bill to implement the Kyoto proposal co-sponsored by Sen. John McCain, front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, and Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, the favorite Democrat of many Republicans. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that this measure would reduce gross domestic product by $776 billion annually, raise gasoline prices 40 cents a gallon, raise natural gas prices 46 percent and cut coal production by nearly 60 percent. Charles River Associates, business consultants, predicts that it would kill 600,000 jobs.
Yet, Jonathan Lash of the World Resources Institute said last week that McCain-Lieberman does not go far enough in reducing carbon emissions. Green extremists would prefer the severe legislation proposed by Sen. Barbara Boxer, the new chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee.
According to industry sources, Dingell has privately advised auto industry lobbyists to prepare for the worst. House Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi is making carbon emission legislation a priority, and Dingell has warned Detroit that she expects him to move a bill through his committee. He will do his best to modify legislation, but he is obliged to follow Pelosi's wishes and cannot play Horatio at the bridge.
The same dilemma faces Rep. Rick Boucher, a staunch ally of the coal industry who will become chairman of the Energy and Commerce subcommittee on energy and air quality. He must balance Pelosi's desires with the interests of the coal counties in his southwest Virginia district.
Staunch foes of carbon regulation remain in the administration, headed by Chairman James L. Connaughton of the Council on Environmental Quality. But the Energy Department's top executive strata have gone green.
Since moving from deputy treasury secretary to energy secretary nearly two years ago, business executive and financier Samuel W. Bodman has kept a low profile. In a rare public utterance on global warming Oct. 5, 2005, he said an "increasing level of certainty" about global warming fueled by carbon dioxide "is real" and "a matter we take seriously." In private meetings, he has expressed dissatisfaction with administration policy. Bodman's undersecretary, former Senate staffer David K. Garman, has shocked industry lobbyists with his criticism of the president's views.
In the background is a pending Supreme Court decision on what the Clean Air Act requires or permits the Environmental Protection Agency to do about greenhouse gas emissions. Even if the court says the authority is merely discretionary, McCain or any Democratic president would then crack down on industry if nothing is passed before the 2008 election.
Ultimate salvation from U.S. self-destructive behavior may come from the real world. Most European Union countries, suffering higher energy costs and constraints on growth imposed by the Kyoto pact, cannot meet that treaty's requirements for emission levels. Furthermore, China is on pace to exceed U.S. emissions by 2010, meaning that unilateral U.S. carbon controls will have little impact on global emissions while driving American jobs to China.
This downside of Speaker Pelosi's green determination ought to resonate in union halls and coalfields of Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia. However, American industrialists, while wringing their hands, are not making their case.
© 2006 Creators Syndicate Inc.

Boucher is now the Chairman of House Energy Committee

2007-01-14T18:18:00.000-05:00

See Congressman Boucher's information and how he voted in recent days. We look foward to great things coming down the road with congressman Boucher Chairman of the House energy Committee. He will be a player in the nations energy policy and carry the reality of coal and its role in keeping America free. GO RICK!

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/congress/members/b000657/

More dependence on foreign oil?

2007-01-14T18:11:00.000-05:00

I must be reading this wrong I thot they said, we should increase our dependence on foreign oil?

House Energy Bill Discourages New, American Supplies of Oil and Natural Gas

Bottom Line: Increased Foreign Oil Dependence

WASHINGTON, Jan. 12 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Democratic leadership of the House of Representatives today unveiled a proposal to increase taxes on the U.S. oil and natural gas industry, a move that would steer billions of dollars from investments in new, American energy resources, according to the Independent Petroleum Association of America (IPAA).
"If the goal is to lessen our dependence on foreign oil, then this bill falls far short," said IPAA President Barry Russell. "The American oil and natural gas industry is our most precious and primary defense against increased oil imports. This is a time to encourage American investment in energy projects here at home, not discourage it. This bill takes capital from U.S. oil and natural gas companies that otherwise would be spent on domestic energy exploration."
IPAA represents more than 5,000 oil and natural gas companies, most of them small, independent businesses, who drill 90 percent of the oil and natural gas wells in the United States.
There are three provisions in the legislation specifically opposed by IPAA:
1. Section 199 -- The Manufacturing Tax Deduction. The legislation repeals a 2004 law that allowed companies to keep more of their earnings. The bill singles out the oil and natural gas industry, while maintaining this incentive for every other manufacturing and extraction industry.
IPAA's Russell said: "Increasing the industry's tax rate will siphon billions of dollars from much needed American energy projects. This measure is purely political with the goal of punishing an industry that has low favorability on Capitol Hill. But the result actually punishes the consumer and our national interest of secure, domestic energy supplies."
IPAA companies do invest their capital here in the United States. Independent oil and natural gas producers reinvest, on average, 150 percent of their domestic cashflow into new exploration projects in the United States, according to a study by John S. Herold, an energy industry consulting firm. This means that U.S. oil and natural gas companies are not only spending all of their earnings on new American energy supplies, but also borrowing from lenders and investors to find new oil and natural gas resources.
2. Royalty Provisions. The bill penalizes offshore oil and natural gas companies that signed leases in 1998 and 1999 that, due to federal agency mistake, did not set a price threshold for royalty incentives. The bill requires all companies to re-negotiate these leases (or adhere to certain payments or consequences), even though they were fairly signed and the companies have no responsibility for the federal government's contractual mistake. This creates a plethora of questions over the sanctity of federal contracts. The bill also states that those companies that do not renegotiate or pay a $9 per barrel "conservation fee" will be banned from participation in future federal offshore lease sales.
IPAA's Russell said: "The contracts signed by the federal government and energy producers are called 'non-negotiable' for a reason. Quite simply, they are legal and binding, regardless of the government's mistakes in drafting them. Many companies will choose to work with the federal government on a reasonable solution. That is a business and legal decision for each individual company. However, sanctity of contracts is a cornerstone of America. The U.S. offshore regulatory program is admired around the globe for its stability and predictability, the action in the House sends the wrong signal to investors around the world about the reliability of America's federal contracts."
3. Alternative Energy Fund. Any money raised by this bill (from increased taxes on the oil and natural gas industry to new royalties) will be captured and directed to a fund that will provide research and development of "alternative" energy.
IPAA's Russell said: "Sixty percent of the nation's energy comes from oil and natural gas. For the foreseeable future this will continue. While it is important for America to develop a broad energy portfolio, the nation's vast oil and natural gas resources cannot be ignored. Research on improving the development of these resources can be equally essential to the nation's future and its security. For example, imagine the value of new technologies that could extract the more than 390 billion barrels of oil that are currently unrecoverable in America."
IPAA represents the companies that drill 90 percent of the oil and natural gas wells in the United States and its offshore waters.
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