Re: [Biofuel] Make this the LAST Aniversary of the Bush/Cheney 9/11 Media Fairy Tale !
I'm inclined to support Bruno's position here. The thing with most conspiracies is that they are redundant: the result may be achieved more safely, surely, and cheaply by provocation and manipulation than by sneaking about pretending to be someone else. I certainly believe that there are conspiracies out there: in fact I believe there are a far greater number of conspiracies than the average conspiracy theorist believes in, but they are uncoordinated and contrary to one another. People whisper to one another behind closed doors all the time, and not only amorously. Just last night my wife and I were speculating on how one could paint-bomb Julius Malema (q.v.). Where I baulk is the single, unified conspiracy to rule them all. That said, I would be very surprised indeed if the Official Version of the 11/9 events did not deviate significantly from the truth. I think there are those among the powers that be who are all the happier the more wrong trees conspiracy theorists bark up: and I would go as far as to wonder if the exact detail is all that important. If I have learned anything it is that living sanely means being able to deal sanely with the unknown - and the unknown is huge. Denying the unknown, or denying the importance or ambit of the unknown, or the unknowable, is a popular attitude especially among those who are supposed to have some understanding of things. Focus on what we do know, they say, and if they do not positively assert that the unknown and the unknowable do not exist they are at least satisfied to ignore them. It's all Hume's fault. Without the pervasive assumption of Humean phenomenalism as an attitude the world would not have considered Heisenberg's uncertainty principle remarkable enough to name after someone. As it is three bullshit artists out of every five come across all sophic and sagacious by bunging quantum mechanics in somewhere. But I digress. Knowing that there are around seventy-four theories of which either an unknown one or none at all may be true is sufficient to develop a sane stance. It does not, should not, affect one's understanding of what is right, correct, beneficial, or desirable: those cannot arise purely from empirical observation. But they will tell us which questions we want answered; and in those terms the vast bulk of the conspiracy theorists' questions are neither here nor there. Regards Dawie Coetzee From: Bruno M. [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: sustainablelorgbiofuel@sustainablelists.org Sent: Wednesday, 14 September 2011, 18:47 Subject: Re: [Biofuel] Make this the LAST Aniversary of the Bush/Cheney 9/11 Media Fairy Tale ! Paul, do you really 'believe' this 9-11 conspiracy crap ? I ( may i say 'We'?) are not Bush fans, but, if it was all a set-up ( an inside job) it would involve at least a few hundred people, ( thousands if also the first responders had to keep quit) and could it then be, that even after ten years not 1 of them feels remorse, and came out of the closet and tell the truth, or wikileak it? Many Americans are so blind to what happens in the world ( outside the USA), that they don't can grasp the idea that the USA just got what they asked for, harvested what they sowed. To educate yourself, and be able to find more truth, at least read what the others have to say, it may open your eyes. Just a few to get you started: http://www.debunking911.com/ http://www.sawyerhome.net/whatilearned.html http://www.alternet.org/story/41601/ Grts Bruno M. ~~ snip -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: /pipermail/attachments/20110915/5c1f998b/attachment.html ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
[Biofuel] Can We Stop the Next Fukushima Times 10,000?
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/09/13 Published on Tuesday, September 13, 2011 by CommonDreams.org Can We Stop the Next Fukushima Times 10,000? by Harvey Wasserman The horrible news from Japan continues to be ignored by the western corporate media. Fukushima's radioactive fallout continues to spread throughout the archipelago, deep into the ocean and around the globe---including the US. It will ultimately impact millions, including many here in North America. The potentially thankful news is that Fukushima's three melting cores may have not have melted deep into the earth, thus barely avoiding an unimaginably worse apocalyptic reality. But it's a horror that humankind has yet to fully comprehend. As Fukushima's owners now claim its three melted reactors approach cold shutdown, think of this: * At numerous sites worldwide---including several in the US---three or more reactors could simultaneously melt, side-by-side. At two sites in California---Diablo Canyon and San Onofre---two reactors each sit very close to major earthquake faults, in coastal tsunami zones. * Should one or more such cores melt through their reactor pressure vessels (as happened at Fukushima) and then through the bottoms of the containments (which, thankfully, may not have happened at Fukushima), thousands of tons of molten radioactive lava would burn into the Earth. * The molten mass(es) would be further fed by thousands of tons of intensely radioactive spent fuel rods stored on site that could melt into the molten masses or be otherwise compromised. * All that lava would soon hit groundwater, causing steam and hydrogen explosions of enormous power. * Those explosions would blow untold quantities of radioactive particles into the global environment, causing apocalyptic damage to all living beings and life support systems on this planet. The unmeasurable clouds would do unimaginable, inescapable injury to all human life. Fukushima is far from over. There is much at the site still fraught with peril, far from the public eye. Among other things, Unit Four's compromised spent fuel pool is perched high in the air. The building is sinking and tilting. Seismic aftershocks could send that whole complex---and much more---tumbling down, with apocalyptic consequences. Fukushima's three meltowns and at least four explosions have thus far yielded general radioactive fallout at least 25 times greater than what was released at Hiroshima, involving more than 160 times the cesium, an extremely deadly isotope. Reuters reports that fallout into the oceans is at least triple what Tokyo Electric has claimed. Airborne cesium and other deadly isotopes have been pouring over the United States since a few scant days after the disaster. Overall the fallout is far in excess of Chernobyl, which has killed more than a million people since its 1986 explosion. Within Japan, radioactive hotspots and unexpectedly high levels of fallout continue to surface throughout the archipelago. The toll there and worldwide through the coming centuries will certainly be in the millions. And yetit could have been far worse. In the US, in the past few months, an earthquake has shaken two Virginia reactors beyond their design specifications. Two reactors in Nebraska have been seriously threatened by flooding. Now a lethal explosion has struck a radioactive waste site in France. We have also just commemorated a 9/11/2001 terror attack that could easily have caused full melt-downs to reactors in areas so heavily populated that millions could have been killed and trillions of dollars in damage could have permanently destroyed the American economy. The only thing we now know for certain is that there will be more earthquakes, more tsunamis, more floods, hurricanes and tornadoesand more terror attacks. Horrifying as Fukushima may be, we also know for certain that the next reactor catastrophe could make even this one pale by comparison. Japan will never fully recover from Fukushima. Millions of people will be impacted worldwide from its lethal fallout. But the next time could be worse---MUCH worse. The only good news is that Japan, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Sweden and others are dumping atomic power. They are committing to Solartopian technologies---solar, wind, tidal, geothermal, ocean thermal, sustainable bio-fuels, increased efficiency and conservation---that will put their energy supplies in harmony with Mother Earth rather than at war with her. The rest of humankind must do the same---and fast. Our species can't survive on this planet---ecologically, economically or in terms of our biological realities---without winning this transtion. The only question is whether we do it before the next Fukushima times ten thousand makes the whole issue moot. Harvey Wasserman's Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth, A.D. 2030, is at www.solartopia.org. His Solartopia Green Power Hour runs at
[Biofuel] Green Jobs: A Promise Unfulfilled
http://www.truth-out.org/green-jobs-promise-unfulfilled/1315925888 Green Jobs: A Promise Unfulfilled Tuesday 13 September 2011 by: Russ Choma, New America Media | Report Washington, D.C. - When Barack Obama was running for president, he promised to spend $150 billion over the next decade on renewable energy technologies, an investment that would lead to 5 million new, high-paying jobs that could never be outsourced. Once elected, Obama pushed through an economic stimulus plan that allocated $500 million to green job training efforts giving all Americans a shot at good jobs that benefit the environment. But more than two years later, these green job-training initiatives have fallen far short of the hype. Out-of-work Americans are finding that special training isn't always enough to get a good green job. Or that the jobs they do qualify for have lousy pay and may last only as long as the government subsidizes them. Measuring the success of green job programs is difficult. The Labor Department has no reliable statistics on how many green jobs there are, or even a solid definition of just what a green job is. But people like Casey McDonald and his fiancée, Jade Mooneyhan, don't need to see statistics to know that political promises do not amount to economic reality. Dashed hopes McDonald and Mooneyhan moved from Tennessee to California so they could attend a private, wind-power technician training program. Mooneyhan planned to complete the program while McDonald took care of their then 1-year-old son, Jaeden. Once she finished training and got a job, he would start the program. The couple considered the $10,000 they saved for the trip as an investment in their future. McDonald said he's had a lot of jobs, but the pay usually maxes out at $20 to $25 per hour. I don't want to be 55 and still working at $25 an hour, he said. We really, really wanted to secure something for us and our son, maybe in the future have a house that we can feel good about. McDonald, 30, lacks a high school diploma and had bounced from job to job. He moved with Mooneyhan from Jacksonville, Fla., to Nashville, Tenn., where Jaeden was born. For a year, they lived in Mooneyhan's mother's basement, saving every dime they could for the job training. But life in Ontario, Calif., did not go as smoothly as they had hoped. Mooneyhan graduated from the one-month program, where tuition was $1,900, and started getting job interviews as an entry-level wind tech. They went well until employers asked about her training. We started to notice a really disturbing pattern forming, McDonald wrote in an email recently. Upon finding out she went to the accelerated program, they would cut the interview short and would tell her they would be contacting her. Of course, not one of the people who said that have replied back. Out of money, the couple moved to another location in California, and then to Colorado, staying with friends and family, pursuing a lead on a construction job for McDonald. The job didn't pan out. The family is now back in Florida. They live with Mooneyhan's father-in-law, and McDonald works in the family's landscaping business. Mooneyhan has taken a job cleaning apartments to get them ready for leasing, and then goes to work to help McDonald with lawn care. It's not lack of motivation if we just had a chance, said McDonald. I prove that every day. If I can make somebody stop and go 'wow, and it's not even their yard, then I know I've done my job. His frustation, he said, is that, You've got two dedicated workers who can't find jobs. Reality check In May 2009, the administration announced the launch of Pathways Out of Poverty, a $500 million grant program to support green job training tucked into the stimulus package. These Pathways Out of Poverty grants will help workers in disadvantaged communities gain access to the good, safe and prosperous jobs of the 21st century green economy, said Secretary of Labor Hilda Solis. Green jobs present tremendous opportunities for people who have the core skills and competencies needed in such well paying and rapidly growing industries as energy efficiency and renewable energy. How the rhetoric of green jobs will translate to reality is still being determined, said Sarah White, a senior associate at the Center on Wisconsin Strategy, an economic development think tank at the University of Wisconsin. When people throw around numbers, it comes across as gospel, but you have a lot of well-intentioned people inflating numbers, or just making up numbers, White said. Most of the real numbers you see are based on potential, so people get confused. There also is confusion about what form the jobs will take, making gathering accurate numbers a difficult task. In many cases, White, and others who analyze the green job market, said green jobs aren't new at all, just old jobs that are claiming a new green focus. The Martian
[Biofuel] No rush to turn to renewables
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/mail/eo20110914a1.html Wednesday, Sep. 14, 2011 SENTAKU MAGAZINE No rush to turn to renewables Since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami severely damaged the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, faith in renewable energy sources has spread fast in many corners of the world as an emissions-free means of generating electricity. But placing excessive expectations on renewable energy sources could backfire on the Japanese economy and industry. Major European countries like Germany, Switzerland and Italy have decided to do away with nuclear power. Major projects have been set afoot in Japan, each to construct a huge photovoltaic power plant to generate more than 1,000 kW of power with solar energy. A principal impediment to a broader use of solar and other renewable energy sources has been their high costs. With China's entry into the field, such costs have been reduced remarkably and the present anticipation is that 1 kW of electricity can be generated at less than ¥10 within a few years through renewable sources. It must not be overlooked, however, that there is a crucial problem associated with the generation of renewable energy that cannot be resolved by lowering the costs. That relates to energy returned on energy invested (EROEI) or the balance sheet of energy. The ratio of EROEI is obtained by dividing the amount of usable energy acquired during a given life cycle by the amount of energy expended to acquire that energy in the same life cycle. This means the higher the ratio the more cost-efficient, and can be explained in layman's terms with simple examples. The cost of operating most of the oil wells in the Middle East is close to nil because the oil gushes out on its own. So, it is possible to get oil worth 100 times the initial energy cost needed to bore wells. This means that the EROEI ratio is 100. In the case of extracting oil from oil sands, the ratio is as low as 20 because of a huge amount of energy is needed to build distillation facilities and extract oil from oil sands. If the ratio is less than 1, more energy would have to be expended than what can be acquired. That is why nobody has ever thought of exploring uranium contained in seawater, which can feed nuclear power stations for 60,000 years, or methane hydrate reserves in oceans surrounding Japan, which can be turned into natural gas that lasts for 100 years. According to studies conducted by the Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) of the United States and other institutes, the EROEI ratios are estimated at 100 for oil wells in the Middle East, 100 for natural gas in Qatar, 30 for shale gas that requires injection of pressurized water and 50 for coal mining using powered shovels. Compared with these high EROEI ratios given to these fossil fuel resources, extremely low figures are shown for others: 20 in the case of nuclear power, 15 for wind power and a mere 5 for solar power. Main reasons are enormous facilities needed for nuclear power generation (these facilities need a large amount of energy for construction and operation) and low generating efficiency inherent in wind and solar power generation. All these facts and figures indicate that promotion of solar power generation for fear of drying up of fossil fuel reserves would be tantamount to relying on an energy source 20 times less efficient than oil, thus wasting natural resources globally. Another serious problem would result from blindly expanding the use of renewable energy sources because electricity from such sources is unstable. Efforts to stabilize the supply of renewable electricity would require the use of high-tech equipment like lithium-ion batteries and fuel cells, which in turn consume large amounts of lithium, cobalt and other rare metals as well as rare earths such as dysprosium. These materials are not only rare and difficult to mine but also heavily concentrated in a small number of countries - more than one half of the global lithium reserves are in Bolivia while South Africa and Russia have a combined 90 percent of the global platinum reserves. Any move by these resource-rich countries to restrict export out of nationalistic motivation could lead to sharp increase in the prices of the materials. During the past decade since lithium began to be used in computers and cellphones, its price has shot up five times; the price of dysprosium has gone up 80 times during the past five years after it became a vital component of permanent magnet used in high performance motors for electric cars. Many scientists are trying to develop new materials that would replace these rare metals and rare earth elements. But it is not likely that their efforts will bear fruit anytime soon. Japan once was the global leader in developing and manufacturing solar cells and lithium-ion batteries. But its dominant position is being taken over by China and other Asian countries,
[Biofuel] Has anyone seen the 2010 B100 Biodiesel survey from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory?
Has anyone seen the 2010 B100 Biodiesel survey from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory? If so, please share the link: A few National Renewable Energy Lab documents video on Biodiesel going back to 2005 2011: nothing on B100 yet? B20: http://www.houston-cleancities.org/Clean%20Cities%20Pages/Coalition%20Events/4-27-2011/NREL.pdf 2010: ? 2009: B100 survey? Biodiesel status report: http://www1.eere.energy.gov/cleancities/pdfs/bd_status_issues_final.pdf http://www.nrel.gov/vehiclesandfuels/npbf/pdfs/44833.pdf 2 NREL video presentations + 1 combined MB/Audi/VW/BMW/Bosch http://www.dieselforum.org/index.cfm?objectid=2FB6D266-AF06-11E0-ABD4000C296BA163 my take-away comment: NREL sees negligible differences performance-wise between ASTM-spec Biodiesel and petro-diesel versus Walter the Mercedes Benz spokesman pushing the urea-exhaust system while admitting quality of hydro-treated vegetable oil versus BP's Rich George talking about the fungible nature of biodiesel versus petro diesel blames the states' individual laws and UL not approving more than 5% use at retailers importance of ASTM spec fuel if big players can distribute biodiesel ... Most pipelines don't carry biodiesel = competes with jetfuel movement to put 100 parts per million of biodiesel with jetfuel ... slow movement to B5 expensive to have terminal with heated storage tanks and pipes to carry biodiesel 365 business as usual = splash blend 2008: B20 http://www.nrel.gov/vehiclesandfuels/npbf/pdfs/45184.pdf 2007: B100: http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy08osti/42787.pdf 2006: B100: http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy07osti/41549.pdf 2005: B100 survey? Effects of Biodiesel: http://www.nrel.gov/vehiclesandfuels/npbf/pdfs/38296.pdf -- next part -- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: /pipermail/attachments/20110915/41f28b15/attachment.html ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
Re: [Biofuel] Make this the LAST Aniversary of the Bush/Cheney 9/11 Media Fairy Tale !
Hi Dawie Your posts are a treasure, always a delight to read, tres elegant. But good heavens, man, no Heisenberg? Whatever would science fiction do without Heisenberg? Blame Hume? I love it! And journalists, for that matter: I misread Heisenberg to mean, or at least imply somehow, that the observer is an inseparable part of what's observed, and, therefore, the injunction to BE OBJECTIVE that's drummed into all young reporters is complete nonsense. We ain't just conduits with a funnel at one end and a tap at the other. (Unless of course you want to hold down a job in the MSM.) I have a direct impression that facts are made of plasticine. Julius Malema, hm, I think you're not the only one... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Malema Would a virtual paint-bomb do? What colour? Project B might enable that quite handily, once I get Project A off the front-burner. I'll be in touch. By the way, re walkability, I much preferred your version to the one you reffed. I'd like to put it on Journey to Forever, if I may. It'll take a little time though. Didn't we decide at one stage that conspiracy theories and conspiracy theorists are a conspiracy? From the Pinhead Angels Dept.: Two Oxford dons were arguing in the club. Said one After more than three weeks of research, I'm forced to the conclusion that Shakespeare was written by Queen Elizabeth. Long pause. Good God, d'you mean to say you think such prose could have been written by a WOMAN? Exasperated splutter. My dear fellow, you miss my point entirely - Queen Elizabeth was a man! Sorry I've been so scarce - writing, and living like a hermit, keeping away from the city. Love to Elbie, and to you. Keith I'm inclined to support Bruno's position here. The thing with most conspiracies is that they are redundant: the result may be achieved more safely, surely, and cheaply by provocation and manipulation than by sneaking about pretending to be someone else. I certainly believe that there are conspiracies out there: in fact I believe there are a far greater number of conspiracies than the average conspiracy theorist believes in, but they are uncoordinated and contrary to one another. People whisper to one another behind closed doors all the time, and not only amorously. Just last night my wife and I were speculating on how one could paint-bomb Julius Malema (q.v.). Where I baulk is the single, unified conspiracy to rule them all. That said, I would be very surprised indeed if the Official Version of the 11/9 events did not deviate significantly from the truth. I think there are those among the powers that be who are all the happier the more wrong trees conspiracy theorists bark up: and I would go as far as to wonder if the exact detail is all that important. If I have learned anything it is that living sanely means being able to deal sanely with the unknown - and the unknown is huge. Denying the unknown, or denying the importance or ambit of the unknown, or the unknowable, is a popular attitude especially among those who are supposed to have some understanding of things. Focus on what we do know, they say, and if they do not positively assert that the unknown and the unknowable do not exist they are at least satisfied to ignore them. It's all Hume's fault. Without the pervasive assumption of Humean phenomenalism as an attitude the world would not have considered Heisenberg's uncertainty principle remarkable enough to name after someone. As it is three bullshit artists out of every five come across all sophic and sagacious by bunging quantum mechanics in somewhere. But I digress. Knowing that there are around seventy-four theories of which either an unknown one or none at all may be true is sufficient to develop a sane stance. It does not, should not, affect one's understanding of what is right, correct, beneficial, or desirable: those cannot arise purely from empirical observation. But they will tell us which questions we want answered; and in those terms the vast bulk of the conspiracy theorists' questions are neither here nor there. Regards Dawie Coetzee From: Bruno M. [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: sustainablelorgbiofuel@sustainablelists.org Sent: Wednesday, 14 September 2011, 18:47 Subject: Re: [Biofuel] Make this the LAST Aniversary of the Bush/Cheney 9/11 Media Fairy Tale ! Paul, do you really 'believe' this 9-11 conspiracy crap ? I ( may i say 'We'?) are not Bush fans, but, if it was all a set-up ( an inside job) it would involve at least a few hundred people, ( thousands if also the first responders had to keep quit) and could it then be, that even after ten years not 1 of them feels remorse, and came out of the closet and tell the truth, or wikileak it? Many Americans are so blind to what happens in the world ( outside the USA), that they don't can grasp the idea that the USA just got what they asked for, harvested what they sowed. To educate yourself, and
[Biofuel] Dire Warning Over Arctic Sea Ice Melt
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/09/14-0 Published on Wednesday, September 14, 2011 by The Telegraph/UK Dire Warning Over Arctic Sea Ice Melt Sea-ice coverage across the Arctic Ocean has dwindled to its second-lowest level since satellite records started in 1979, the National Snow and Ice Data Centre said, days after another study said ice melt was at its worst levels ever. Areas of the Arctic with at least 15 per cent sea-ice as of Saturday totalled 1.68 million square miles, slightly above the record-low of 1.61 million square miles recorded in 2007. Yet to be determined is whether the sea-ice cover will be the lowest for the year. Annual minimums are usually reached around mid-September. We're getting close, but there's still the potential for further loss of ice, said Walt Meier, a research scientist at the Boulder, Colorado-based National Snow and Ice Data Centre. Ice coverage could diminish either through more melt or from winds or both, Mr Meier said. However, some areas, including those near the North Pole, were showing signs of ice growth, he said. Probably there's a little bit of both going on - there's melting and refreezing, he said. At least one other institution has reported that this year's Arctic ice coverage was the lowest on record. A report issued last week by the University of Bremen in Germany said sea-ice coverage on Sept. 8 fell below the 2007 minimum. The University of Bremen researchers use finer-resolution measurements that can better distinguish smaller areas of ice and open water, Meier said. But that university's methodology also has some drawbacks, he said. Under either measurement, however, Arctic ice cover has diminished dramatically over recent decades. Saturday's coverage, as measured by the National Snow and Ice Data Centre, was only about two-thirds the average coverage measured from 1979 to 2000. Reduced sea ice is believed to have cascading impacts on climate in the circumpolar north and even lower latitudes. According to an academic study released on Tuesday by the US Geological Survey, Yupik Eskimo residents in southwestern Alaska are living with some of those affects. The study, published in the current edition of the journal Human Organisation, examined observations of elders and longtime hunters in two Lower Yukon River villages. The residents detailed dramatic changes over the years in river-ice thickness, a public-safety risk because no roads connect villages in that part of Alaska, and residents in winter travel over river ice. The residents also testified to changing ranges for several animals, particularly moose and beavers, changes in vegetation and concerns about reduced availability of driftwood that used to be pushed downstream by powerful currents of spring meltwater. © Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2011 ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
[Biofuel] US Grassroots Effort to Ban Fracking Ramps Up, as Groups Solicit the UN to Recognize Fracking as a Human Rights Issue
http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2011/09/14-0 September 14, 2011 Food Water Watch http://www.foodandwaterwatch.org/ US Grassroots Effort to Ban Fracking Ramps Up, as Groups Solicit the UN to Recognize Fracking as a Human Rights Issue Over 5,000 Calls Made to the White House from Citizens Concerned About Fracking WASHINGTON / BRUSSELS - September 14 - On the heels of last week's demonstration in Philadelphia that attracted over a thousand activists concerned about the public health and environmental problems associated with hydraulic fracturing (fracking), over 5,000 Americans from all 50 states flooded White House phone lines yesterday to tell President Obama to ban the polluting, dangerous practice. Spearheaded by the national consumer advocacy group Food Water Watch, United for Action, and Center for Health, Environment and Justice, nearly 50 organizations across the country and individuals in every state called on Obama to ban fracking. President Obama has got an energy problem on his hands, says Wenonah Hauter, Executive Director of Food Water Watch. Citizens, many of whom helped to get him elected, are becoming increasingly worried about fracking and other dirty energy schemes the administration is assessing, like the Keystone XL pipeline. Our water resources should not be sacrificed for energy, and he's hearing this in no uncertain terms from people all over the country. The calls to the White House come in the lead up to next month's critical vote by the Delaware River Basin Commission on whether or not to open up the watershed to fracking. President Obama has one of five votes on the Commission, along with the Governors of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware. The Delaware River is the drinking water source for 15.6 million people in New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Fracking is not clean, or green, says Lois Gibbs, Executive Director of the Center for Health, Environment Justice. We don't have to look any further than Dimock, Pennsylvania or Dish, Texas to see the devastating effects of fracking, and we must ban the practice to ensure that no other communities are made unsafe or unlivable in its wake. There are hundreds of reasons not to frack, any one of which provides sufficient reason to stop hydraulic fracturing, says David Braun, co-founder of United for Action and the National Grassroots Coalition. However, we don't just have one good reason, we don't just have five, but we've got hundreds. So why are we doing it? Food Water Watch is also bringing fracking to the attention of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva this week, where UN observers are weighing in on Catarina De Albuquerque's report on the human right to water and sanitation. In her U.S. assessment, De Albuquerque, the special rapporteur for the human right to water and sanitation, reported on water contamination found in the U.S. from fracking and recommended a holistic consideration of the right to water by factoring it into policies having an impact on water quality, ranging from agriculture to chemical use in products to energy production activities. Now that the human right to water is legally binding and has been officially recognized by the UN General Assembly, and De Albuquerque has determined that fracking could further imperil the human right to water in the U.S., we believe that the U.S. should stand behind its commitment to safeguarding this precious right to water and ban fracking, said Darcey O'Callaghan, International Policy Director at Food Water Watch. According to Food Water Watch's recent joint letter with UNANIMA International to the UN Human Rights Commission, fracking isn't only a problem in the U.S. The oil and gas industry has its sights set on fracking in Europe, with the U.S. energy information administration forecasting 187 trillion cubic feet of gas resources available in Poland, followed closely by France at 180 trillion cubic feet. France, however, following strong civil society protests, currently has a moratorium against fracking. Poland is the Marcellus Shale of Europe, said Gabriella Zanzanaini, Director of European Affairs for Food Water Europe, the European program of Food Water Watch. Energy security is a real concern for Poland, given its current reliance on Russia, but the government and citizens should also be aware that fracking can cause explosions, well contamination and public health effects that could be devastating to rural communities-as communities in the U.S. have experienced. The groups participating in the call-in day to President Obama include: Advocates of Apple Valley NY Ashtabula County Farmers' Union Bakken Watch Catskill Citizens for Safe Energy Catskill Mountainkeeper CCARE Center for Health and Environmental Justice Citizens for Elbert County Climate Action Coalition of New Paltz Damascus Citizens for Sustainability Food Water Watch Fort Worth Can Do
[Biofuel] In the Fight Against Fossil Fuel Addiction, Bring What You Can
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/09/14-11 Published on Wednesday, September 14, 2011 by CommonDreams.org In the Fight Against Fossil Fuel Addiction, Bring What You Can The Heinz Award and What I Plan to Do With It by Sandra Steingraber I was thrilled recently to receive a Heinz Award in recognition of my research and writing on environmental health. This is work made possible by my residency as a scholar within the Department of Environmental Studies at Ithaca College. Many past and present Heinz Award winners are personal heroes of mine--and Teresa Heinz herself is a champion of women's environmental health--so this recognition carries special meaning for me. And it comes with a $100,000 unrestricted cash prize. Which is stunning. As a bladder cancer survivor of 32 years, I'm intimately familiar with two kinds of uncertainty: the kind that comes while waiting for results from the pathology and radiology labs and the kind that is created by the medical insurance industry who decides whether or not to pay the pathology and radiology bills. Over the years, I've learned to analyze data and raise children while surrounded by medical and financial insecurities. It's a high-wire act. But as an ecologist, I'm aware of a much larger insecurity: the one created by our nation's ruinous dependency on fossil fuels in all their forms. When we light them on fire, we fill the atmosphere with heat-trapping gases that are destabalizing the climate and acidifying the oceans (whose plankton stocks provide us half of the oxygen we breathe). When we use fossil fuels as feedstocks to make materials such as pesticides and solvents, we create toxic substances that trespass into our children's bodies (where they raises risks for cancer, asthma, infertility, and learning disorders). Emancipation from our terrible enslavement to fossil fuels is possible. The best science shows us that the United States could, within two decades, entirely run on green, renewable energy if we chose to dedicate ourselves to that course. [1] But, right now, that is not the trail we are blazing. Instead, evermore extreme and toxic methods are being deployed to blast fossilized carbon from the earth. We are blowing up mountains to get at coal, felling boreal forests to get at tar, and siphoning oil from the ocean deep. Most ominously, through the process called fracking, we are shattering the very bedrock of our nation to get at the petrified bubbles of methane trapped inside. Fracking turns fresh water into poison. It fills our air with smog, our roadways with 18-wheelers hauling hazardous materials, and our fields and pastures with pipelines and toxic pits. I am therefore announcing my intent to devote my Heinz Award to the fight against hydrofracking in upstate New York, where I live with my husband and our two children. Some might look at my small house (with its mismatched furniture) or my small bank accounts (with their absence of a college fund or a retirement plan) and question my priorities. But the bodies of my children are the rearranged molecules of the air, water, and food streaming through them. As their mother, there is no more important investment that I could make right now than to support the fight for the integrity of the ecological system that makes their lives possible. As legal scholar Joseph Guth reminds us, a functioning biosphere is worth everything we have. [2] This summer I traveled through the western United States and saw firsthand the devastation that fracking creates. In drought-crippled Texas where crops withered in the fields, I read a hand-lettered sign in a front yard that said, I NEED WATER. U HAUL. I PAY. And still the fracking trucks rolled on, carrying water to the gas wells. This is the logic of drug addicts, not science. I also stood on the courthouse steps in Salt Lake City while climate activist Tim DeChristopher was sentenced to two years in federal prison for an act of civil disobedience that halted the leasing of public land for gas and oil drilling near Arches National Park. Before he was hauled away by federal marshals, Tim said, This is what love looks like. After two months of travel, my children and I arrived home to the still unfractured state of New York. After stopping at a local farm stand to buy bread, tomatoes, cheese, and peaches for dinner, we celebrated our return along the vineyard-and-waterfall-lined shore of Cayuga Lake. I watched my son skip stones across its surface. Under his feet lay the aquifer that provides drinking water to our village. This is what security looks like. Please join me in the struggle to defend the economy and ecology of upstate New York. Bring what you can. Sources: 1. M.Z. Jacobson and M.A. Delucci, A Path to Sustainable Energy by 2030, Scientific American 301 (2009): 58-65. 2. The Earth's biosphere seems almost magically suited to human beings, and indeed it is, for we evolved
[Biofuel] Dean Baker: Why Didn't We Make These Guys Run Around Naked With Their Underpants Over Their Heads?
http://www.truth-out.org/dean-baker-why-didnt-we-make-these-guys-run-around-naked-their-underpants-over-their-heads/131585621 Dean Baker: Why Didn't We Make These Guys Run Around Naked With Their Underpants Over Their Heads? Wednesday 14 September 2011 by: Keane Bhatt, Truthout | Interview Economist Dean Baker is co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy (CEPR) in Washington, DC. In his most recent book, The End of Loser Liberalism: Making Markets Progressive, Baker argues that the market is politically structured to ensure that income flows upward. He provides a range of strategies to reframe economic debates and offers proposals to reshape the economy to serve the interests of the majority of the population instead of a small elite. The book is available to be downloaded for free at CEPR's web site. http://deanbaker.net/images/stories/documents/End-of-Loser-Liberalism.pdf Keane Bhatt: The prevailing economic model has been defended on the grounds of its dynamism and efficiency. But it's allowing 25 million people to be without adequate employment and 42 million to be on food stamps, while the private sector sits on $2 trillion in cash. There are millions of foreclosed homes standing idle despite the urgent need for decent housing. How do you evaluate this situation, where vast resources aren't being allocated efficiently in a time of such desperate poverty? Dean Baker: There are two different issues, I think. One is the presumably short-term issue, but what's quickly turning into a long-term issue, of a serious downturn. The other is the more general issue of an efficient system with efficient outcomes. I don't think focusing on efficiency is a bad place to begin. My book argues that most economists are not honest about this. But in the short-term, which, as I said is becoming longer-term, efficiency is kind of moot. We have an incredible amount of idle resources and this is just totally self-inflicted stupidity. We know how to get out of this: we just have to spend money. You can spend it on better or worse things, but it's really simple. You have a vast amount of idle workers, idle capacity and idle resources in just about every sector of the economy. So what you really need to do is spend money, have the Federal Reserve Board be more aggressive in its monetary policy and eventually we will have to get the dollar down to get something closer to balanced trade. That's the major imbalance in the US economy. But these aren't efficiency questions; it's a question of putting resources to use. There are political obstacles - there's nothing inherent in the economy. We weren't in this situation four years ago - there were plenty of problems in the economy, but huge amounts of idle resources were not one of them. But because of political obstacles, it's totally possible that we'll have a decade of high unemployment, vast amounts of idle resources and waste. KB: Your book argues that financial crises don't have to lead to lost decades of massive pain and suffering and, even more importantly, that the US never even experienced a true financial crisis. DB: There's a lot of real sloppy thinking here. The main promulgators of this view are Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart and they say that they look back over 600 years of history and find that in almost all these cases, countries took over a decade to recover. It's painful, because I'd like to think - and one would expect that they'd like to think - that we know more economics than we did 600 years ago. If we don't - and we really haven't learned anything - why do you guys get paid high salaries? I say that only partially facetiously. If we were to look back through time, a very high percentage - probably the majority - of newborn babies didn't survive to age 5. You'd be an idiot to say that the past trend holds today - we have modern medicine, so we have a very good reason to expect that the overwhelming majority of children will survive to age 5. We have learned something in economics over six centuries, so it's not some curse, they're concrete problems. Finance gets very mysterious and complicated. There are instruments that are hard for people to understand; they're hard for me to understand. The basic story is not complicated: we need demand. As I say in the book, there's very little about the financial crisis that explains where we are today. People who want to buy homes have no problem getting credit - you can't go 0% down, but someone who, say, 15 years ago was able to get a home mortgage can expect to get a home mortgage today. In terms of businesses, the US, unlike Japan, has a very large capital market where firms can directly access capital through commercial paper and bond financing. The current rates are extraordinarily low in both nominal and real terms. So the idea that the banks being crippled would impede the economy doesn't follow when hundreds of the largest
[Biofuel] Chevron Confirms Gulf of Mexico Oil Leak
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/09/14 Published on Wednesday, September 14, 2011 by Reuters Chevron Confirms Gulf of Mexico Oil Leak http://news.yahoo.com/release-key-bp-oil-spill-probe-expected-soon-043510033.html U.S. blames BP for Gulf spill 14-9-11 http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/09/14-4 Published on Wednesday, September 14, 2011 by The Guardian/UK Deepwater Horizon Report Syphons Off Some Blame From BP Official findings suggest the oil giant's contractors should share responsibility for the disaster ___ Biofuel mailing list Biofuel@sustainablelists.org http://sustainablelists.org/mailman/listinfo/sustainablelorgbiofuel Biofuel at Journey to Forever: http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel.html Search the combined Biofuel and Biofuels-biz list archives (70,000 messages): http://www.mail-archive.com/biofuel@sustainablelists.org/
