Weekly Climate and Energy News Roundup

I like your roundup 🙂 . Do you plan to make it a regular feature?

Brad October 17, 2010 at 10:23
If regulations are not implemented appropriately or are poorly designed, it may not really matter how many regulations are created. The former has been demonstrated to have been part of what happened with the BP mess in the Gulf of Mexico

What a novel idea, ban by regulation fiat … Wasn’t it Kagan who suggested just that in the Harvard Law Review article “Presidential Administration” — How to strangle the US economy by fiat rules.
Why yes I do remember reading that paper … Do you?

Anthony,
Here is my last letter sent (this morning) to the politians in charge of Canada. It does have to do with energy.
Dear Prime Minister Harper,
Being put in class with the village idiots by society in general has made the research I have been doing to be 10,000 times more correct.
WHAT DO YOU NOT KNOW?
Centrifugal force was never understood and deemed a psuedo-science because of this but…
I have had my fair share of being bounced from politician to
politician, ignored, pointed to policies or blocked by government
regulation for research and funding.
I found a great deal of our science is incomplete or structured with
boarders that they cannot cross and in some cases totally incorrect
when the right questions are put to them.
A good example is a plain circle that you can measure the outside and
come up with a distance. The center of balance would correctly be the
center at the axis point. But when motion is added, This is completely
different. This is where physics stopped.
Now you have an axis point and the edge of the circle. The center of
balance in motion is 2/3 from the axis. Both sides having the same
mass. Now, this center of balance shifts when motion is applied towards
the outside of the circle. The faster it moves, the more compressing
and storing of energy. Just like this planet. It accounts for the
pressure under the planet that we have Earthquakes and volcanes to
releave this. As the planet slows, gases expand and the stored energy
in the mass is releaved.
I did a massive amount of research on turbine efficiency that was were
I found science was absent in understanding what ACTUAL efficiency is
compared to the mechanical measurements that was used in hydro 150
years ago. Whatever water was going around the blades to the housing
was the amount they calculated as being inefficient. It had nothing to
do with actual energy transference of water to turbine, deflection of
energy at many points when the blades are turning or the fact it was
designed for bulk water turning and not efficiency. Centrifugal force
places a key role in all the current design problems.
So, I inverted a turbine. Splitting the energy and rotating it to hit
the circumference on a full circle at all 360 degrees.
Think I didn’t go through a great deal? Hydro companies, politicians
engineers, etc. etc. Mechanically it is sound and will run but the
science was never looked at or understood. This started 6 years ago.
Without this type of research and knowledge being passed down by educators, our population is growing into a mass of over educated idiots.
Thank you,
Joe Lalonde
(took off the phone number and address before Mr. Happy Snippit had gotten to it)

Severn barrage plan likely to be sunk
Government expected tomorrow to refuse to back controversial £21bn tidal energy project with public finance.
The 2007 SDC report controversially suggested the wetlands lost under a Cardiff-Weston barrage could be compensated for by the sacrifice of low-grade farmland in East Anglia, Wales and elsewhere, which was already proving impractical to defend against sea level rises. It also argued the large barrage could provide a much-needed additional river crossing.
So the coast of East anglia, Wales and ELSEWHERE is already proving impractical to defend against SEA LEVEL RISES. Where is elsewhere, what utter rubbish.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/oct/17/severn-barrage-plan-sunk

Human endeavour has always been a learning process, oil is no different. Unfortunately sometimes we don’t learn enough, or remember what we have learnt.
http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/scotlandshistory/20thand21stcenturies/piperalpha/index.asp

What peeves me is reading crap like this

“My generation has failed,” he says flatly. “We are handing over the problem to our children. They—and their children—will live with the worst consequences of climate change. Make no mistake, global warming is happening right now. It is only going to get worse.”
…
That means we no longer have the luxury of polite, time-consuming public debate on the issue. “We have to be much more aggressive about pinpointing our enemies, and doing it early—showing how and where they are spending their money to undermine our efforts,” he says. “We need to learn how to inflict pain on the opposition.”

Being a father of two young children, 9yo and 2yo, I fear for what kinda of world they will be living in within the next 30-40 years. If the “environmentalist” (keyword there is “mental”) get their way, everyone who doesn’t believe humans are the scum of the earth should be punished. As only the “environmentalist” can truely know what is best for the earth.
Love the fact that when you click on “Help support the fight against global warming” you get taken to this page https://secure2.edf.org/site/Donation2?df_id=1533&1533.donation=form1

Your donation will support our campaign in Washington and around the country to build grassroots networks, educate decision makers and reduce emissions. With your help, we’ll keep the pressure on for national action.

With a starting donation of $25 all the way up to $1000 (then an option for “other”) they are certainly ambitious, oh and the default value selected? $50.
That will certainly help a bunch of people stop working for productive jobs and instead jump on fuel burning planes to fly to Washington to take the fight to the government on global warming or was it climate disruption… that is of course the airport is open considering Washington was recently hit with one of the biggest snow falls in 111 years
I am the first to agree, if the science added up and the $$$ weren’t questionable I would be right there with them trying to get our government to make the hard decisions and “help save the planet”. However there is proof on top of proof that although there is some basis for their “beliefs” when all put together it doesn’t add up to a catastrophic apocolyptic event causing every lifeform on the planet to possibly become extinct.
Wake up people and smell the roses, not the excrement coming out of the mouths of a politician Al Gore or a environmental entrepreneur like Pachuri, or professor Michael Mann, or the CRU who’s funding relies on the proof of “Global Warming”. Instead look at the people who don’t have anything to gain out of their research but are more so genuinely interested in the scientific method of “Have a theory, test the theory if the test doesn’t work rethink the theory, if it does work, keep testing it and while it still works then the theory is valid, but if the test fails then it is invalid.”
Anyway just wanted to get that off my chest and again thank Anthony and all the guest posters, moderators and fellow man who visit here to get some insight.

What’s with the re-directs via ‘madmimi.com’?

Robert-
I think you are incorrect about the banking crisis, the driver was not governmental but the creation of the loan backed securities on Wall Street that drove bad loans. Try reading this:
http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/Home/News_Articles/2010/mortgage_crisis.aspx
“Tis true that I wish we would have gone the same route we did after the S and L crisis, but we didn’t. The SEC was completely asleep at the switch:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/27/business/27sec.html
As for oil, remember the regulatory agency workers who were sleeping with hookers hired by big oil and were WAY to close? We fixed that, for the better:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/05/11/politics/main6472239.shtml
Now, what about the biggest oil spill in history, where the oversight was not done, and where exemtions were given makes you think the regulatory structure – ruined by Cheney and Bush – did not need to be re-visited? Common sense to me…

Robuk says: October 17, 2010 at 12:20 pm

Severn barrage plan likely to be sunk … The 2007 SDC report controversially suggested the wetlands lost under a Cardiff-Weston barrage could be compensated for by the sacrifice of low-grade farmland in East Anglia, Wales and elsewhere, which was already proving impractical to defend against sea level rises.

East Anglia is sinking anyway, has been for hundreds of years.
As to scuppering this particular barrage plan, great! it was ill-conceived all along, with great costs, short-term useability, and little benefit at all except to some big engineering company who would’ve had monopolies on it all.
However, tidal energy is enormous and I think we’ve hardly started to harness it skilfully. I wrote about it – there are other promising upcoming tidal harvest technologies that would be far cheaper, far neater, have far less environmental impact, AND last far longer AND be far more repairable. One technology is the “reef” that would harvest tidal energy on a small differential of height; another technology is the small slow turbine generators whose blades twist as they turn to maximise slow flow underwater capture; another completely unexplored technology is the pressure of straight vertical lift – feasible in my locality which has a tidal range second only to the Canadian Bay of Fundy.

Michael Proctor says:
October 17, 2010 at 12:45 pm
“What peeves me is reading crap like this […]”
Ok, didn’t know where you got that from, so i googled and here it is, presented by a Josef Romm, a person called Goldmark interviewed:
http://theenergycollective.com/josephromm/45338/edf%E2%80%99s-peter-goldmark-%E2%80%9Cmy-generation-has-failed%E2%80%9D-it-has-got-be-said-over-and-over-ag
and i actually like a lot of what he says:
“The environmental movement must also do a better job of linking climate directly to shrinking harvests, falling water tables, receding glaciers, extended droughts and more violent storms.”
Yeah, go ahead, produce even more flakey evidence, and for the storms, well, we’ll just wait for a violent one… might take a while, though…
“It’s happening now, and we need to connect that to climate change in the minds of all people.”
I guess it’s way harder to brainwash people into such a fantasy than to awaken them again by simply pointing to the boring non-events in reality.
““What we need more than anything else is a mass movement of young people,”
Yeah. That’ll work. Take Ehrlich’s 1967 philosophy and try to implant it in gadget-keen youngsters of today.
Joe Romm adds:
“He is one of the best thinkers and speakers on climate I know.”
I guess that pretty much sums it up.

As I have comment ted before on this blog the Severn Barrage keeps coming and going as it were ever since it was first proposed in the 1920’s on a far vaster scale not only offering the possibility of internal dams, I presume not dissimilar to the reefs your refer to, to spread out available generating time. Above all else it would also have provided still much needed road and rail links. This tiny modern version is hardly worth the effort and has been cut down at the insistence the Greens. Something about sea birds or some such I fancy. Or was it seals? I forget.
The use of inline free flow, chiefly screw types, low velocity turbines is hardly new and were widely tested in the UK using more modern self adjusting variable pitch blades, unlike the widely employed Victorian designs which used fixed pitch, in the 1970’s both for tidal and small scale hydroelectric generation. Water being incompressible the gains from variable pitch and hydrodynamic flow lines are not that great as against a simple screw.
Ram type technology whether inline with flow or using direct vertical uplift, which again is what I imagine you referring to, is a very old technology indeed and still in use today in various parts of the world. It is ideal for very small and simple installations but does not scale up well.
Kindest Regards

Nice round up, I feel the unemployment is a feature of the obama regime not a flaw. As for lifting the drilling embargo, why have a ban when you can regulate it to death without the PR fallout! As for the smoking ban, while I enjoy it I feel it is dishonest, however the main way of connecting an activity or substance with cancer is by numbers or animal testing, almost anecdotal so I wouldnt expect any study to be that certain (however the studies regarding SHS and childrens asthma are highly certain, extrapolate that!). Given what we do know it is rather daft smoking anywhere.

pat says:
October 17, 2010 at 2:30 pm
The FDA and other agencies have never been able to identify a single death attributable to second hand smoke.
=========
REPLY:
I agree that blaming second-hand smoke as a specific cause of cancer is flawed.
However, the literature implicating second-hand smoke as a very significant factor for increased heart attacks is quite strong. Institute of Medicine has replicated this research, as have other researchers overseas, lending strong support to indoor smoking bans. I have reviewed these studies extensively and agree (I’m an environmental epidemiologist).
See Lightwood’s article at:
http://circ.ahajournals.org/cgi/reprint/120/14/1373?maxtoshow=&hits=10&RESULTFORMAT=&fulltext=Risk+Attributable+to+Secondhand+Smoke+Declines+in+Acute+Myocardial+Infarction+Af&searchid=1&FIRSTINDEX=0&resourcetype=HWCIT

Why does Fred Singer comes back with such old story. Is he trying to clean some ghosts of the past in his resume. I don’t know. He should have let that story down instead of bringing it on top of the news. It’s just another miscalculation from dear Fred. By putting that old story back in the news, he will again be tied to the tobacco industry and will loose whatever credibility he had regained since that time.
Total waste of time, and nothing to gain out of it. The case was closed and lost. Swallow and move on.

Smokey-
We are specifically discussing whether the lack of gov regulation is good thing or not. When I disagreed with the prior poster I was arguing gov action on who to loan to was not the primary driver for the mortgage crisis, but the actions of Wall Street tacitly confirmed by the gov’s lack of regulation. Got the argument now Smokey?

“NUMBER OF THE WEEK: 20 Percent by 2030. Greenpeace and the Global Wind Energy Council produced a study claiming that wind power could produce up to 20% of the world’s power needs by 2030. Given the well known difficulties of wind, as expressed in articles referenced above, one could say that this estimate is a bit optimistic.”
Not if the Greenies are successful in reducing the total power production of the world by – say – 50%, intending – of course! – to save us from global warming by dropping the CO2 production by the human race by 50% by 2030. Of course, 10% of current energy production is probably much too high for wind power as well, so perhaps a reduction of power production by 90% by 2030 is more likely their goal.

@Smokey says:
October 17, 2010 at 6:53 pm
brad says:
Exactly right, Smokey.
Well thought out, focussed regulation is essential.
But the great majority of regulation we see now in the UK and Europe is poorly conceived regulation, for regulation’s sake. The driver for it is (a) to extend the control over the economies of the nation states by an incompetent and unaccountable EU commission (=political elite) and (b) to preserve the jobs of batallions of extremely well paid regulators.
I could write a book about all the “unintended consequences” and flat failures of much of this ‘regulation’, especially in environmental and health & safety fields (which most affects my work).
I don’t think the situation in the USA is much better.
If Brad is so keen on more regulation, he should go to Myanmar, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, China, Iran, India (and about a hundred other states) and tell them all about it. Good luck to him.

“Earth poised to ecologically collapse bringing down biosphere, humanity & most if not all creatures. Avoidable but requires increase in knowledge & immediate biocentric action.” – Ecological Internet, Dr. Barry
“We know Earth dying and being for all creatures coming to an end – deal with it and commit to reversing – or you are the problem.” – Ecological Internet
http://pathstoknowledge.net/2010/10/18/an-ecological-internet-prophet-soothsaying-doomsday

Smokey-
Agree on gov – but isn’t an ethical business community that does not lie to regulators for their own gain, and attempt to draft and “game” regulation for their own advantage also needed?

Methinks that the latest disaster in the Gulf is ample demonstration that changes in regulation are necessary. Perhaps it is impossible to prevent such disasters, but it should not be for lack of trying.
The lift of the ban comes a few months after the incident. Doesn’t seem to be too egregious.

DirkH says:
October 17, 2010 at 2:22 pm
Oh God no. Eugenics for WII a la 10:10
Actually, I can see that going down quite well with some youngsters. 🙁
DaveE.