Category: 05 Energy

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Journal: ClimateGate, Israel & Greenwashing Terror

03 Environmental Degradation, 05 Energy, 06 Genocide, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 10 Security, Collective Intelligence, Commerce, Commercial Intelligence, Government, Media
ClimateGate Rolling Update
Chuck Spinney

An excellent summary of the ongoing dispute over Global Warming.  Chuck.

Climate Catastrophe:A Superstorm for Global Warming Research

By Marco Evers, Olaf Stampf and Gerald Traufetter

Der Spiegel 1 April 2010

Plagued by reports of sloppy work, falsifications and exaggerations, climate research is facing a crisis of confidence. How reliable are the predictions about global warming and its consequences? And would it really be the end of the world if temperatures rose by more than the much-quoted limit of two degrees Celsius?

… are they ready for the Rubber Room or Both? My guess is the answer is “both.”  But read the attached article by Jonathan Cook and judge for yourself.  One thing that is becoming clear, however:  Global Warming can be used as a canonical fear to justify just about anything — from Obama's plan to resurrect the nuclear power industry (while at the same time, he punts on the nuc waste issue by caving into political pressure to close the Yucca Mountain waste depository, after spending $17 billion since the 1980s) to Israel's crackpot plan to win the so-called war on terror by impoverishing the petro-states via the weaning the industrial world off hydrocarbons (see below).  If you want to get a realistic idea of the size of the energy numbers as well as the socio-economic implications of the policy transformations implied by displacing the West's reliance on hydrocarbons, I urge you read my good friend Robert Bryce's important new book, Power Hungry: The Myths of Green Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future, Public Affairs Press, April 2010.  You do not have to agree with his specific recommendations to accept the value of his important work.

Chuck Spinney
Marmaris, Turkey

[archive under construction at http://chuckspinney.blogspot.com/ ]

Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, 30 March 2010
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Journal: Barack Obama–Corruption, Not Change

05 Energy
Full Story Online

Obama to allow oil drilling off Virginia coast

By PHILIP ELLIOTT, Associated Press Writer

Wed Mar 31, 6:18 am ET

WASHINGTON – In a reversal of a long-standing ban on most offshore drilling, President Barack Obama is allowing oil drilling 50 miles off Virginia's shorelines. At the same time, he is rejecting some new drilling sites that had been planned in Alaska.

Phi Beta Iota: This decision is corrupt on so many levels we will leave our comment at that.

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Open Energy Info (OpenEI) Wiki (Some private, some public)

05 Energy, Collective Intelligence, Government

homepage

The goal of the wiki is to organize the world's energy information.   Parts of it are open for contributions from the general public.

Open Energy Info (OpenEI) is a platform to connect the world’s energy data. It is a linked open data platform bringing together energy information to provide improved analyses, unique visualizations, and real-time access to data. OpenEI follows guidelines set by the White House’s Open Government Initiative , which is focused on transparency, collaboration, and participation. OpenEI strives to provide open access to this energy information, which will spur creativity and drive innovation in the energy sector.

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Journal: “Dumb” Government versus Smart Humans

03 Environmental Degradation, 05 Energy, Commercial Intelligence, Earth Intelligence
Full Story Online

Op-Ed Columnist

Dreaming the Possible Dream

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

March 6, 2010

EXTRACT (1 of 2 Innovations): If you combine CO2 with seawater, or any kind of briny water, you produce CaCO3, calcium carbonate. That is not only the stuff of corals. It is also the same white, pasty goop that appears on your shower head from hard (calcium-rich) water. At its demonstration plant near Santa Cruz, Calif., Calera has developed a process that takes CO2 emissions from a coal- or gas-fired power plant and sprays seawater into it and naturally converts most of the CO2 into calcium carbonate, which is then spray-dried into cement or shaped into little pellets that can be used as concrete aggregates for building walls or highways — instead of letting the CO2 emissions go into the atmosphere and produce climate change.

If this can scale, it would eliminate the need for expensive carbon-sequestration facilities planned to be built alongside coal-fired power plants — and it might actually make the heretofore specious notion of “clean coal” a possibility.

Continue reading “Journal: “Dumb” Government versus Smart Humans”

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Journal: President Lacks Intelligence on Nuclear Option–Actually, He Lacks Intelligence (Decision-Support) on EVERYTHING

05 Energy, Commercial Intelligence, Earth Intelligence
Full Story Online

Four Nuclear Myths: A Commentary on Stewart Brand's Whole Earth Discipline and on Similar Writings

AUTHOR: Lovins, Amory
DOCUMENT ID: 2009-09
YEAR: 2009
DOCUMENT TYPE: Journal or Magazine Article
PUBLISHER: RMI

Public discussions of nuclear power, and a surprising number of articles in peer-reviewed journals, are increasingly based on four notions unfounded in fact or logic:

1. variable renewable sources of electricity (windpower and photovoltaics) can provide little or no reliable electricity because they are not ³baseload² the time;

2. those renewable sources require such enormous amounts of land, hundreds of times more than nuclear power does, that they¹re environmentally unacceptable;

3. all options, including nuclear power, are needed to combat climate change; and

4. nuclear power¹s economics matter little because governments must use it anyway to protect the climate.

Continue reading “Journal: President Lacks Intelligence on Nuclear Option–Actually, He Lacks Intelligence (Decision-Support) on EVERYTHING”

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Search: usaid energy water nexus

05 Energy, 12 Water
Must go beyond Water-Energy

Very neat search.  Before your search, there was not much.  Here are just a couple of links that we found worthy outside of Phi Beta Iota, and then below,  our two graphics that the US Government still refuses to contemplate, but which are essential if we are ever to get to coherent sustainable strategy, Whole of Government operations, and a balanced budget.  Kudos to AID for getting this duality right, but it's much more complicated than that, and what's good for water or energy might be bad for all the other pieces of the Whole.

The Water-Energy Nexus:  Opportunities for Integrated Environmental Management(USAID Global Environment Center, July 2001)

Phi Beta Iota: It says a great deal that this nine year old document is still at the top; we need to do more.

Water-Centra Analytic Wheel

Water-Energy Nexus (WENEXA) (US AID India, 2009)

Phi Beta Iota: It might help to stop farmers from selling tanker fulls of water from their land, reducing the national aquifers as the dirt cheap rate of $4 a tanker load.  Not their water to sell!

A Study on Water and Energy Nexus in Central Asia (August 31, 2002)

Phi Beta Iota: A marvelous model study.  Now imagine its expansion using the graphics below.

THE ENERGY AND WATER NEXUS: SERVICES WITH A GOOD MATCH (September 2004)

Phi Beta Iota: Another excellent model study, including value chains and critical success factors.

Linking Water and Energy Sectors for Sustainable Groundwater Use (no date)

Phi Beta Iota: USAID powerpoint briefing, some contact points, agriculture-water-energy.

Assessing the Water-Energy Nexus in Cape Town (2009)

Phi Beta Iota: Short story with two big points:  a sound analytic model and creating the database is both essential and immediately actionable; and what you can learn from data in recommending alternative strategies can reduce need for new financial investments.

Food for thought:

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Journal: Venezuela oil ‘may double Saudis’

03 Economy, 05 Energy, 07 Venezuela

BBC Full Story Online

A new US assessment of Venezuela's oil reserves could give the country double the supplies of Saudi Arabia.

Scientists working for the US Geological Survey say Venezuela's Orinoco belt region holds twice as much petroleum as previously thought.

The geologists estimate the area could yield more than 500bn barrels of crude oil.

Phi Beta Iota: This is consistent with both the Brazilian discoveries and the rare nature of the Amazon region.  All signs point to a re-emergence of the United Nations of South America (UNASUR) as a major political, socio-eceonomic, ideo-cultural, and techno-demographic “bloc” in the next quarter century.  If they create their own Multinational Engagement network for regional information-sharing and sense-making, with a model that can be ported to South Africa for extension into that continent, and to the Indonesia-Malaysia axis with Singapore as a central hub for Chinese diaspora influence, the balance of power in the world will change dramatically.  The “closed model” of top down command and control has faded, the “open model” of networks is emergent.  Latin American populism is a force that cannot be repressed, it can only be respected.