Coal Trains

We Don't Want All That Jazz

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 ~ I plucked this map from an unrelated story, but my eye was caught by the fattest red swath.

It shows the largest rail traffic in tons moved per year. So what are all those trains doing in eastern Wyoming? What are all those tons?

Buried Treasure?

Keep Fossil Fuels Buried

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 ~ We should leave our fossil fuels in the ground.

And not just because it would keep that carbon and its climate change impacts out of the atmosphere, but also because it would add to our energy security as a country.

Keeping more of our fossil fuel wealth in the ground would increase our energy security in two ways:

Coal and Wind

Blackouts in India

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 ~ As much as 10% of the world's population is without electricity following the second massive grid outage in India this week.

Blame is being spread around among an outdated, rickety grid, a lack of generation capacity, government inefficiency and corruption, a failure to follow agreed-to consumption limits by various states, poor energy pricing that encourages wasteful consumption, and, as one routinely expects from the corporate cheer-leading quarter, supposedly strangling environmental regulations. All of these are true at least in part, but the bigger cause is a failure to plan and build a stronger commitment to renewable energy.

Climate Change Math

Is Our Number Up?

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 ~ Bill McKibben has written the definitive piece on the three key numbers that summarize our impending, self-made, and slow-motion global catastrophe. Simply:

1. 2°C--The maximum rise in average global temperature we can sustain without cataclysmic consequences. We're already 0.8°C there, and may have another 0.8°C yet to be reflected but already baked into the global warming cake.
2. 565 Gigatons--The limit on the amount of atmospheric CO2 we can yet emit and stay under 2°C.
3. 2,795 Gigatons--The amount of carbon in the proven gas, oil and coal reserves of companies and countries. These reserves are what those entities intend to extract for humanity's collective burning.

The economics of the fossil fuel industry, their capitalization, and their shareholders' wealth depend on extracting and burning almost 5 times more CO2 than the absorbing ability of the Earth can sustain.

McKibben argues, convincingly, that we need to start thinking of the Fossil Industry in a different way:

Solar Facts

Myths and Misinformation Must Yield

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 ~ An excellent infographic that shines the positive light on solar it increasingly merits:

Solar:

• Is getting cheaper
• Reduces electricity costs long-term
• Generates a net surplus of energy
• Works on cloudy days
• Is becoming competitive with fossil fuels

As I posted earlier, solar has also been proven as an effective base-load energy source.

Turbine Transport

Wind by Rail

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 ~ As wind turbines get larger so do the blades. Because they are fabricated as single pieces, their transport has become quite difficult. Rail can minimize the distance they must travel by truck, a significant challenge on most roads, which generally lack the long, sweeping curves of railbeds. So it's great to see this:

A much better use of rail capacity than the environmentally atrocious idea of transporting coal for export to China.

The Job Creators—IV

By Industry

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 ~ Public transit just makes sense in so many ways.

Oh, and where is Big Oil which the API keeps telling us is such a wonderful job creator? The original study suggests combined oil and gas is 5.18 jobs per $1M investment, but that is, well, all gas. If oil were broken out in this chart, their number would be negative. The oil industry has been shedding jobs for years and pales as a job creator to the renewable energy industry.

Others of interest: roads and bridges repair (20), conservation (20), water infrastructure (20), school buildings (19), financial industry (7), nuclear industry (4). Study details here.

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Cross-posted to the Fare-Free Northwest blog.

Ready for a Grand Bargain

If Only There Were True Leadership

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 ~ Amazingly, perhaps the first glimmers of an awareness of a real way forward:

A majority of Americans from both political parties are ready for the "grand bargain"--an increase in taxes on old energy sources (oil, coal, and natural gas) in return for a reduction in income tax rates across the board. In short, they're ready for a new national climate and energy policy to emerge.

They're also ready to support new, cutting edge energy technologies. And they recognize that climate change is starting to affect extreme weather events--in fact, 82 percent said they were personally affected by a climate-related extreme weather event of one kind or another last year--and are ready to do something about it.

It's bipartisan too. Details and other surprising results.

People know this is what needs to be done, and something much like this is already working in British Columbia. All we need is real leadership, and less corruption from unlimited corporate money.

Climate Change Satire

Ignorance is Bliss

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 ~ Click for larger image.

Source.

One Dollar, One Vote

Getting What They Pay For

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 ~ Where can you reliably get a return on investment of 22,000%? Not even Wall Street insiders can profit like that consistently, but corporations can.


They just "invest" in politicians.

Selective Regulation

Constituent Service?

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 ~ Who fills their campaign chests?

For all the talk about protecting life, they do rather objectify women as things to regulate.

If they were serious about protecting life, there would be a lot more regulation of quite a few other things, like atmospheric carbon, coal ash tsunamis, guns, fracking fuels in drinking water, and any number of things that blow up far too too often: oil refineries, drilling rigs, and financial markets especially.

Energy Downsides

On Toxic Wind Events

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 ~ Um, there aren't any.

Also: who provides the guarantees against the financial fallout of these events?

Choices: Economy or Environment?

Why Not Choose Both?

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 ~ In the abstract everyone is in favor of protecting the environment. The particulars are another story. Opposition stems from the belief that environmental protection can come only at unacceptable economic cost. Must we choose between the environment or the economy?

Opposition to environmental legislation was, and is, clearly misguided. Exposure to lead at an early age is now known to cause neurological problems, even at extremely low doses. Since 1984, airborne lead concentrations have fallen 98 percent because of environmental activism. We have seen declines in airborne sulfur dioxide of 35 percent and carbon monoxide of 32 percent even as our GDP has more than doubled. Yet let us never forget that efforts to clean the air were vehemently opposed when first introduced. Remember the hue and cry of those who foresaw economic calamity when the lead phase-out was legislated. Industry gravely predicted that tens of thousands of gas stations would go out of business. Let us always remember the hysterical cries of economic doom as we tightened pollutions standards with the Clean Air Act in 1970. Every major automobile manufacturer came to Washington with tales of impending bankruptcy should the proposed act become law. None of the predictions of economic failure came to pass.

A Giant Carbon Vacuum?

Reducing Atmospheric Carbon

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 ~ Can we address the problem of climate change by simply sucking carbon out of the atmosphere?

Technically, yes. But practically, no.

...in a paper published earlier this month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers found that trying to scrub the air is much more expensive than keeping it from getting dirty in the first place.

For the scientists conducting the study, air capture was shown to be largely wishful thinking that distracts from more effective strategies for combating pollution and climate change. "We thought it was important to set the record straight because [air capture] has policy implications," said Howard Herzog, a senior research engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Energy Initiative and one of the report's authors. He said that air capture is appealing because it allows people to get away with not changing anything about their energy use.

It's not hard to understand the superficial appeal: we could continue with business as usual, and clean it up afterwards, or, you know, whenever.

The Eye of the Beholder

À Chacun Son Goût

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~ The French say that one cannot much argue usefully about personal taste; to each his own. However, not everything is art, nor do we widely embrace form irrespective of function. Could wind turbines be made more aesthetic? Perhaps, but that's not why we build them.

Nonetheless, they are attractive to some of us, especially compared to, say, coal plants.

Courage

Tim DeChristopher Speaks Truth to Power

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~ Tim DeChristopher is a political prisoner in the United States.

DeChristopher was sentenced today to two years and fined $10,000 for two felonies (really) based on non-violent acts of civil disobedience. DeChristopher bid in an auction of oil leases in an effort to highlight the destructive effects of the fossil fuel industry, their impacts on climate change, and the corruption of our government by indstry wealth and power. The auction was later found to be illegal, and rescinded, but that didn't stop our government from a politically motivated prosecution.

Details of the allegations and the trial here. DeChristopher's web site here.

But the best thing to read about this sorry travesty of American justice is his final statement to the court. Excerpts:

Sunny Days Ahead for Solar

Lower Costs, Better Technologies

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~ Solar power continues to grow more competitive against other forms of electricity generation. At the just completed German InterSolar trade show module prices are down to $1.40/W and, according to Lux Research, headed to a low point in the second half of this year of $1.20/W. IHS iSuppli research expects PV modules to break the $1.00/W threshold in early 2012. Overall systems are roughly twice the module cost, meaning commercial solar could cost only $2/W (or less) a year from now.

What would such costs for solar mean?

Pander Bear

NJ Governor Christie Withdraws from RGGI

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~ New Jersey's corpulent chief has pulled out of RGGI, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. The original 10 northeastern states, now minus New Jersey, will carry on without the participation of the Garden State.

At a morning news conference, the governor asserted that New Jersey was succeeding in reducing its carbon dioxide emissions not because of the multistate program, known as RGGI (pronounced Reggie), but because it is relying more on natural gas and less on coal to fill its energy needs.

“RGGI does nothing more than tax electricity, tax our citizens, tax our businesses, with no discernible or measurable impact upon our environment,” Mr. Christie said.

A transition away from coal to (relatively) cleaner natural gas helps for now, but there is no guarantee that natural gas will remain at its current bargain basement prices. If the economy ever returns to a brisker growth pattern there will be pressure to provide more electricity by whatever means, including coal. The Governor is very unlikely to complain about emissions if he thinks economic growth depends on the power production that causes them.

Too Much Wind Power

What If We Had More Than We Could Use?

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~ What indeed?

Our overly damp spring weather has provided an abundance of hydropower. There's so much that the creaky and antiquated electrical grid cannot take all the power wind turbines are now poised to generate. So the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) which manages the grid, is shutting down wind turbines. If the turbines don't operate, they don't produce the power that in turn generates the income that pays for their financing.

Thus, wind is made less feasible because of a surfeit of hydro.

Priorities

The Deficit Scold Agenda

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~ For two years we've been hearing from many quarters about the urgent need to cut government spending to bring down the deficit. Some of the rationales may have merit, but what passes for debate on the subject is deeply unserious.

For proof, one need look no further than subsidies to oil and gas.

President Obama wants Congress to chop $3.6 billion in 2012 oil and gas tax breaks for a total of $46.2 billion over the next decade. Among Mr. Obama’s targets: a nearly century-old oil and gas industry tax deduction for the costs of preparing drill sites and a manufacturer's tax break granted the oil industry in 2004.

The number is significant, but still little more than one-tenth of the federal subsidies that oil and gas companies might receive over 10 years. Adjusted for inflation, they currently receive about $41 billion in annual subsidies annually. That amounts to more than half – 52 percent – of total benefits distributed to energy sectors by the federal government.