Bio-Hope, Bio Hype
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originally posted at:
http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/200709/bio.asp
Bio-Hope, Bio-Hype
A users' guide to biofuels
By Frances Cerra Whittelsey
September/October 2007
Chart: Comparing Biofuels
Editor's note: The chart in Sierra's print version stated that vehicles using B99/100 biodiesel require special modifications. Unless the car is using 100 percent waste vegetable oil, the only modification necessary is to replace natural rubber fuel hoses on older vehicles. Modern diesel vehicles can use biodiesel with no modifications. The chart has been corrected.
IN OUR BEAUTIFUL BIOFUEL FUTURE, cars and trucks are powered by wood chips, prairie grass, wheat straw, fast-food grease, garbage, and even algae--whichever material is most plentiful locally and least damaging environmentally. With cars getting 40 miles a gallon or better, greenhouse-gas emissions plummet. The biofuel revolution sparks an economic boom by keeping U.S. dollars at home instead of sending them to Middle Eastern sheikhs.
Biofuels can be made from nearly any organic material. By essentially recycling carbon from living things (as opposed to the ancient biomass in coal and petroleum), biofuels help fight global warming. But some could also add to our environmental problems: In an equally possible but less rosy future, governments and agribusiness clear rainforests and wetlands for vast plantations of biofuel crops like oil palms. With arable land increasingly devoted to fuel production, food prices push higher. The roads clog with biofuel SUVs that still get lousy mileage. Global warming slows insignificantly, if at all.
Which future is ours? It depends on choices being made today. At present, for example, corn is the source of 95 percent of the United States' ethanol. Although politically popular in farm states, corn is a problematic source of fuel: It requires good land and petroleum-intensive cultivation and fertilization, and it can also readily feed both humans and livestock. (Food prices are already increasing because of competition with ethanol.) If the mill processing the corn is powered by coal, ethanol produces more net greenhouse gases than gasoline does. "It's easier to do bad than good in this area," warns Dan Kammen, founding director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the University of California at Berkeley. "But there's also potential to make the production of fuel more decentralized and more democratic." The chart below lays out the pros and cons of the major biofuels; now it's up to us to get the right mix.
Virtue Rewarded
California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) has boosted bioenergy by ordering that the carbon content of all fuels sold in the state be cut by 10 percent by 2020. Each fuel will get a life-cycle carbon analysis, showing how much greenhouse gas it emits from origin to tailpipe. Fuel suppliers will need to blend ingredients to meet their reduction targets, which should increase demand for cleaner options like cellulosic ethanol.
The Urge to Splurge
Putting a dent in global warming requires conservation as well as biofuels. A 3 percent increase in fuel-economy standards for vehicles, for example, would save more gas than the entire 2006 production of corn ethanol. Sadly, we've been driving in reverse: For the past five years, U.S. gasoline consumption has increased by 1.4 percent annually, and diesel by 3.6 percent.
Conserving Critters Too
The rush to biofuels is putting the squeeze on wildlife. Nearly 40 million acres of farmland are currently idled under the federal Conservation Reserve Program, which seeks to reduce soil erosion, improve water quality, and provide habitat. The Bush administration has proposed that land set aside under the program be converted to fuel production. The proposal is part of the 2007 Farm Bill, which is likely to be voted on this fall.
Best-Case Scenario
The best sources of biomass for fuel are waste products and native perennial grasses, which provide more usable energy per acre than corn ethanol or soybean diesel. In fact, says a report by the University of Minnesota, fuels made from native plants can actually be "carbon negative," because they store excess carbon dioxide in their roots and the surrounding soil, reducing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere.
Crying in Your Biodiesel
Here's where some get off the biofuel bus: It's raising the price of beer. In Germany, subsidies for corn and rapeseed production are squeezing production of barley--an important ingredient in the national beverage. The effects of higher barley prices are starting to appear at the tap. The price of a liter mug of beer at this year's Oktoberfest, for example, will be up by 5.5 percent.
Saturday, September 22, 2007
China plans to mine Helium-3 for fusion power
===================================================
originally posted at:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/10/moon_helium/
China to map 'every inch' of the moon
There's Helium-3 in them thar hills
By Lucy Sherriff → More by this author
Published Friday 10th August 2007 12:20 GMT
China has announced plans to map "every inch" of the surface of the Moon as part of its ambitious space-exploration programme.
The NSA (National Space Administration) also made no bones about China's commercial interest in space, telling reporters that the Moon holds the key to future generation of energy.
Ouyang Ziyuan, head of the first phase of lunar exploration, is quoted on government-sanctioned news site ChinaNews.com describing plans to collect three dimensional images of the Moon. He also outlined plans to exploit the vast quantities of Helium-3 thought to lie buried in lunar rock.
"There are altogether 15 tons of helium-3 on Earth, while on the Moon, the total amount of Helium-3 can reach one to five million tons," he said.
"Helium-3 is considered as a long-term, stable, safe, clean and cheap material for human beings to get nuclear energy through controllable nuclear fusion experiments. If we human beings can finally use such energy material to generate electricity, then China might need 10 tons of helium-3 every year and in the world, about 100 tons of helium-3 will be needed every year."
The country's space programme is split into three phases - the first is "circling the Moon", the second "landing on the Moon", and the third "returning to Earth".
Earlier this year, the Chinese space agency outlined plans to launch the first probe in the second half of 2007. It has now also given a few more details of its plans for phase two, which will see an unmanned rover land on the lunar surface in 2010 and "meticulously" survey the area in which it lands. A sample-return mission is slated for 2012.
===================================================
originally posted at:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/10/moon_helium/
China to map 'every inch' of the moon
There's Helium-3 in them thar hills
By Lucy Sherriff → More by this author
Published Friday 10th August 2007 12:20 GMT
China has announced plans to map "every inch" of the surface of the Moon as part of its ambitious space-exploration programme.
The NSA (National Space Administration) also made no bones about China's commercial interest in space, telling reporters that the Moon holds the key to future generation of energy.
Ouyang Ziyuan, head of the first phase of lunar exploration, is quoted on government-sanctioned news site ChinaNews.com describing plans to collect three dimensional images of the Moon. He also outlined plans to exploit the vast quantities of Helium-3 thought to lie buried in lunar rock.
"There are altogether 15 tons of helium-3 on Earth, while on the Moon, the total amount of Helium-3 can reach one to five million tons," he said.
"Helium-3 is considered as a long-term, stable, safe, clean and cheap material for human beings to get nuclear energy through controllable nuclear fusion experiments. If we human beings can finally use such energy material to generate electricity, then China might need 10 tons of helium-3 every year and in the world, about 100 tons of helium-3 will be needed every year."
The country's space programme is split into three phases - the first is "circling the Moon", the second "landing on the Moon", and the third "returning to Earth".
Earlier this year, the Chinese space agency outlined plans to launch the first probe in the second half of 2007. It has now also given a few more details of its plans for phase two, which will see an unmanned rover land on the lunar surface in 2010 and "meticulously" survey the area in which it lands. A sample-return mission is slated for 2012.
The Carpetbagger Report explains the stubborn, groundless doubt about global warming
=============================================================================
originally posted at:
http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/12703.html#more-12703
A new entry for the WSJ contest
Posted August 29th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
Share This | Spotlight | Permalink
A few weeks ago, I noticed a few bloggers debating which Wall Street Journal editorial was the most fundamentally dishonest. There are almost too many pieces to choose from, but I’d argue that today’s gem on global warming is at least as bad as anything I’ve ever seen the paper run.
You know the story: NASA slightly revised its record of average annual temperatures in the United States since 2000 after a Canadian blogger and global warming skeptic found a small computer error. The glitch altered the overall global mean temperatures by one-one-thousandth of a degree, NASA corrected its charts, and the agency gave the person who noticed full credit for the catch. The trends remain the same, and scientists’ understanding of climate change is entirely unaffected.
Limbaugh, Fox News, and conservative blogs threw a fit, but their whining had no basis in reality. Once the right’s claims had been thoroughly debunked, conservatives moved on — and today the Wall Street Journal editorial board moved in.
The new data undermine another frightful talking point from environmentalists, which is that six of the 10 hottest years on record have occurred since 1990. Wrong. NASA now says six of the 10 warmest years were in the 1930s and 1940s, and that was before the bulk of industrial CO2 emissions were released into the atmosphere.
Look, this is just silly. The minor computer error was entirely inconsequential. As Brad Plumer recently explained, “The global temperate record, in which 2005 is still the hottest year and Al Gore’s claim that nine of the ten hottest years in history have occurred since 1995 is still operative…. Nothing’s really changed. All told, it’s a tempest that deserves a very tiny teapot.” But the Journal keeps hacking away.
If nothing else, the snafu calls into question how much faith to put in climate change models. In the 1990s, virtually all climate models predicted warming from 2000-2010, but the new data confirm that so far there has been no warming trend in this decade for the U.S. Whoops.
It’s hard not to appreciate the WSJ’s use of the phrase “calls into question.” The point is to just blur the line and create confusion, so that the audience will throw up its arms in frustration and look at this as a he-said/she-said controversy. That’s the m.o. global-warming deniers have been using for quite while now.
The Journal’s claims are just wrong. Worse, the paper must realize it’s wrong, but it’s making the claims anyway.
Kevin posted a very helpful chart a couple of weeks ago showing the global warming trend, accounting for the corrected glitch. It’s unmistakable — and easy enough to read that even a WSJ editor can understand it.
The Journal added this fascinating observation in its editorial:
So far this year NASA has issued at least five press releases that could be described as alarming on the pace of climate change. But the correction of its overestimate of global warming was merely posted on the agency’s Web site.
Got that? The Wall Street Journal is disappointed that NASA didn’t issue a press release to highlight a statistically-insignificant change to a computer model that continues to show the same global warming trend that existed before.
The Journal’s editors better enjoy this now, because once Rupert Murdoch takes over, there’s no way he’ll tolerate sloppy, uninformed, breathtakingly dishonest editorials like this one. Oh wait….
=============================================================================
originally posted at:
http://www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com/archives/12703.html#more-12703
A new entry for the WSJ contest
Posted August 29th, 2007 at 12:45 pm
Share This | Spotlight | Permalink
A few weeks ago, I noticed a few bloggers debating which Wall Street Journal editorial was the most fundamentally dishonest. There are almost too many pieces to choose from, but I’d argue that today’s gem on global warming is at least as bad as anything I’ve ever seen the paper run.
You know the story: NASA slightly revised its record of average annual temperatures in the United States since 2000 after a Canadian blogger and global warming skeptic found a small computer error. The glitch altered the overall global mean temperatures by one-one-thousandth of a degree, NASA corrected its charts, and the agency gave the person who noticed full credit for the catch. The trends remain the same, and scientists’ understanding of climate change is entirely unaffected.
Limbaugh, Fox News, and conservative blogs threw a fit, but their whining had no basis in reality. Once the right’s claims had been thoroughly debunked, conservatives moved on — and today the Wall Street Journal editorial board moved in.
The new data undermine another frightful talking point from environmentalists, which is that six of the 10 hottest years on record have occurred since 1990. Wrong. NASA now says six of the 10 warmest years were in the 1930s and 1940s, and that was before the bulk of industrial CO2 emissions were released into the atmosphere.
Look, this is just silly. The minor computer error was entirely inconsequential. As Brad Plumer recently explained, “The global temperate record, in which 2005 is still the hottest year and Al Gore’s claim that nine of the ten hottest years in history have occurred since 1995 is still operative…. Nothing’s really changed. All told, it’s a tempest that deserves a very tiny teapot.” But the Journal keeps hacking away.
If nothing else, the snafu calls into question how much faith to put in climate change models. In the 1990s, virtually all climate models predicted warming from 2000-2010, but the new data confirm that so far there has been no warming trend in this decade for the U.S. Whoops.
It’s hard not to appreciate the WSJ’s use of the phrase “calls into question.” The point is to just blur the line and create confusion, so that the audience will throw up its arms in frustration and look at this as a he-said/she-said controversy. That’s the m.o. global-warming deniers have been using for quite while now.
The Journal’s claims are just wrong. Worse, the paper must realize it’s wrong, but it’s making the claims anyway.
Kevin posted a very helpful chart a couple of weeks ago showing the global warming trend, accounting for the corrected glitch. It’s unmistakable — and easy enough to read that even a WSJ editor can understand it.
The Journal added this fascinating observation in its editorial:
So far this year NASA has issued at least five press releases that could be described as alarming on the pace of climate change. But the correction of its overestimate of global warming was merely posted on the agency’s Web site.
Got that? The Wall Street Journal is disappointed that NASA didn’t issue a press release to highlight a statistically-insignificant change to a computer model that continues to show the same global warming trend that existed before.
The Journal’s editors better enjoy this now, because once Rupert Murdoch takes over, there’s no way he’ll tolerate sloppy, uninformed, breathtakingly dishonest editorials like this one. Oh wait….
Marc Elrich - It is time for Montgomery County to enact a growth policy that makes sense.
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originally posted at :
http://www.gazette.net/stories/091207/montcol201233_32359.shtml
It is time for Montgomery County to enact a growth policy that makes sense.
For too long, development proceeded in a way that packed our roads and schools and over-taxed our fire and rescue, police, recreation and social services. This hurt our quality of life and our ability to meet our children’s educational needs, while straining public safety resources and damaging the environment.
We got in this mess by allowing growth that did not pay its way, leaving average taxpayers with the bill. Growth proponents like to say that the county failed to build the roads and schools, ignoring the reality that the county didn’t have the money to build these things precisely because it didn’t collect adequate development fees and was politically unwilling to impose the massive tax increases on residents that would have been required to support growth. The problems we face are the legacy of county policies.
The county cannot afford to adopt a growth policy that pretends that there are no problems or fails to take the steps necessary to address them. We need rules, guidelines and development fees that are permanent, fair and adequate to meet our needs. We need policies that allow development only when and where the infrastructure is truly adequate, not policies that trade away our quality of life.
Stricter policies wouldn’t stop growth or hurt the economy. They will have little impact on the current cycle because there are already 28,000 houses and commercial space for more than 100,000 jobs approved that will not be affected by changes to growth policy — construction that won’t pay the true cost of the necessary infrastructure, adding to our problems. The housing alone represents seven to 12 years of on-going construction. The steps we take today are to prepare for the future. Most importantly, whatever the state of the economy and the building market, new development requires new infrastructure that has to be paid for by somebody.
The Planning Board recently forwarded a set of recommendations on growth to the County Council. It had good proposals such as development impact fees that for the first time generally reflect the true cost of providing the needed roads and schools. It was the welcome start to paying attention to long-term facility, fiscal, economic, environmental and social sustainability.
Unfortunately, those proposals fall short when addressing growth management. They essentially say that we have adequate transportation capacity because there are buses and therefore development can proceed unchecked. They recommend allowing entire school clusters to go as high as 135 percent of capacity. Ignoring congestion and school over-crowding is not acceptable.
For all the talk about Montgomery County being the ‘‘model” of good planning, the reality is that other jurisdictions are often more deliberate and more creative in struggling with the same challenges that we face.
We must recognize that a continuation of urban sprawl and over-reliance on single occupancy vehicles is counter to everything we know has to happen in order to fight global warming. Our design and planning has to address that by building transportation infrastructure that meets public needs, but for most commuters, the public transportation system is simply inadequate — too slow, too infrequent and too unreliable — to meet their needs.
We can’t ask future development to pay for past mistakes, but we can avoid making those same mistakes again. There are more creative ways to do this than we’ve employed and we should explore them. As a general principle, growth should be focused where the infrastructure can support it, kept out of areas where it can’t, and occur in a way that benefits our community.
Too many proposals, like some of the transportation ideas the council has seen, aren’t really about improving things, but about allowing things to get worse while narrowly avoiding the worst-case scenario. I don’t accept that worse is either acceptable or inevitable. I challenge all of us to think about what kind of community we want and to boldly go about creating it.
A sound growth policy should lead us to a place we want to be, not ask us to accept a continuing decline in our quality of life.
Marc Elrich, a Democrat from Takoma Park, is an at-large member of the County Council. His e-mail address is Councilmember.Elrich@ MontgomeryCountyMD.gov
==========================================================
originally posted at :
http://www.gazette.net/stories/091207/montcol201233_32359.shtml
It is time for Montgomery County to enact a growth policy that makes sense.
For too long, development proceeded in a way that packed our roads and schools and over-taxed our fire and rescue, police, recreation and social services. This hurt our quality of life and our ability to meet our children’s educational needs, while straining public safety resources and damaging the environment.
We got in this mess by allowing growth that did not pay its way, leaving average taxpayers with the bill. Growth proponents like to say that the county failed to build the roads and schools, ignoring the reality that the county didn’t have the money to build these things precisely because it didn’t collect adequate development fees and was politically unwilling to impose the massive tax increases on residents that would have been required to support growth. The problems we face are the legacy of county policies.
The county cannot afford to adopt a growth policy that pretends that there are no problems or fails to take the steps necessary to address them. We need rules, guidelines and development fees that are permanent, fair and adequate to meet our needs. We need policies that allow development only when and where the infrastructure is truly adequate, not policies that trade away our quality of life.
Stricter policies wouldn’t stop growth or hurt the economy. They will have little impact on the current cycle because there are already 28,000 houses and commercial space for more than 100,000 jobs approved that will not be affected by changes to growth policy — construction that won’t pay the true cost of the necessary infrastructure, adding to our problems. The housing alone represents seven to 12 years of on-going construction. The steps we take today are to prepare for the future. Most importantly, whatever the state of the economy and the building market, new development requires new infrastructure that has to be paid for by somebody.
The Planning Board recently forwarded a set of recommendations on growth to the County Council. It had good proposals such as development impact fees that for the first time generally reflect the true cost of providing the needed roads and schools. It was the welcome start to paying attention to long-term facility, fiscal, economic, environmental and social sustainability.
Unfortunately, those proposals fall short when addressing growth management. They essentially say that we have adequate transportation capacity because there are buses and therefore development can proceed unchecked. They recommend allowing entire school clusters to go as high as 135 percent of capacity. Ignoring congestion and school over-crowding is not acceptable.
For all the talk about Montgomery County being the ‘‘model” of good planning, the reality is that other jurisdictions are often more deliberate and more creative in struggling with the same challenges that we face.
We must recognize that a continuation of urban sprawl and over-reliance on single occupancy vehicles is counter to everything we know has to happen in order to fight global warming. Our design and planning has to address that by building transportation infrastructure that meets public needs, but for most commuters, the public transportation system is simply inadequate — too slow, too infrequent and too unreliable — to meet their needs.
We can’t ask future development to pay for past mistakes, but we can avoid making those same mistakes again. There are more creative ways to do this than we’ve employed and we should explore them. As a general principle, growth should be focused where the infrastructure can support it, kept out of areas where it can’t, and occur in a way that benefits our community.
Too many proposals, like some of the transportation ideas the council has seen, aren’t really about improving things, but about allowing things to get worse while narrowly avoiding the worst-case scenario. I don’t accept that worse is either acceptable or inevitable. I challenge all of us to think about what kind of community we want and to boldly go about creating it.
A sound growth policy should lead us to a place we want to be, not ask us to accept a continuing decline in our quality of life.
Marc Elrich, a Democrat from Takoma Park, is an at-large member of the County Council. His e-mail address is Councilmember.Elrich@ MontgomeryCountyMD.gov
Studies show Intercounty Connector will not ease Beltway, interstate congestion
====================================================================================
Originally posted at:
http://www.gazette.net/stories/091907/montlet213526_32365.shtml
Studies show Intercounty Connector will not ease Beltway, interstate congestion
The Gazette’s Sept. 12 editorial, ‘‘Now more than ever, we need the ICC,” included major misstatements and omissions.
First, the editorial stated that the 18-mile Intercounty Connector would have ‘‘reasonable tolls,” but didn’t mention that the state anticipates round trip, rush-hour tolls of $7 a day in 2010, according to the 2006 Final Environmental Impact Statement for the ICC (see Environmental Consequences, IV-350 of the FEIS at www.iccstudy.org).
Second, The Gazette continues to cite Beltway and interstate congestion as an argument for the ICC even though the Maryland Department of Transportation confirmed in the FEIS that the ICC wouldn’t reduce congestion on Interstate 270, the Beltway or I-95 (see Environmental Consequences, IV-352 and IV-380).
Third, the editorial omitted mention of a better east-west connection than the ICC: widening Muncaster Mill Road, and Routes 28 and 198 from Georgia Avenue to U.S. 29 to four lanes throughout. The estimated cost is $350 million, a small fraction of what the multi-billion dollar ICC would cost.
Fourth, the editorial wrongly stated that the Bush administration selected an ICC alignment that would have ‘‘the least impact on the environment.” In fact, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of the Interior are on record stating that the northern alignment would cause less damage than the one selected. In addition, federal agency staff concluded in January 2003 that the ICC was not a good candidate for a fast-tracked environmental review. President Bush disregarded the advice of professionals in both cases.
Fifth, contrary to the editorial, construction of the toll highway is not ‘‘already under way,” although some preparatory clearing has been done. The ICC is in court, not in concrete.
The Gazette is correct that transportation needs have been shortchanged for years — all the more reason why Maryland can’t afford to waste billions of dollars on the ICC high-toll highway. Scarce funds should be spent on less damaging, cost-effective projects like road widenings described above, and for crucial transit projects such as the Corridor Cities Transitway, which would bring light rail from the Shady Grove Metro to Clarksburg, and the Purple Line.
Philip M. Andrews, Gaithersburg
The writer, a Democrat, represents District 3 on the County Council.
====================================================================================
Originally posted at:
http://www.gazette.net/stories/091907/montlet213526_32365.shtml
Studies show Intercounty Connector will not ease Beltway, interstate congestion
The Gazette’s Sept. 12 editorial, ‘‘Now more than ever, we need the ICC,” included major misstatements and omissions.
First, the editorial stated that the 18-mile Intercounty Connector would have ‘‘reasonable tolls,” but didn’t mention that the state anticipates round trip, rush-hour tolls of $7 a day in 2010, according to the 2006 Final Environmental Impact Statement for the ICC (see Environmental Consequences, IV-350 of the FEIS at www.iccstudy.org).
Second, The Gazette continues to cite Beltway and interstate congestion as an argument for the ICC even though the Maryland Department of Transportation confirmed in the FEIS that the ICC wouldn’t reduce congestion on Interstate 270, the Beltway or I-95 (see Environmental Consequences, IV-352 and IV-380).
Third, the editorial omitted mention of a better east-west connection than the ICC: widening Muncaster Mill Road, and Routes 28 and 198 from Georgia Avenue to U.S. 29 to four lanes throughout. The estimated cost is $350 million, a small fraction of what the multi-billion dollar ICC would cost.
Fourth, the editorial wrongly stated that the Bush administration selected an ICC alignment that would have ‘‘the least impact on the environment.” In fact, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Department of the Interior are on record stating that the northern alignment would cause less damage than the one selected. In addition, federal agency staff concluded in January 2003 that the ICC was not a good candidate for a fast-tracked environmental review. President Bush disregarded the advice of professionals in both cases.
Fifth, contrary to the editorial, construction of the toll highway is not ‘‘already under way,” although some preparatory clearing has been done. The ICC is in court, not in concrete.
The Gazette is correct that transportation needs have been shortchanged for years — all the more reason why Maryland can’t afford to waste billions of dollars on the ICC high-toll highway. Scarce funds should be spent on less damaging, cost-effective projects like road widenings described above, and for crucial transit projects such as the Corridor Cities Transitway, which would bring light rail from the Shady Grove Metro to Clarksburg, and the Purple Line.
Philip M. Andrews, Gaithersburg
The writer, a Democrat, represents District 3 on the County Council.
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