WastedEnergy

Topics on Energy, Resources, Waste and Culture

One for a Rainy Day

Posted by wastedenergy on March 7, 2011

OK, so, suppose you’ve got no sunshine, the wind’s not blowing, your battery is blown out, your ultracaps are busted, you’ve got no trashy fuel left to burn, and for some reason even your geothermal flux capacitor is broken, but you still need some energy. What else are we supposed to do?

A lot of people will try and tell you the only way to balance things out is with natural gas. Well, that might not always be the worst idea in the world, but first check thyself, forst you wreck thyself. Should we really be using natural gas as the first option, as so many people seem to be suggesting? Is it really going to help us transition to renewable energy? I find the proposition dubious, as you probably know by now. Moreover, natural gas is too valuable to be wasting trying to replace coal and oil. We might actually need it for those moments when the lights all but go out.

And, it’s not exactly as clean as some folks might be trying to tell you, either.

Well, we sure fracked that one up.

So, what can we do to cut these guys down to a more appropriate size?

Let me give you my thoughts on a big part of the answer.

Hydropower. Like trashpower, it’s one of those things that gets trashed a lot by otherwise well-intentioned environmentalists. Don’t get me wrong: there’s been many an ecosystem that’s been wrecked before being checked by huge dams. But just like with waste-to-energy, with better living through technology, we can not only fix the problems that were making it dirty before, we can also make it a powerful ally in our quest to rid the world of dirty energy. But what do I mean by that exactly?

Hydropower is good for many things, first of which is providing a steady lightening of the load for when your other sources of lightning power won’t fire.  Let’s have a quick look at the Netherlands as an example. They know how to do it up proper, when it comes to both liquid and gas (sidebar: they also recycle half their trash, and burn the other half – for energy). First, they know how to save their gas for when the time is right. Compare them to Britain, which Thatcherized its gas industry and is now facing an energy crisis of epic proportions that might be fixable only with a nuclear fix, at least in the short term. I still have faith that they’ll get the offshore wind and wave power figured out, though – they have some of the best resources in the world, once they figure out how to tap into them. The Netherlands, on the other hand, owns the largest gas field in the North Sea, the largest in Europe even, instead of letting it own them via corporate control. The country has long had a penchant for demanding individual sacrifice for the greater good, though not so much that the State sucks all the flavor out of life. They’ve done a good job of conserving it and of actually tapping into the smaller, scattered fields first, so as to save the best for last. Eat your heart out, Bakken Shale and Kochheads everywhere.

Not only that, but they’re actually finding more of it all the time. The good stuff, too – no fracking required. What can I say, the Dutch know how it’s done. Keep burning that eternal flame.

But enough fire for now - let’s get to the water part.

Water, water, everywhere. We’re going to get wet. Lest you think those crazy Dutch were only about the windmills, let me be blunt with you: they know how to roll with the tides as well, and also a little thing about rolling on a river. They may be living in Flatland, but they’ve still got quite a bit of hydropower going on in their own little world too. And monster dams big enough to block out the sun aren’t the only way of doing things either: if you’ve never heard of microhydro, well, it’s time for you to get crackin’ and frackin’ on a little bit of your OWN research. Talk about untapped potential!

That’s not to say, of course, that there isn’t something to say about big hydro as well, since sometimes, as she said, you better go big or go home. Just look at what America’s Hat has to offer up, if we can only manage to get some transmission lines past those confounded nimbies. Power to the people, anyone?

Think classic was the only way I could do it? Here’s a little new wave that might be up your alley, and I’m not talking wave power, although that’s great too. Inspect this gadget, and I’m willing to bet you’ll go WOWZERS, or possibly even YAKAWOW!!! The dreaded Dr. Koch has got nothing on this one. I’m talking, of course, about the variable speed water turbine. We’ve been fangling this one for a while, but it’s ready to roll out now. You see, one of the problems that tends to arise is when the water level falls, and the pressure drops out. The solution? Add a turbine that can go at any speed and still pump out juice. Inconsistent generator speed got you down? All it takes is an extra flux capacitor to smooth out the output a little bit. So simple, you can even do it yourself.

Hey, hipster techno fans out there, I got the news: this time, we’re keeping the lights on. Wouldn’t want to miss out on that quadruple rainbow, now, would ya? As for me, I’m always on, even when I’m out cold. Five stars. Heads up. Look out below. Shoot past the moon, reach for the stars. Forget the rivers you thought you knew, try a waterfall instead. See ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya.

I HAVE THE POWER OF A THOUSAND SUNS!!!!!!!!!!

Posted in Energy Production, The Ether, Water and Soil | Tagged: , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Slice and Dice

Posted by wastedenergy on March 5, 2011

This is my diss track. Scrubs, you see, get no love from me. None whatsoever. Not a drop. Not even once. No energy wasted, and once I’m done with this one, the pigeons will be squirming in their borrowed shoes, and no further diss will be necessary.

How many Dicks does it take to frack to the center of the earth and make it pop? Answer: only one, and he used to be the CEO of a little company called Halliburton. These same bad boys who brought you boys back in body bags and $20 canned meals not fit for dog food not only cemented BP’s bad drill job in place to make the history books, but also invented a little process called fracking, you see. Lest you think they were coming along with a brand new ride, as so boldly pronounced by Exxon and their ilk, they invented it in 1947. That was before we even invented the hydrogen bomb. Talk about primitive!

While Republicons and Decepticrats were both dicking around trying to figure out how to make a quick buck for the private stash, the good people of America were paying the true price for their shenanigans: once again, oil in the water, in this case countless millions upon millions of gallons of the freshest stuff instead of fire on the salty seas. Well, what’s a headache and a few bloody noses here and there? A small price to pay for cheap natural gas, right? Well, not so much on that cheap part. ‘Cause it wasn’t just the good Americans who paid that price: I got news for you tea party types, there’s more than one way for a cat to catch a mouse. And by that, I mean there’s more than one way to subsidize drilling: environmental externalities aside, it was the shareholders who were paying that two or three times the price on the futures market for each thousand cubic feet. Fiscal conservatives? Hardly, these guys have a mountain of debt all the way to the Kingdom Come they’ll be sending us all to climb on our own two feet if they have their way.

Speaking of which: did you know these guys want to cut funding for the next-generation energy technologies we need to save our skin? Yes, that’s right, apparently the future is a low hanging fruit to some, and they don’t mind picking it right off the tree before it’s even gotten to its full size, let alone ripened. Apparently, anything that slices even a dollar off the profit margin of Koch Industries is considered bad for America. Well, it’s certainly bad for general motoring, that much we know without a doubt. The conspiracy to which I refer, of course, is the attempt to de-fund the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. This would be roughly the equivalent of ending the Space Program at Mercury.  We may be abusing plastic like it’s our job, but remember that if it weren’t for public sector investment in science and technology, we’d never have the stuff in the first place, and I don’t just mean trashy bags, but the also what lets me tell you this over the tubes right at this very moment. Let’s hope these boys get caught Red-handed just like the CIA with their friends in the Taliban and left and right, but mostly Right, all over South America. Talk about Forbidden Fruit! (Sidebar: do I even dare mention the extraterrestrials? Nah, save that one for another day. First things first.)

And if that wasn’t enough, they dare not touch those Red State agricultural subsidies either, oh, no sir! When it comes to pretending to be pound-wise, these guys have even the old Reagan, Reagan II, and Reagan III and IV administrations beat! Oh yeah, I went there, and I’ll even go a step further: everyone’s beloved Saint Reagan was even worse than Bush II. Sure, he may have had the gift of gab, but just because a pigeon can cluck doesn’t mean he has anything to say. His vision for America included painting red stripes right over the blue background for the stars, and I don’t mean a smooth brew from Jamaica: we’re talking red and white bottles of high fructose chemical poison processed from the fruits of God’s Green Earth. If only we had the foresight to support real green agriculture, we might be eating a lot more fruits and vegetables, but corporate criminals get first dibs when it comes to government handouts, so it’s not just the price of wheat going up these days, but cabbage and tomatoes too. Shrub, grandchild of the famous friend of fascists, may have taken it to the next level in dropping a cool trillion on fruitless wars in the Mideast, but his ideological predecessor and the source of his worst Dicks and Donnies was the one who set the stage. Reagan invented neoconservatism, and you just can’t top that when it comes to Worst President Ever.

Last, but not least, I’m willing to bet some private waste management contractor has some skin in the game when it comes to the recent dicing of the Green the Capitol initiative. And de-funding the EPA, whose total budget amounts to a mere handful of billions, isn’t exactly the best way to balance the budget. Remember, not every office has its head in the sand like the one that lets the haters keep hating on waste-to-energy so much: these are the folks who make sure our rivers don’t catch on fire and air doesn’t contain enough smoky soot to choke a camel. Next time you need to pull off a balancing act, try using your head instead.

Look at that, I even managed to hit all seven categories, and then some. Eat your heart out, double rainbow, I got sixteen ways ’til Sunday to call out a Scrub and make him run crying back to the hole he came from! Speaking of which, it might be time to return to our ongoing discussion soon. But ah, as the Good Book says (and a little bird or two as well): to everything, there is a season. How I do love Spring!

Posted in Agriculture and Food, Air, Climate Change, Energy Consumption, Energy Production, Solid Waste, The Ether, Urban Planning, Water and Soil | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Mislead By Example

Posted by wastedenergy on March 2, 2011

Pro Tip for all those wannabe budget slashers out there: Kimchi is not a low-hanging fruit, even if you can’t pronounce it (pro tip #2: it’s pronounced how it’s spelled, and it’s easier to figure out than your last name, Mr. You-know-who-you-are).

“Not helping my buddies in the oil business makes me sad.”

In case you missed it, the Houseteria now looks a lot different from how it did during your last visit. Gone are the recycled paper takeout trays and biodegradable eco-plastic cups and utensils, the myriad eye-catching compostables and recyclables receptacles to grab both your attention and your waste product. In their place now stands a mountain of garbage-to-be, in the form of styrofoam cups and Teabaggers.

What more is there to say, really?

I know, it all amounts to peanuts in the end. But don’t you think our Hill of beans should hold up their end of the bargain?

 

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Posted in Agriculture and Food, Energy Consumption, Solid Waste | Tagged: , , , , | 2 Comments »

Zap

Posted by wastedenergy on February 27, 2011

Are you a math geek? Like solving problems? Needed a quick jolt to knock you into action? This one’s for you.

Say hello to my little friend: he’s gonna pop a cap in you. An ultracap, that is. Never heard of him? You have now.

First, a brief explanation of the concept: an ultracapacitor is an energy storage technology that has been around for a couple of decades, but whose potential has only begun to be realized, let alone exploited. It stores electrical energy, but the idea is very different from a conventional battery: rather than storing the charge as chemical potential energy, charge is captured as it sits along a surface area, usually carbon nanotubes or some other nanomaterial. Since an electron occupies essentially no volume, it is able to lie flat along the surface, and so the greater the interior surface area of the ultracapacitor cell, the more charge is able to be stored. Because the exploitable area is based on two dimensions but is stored inside a body built in three dimensions, there is no theoretical limit to the amount of charge that can be stored in a cell of a given volume; the only limit is a practical one, related to how much accessible surface area we can create using the materials available to us and the amount of energy available to be stored in this way.

OK, so what’s the big deal?

The big deal is that while we were all asleep at the wheel of our electric cars thinking that lithium-ion batteries were the end-all-be-all for electric energy storage and that a concept over two hundred years old (the voltaic pile, or battery) was all we had in our arsenal for the fast-charging and energy-dense storage devices we need to make clean energy sources like solar power viable at the scales and in the applications where we really need them, those whiz kids over at Argonne National Laboratory were busy working with extraterrestrial intelligence to fangle something truly new and exciting.

Currently, ultracapacitors using nanocarbon materials are already in use for fast-charging hybrid and electric buses and a few other applications. But their potential extends far beyond current usage. As usual, better manufacturing techniques, improved technological concepts and materials, and economies of scale will bring down the cost and improve the performance of these devices. I’m talking about fast-charging electric vehicles of all types, capable of storing more than a few dozen miles’ worth of charge. Not only that, but we can use them to store energy from home-scale solar energy production systems as well as the electric grid, to save up energy for when our shining star can’t quite reach us. Skeptics will say the technology isn’t ready yet, but I say it’s just a matter of time – and a little effort. Hey, politicos: instead of slashing energy research budgets like the blind leading the blind, why don’t you think about cutting off the arms of the armed forces instead, and doubling, tripling, or even sextupling the budget for our national labs so they can get this stuff off the bench and onto the market where we need it?

Of course, it won’t solve everything: we still need to conserve our natural resources and ecosystems properly and with respect to the needs of future generations, and we still need to actually develop and build out the clean energy sources we’ll use to charge these things up in the first place. But put all the pieces together, and you begin to see that it can be done. We have the technology, and we can build it.

Think you’ve seen it all? I got news for you: you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

I recall, lightning struck itself…

Posted in Energy Production, The Ether | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

You Got Lynched

Posted by wastedenergy on February 25, 2011

Crisis over! You can go back to whatever you were doing now. Especially if what you were doing was sitting in traffic alone in your hulking monster of an SUV.

That’s right folks, I’ve finally seen the light and decided to change my ways. It’ll be “peak oil” no more now. Instead, what we have today is “the cornucopia of eternal oily glory holes all over the cake you’ll be having and eating too.” Move over, creamy nougat center, we’ve just drilled a little deeper and struck a caramel gusher.

Let me back up a bit, since you might have missed master opinionator Michael C. Lynch’s op-ed in the New York Times today. It was so brilliant, I had to wear my sun shades to read it, and my eyes still hurt. So once again (and since the letter space in the Grey Lady is too small to point out all the ways the guy is right) let’s just go point by point here to praise all the wonderful things he has to say and feel stupid for ever thinking “peak oil” might have been a problem.

First, Mr. Lynch aptly points out that peak oil is just a “theory,” you know, just like anthropogenic climate change, gravity, evolution, and round-earthness. We would be remiss to avoid confirming that it is in fact a complete theory and not merely a set of facts.

Next, he adds that Saddad al-Husseini, source of the recent WikiLeaks cable stating that Saudi Arabia overstated its reserves by 40%, has been making such claims for years, and that this news is really nothing new at all. Indeed, the alarm bells have been sounding for years, and it is good to see that at least a few insiders with their own skin in the game have felt the need to call ‘em like they see ‘em, since in the end the truth is more important than making a little extra dough.

He kindly gives us the “correct” number for Saudi oil reserves, some 260 billion barrels. These are magic barrels, of course, since a new one reappears in the exact same spot in the ground for every one that is pumped out, which is why Saudi oil reserves have stood constant at that same 260 billion barrels (or we could call it 267 billion to give a better air of precision to our figures) since the OPEC quota wars of the 1980′s.

He notes correctly that recovery rates have increased (never mind all the extra water and energy it takes to push out those last few drops of oil and that the net energy from so-called “enhanced” oil recovery is extremely low and possibly negative) while avoiding the totally irrelevant consequence that fields like Ghawar and those in the North Sea have not declined at all, nope, not one bit.

What goes up must continue going up, so say the laws of physics.

Next, he shares the wisdom that “[o]fficials there have discovered approximately 70 major oil fields that they have left untapped over concerns that increased Saudi production would cause global oil prices to collapse.” Of course, we’re also talking about heavy oil, oil contaminated with hydrogen sulfide and vanadium, and oil that takes too much energy to get out of the ground (energy they don’t have because Saudi Arabia is currently in the midst of a natural gas supply crisis). But it’s true, there’s so much unusable oil there that if we were to use it, it might put a brief dent in the inexorable rise in the price of oil.

He then notes, correctly, that Saudi Aramco hasn’t been doing much exploring lately. That’s true, as anyone who has read Matt Simmons’ seminal work Twilight in the Desert can tell you: they already figured out decades ago that poking dry holes in the sand won’t get you very far. True, they discovered a few isolated pockets of oil here and there, but the expense of piping and constructing refineries for all that oil made it simply impossible to make a profit at the oil prices of those days. Maybe now that we are looking at $100+ again for the near future, we might start to see a few droplets, although that still won’t do much about the net energy issue and the very physical limits to growth in oil production.

Peak oil theorists, as Lynch points out, have a “political and environmental agenda.” This much is true as well, and it stands in stark contrast to the oil companies who want us to believe we can continue to rely on their product indefinitely, who have no agenda but the truth. Thankfully, we have them and their “consultants” like Mr. Lynch and his MIT colleague, the notorious climate change denier who changes his tune and says he didn’t really mean to say what he said and that we’re all just misinterpreting him every time the rest of the climate science world points out errors in his work.

Next  he wisely contradicts those wacky eco-freaks by pointing out that “electric cars and wind farms” are “unproven technology.” He’s right; we don’t even know if these things work at all. Just ask the Dutch about wind power, and they’ll tell you it won’t work and you’re silly for even trying.

Finally, he takes us all to task for “wasting taxpayer money” on “boondoggles” intended to avoid a false crisis in the oil supply. Again he’s right; the Iraq war was a Bad Idea.

I couldn’t have said it better myself. So thanks Michael, we couldn’t have asked for a better anniversary present!

Posted in Energy Consumption | Tagged: , , , | 47 Comments »

Triple Rainbow All The Way

Posted by wastedenergy on February 16, 2011

Have you ever seen the sun? You know, that big shiny ball of fire in the sky? Well, you might want to have a second look.

New wave is great, but today we’re talking old school. There’s something to be said for the perfect fusion of form and function, and in terms of modern technology, such an ideal synthesis is found in the concept of a building or community that is in itself an ecosystem, recycling all its products and generating an output at least equal to its energy intake.

A lot of observers of the energy markets tend to dismiss solar power as too expensive, too variable, and too insignificant to have a real impact on energy consumption. As it happens, they are incorrect on all three counts. Photovoltaics and other solar energy technologies become cheaper every day and have already passed grid parity in many markets, and they will continue to do so as the cost of fossil fuels continues to rise inexorably. The problem of variability in renewable energy sources is easily addressed through complementary technologies from advanced batteries and other energy storage technologies to smart grid management and interconnections. And the scale of solar development has been increasing almost faster than we can even measure it, with total worldwide deployment of PV doubling roughly every two years and with “largest solar array yet conceived” headlines gracing the pages of the daily papers with ever-increasing regularity.

Let’s address each of these concerns with the supposed non-viability of solar power point by point.

“It’s too expensive.”

Not so. The typical cost of solar photovoltaics today, factoring in subsidies, is around $2 per watt, which works out to about $0.20 per kilowatt-hour, depending on your latitude and degree of sunshine. That is already a lot less than some of us pay on our electric bills, and some seven times cheaper than twenty years ago. These costs are only likely to continue to decrease as manufacturing processes become more efficient, as new systems like thin-film PV using nano-scale materials become increasingly popular, as economies of scale are achieved within the solar energy industry, and as the energy return on investment for solar energy continues to increase. It truly is just a matter of time before solar and other renewable energy technologies are cheaper than coal not just here and there, but everywhere. And that’s not even counting all the tax revenue we could be generating by forcing coal burners and deepwater drillers to actually pay for all the pollution and excrement they create for once!

“It’s too variable.”

Not when done right. One square meter of photovoltaics is enough to generate between fifty and one hundred watts of power; a rooftop covered with solar panels is enough to generate many times over the amount of energy used by a well-designed building filled with efficient appliances. It’s really just a matter of storing that extra energy, and contrary to what a lot of people seem to believe, we already have one or two ways of doing that. Not only that, but I’m pretty much convinced that ultracapacitors are going to be the wave of the future, not just for their current uses for fast-charging hybrid buses but for home-scale and grid-scale energy storage as well. These machines, which require an additional post on their own to truly describe their potential, store electric charge along a surface rather than as chemical potential energy as in a battery. Imagine how much surface area you can pack into a volume of a given size, combined with the potential of nanotechnology, and you may begin to see things as I do. And let’s not forget that there ARE, in fact, base-loading and on-demand renewables as well, like geothermal and waste-to-energy, that can serve us well to provide backup power when the lights go out in the sky.

“It doesn’t scale.”

Nothing scales better. Indeed, solar energy comes in all sizes, from small domestic-scale hot water or hybrid PV systems to mult-gigawatt power plants that disabuse the land of its former disuses. Now, compare that to an alternative that a lot of “techno-fetishists” like to cite as the future: nuclear power. Not only does solar power not cause radioactive releases or the occasional meltdown and reactor explosion to permanently alter all our DNA as well as that of our children and do little to support the nuclear-weapons-industrial complex, it can also scale both up and down as needed. How are we doing on modular nuclear reactors these days, Bill Gates? Any progress yet? And, it almost goes without saying, but unlike certain other ways of getting energy, it won’t blow out a huge hole in your wallet, nor in the ocean floor.

Are you still unconvinced? Well, haters gonna hate, as they say. But I can paint a sharper picture than they can by pointing out that all the deficiencies they love to cite are merely omissions or oversights. Eat your heart out, guys. In the meantime, the rest of us will go ahead and do our best to actually fix the problem.

What goes down must come up.

Posted in Energy Production, Solid Waste, The Ether | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Green Living for Dummies

Posted by wastedenergy on February 14, 2011

Be careful you don’t dig yourself into too deep a hole of dirt, let your compost pile collapse on top of you and smother you to death. Are you a Doomer? The easiest way to diagnose this problem is by asking yourself a few simple questions.

Do you believe that oil has magical properties such that it is totally impossible for any substance or technology to ever do what it does, but better?

Do you feel so attached to your way of thinking about the world that you refuse to consider anyone else’s viewpoint, ever?

Did you quit your job as a university professor in order to spend your time squeezing goat nipples?

Do you refer to the very idea of ”civilization” as “omnicidal”?

Do you find yourself writing poetry about the inevitable collapse of civilization and how much you’d love to go back to the time when you could whack a potential mate over the head with your club and drag her back to your cave?

If someone suggests that a certain technology might be a good idea, do you find yourself automatically ruling out the possibility that it could ever be a good idea on the grounds that it is technology and all technology (including the Wheel) is automatically Evil?

Do you ever find yourself using the phrase “techno-fetishist” to refer to someone who likes solar panels?

If you answered yes to at least one and a half of the above questions, you might be a Doomer. Please seek counseling so that you can stop being sheeple and contribute some positive value to the world.

Now, here are a few ideas for how you can check yourself, without wrecking yourself – or others. And please, if you simply cannot manage to disabuse yourself of your bad habits of thinking, do us all a favor and keep your damn opinion to yourself. When we want to hear from you, we’ll ask you to chime in, but let’s be clear about one thing: this here energy, environment and resource thing is MY generation’s problem to fix, and the same people who got us into the mess will not be the ones to get us out of it. That much we know for certain. So my suggestions:

1. Use less energy. Each of us individually uses FAR more energy than we need, and far more than really benefits us. Think about your order of operations when you get in the shower. Turn the thermostat down to the lowest comfortable temperature in the winter and up to the highest comfortable temperature in the summer. Find other ways to cool off or warm yourself up, like drinking a nice warm mug of hot cocoa, taking a dip in the pool, or putting on a goddamn sweater for once.

2. Support the development of clean energy technology. If you feel so inclined, work to get a job in this sector yourself so you can actively contribute to the building of real solutions. Energy efficiency and using less energy is all fine and good, but ultimately we need to have renewable sources of energy, transportation systems that don’t rely on rapidly depleting resources, and ways of managing our garbage and other inevitable excrement of society that doesn’t foul up the air we all breathe and the water we all drink. The only way these jobs, the ones we really need, are going to come into existence, is if we work as hard as we possibly can to create them ourselves.

3. Elect the right people. We often become far too automatically cynical about those infamous “Powers That Be,” without ever really considering what we mean. Remember, we are talking about human beings with (hopefully, if they aren’t like the Doomers) fungible minds who are capable of learning new things and maybe even occasionally following that old principle known as “doing the right thing.”

And always remember, if you say something that pisses off one of these Doomers so much that he decides you can’t be friends anymore, that’s when you know you’ve done something right. Keep up the good work!

Posted in Energy Consumption, Solid Waste | Tagged: , , | 1 Comment »

FIRE ME

Posted by wastedenergy on February 11, 2011

It’s been a while since I’ve stated the obvious, but it still needs stating for the oblivious.  If you’re looking for hope for humanity in the face of such daunting challenges as peak oil, the steady obliteration of our natural resource base, and the unkiltering of the global climate, look no further.

There are still those poor, pitiable souls out there who believe the highest possible, and even the only possible reuse of a partially rotted-out apple crate is to keep loading it with apples until cows walk down stairs. If you start talking about burning your old smelly couch and actually getting real some use out of it, they start welling up with tears. Don’t worry, it’s not dioxin or sulfuric acid in the eyes causing your small-minded friend to cry. The real problem is that old habits die hard, and when one has been taught by one’s forebears for so long that a practice is wrong, it can be hard to disabuse onesself of such thinking. In this case, so many are willing to continue believing old facts they picked up from their environmental senseis, including many of the founders of the environmental justice movements whose only real fault is unwillingness to consider newer and better evidence. And to be fair, the fault lies just as equally with the purveyors of our miracle technology, for their own failure to confront the PR disaster of an industry’s history. The problem with such longstanding adherence to old beliefs is that even the old master must die eventually; there’s a reason only a Sith has the power to live forever (and his own actions will eventually undo him anyway). As times change, so must ideas.

They say the best technology is indistinguishable from magic. It’s true in a sense: the very best of what we are able to do with advanced networks of machines is paralleled in nature to the circuitry of a multicellular organism or even an ecosystem, with such a degree of complexity and inter-utility that the base components of the machine on their own could never be used to predict the ultimate outcome of the total system. To the untrained eye, it truly is magic.

Consider for a moment the waste-to-energy plant.

This modern marvel can turn your trash into mere ash, burn away the remnants of rotting pulp from that smelly couch or funked-up mattress so nobody has to blow out their wrist going at it with a box cutter, spring the springs back out of your couch and the nails out of your old crates and pallets with magnets, in the process add value to old fossil fuels so we don’t have to frack everything up so much and blow up so many mountains,  and maybe even pop out few rock solid pellets of aluminum and yes, even gold and silver in the process. And, on top of that, it has none of the variability of most other renewable sources of electricty, with slight variations to the process (and a few precautions) can turn the used product into chemicals or fuels instead of heat if that happens to be more valuable at a particular place in time, and even does so at a cheaper cost than most renewables as well. Why on God’s Green Earth would you ever want to bury this stuff?

Not only that, but if you really like, you can also turn your work of engineering into an art piece. Personally, I think there’s something to be said for simplicity as well: a nice solid functional item that works exactly as it should and blends in perfectly with its surroundings.  But if you want to get all wild and wacky with it, that’s alright with me too. Either way, let’s let this magic genie out of its bottle already, for crying out loud!

“Oh, hey down there little guy…whatcha lookin’ at? Just a-rockin’ and a-cruisin’ up here.”

Posted in Energy Production, Solid Waste, The Ether | Tagged: , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

Sixty Thousand Feet Under

Posted by wastedenergy on February 9, 2011

Don’t worry, folks, there’s plenty of oil left. We just can’t get to any of it, at least not without killing ourselves.

Let’s rewind for a second. Perhaps you’re shaking in your boots after reading the “news” about the recent WikiLeaks cable detailing Saudi Aramco’s shenanigans in covering up their empty oil pits. Of course, there’s nothing new in there to those who have been paying attention. Turns out my generation really was the only good thing to come out of the 1980′s (well, that and some awesome rock and roll music): if you recall, every other OPEC nation engaged in a war to bid up their quotas in order to shake down the West for more of its hard-earned white-collar dollars. Unfortunately, that had the side effect of creating valueless reserve estimates. And it’s not just Kingdom Come, but the whole rest of the oil-dependent world about to come crashing down in a sea of fantastic damage.

Yes, that’s right, Matt Simmons was right, and that guy up in Cambridge, as they usually are, was wrong. Now, shall we keep on burning?

Posted in Climate Change, Energy Consumption | Tagged: | Leave a Comment »

Wipeout

Posted by wastedenergy on February 3, 2011

EXTINCTION!  It’s a concept with which most of us are familiar only in passing, in the abstract or from our experience using it stack up W’s back in our high school debate days. But what about the real thing?

Well, you don’t actually have to try that hard to imagine it, because it’s already here. Consider how the mass extinction event occurring today as a result of human encroachment on habitats, pollution and climate change stacks up against past events. Last time we checked, a full 40% of all species have disappeared from the face of the planet Earth since 1970. Forty percent in just forty years! Imagine what we might be able to accomplish if we just try a little harder, by colonizing the remaining biodiversity hotspots with industrial agriculture, burning all the remaining coal we can find and flushing as much methane as we can get out of the continental shelves, and filling up the rest of our streams and oceans with choking garbage.

Percent of species going extinct versus millions of years ago

Now consider the trilobite. The fossil record is rife with trilobites; this group of animals dominated the planet’s oceans for some 250 million years, almost half the time multicellular animals have existed at all. Have you seen any of these guys around lately? How is it possible that something so common, so entrenched, so basic and ubiquitous in the Earth’s ecosystems is entirely gone? It would be as if all mollusks or all insects were wiped out. In our efforts to exploit the Earth’s resources to suit solely our own needs, we are tinkering with forces we do not understand and cannot hope to control. Now ask yourself, do large brains and opposable thumbs really make us so special? Unfortunately, most of us seem to be under the illusion that we are better than other creatures, as opposed to both exactly the same as them and wholly dependent upon them.

“What are you lookin’ at?”

Now, there are some who would tell you none of the above matters. What really matters is relaxing restrictions on oil drilling, so we can frack away bits of the environment slowly but surely until all that remains is skies of acid filled with clouds of soot and rivers that run purple with poison. They don’t believe in the value of other species, or even the human species; the only thing that concerns them is the bottom line. These mammon worshippers believe all our problems would be solved if we simply reverted our monetary system to the gold standard. They might have some of their own skin in the game, if they happen to be invested in gold as a commodity, but if we want to save our own skin, then it behooves us to pay attention to the bare facts instead of the issues that seem to occupy the teabaggers on Fox News and the Ragnarok promoters over at the Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute.

Joker of Doom

If we were really so self-interested, we might be more inclined to protect our own home. Julian Simon’s followers might like to believe human ingenuity is the ultimate resource, but I’ve got news for them: we’re not going to be landing on another planet with trees anytime soon. So maybe it’s finally time for the dinosaurs to go extinct, before they take the rest of us down with them.

Posted in Agriculture and Food, Air, Climate Change, Solid Waste, Water and Soil | Tagged: , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

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