|
12/31/2006 The last message of this unfortunate year. Now
we too have our own little Gulag. Comrade Stalin is smiling in
hell...(Click
here to read the article) |
|
12/331/2006 Hey, the Titanic has been sinking for a while.
Can the rich have some fun? Sure...(Click
here to read the article) |
|
12/30/2006 While gluttony rules here the Earth is quietly
shrugging us off
(Click
here to read the article) |
|
12/26/2006 Who needs the stupid dolphins anyway? The
Chinese economy is growing 10% per year all the way to hell!
(Click
here to read the article) |
|
12/22/2006 The big offshore lease fee giveaways pale in
comparison with the astronomical incremental costs of producing
these leases
(Click
here to read the article) |
|
12/21/2006 Will oil shale become the energy savior of US?
According to the pretty cartoons in this NYT article, yes. According
to my experience and knowledge of the subject, no.
(Click
here to read the article) |
|
11/22/06 How much stuff is too much? Try way too much for the
Americans
(Click
here to read the article) |
|
11/19/06 China is running out of the environment to support its
hallucinations about world domination with 1.5 billion people and
not enough air, water, and soil to keep them alive.
(Click
here to read the article) |
|
11/09/06 So what Greenpeace has been saying for months is now
official: ADM is going after the tropics. As I have been
saying in my presentations, this move marks an accelerated end to
the Earth we all used to know. The new Earth will look a lot
more like the Middle East, hot, parched and inhospitable. But
corporate profits are more important than human survival.
Everyone knows that...
(Click
here to read the article) |
|
11/02/06 With the price of corn hitting $3.30/bushel,
just the corn input cost of $3.30/2.5=$1.32/gallon EtOH,
translates to $2.06/gallon of energy as gasoline equivalent, because
ethanol has 64% of the heating value of gasoline. This is not
good news for ethanol producers, especially that the other costs of
making and distributing ethanol add at least $1/gallon EtOH or
$1.56/gallon gasoline equivalent.
At $3.62/gallon gasoline equivalent to make, ethanol cannot compete.
(Click
here to read the article) |
|
10/30/06 Delusions, exploding militarization of science,
and ever less real funding for energy rule the day.
(Click
here to read the article) |
|
10/27/06 Is environment destruction compatible with religion?
(Click
here to read the article) |
|
10/27/06 Ethanol and corrosion?! Oh my God! Haven't
we known this inconvenient truth in detail for 100 years? In
1906, Mr. F. B. Wright published his "Practical Handbook on the
Distillation of Ethanol and Denaturing," in which he stated the
following: "Ethanol dissolves a large number of substances insoluble
in water and acids, such as many inorganic salts, phosphorus,
sulfur, iodine, resins, essential oils, fats, coloring matters,
etc." For the scientifically challenged policymakers here is
my translation: In any gasoline tank that has metallic salt crud and
water, ethanol will dissolve the water-insoluble metal salts, and
partition them into the water, thus forming a strong electrolyte.
This electrolyte will then make electrical batteries of every
metal junction (weld or solder) and every chemical impurity of the
metal wall. After a while, corrosion will eat through the
walls of the tank and there will be leaks. With the newer fiberglass
tanks, ethanol will partition from gasoline into the bottom water,
and the concentrated ethanol solution will dissolve fiberglass
resins and delaminate the fiberglass. The neat thing is that
the ethanol rich electrolytes gather at the tank bottoms, that is in
the most dangerous location. Are we in for the Round II of surprises
with underground storage tank leaks that will make the MTBE fiasco
look like the summer's night dream?
(Click
here to read the article) |
|
10/25/06 Have you tried to live in San Francisco on $8/hr?
(Click
here to read the article) |
|
10/24/06 As I have said several times here, Ford has been
working very hard to bankrupt itself
(Click
here to read the article) |
|
10/17/06 The epigenetics of human development are poorly known,
but there are reasons to be worried, very worried... The synthetic
chemicals from distributed sources, are primary sources
of endocrine disruptions in humans as well as severe birth defects,
both mental and physical
(Click
here to read the article) |
|
10/01/06 An interesting tidbit on Californian politics.
Instead of developing public transportation and rebuilding LA, our
legal eagles are suing the car companies. As the article's author
correctly points out : "There could basically
be no life in California — or in the United States generally —
without cars and trucks." I agree, this is how bad the
situation really is (Click
here to read the article) |
|
10/01/06 Part 3 of the NYT article on water problems in India
(Click
here to read the article) |
|
09/30/06 We all know that because of less regulation and
corporate vitality, the US economy has been creating more jobs and
fuller employment than the bureaucratic, stagnant economies in the
EU. Right? Well, think again...(Click
here to read the article) |
|
09/30/06 1.1 billion people, too little water? Try to
imagine what will happen. (Click
here to read the article) |
|
09/29/06 Look at India for the future of water supply in
many parts of the world. So when we talk about expanding water
use by industrial agriculture by another factor of 2-3, we should
stop and think twice...(Click
here to read the article) |
|
09/24/06 In the meantime, the boom is on for ethanol plants.
The South Sea Bubble is being repeated all over again, albeit at a
much smaller scale (Click
here to read the article). And the good old
taxpayers are picking up the tab (Click
here to read the article) |
|
09/21/06 We have a government whose agencies work
directly against the citizens who elected them and pay their
salaries from federal taxes. So, the Department of Interior conspires to give
away mining rights with no regard to the environmental damage and
public interest. (Click
here to read the article)
The Environmental Protection Agency conspires
to poison and pollute us under the disguises of the Blue Sky
Act and cost-saving measures. (Click
here to read the article) The US Forest Service conspires to cut valuable
trees under the disguise of fire protection, while building massive
new roads into the wilderness. (Click
here to read the article)
The Food and Drug
Administration conspires to allow new untested and harmful drugs on the market. (Click
here to read the article)
The US Department of Energy spends billions on the politically
motivated non-science, instead of working on our energy supply. The
US Department of Agriculture is a subservient subsidiary of big
agribusiness, and does not protect the farmers and farmland.
(See most everything else on this web site)
And the
list goes on and on. No wonder we have all enjoyed watching the
Pirates of the Caribbean. At least the pirates there admit that
they like raping and pillaging, and they do not wrap themselves in a national flag while pursuing their real
pleasures ...
|
|
09/20/06 Mr. Friedman does not comprehend the scales involved
in abusing the contemporary environment for energy and the
penalties paid for this abuse. So I would urge Mr.
Friedman to include himself in the dumb category he so nicely
defined for the rest of us. Mr. Friedman has been admonishing us for
some time to
follow the Brazilian sugarcane ethanol success story and gain
independence from the Middle East oil. It is commonly said that
ethanol has displaced 40% of crude oil use in Brazil. The truth is
somewhat more complicated. First, Brazil is a developing country,
whose consumption of crude oil has been tiny,
10 times less than that in the US. For
the last 40 years, the energy consumed in Brazil as crude oil has
been smaller than the calorific value
of corn grain in the US! Second, if one
divides the total energy of anhydrous ethanol consumed in Brazil by
the energy of crude oil consumed there, the average ratio is a mere
8%. Third, gasoline fuel use in Brazil is less than 1/2 of diesel
fuel use there and sugarcane ethanol has added 40% to gasoline
supply in Brazil. Fourth, Brazilians are now almost self-sufficient
in oil supply because of their competent national oil company,
Petrobras. They are busy selling sugarcane ethanol to Sweden, Japan,
US, and other countries, while driving on petroleum products at
home. Therefore, unless we do the following in the US, we should not
deceive the public: (1) For an equal per capita use of petroleum, we
must cut down petroleum consumption in the US by a
factor of 6. (2) This would mean
driving all US vehicles one day per week.
(3) All gasoline-powered passenger cars and SUVs would have to be driven only
one day every two weeks. I
bike to work. Does Mr. Friedman? (Click
here to read the article)
|
|
09/19/06 The Mississippi River is no longer replenishing the
Louisiana coast with silt. So who is guilty? (Click
here to read the article)
|
|
09/19/06 The Green Revolution certainly benefits Monsanto.
Does it also benefit the poor farmers in poor countries? (Click
here to read the article)
|
|
09/16/06 As I have been saying for some time, the American
automakers suffer from their inability to think clearly. I
guess this is a national trend these days...(Click
here to read the article)
|
|
09/03/06 China's pollution is a real killer
(Click
here to read the article)
|
|
08/10/06 Americans will shell out billions of dollars to drink
unpolluted water, if they can get it at all. Would there be a
correlation between industrial agriculture, ethanol plants, and
these huge out-of-pocket expenses? Yes(?)
(Click
here to read the article)
|
|
08/10/06 Detroit's top managers have been caught in a time
warp. Or is it lack of responsibility and plain stupidity?
Higher bonuses are in order while their companies are going
kaput...(Click
here to read the article)
|
|
07/26/06 Are we sliding slowly towards a global recession
while trying to launder agricultural subsidies?
(Click
here to read the article)
|
|
07/24/06 What is a mere 47.9
billion dollars per year in agribusiness subsidies, if one wants to
make ADM, Cargill, Bunge, etc. happy, and ensure their payments to
the political coffers at all government levels? Unfortunately,
the developing countries have no respect for our noble senators, the
National Corn Growers Association, and the ethanol and biodiesel
lobbyists. The WTO agricultural tariff talks are dead for now...
(Click
here to read the article)
|
|
07/22/06 NASA deletes "understand and protect our home planet"
from its mission statement. Did we collectively die under the current Washington
regime? If so, when did this happen? (Click
here to read the article)
|
|
07/18/06 So who destroys the Amazon forest faster than others?
Unfortunately, it is an American corporation, Cargill.
But not to worry, two other American corporations, ADM and Bunge,
are not far behind, and McDonalds uses the cheap meat. (Click
here to read the article)
|
|
06/20/06 So let's pretend we do something about CO2
emissions. Paper is patient and it can be reused in
toilets...(Click
here to read the article)
|
|
06/20/06 Will we ever learn not build houses on the beaches?
Probably not...(Click
here to read the article)
|
|
06/10/06 China alone is capable of poisoning the entire earth
with the byproducts of coal combustion. The already monstrous coal
emissions in the U.S. are also poisoning the whole globe.
120 new coal-fired plants are on the drawing boards. If they
are ever built, the U.S. will be locked into the earth-killing race
at a much higher speed. (Click
here to read the article)
|
|
05/31/06 Is General Motors a
danger to its employees, the US, and the world? Yes, it is.
Their cosmic stupidity is the reason why Toyota today is worth
$198.9 billion and G.M. $15.8 billion. G.M. is worth just slightly
more than Harley-Davidson, the motorcycle company ($13.6 billion).
..(Click
here to read the article)
|
|
05/30/06 Can our federal government help in damaging the
environment? Of course...(Click
here to read the article)
|
|
05/28/06 "Clean coal"? Are you kidding?
(Click
here to see the video)
(Click
here to see the graphic)
|
|
05/28/06 Sharpshooters with silencers killing at night? There
is no better metaphor for our true
relationship with Nature.
(Click
here to read the article)
|
|
05/21/06 Instead of moving into the cities, many people are
forced to move far away from them, only to commute back for 4-6
hours each day. That's 25-30 hours, or two full days of active
life, per working week! Think about it as spending 1 year in
jail every 3-5 years, or a 10-year sentence for the average
30-year work career. What happened to the land of the free?!
(Click
here to read the article)
|
|
05/14/06 Now China has joined US in scientific cheating, only
here the cheaters are many and there are no retributions. (Click
here to read the article)
|
|
05/14/06 With gasoline above $3 per gallon and ethanol above
$5.60 per gallon (gasoline energy-equivalent and accounting for
subsidies), perhaps it is time to start investing into our country
to ease Ms. Aline Lacombe and countless others' pain. (Click
here to read the article)
|
|
05/14/06 The US military is the single largest user of fossil
fuels in the U.S. An F-16 jet fighter uses 1.5 tons of fuel
per hour. (Click
here to read the article)
|
|
05/10/06 Will something useful be born from this ruin of our
political system? (Click
here to read the article)
|
|
05/08/06 What happens when a failed politician wants to talk
with an executive of a failing computer company about things they
both don't know? They write a silly NYT Editorial... (Click
here to read the article)
|
|
05/07/06 The CBS 60 Minutes The Ethanol
Solution program reminds me of the old communist
propaganda films: The same intellectual sophistication and the
same adherence to science and truth. I am longing though for the
red flags waving and heroic choir singing in the background.
Call it nostalgia, but seeing Comrade Rather puts me in this mood...(Click
here to read the article)
|
|
05/05/06 Despite popular belief, the environment's capacity to
absorb our waste is limited. So we need to burn less fossil
fuels, gasoline for example...(Click
here to read the article)
|
|
04/27/06 Ethanol: A Tragedy in 3 Acts:
Amid the current panic about gas prices many people are embracing
ethanol. But that's not such a good idea (Click
here to read the article)
|
|
04/23/06 Clean beaches in Hawaii? Think twice, and
upgrade the sewer infrastructure once...(Click
here to read the article) |
|
04/22/06 Are metals increasingly in short supply?
Yes, even if one discounts the current speculation (Click
here to read the article) |
|
04/22/06 So, finally the shortages of gasoline.
This is the big ethanol's chance to step in and keep gas stations
well-supplied. Just kidding...There is not enough ethanol in
the entire US to do that.
(Click
here to read the article) |
|
04/20/06 Have you ever tried to cover yourself on a cold
winter night with a child's blanket? You cover your torso, and
the legs stick out... The child's blanket is the earth with all of
its resources, and the big guy stretching this blanket to the point
of breaking it is us. Welcome to the Alice in Wonderland world of
sustainable economies.
Unfortunately, in this version of the book, the big bad Queen will
walk off with our collective empty head. (Click
here to read the article) |
|
04/20/06 On this Earth Day, let me remind you that since this
day has been established we have destroyed another 1 billion acres
of forests on the earth (the total land area of Sweden)
(Click
here to read the article) |
|
04/16/06 Trans fats (plus high fructose corn syrup) = a sick
population and nice corporate profits
(Click
here to read the article) |
|
04/15/06 Decline of agriculture in Iraq is catastrophic
(Click
here to read the article)
|
|
04/13/06 CHINA: ANGRY OVER POLLUTION, VILLAGERS ATTACK
FACTORIES About 200 villagers in eastern Fujian Province,
angry over the polluting of their water supply,
attacked three factories and a sewage treatment plant, smashing
windows, air-conditioners and other items, a Hong Kong newspaper,
The South China Morning Post, reported. (REUTERS) |
|
04/11/06 As always, Nicholas Kristof hits the nail in the head:
High fructose corn syrup made of 20% of U.S. corn (2% of that corn
goes to feed people) has killed and maimed more Americans than all
terrorists and wars since WWII. Is the Homeland Security
Department responding to this clear and direct threat to the lives
of American citizens? I guess not...
(Click
here to read the article) |
|
04/10/06 ADM and its corrupting power are analyzed by Legal
Times
(Click
here to read the article) |
|
04/10/06 This naive article from the NYT espouses virtues of Brazilian sugarcane ethanol, implies that the U.S. could
do better, but leaves out the essential details: (1) With 187
million people, vs. 300 million in the U.S., Brazil uses only about
4.5 billion gallons of gasoline vs. 140 billion gallons in the U.S.
(2) In 2004, Brazil produced 2.4 billion gallons of gasoline equivalent
as ethanol, while the U.S. produced ~2.0. billion gallons of
gasoline equivalent, and imported 140 million gallons of ethanol
from Brazil. (3) At 1.799 real/L, the energy-equivalent price of
ethanol is 2.856 real/L, which makes it more expensive than unleaded
gasoline. (4) Brazil exports plenty of ethanol to E.U. and U.S., and
uses the domestic production of crude oil to satisfy its minuscule need
for automotive fuels.
As I have shown before, the silly net energy balances are just political manipulations, and have
little to do with the physics and thermodynamics of biofuel cycles.
The fact is that sugarcane ethanol plants cause huge pollution.
The bagasse and sugarcane leaves now burned in the refineries no
longer protect and fertilize the plantations, which are depleted
from nutrients and eroded away. The largest sugarcane plantations are
fertilized with synthetic fertilizers, and the runoff water
pollutes local rivers and groundwater. The displaced cattle feed
plantations are being moved into the Amazon jungle by burning
vigorously what is left of it. The whole scheme will fall
apart in about 50-75 years from the exhaustion of natural resources.
Instead of talking about ethanol and
sugarcane, we need to talk about cutting automotive fuel consumption in the U.S. by a factor of 2 or 4,
because we surely cannot cut it by a factor of 15 to become a Brazil
equivalent.
(Click
here to read the article)
|
|
03/25/06 As they say, hell is paved with good intentions...
If Mr. Koshla simply stopped driving his Chevy Tahoe and moved to a
smaller house, he would do infinitely more for the earth than he
does now throwing money at ethanol production. (Click
here to read the article) |
|
03/04/06 Is concentrated cow manure good for the environment?
To see and smell, please visit our friendly neighborhood CCC (Cattle
Concentration Camp) near Harris Ranch, CA, along Highway 5. (Click
here to read the article) |
|
03/02/06 Among its many scientific failures, NASA's cutbacks in
the earth-monitoring satellite programs hurt the most, and cuts in
the deep-space exploration come next. (Click
here to read the article) |
|
01/15/06 NASA has quietly terminated the
Deep Space Climate Observatory, citing "competing
priorities." The news media took little notice. Few Americans, after
all, had even heard of the program. But the entire world may come to
mourn its passing...(Click
here to read the article) |
|
01/12/06 Scientists studying a fast-dwindling genus of colorful
harlequin frogs on misty mountainsides in Central and South America
are reporting today that global warming is combining with a
spreading fungus to kill off many species...
(Click
here to read the article) |
01/12/06 China's pollution may destroy it... (Click
here to read the article)
|
