Happy Halloween
This has nothing to do with the environment. But I love zombies.
From boingboing tv (via)
Remember kids, strangers are supposed to give you candy tonight, if they try to eat your brains, they are zombies.
Land-based Wind Projects: Maximizing Benefits, Overcoming Barriers
| December 14, 2007 |
SAVE THE DATE!
Land-based Wind Projects: Maximizing Benefits, Overcoming Barriers
This workshop is the next in the series started in 2003 and will examine how wind power use can reduce energy budgets, offset wastewater treatment costs and help mitigate climate change. Barriers related to permitting, public acceptance, financing, interconnection, operation and maintenance issues that impede implementation and success of land-based wind projects will be addressed with a view to generating solutions that can be readily applied. Lessons learned and approaches used by energy committees from the Towns of Orleans and Falmouth will be shared as well as a case study examining how wastewater treatment and wind energy generation have been successfully combined.
When: December 14, 2007
Where: Marriott Hotel, Route 132, Hyannis
Co-Sponsors: Massachusetts Coastal Training Program (Waquoit Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve), Cape and Islands Self-Reliance and Cape and Islands Renewable Energy Collaborative
A complete agenda and registration information will be released shortly.
For more information visit: www.coastaltraining.org
Give Al Gore A Pat On The Back
And show your support for continued action on global warming all at the same time. The American Wind Energy Association has put together a small online petition that you can use to show your support for Al Gore and the IPCC, and the important work they do to raise awareness about the dangers facing this planet. Go over and sign it, and let the world know that we support this kind of action, and want more of it.
Energy Smackdown Episode 2
The saga, and the smackdown continues.
Syncrude Can Go To Hell (But Will Probably Take Us With Them)
Every second the counter on the Syncrude web site goes up by another 3 ticks - indicating 3 more barrels of sweet crude oil put into the great oil engine that drives the economic, commercial and political systems that you are part of.
Syncrude seem rather proud of their oil sands operation. They say, “According to the Alberta Energy and Utilities Board, Alberta’s oil sand deposits contain approximately 1.7 trillion barrels of bitumen, of which over 175 billion are recoverable with current technology, and 315 billion barrels are ultimately recoverable with technological advances. The Athasbasca Oil Sands Deposit is, by itself, the largest petroleum resource in the world.”
Now that’s something to talk about. Not that the talk should be in the glowing terms that Syncrude coat each word with, from the dripping oil that shimmers on the Sustainability pages of their web site, to the half a million barrels of crude a day that they say will be delivered into the welcoming, warming world by 2015. Syncrude have nothing to be proud of.
A front line report in today’s Guardian sheds clear light on the dirty world that is Athabasca Sands:
Apart from the smell, you get little sense of what the oil sands are like unless you drive 45 minutes up Highway 63 and take a site tour of, say, Syncrude, a consortium that includes Imperial Oil and Petro-Canada. You might know that it’s the world’s largest producer of synthetic crude, but it still takes a while to comprehend the awesome size of its operations here. After the boreal forest is cleared and the peat bog removed, what’s left is dark, molasses-like, oil-saturated sand, which is then transported by trucks with tyres as high as two-storey houses. When full, they weigh more than two Boeing 747s; they can crush a pick-up truck without noticing it.
That’s what Syncrude is about. A partnership of some of the giants of the Canadian oil industry: Imperial Oil, ConocoPhilips, PetroCanada…Imperial Oil? Actually it’s ExxonMobil to you and me. Yes, ExxonMobil, once again spreading their oily arms wide to welcome the filthy riches being dug out of the heart of one of the most vital ecosystems on Earth.
It’s not just Syncrude, though, but also Shell, another of the “Big Four” oil companies who are intent on sucking their own 500,000 barrels of oil a day from the Athabasca field, and who write so eloquently on their web site:
“We believe that oil and gas will be integral to the global energy needs for economic development for many decades to come. Our role is to ensure that we extract and deliver them profitably and in environmentally and socially responsible ways”
Yes, that’s right: environmentally and socially responsible ways. Let’s all have a big group hug and say “welcome” to the saviours of the Canadian economy - and the slaughterers of our planet.
Keith Farnish
www.theearthblog.org
www.greenseniors.org
Palm Oil Plantations Are Major Sources Of CO2 Emissions
Greenpeace volunteers and a local community are working to stop the destruction of an area of swamp forest in Sumatra, Indonesia, which is to be converted into a palm oil plantation. More than 30 volunteers will work with people from the nearby village of Kuala Cenaku to construct dams in canals that are being used for logging and draining peatland.
Greenpeace says that by halting drainage operations with dams, they will prevent the peatland from drying out and releasing large quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, as well as stop the illegal burning of the peatland to plant palm oil saplings. According to Greenpeace, destroying peatland swamp forests is the main contributor to Indonesia’s high CO² emissions, which makes the country the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases after China and the United States.
Palm oil is used in a million things (from biodiesel production, to junk food). Is this how global capitalism will work? We dry out peatland to produce cheap palm oil to create “renewable” fuels and cheap junk food, at the cost of an even greater co2 burden on the planet? What do you think?
Protest
many more below
(more…)
Original post by Scytle
Monday Confessional
I did a lot of stuff this weekend. Tops on my list was meeting Bre Pettis (yes the guy who does Make Podcasts). He is a really cool guy, friendly and with a great sense of humor. I met him along with a lot of other very cool people at Podcamp Boston 2. I also saw a stunning and wonderful cyborg lady. I also went for several very nice bike rides. Specifically I was part of my first ever critical mass. For those of you who don’t know critical mass is a peaceful and rowdy reclaiming of the streets by bicyclists.
Basically a ho-billion bikers take to the streets in an “unplanned” gathering and ride around having a wonderful time. Because they reach a critical mass (get it) they take over the roads and are able to use the roads for what in my opinion they would be much better suited for, riding you bike. For me it really was unplanned I had no idea there was going to be a critical mass (I was not on the cool list), but one came by and I was on my bike, and blam mass ho!
This seemed to be a special Halloween themed mass ride because I saw a lot of very cool costumes and lots of people dressed up in a million fun ways. There was screaming, and chanting, and singing, and one group of bikers had what seemed to be a full drum set made from buckets and old pipes clamped to the front of their bikes. It was so much fun, I must have looked like a goof with my a smile from ear to ear.
I also was part of an anti-war protest. Don’t let anyone tell you that the anti-war movement is dead. There were thousands of people out in the rain this weekend marching and letting their voices be known. It all culminated in a big rally on the Boston Commons, with singing and dancing. By the way if anyone ever asks you what the opposite of war is, tell them art.
Energy Smackdown Episode 1
I met a John Herman (a pretty cool guy) at a conference this weekend. And he let me in on a little project he had worked on that might become something larger. I thought it would be cool over the next week or so to highlight the Energy Smackdown. It is a show about three families trying to reduce their carbon footprint. It happens over a 5 month period and may be turned into a larger show in the future. I like the idea of a show that combines Americans hunger for “reality tv” with practical tips for living a greener lifestyle.
China To Spend 14.5 Billion Dollars To Battle Lake Pollution
Remember a couple of months ago when we talked about the panic that was caused when a giant algal bloom happened in China, cutting off the drinking water supply to millions. Seems it is going to cost them, a lot, to fix.
China has announced a multibillion-dollar plan to clean up a severely polluted lake where an algae bloom forced the suspension of water supplies to millions of people this summer.
The $14.5 billion plan to clean up Lake Tai, in a densely populated area northwest of Shanghai, should take five years, said a statement dated Friday and posted on a government Web site of the nearby city of Taizhou.
The move comes amid mounting official urgency about curbing chronic pollution in China’s rivers and lakes that has left millions of people without clean water and disrupted city water systems.
Lake Tai is one of a series of lakes where blooms of blue-green algae blamed on pollution have disrupted water supplies this year. Some types of the algae can produce dangerous toxins.
“The plan will control the eutrophication of Lake Tai in five years and realize the clear improvement of water quality,” the government statement said. “In another eight to 10 years, the problem of the Lake Tai water pollution will be basically resolved.”(via)
This pollution is cutting off drinking water TENS of MILLIONS of people. Imagine if say the entire state of New York didn’t have drinking water. That is the kind of scale we are talking about. The environment is not just something Al Gore goes on about. It is the real life, physical world we live in, and if we mess it up badly enough it will no longer support us.
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