The Energy Thread

David Roberts from Grist says Senate Dems may actually grow a pair and do something! God, I haven't had any hope on this for a long time, I hope this is even a tiny bit accurate:

On Thursday, the Senate Democratic caucus held a meeting and everyone emerged giddy as schoolchildren. Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) called it "one of the most motivating, energized, and even inspirational caucuses that I've been a part of." Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) called it "absolutely thrilling." Said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), "It was really very, very powerful. It was inspirational, quite frankly."

This is, to say the very (very) least, uncharacteristic. Are these Senate Democrats we're talking about? What happened at this meeting?...

...the climate bill has been proceeding along the same well-worn rut, with Kerry and Lieberman ladling on offshore drilling, natural gas, nuclear, and coal subsidies to lure corporate and, it was hoped, Republican support. Yet the only Republican support that ever materialized, Lindsey Graham (S.C.), flaked out at the first sign of danger. Now even the few remaining "moderates" on the Republican side are digging in their heels, right on cue.

There are no more compromises to make and no one left to compromise with. The traditional approach can only lead to failure now.

The other approach is what pushed financial reform over the top: Take a strong bill to the floor without 60 votes, beat the sh*t out of Republicans for obstructionism, use public opinion in your favor, compromise where you're forced, and pry off enough votes to get it done. It's the go-big-or-go-home strategy. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) argued, and it looks like the caucus generally agreed, it's time to go that route on climate.

And from ClimateWire (via NYT):

According to a staff-written summary of yesterday's closed-door caucus meeting obtained by E&E, senators discussed a legislative strategy "more akin to the financial regulatory legislation than of health care, with Democrats bringing to the floor an impenetrable package that Republicans could not roadblock."

Democratic senators declined to discuss the exact details of their strategy after emerging from the hourlong talks. But its basic thrust appears to be a plan to anchor the climate and energy effort to widely popular legislation that would overhaul offshore drilling regulations in the wake of the Gulf spill, and then dare Republicans to vote against it.

LONDON — Alcohol-induced behavior has produced many unintended consequences, but pushing up the global price of oil and losing $10 million must rank among the most novel.

Britain’s financial regulator disclosed on Tuesday that Steven Noel Perkins, a former oil futures broker, single-handedly engineered a jump in the price of oil a year ago and cost his firm millions of dollars with a string of unauthorized trades after a weekend of heavy drinking.

Mr. Perkins had just returned from a liquor-soaked golf weekend with colleagues in June of last year when he sat down in front of his laptop at his home east of London and started to place bets on Brent crude futures, according to a report by the Financial Services Authority. He continued to drink and place bets through the night, and by the morning of June 30, Mr. Perkins had placed more than $520 million worth of trades, at one point pushing the price of oil to $73.05, an eight-month high. The trades by Mr. Perkins were the main reason the price gained about $1.65 a barrel in just over two hours in the middle of the night, according to the report.

“Mr. Perkins’s explanation for his trading on 29 and 30 June is that he was drunk,” the F.S.A. said. “He claims to have limited recollection of events on Monday and claims to have been in an alcohol-induced blackout at the time he traded.”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/7970619/Obama-could-kill-fossil-fuels-overnight-with-a-nuclear-dash-for-thorium.html

thorium: energy pros, tell me about it

bump

if.....he might

I know a little from investigating investment opportunities.

Thorium is used primarily in ceramics, if you have a kerosene lantern the mantle is thorium cloth. The common isotope Th232 is way more abundant than U235 (of which there may be only about 70 years supply from known deposits. India, a country that possesses practically no uranium, has extensive beaches of somewhat radioactive monazite black sand - the nation could fuel itself for a century by refining thorium out of bulldozer loads.

http://www.hindu.com/seta/2009/01/01/images/2009010150131601.jpg

Its no surprise that India is leading the push for thorium reactors. Western nuclear engineers have avoided using nearly pure thorium reactors for a few reasons, the most important being that spent fuel includes U233 which is super convenient for building bombs with, and Th238 which is difficult to work with (compared to say U235 and Pu239, blocks of which can be handled with thin gloves). India is going ahead with some Pu-Th fast breeders that look a lot like conventional breeders (pressurized reactor core with fuel rods, lots of piping to fuel exchangers etc).

I came across thorium while reading the active lobby for thorium molten salt reactors (an intrinsically meltdown proof design that performs in which the reaction occurs in a closed loop of moving liquid)to be considered among GenIV or V reactor designs. I don't think liquid sodium has many US fans since the fire at the Japanese fast breeder.

Thorium could also be used in the traveling wave breeder reactor design Bill Gates is funding, but presently those will be using depleted uranium accumulated (in huge quantities) from conventional U fuel reprocessing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwRYtiSbbVg

Pardon the numerous grammatical errors.

the giant problem that no one likes to talk about:

http://i54.tinypic.com/29bymnm.jpg

graph should probably be labeled better, e.g., "Declining Oil Discoveries vs. Increasing Oil Consumption"

I read the entire contents of dieoff.org ten years ago (it hasn't been updated), and many/most of JH's sources. Financially I'm 10x better off as a result. Emotionally, well I can sleep after a bottle.

ha! yeah, I sympathize with your last point. it's difficult to come to grips with it. But at least in much of the rest of the world, peak oil studies get a least a little bit of publicity. Der Spiegel highlighted the German military study and the Guardian has been consistently pretty good,relatively speaking.

But the WashPo and the NYT? I can't tell if it's an editorial decision to not mention peak oil if they're really that clueless. Either way, the resulting ignorance is catastrophic.

BTW, if you like to keep up to date daily on resource depletion issues, oildrum.com is the best moderated non-investment oriented forum.

Just for you, Z S, www.peakoilblues.com. I could real off another several dozen sites of interest. Kunstler's Clusterfuck Nation has at least been well written for the better part of the past decade.

appreciate it, but I've already got them all bookmarked (except for peakoilblues, which I'll check out now!). Energybulletin.net is my first stop, though.

(granted, since they publish just about anything that is even tangentially related to the issues of resource constraints, there's a lot of bad stuff on there, but plenty of good as well)

And for the grand picture (including discussions of the incompatibility of credit-based money with finite natural resources) I'd recommend everyone set down (with their favorite drink) to Chris Martenson's Crash Course. Nothing this decade has come as a suprise to a dieoff.org reader, it's just been a matter of timing and leverage.

I've only seen Ch. 18, which was excellent:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfAQktktGgQ

And of course, all of this was anticipated in 1972 by the Club of Rome. Avert your eyes.

http://rutledge.caltech.edu/ODcomments/LTGScenario1.jpg

Sanpaku that can't be right because all models have been discredited because weatherman sometimes get the weekend forecast all wrong. Also, token comment about Malthus and how he was completely wrong (even though it appears that he's still on track to be correct).

typos galore but I'm hitting the bottle so I can sleep tbh

interesting paper comparing projections of Limits to Growth to what actually happened, 1970-2000:

The analysis shows that 30 years of historical data compares favorably with key features of a business-as-usual scenario called the "standard run" scenario, which results in collapse of the global system midway through the 21st century. The data does not compare well with other scenarios involving comprehensive use of technology or stabilizing behaviour and policies.

http://gigaom.com/cleantech/solyndra-spells-disaster-for-doe-loan-guarantee-program/

Not good news at all, I had high hopes for Solyndra, I hope this isn't going to sour the climate for Loan Guarantees.

Z S or Ed do you guys have any recommendations for books on the early years of climate change science/research? ive been reading a little bit abt arctic & near arctic ecology & it touches on climate change obvs & was wondering if ppl doing field research in the far north were among the 1st to really visibly notice these things.

also Z S if youre still w/ the EPA much love hope it doesnt get to hard out there

a nice free resource is The Discovery of Global Warming

and within that, a nice summary is here:
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/summary.htm

thnx!

also have u read elizabeth kolbert's climate change book? 'field notes from a catastrophe'?

I have! it's excellent, and a quick read, too.

it's not all bad news in the CA solar industry

not really "energy" related, but i just reread neal stephenson's "zodiac" and it makes me want to ~take direct action~

also apparently we don't have a generic "environmentalism" thread, but i guess it'd just be a pretty miserable and bitter place

http://i51.tinypic.com/2q0kcgh.gif

this single image should be enough to prove to all future generations that Joe Bastardi, Accuweather’s chief long-range forecaster, is the dumbest man in North America. What kind of fool looks at that data and concludes that sea ice is on a rebound? What kind of fool puts him on television?

(btw, looking at sea ice trends by volume, a more useful metric, is incredibly depressing)

haha oh wow

wait, hold the phone, i just saw ANOTHER trend in that graph, hold on just a sec while I get my monitor writing pen thingy...

http://i51.tinypic.com/2mxh9wj.jpg

ladies and gentlemen...SCIENCE

not really "energy" related, but i just reread neal stephenson's "zodiac" and it makes me want to ~take direct action~

haven't read it, but I'm gonna throw it on my xmas wishlist

wait a second...look at that revised screencapture...a HOCKEY STICK shape for sea ice?

TAKE THAT GLOBAL WARMISTS

(sorry i'm depressed, politically alienated and drinking)

Don't worry, we're just at the indicated stage:

http://img813.imageshack.us/img813/2519/mcdiagram.gif

zodiac is a great book, but it kinda put me off lobsters for life, I can never make myself to eat tomalley ever again

On one hand, awesome. Benjamin Santer WAILS on Patrick Michaels here.

On the other, I'm almost certain that when Patrick Michaels gets on a roll at a cocktail party and spews off a bunch of his bullshit, almost everyone believes him, forgets all the misleading details he may bother to include, and only remembers "climate change...uncertainty...needs more research..." So mission accomplished for him, pretty much, regardless of how embarrassingly he gets humiliated in this clip, because the only people who will watch that clip are people that don't need to be convinced.

sigh

oops, forgot to include "the clip" (testimony starts about a minute in):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-a4R1bKGsN8

I think the fact that telling a lie can be done briefly while proving something is a lie takes much longer pretty much explains everything that is terrible in the world

The Obama administration is retreating on long-delayed environmental regulations — new rules governing smog and toxic emissions from industrial boilers — as it adjusts to a changed political dynamic in Washington with a more muscular Republican opposition.

Now, the agency says, it needs until July 2011 to further analyze scientific and health studies of the smog rules and until April 2012 on the boiler regulation. Mr. Obama, having just cut a painful deal with Republicans intended to stimulate the economy, can ill afford to be seen as simultaneously throttling the fragile recovery by imposing a sheaf of expensive new environmental regulations that critics say will cost jobs.

hmm...well yea, it is a tough political situation, so I guess that-

On Tuesday, EPA asked for a one-year delay on its new rules for soot and toxics pollution from industrial boilers and solid-waste incinerators. On Wednesday, it announced that it would be delaying its new smog rules (for the third time) until July, despite a court order to produce them by Dec. 31.

This is mystifying. By any rational cost-benefit analysis, these rules would be some of the most cost-effective in federal government history. Brad Plumer has an excellent state-of-play piece. As he notes, "EPA experts found that cutting toxic pollution could prevent 5,000 deaths and 36,000 asthma attacks each year. All told...the rule would have cost an estimated $2.9 billion each year while delivering between $17 billion and $41 billion in annual health benefits—not a bad deal.

Sorry to be the stereotypical leftleaning envirofascist here, but we're delaying a rulemaking on something that could save FIVE THOUSAND lives a year, because of political pressure. FUCK THAT. I'm so sick of this shit.

sorry, second quote is from David Roberts, here

Sorry to be the stereotypical leftleaning envirofascist here, but we're delaying a rulemaking on something that could save FIVE THOUSAND lives a year, because of political pressure. FUCK THAT. I'm so sick of this shit.

ive been doing a fair bit of background reading on pollution levels & various environmental changes over the past half century and the galling selfishness and sheer bad faith of the opposition here is just... honestly it just depresses and enrages me to where i cant do much with it.

Fox boss ordered staff to cast doubt on climate science

In the midst of global climate change talks last December, a top Fox News official sent an email questioning the "veracity of climate change data" and ordering the network's journalists to "refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question."

The directive, sent by Fox News Washington managing editor Bill Sammon, was issued less than 15 minutes after Fox correspondent Wendell Goler accurately reported on-air that the United Nations' World Meteorological Organization announced that 2000-2009 was "on track to be the warmest (decade) on record."

From: Sammon, Bill
To: 169 -SPECIAL REPORT; 036 -FOX.WHU; 054 -FNSunday; 030 -Root (FoxNews.Com); 050 -Senior Producers; 051 -Producers; 069 -Politics; 005 -Washington
Cc: Clemente, Michael; Stack, John; Wallace, Jay; Smith, Sean
Sent: Tue Dec 08 12:49:51 2009
Subject: Given the controversy over the veracity of climate change data...

...we should refrain from asserting that the planet has warmed (or cooled) in any given period without IMMEDIATELY pointing out that such theories are based upon data that critics have called into question. It is not our place as journalists to assert such notions as facts, especially as this debate intensifies.

sigh

Joe Romm OTM, I guess: "Well, okay, this would be a bombshell email coming from any other news organization in the world. So maybe the only bombshell is that Sammon was foolish enough to put this egregious Fox News policy into an email."

Out of the many depressing things in the world, one of the worst is that Fox News has been debunked/called out/embarrassed so so so so so many times, and yet so many people still watch and believe everything it spews out. I mean, I'm glad Media Matters is there documenting all of this and trying to correct things, but it just doesn't work. Yes, only several million people watch Fox, a small proportion of the United States population, but surely most of that relatively small audience of Fox True Believers goes forth into the world to spread the nonsense to people who don't follow the news at all and take them at their word. Straight from Industry/Frank Luntz to Fox/GOP to TOTAL FUCKING MORONS to people who don't follow the news. I love the idea of democracy but any hopes of an enlightened populace within the next 100 years is being torn to shreds

it'll happen. whether it will take utter cataclysm is another issue. thinking of irreversible global warming is a great way to terrify myself, but that's not the problem yet - the problem is a question of basic universal human empathy and the fact that tropical, undeveloped countries are getting this in the neck far worse than temperate, developed ones

I also strongly believe that in a few years' time, humanity will have the opportunity to choose the way of greed or the way of universality, and the fate of the planet rests on that decision - not just in a climatic sense but in a holistic sense

some pretty millennial thinking there bro

there's a revolution on and you're invited