Category Archives: Climate change

You, here, now —Bill McKibben @ Power Shift

A great honor and a terrible burden.

I think he meant not only the people in front of him but also everyone willing to do something.

As for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce:

We cannot stop money but we can strip them of their credibility.

That applies to some other organizations, as well.

We need to fight with art and music, too.

10,000 young people went to DC to hear him in Power Shift 2011. We are all late to the fight. As he says:

Try to change those odds.

Here’s the video.

-jsq

PS: Owed to Raven.

Nuclear (Stewart Brand) vs. renewable energy (Mark Z. Jacobson) at TED

Stewart Brand of Whole Earth Catalog fame is a long-time environmentalist who in recent years decided nuclear was necessary. (He also decided no-till was necessary, which was enough to convince me he’s gone barmy.) Here at TED he debates Mark Z. Jacobson, whose new study says we can power the world with wind, water, and sun. I think Jacobson should reconsider including building more hydroelectric dams, but his study does demonstrate that we don’t need nuclear or biomass. But watch it and see what you think:

Here is my critique of Brand’s arguments: Continue reading →

It’s an opportunity –John S. Quarterman

“Like a burned-over longleaf pine, we can come back from this recession greener than ever, if we choose wisely.”

Here is my response to James R. Wright’s questions about jobs and priorities. -jsq

It’s an opportunity for those of us who are not currently searching for our next meal to help those who need jobs, and thereby to help ourselves, so they don’t turn to crime. Like a burned-over longleaf pine, we can come back from this recession greener than ever, if we choose wisely.
Switchgrass seemed like a good idea five or ten years ago, but there is still no market for it.
Meanwhile, local and organic agriculture is booming, and continued to boom right through the recession.
Not just strictly organic by Georgia’s ridiculously restrictive standards for that, but also less pesticides for healthier foods, pioneered as nearby as Tifton. That’s two markets: one for farmers, stores, and farmers’ markets in growing and distributing healthy food, and one for local banks in financing farmers converting from their overlarge pesticide spraying machinery to plows and cultivators.
Similarly, biomass may have seemed like a good idea years ago, but with Adage backing out of both of its Florida biomass plants just across the state line, having never built any such plant ever, the biomass boom never happened.
Meanwhile, our own Wesley Langdale has demonstrated to the state that

Continue reading →

South Georgia already in drought: parameters for industry?

Droughts and floods: maybe we need to manage water better, including managing industrial use of water.

According to the AP, Ga. foresters brace for busy wildfire season:

A cold, wet winter has left northern parts of the state in decent shape, but in southern Georgia river flows and soil moisture are both at some of the lowest points that would be expected in a century, said David Stooksbury, Georgia’s state climatologist at the University of Georgia.

The nearterm effects:

“We have a good fuel load with plenty of dry vegetation, the soil is dry and there’s a low relative humidity and there’s wind,” Stooksbury said. “That is the simple recipe for a trash fire to get out of control very quickly and become a wildfire.”

Yes, Sunday Georgia Forestry cut off burn permits in Lowndes County because some fires had gotten out of control.

The long term problem? Continue reading →

Wind farms in earthquakes and tsunami?

They keep working.

Kelly Rigg in Huffpo writes Battle-proof Wind Farms Survive Japan’s Trial by Fire:

Colleagues and I have been directly corresponding with Yoshinori Ueda leader of the International Committee of the Japan Wind Power Association & Japan Wind Energy Association, and according to Ueda there has been no wind facility damage reported by any association members, from either the earthquake or the tsunami. Even the Kamisu semi-offshore wind farm, located about 300km from the epicenter of the quake, survived. Its anti-earthquake “battle proof design” came through with flying colors.
Mr. Ueda confirms that most Japanese wind turbines are fully operational. Indeed, he says that electric companies have asked wind farm owners to step up operations as much as possible in order to make up for shortages in the eastern part of the country:

The only wind farms not operational are stopped because of failure of the grid to feed electricity into, says Mr. Ueda:

Eurus Energy Japan says that 174.9MW with eight wind farms (64% of their total capacity with 11 wind farms in eastern part of Japan) are in operation now. The residual three wind farms (Kamaishi 42.9MW, Takinekoshirai 46MW, Satomi 10.02MW) are stopped due to the grid failure caused by the earthquake and Tsunami.

So they wind farms built like that could most likely survive a hurricane in the Georgia Bight.

-jsq

Offshore wind energy cheaper than nuclear –EU climate chief

Inland south Georgia doesn’t have much wind, probably not enough to generate significant electricity, but wind farms off the Georgia coast could. Now we hear fromm Zachary Shahan in Clean Technica that Offshore Wind Energy Cheaper than Nuclear Energy, EU Climate Chief Says:

EU climate chief Connie Hedegaard has added that offshore wind energy is cheaper than nuclear.
…
“Some people tend to believe that nuclear is very, very cheap, but offshore wind is cheaper than nuclear,”

He’s picking up the story from the Guardian, in which Fiona Harvey and Terry Macalister wrote 17 March 2011: Continue reading →

Particulate matter is a killer. –Lisa Jackson, EPA, 17 March 2011

Listening to EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson about EPA’s proposed new mercury rules, for me, the live feed on facebook did not work, but the one on whitehouse.gov did. A few quotes:

Particulate matter is a killer. We know it results in hundreds of thousands of deaths.

That matches some local concerns in Lowndes County.

How much of a killer? Continue reading →

Georgia Power plans to decertify two coal plants

According to gapower’s own press release:

ATLANTA, March 16, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Georgia Power expects to request approval from the Georgia Public Service Commission to decertify two coal-generating units totaling 569 megawatts, the company announced Wednesday.
The request to decertify units 1 and 2 at Plant Branch in Putnam Co. will be included in Georgia Power’s updated Integrated Resource Plan filing with the commission in late summer. The company expects to ask for decertification of the units as of the effective dates of the Georgia Multipollutant Rule, which are currently anticipated to be Dec. 31, 2013 for unit 1 and Oct. 1, 2013 for unit 2.
The decision to decertify the units is based on a need to install environmental controls to meet a variety of existing and expected environmental regulations.
“After an extensive analysis of the cost to comply with environmental regulations, we have determined the continued operation of these units would be uneconomical for our customers,” said Georgia Power President and CEO Paul Bowers. “This decision is in keeping with our focus to provide affordable and reliable electricity for our customers.”

This matches with a report from last July that gapower was turning away from coal. And they suspended work on Plant Branch a year ago. Unfortunately, mostly they’re turning to natural gas and nuclear. Continue reading →

The politics of climate change denial

Why do some people deny the overwhelming science of climate change in a time when the evidence and analysis is so thorough and so conclusive that no reputable scientific organization in the world doubts any longer that humans are changing the climate of the whole planet for the worse: because it threatens their political and economic beliefs. Naomi Klein: Why Climate Change Is So Threatening to Right-Wing Ideologues:

And the reason is that climate change is now seen as an identity issue on the right. People are defining themselves, like they’re against abortion, they don’t believe in climate change. It’s part of who they are.

It’s like denying the earth goes around the sun. Why would they identify with such a silly thing? Because of what actually dealing with climate change would mean: Continue reading →

NOAA Weather Radios needed on the edge of the county –John S. Quarterman

So I’ll give you my opinion, like I gave it to the County Commission, and at the end of this post there’s a chronological list of links to all the NOAA Weather Radio posts so far.

But first, what do these radios do? According to NOAA:

NWR is an “All Hazards” radio network, making it your single source for comprehensive weather and emergency information. In conjunction with Federal, State, and Local Emergency Managers and other public officials, NWR also broadcasts warning and post-event information for all types of hazards – including natural (such as earthquakes or avalanches), environmental (such as chemical releases or oil spills), and public safety (such as AMBER alerts or 911 Telephone outages).

So these radios provide all the types of information J.L. Clark referred to. There’s more information in that NOAA web page.

I spoke after J.L. Clark on 22 Feb 2011. There is no video, because LAKE had only one camera at that meeting. From memory, here is the gist of what I said.

I live out on the edge of the county. I remember when Ashley Paulk moved in next door.