On another venue, I am asked ...

Even if your assessment is true and these untapped fields would only replace the current production that is dropping off. Don't you think it would be wise to keep our production at current levels rather than forcing it to drop by not allowing new fields to come on line as the old ones lose potency? Do you think the answer to our oil problem is to have less of it?

Well ask and you shall receive I guess...

On monday, my colleague and I called on the federal Bureau of Land Management to stop being an Energy Delayer and lift a moratorium that locked up the vast reserves of solar energy located on federal lands. Today, the BLM announced that they would lift the planned twenty-two month moratorium on land it stewards in six southwest states rich in solar energy.

On June 23 in New York City,  John Todd, one of the founders of New Alchemy Institute,  received the first Buckminster Fuller Challenge Award for his Comprehensive Design for a Carbon Neutral World, a practical plan to remediate Appalachian coal lands with

An economy built on environmental restoration, carbon sequestration, renewable energy and ecological design

He wants to apply his decades of experiences with Eco Machines for water remediation to cleaning coal slurries and rebuilding healthy soils from the slag.  He has outlined a process that goes from waste and water treatment to reforestation with a full renewable economy based on biomass and local wind power.  With his experience building Agricultural Industrial Ecologies, as in Burlington, VT, he proposes a regional succession of industrial ecologies that can provide healthy lives and environments for larger populations over centuries if not millenia.

Full report at [pdf aert]
http://challenge.bfi.org/...

By Helen Aki and Jesse Jenkins, cross-posted from the Breakthrough Blog

Just as the time becomes ripe for a major push towards clean, cheap sources of electricity, the Bureau of Land Management threwa two-year stumbling block in the path of solar power development last Friday.  As solar power ramps up--the Bureau has received 130 proposals solar plants since 2005--the Bureau decided to put a hold on further development, claiming that that an exhaustive environmental impact report must be completed before solar plants can be installed on federally owned lands. Meanwhile, the push continues for oil drilling in protected offshore areas and the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge (an endeavor that really merits an environmental impact assessment!).

I just received this public information release from Gary Hooser's office and I must say that it makes me proud of the state and of Senator Hooser.  I live on the same island, just down the street from the good State Senator and I commend him and our state legislature for taking the lead in this type of legislation.

First, my tip to raoul78 for his diary currently on the rec list in which he questions the recent decision of the Federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) to halt further lease applications for large-scale solar applications beyond 125 applications already in hand, while BML and the Department of Energy conduct a thorough study of the possible environmental impact of such massive surface installations in 6 states. Having tipped my hat, I respectfully believe that raoul78 (and the NYT and the solar energy lobby) are wrong, and that the BML has made the right decision. However you cut it, one million acres of solar panels is an absolute environmental disaster the impact of which cannot be justified by the prospective energy benefits. More over the fold

This has been my dream all through childhood and early adulthood (I am now 26 year old accountant).  

Disclaimer, I don't konw the science behind all of this, but these are just my thoughts and dreams.  My ideas are always evolving so I don't have all the answers and I have missed/forgot things.

Well, given rising energy prices and the impending climate change tipping point, this decision seems a little idiotic:

Faced with a surge in the number of proposed solar power plants, the federal government has placed a moratorium on new solar projects on public land until it studies their environmental impact, which is expected to take about two years. . .

Galvanized by the national demand for clean energy development, solar companies have filed more than 130 proposals with the Bureau of Land Management since 2005. They center on the companies’ desires to lease public land to build solar plants and then sell the energy to utilities.

According to the bureau, the applications, which cover more than one million acres, are for projects that have the potential to power more than 20 million homes.

Holy crap.  I used to think the Bushies were idiots, then I thought they were stupid, then I thought they were incompetent, then I thought they were malicious, then I thought they were vengeful.

Now I just think they're evil.

Much of the desert Southwest that holds great promise for large scale solar installations is owned by the Federal Government, and managed by the Bureau of Land Management.

The BLM has received over 130 applications to lease government land for solar installations, and has now decided that any future applications will first have to wait for the results of an environmental impact statement of large scale solar plants on the environment.

Hat tip to gristmill.

Well, I lied again, no spent nuclear fuel diary yet. Really, the "check is in the mail". So, Charles Barton invervened again from his stunningly accurate and devastating critiques of Wind and Solar energy; their inability to fill the energy gap or provide a serious, cheap alternative to coal and natural gas.

So...we have here a "guest diary" from Charle's Nuclear Green web site. Hopefully comments will be many and lively and Charles will, if he feels he needs to, chime in here.

--David Walters

Introduction: The Center for Public Policy Studies is associated with the British Conservative Party, although its positions are not coordinated with the official party views. The Essay, "Wind Chills," by Tony Lodge, ought to be read as a political document, but it should not be dismissed simply because of its ideology. Wind Chills offers a penetrating analysis of the problems associated with wind. I have posted both the press release on Wind Chills and selected passages from the document

Hardly a day goes by without a new announcement for the development of a new large utility scale wind farm or solar project.  From a huge solar project in Arizona to a recently announced first of it's kind offshore wind farm off the coast of Delaware.  Tens of thousands of megawatts of new renewable capacity is in the pipeline in various stages of development, but it could all come to a screeching halt.  More below the fold.

Dr. James E. Hansen, of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, made a call to arms on Global Warming two decades ago.  Yesterday he made, what he calls, a final call to arms against the most pressing of issues facing our planet; Global Warming.  Dr. Hansen claims we are standing at the edge of the abyss, unaware of what we are peering into and prepared to soldier on, caring little if our next step finds solid ground or not.  He claims that we are only seconds from a tipping point, where whatever we do may never reverse the damage we have done to our planet and set ourselves on the fast track to extinction.  Our world is in peril and they look to America for leadership.  Will the rest of the world find that leadership they expect from the country that brazenly calls itself "the last great super power"?

More after the break...

Crossposted from Left Toon Lane, Bilerico Project & My Left Wing


click to enlarge

H.R. 6049, the Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act of 2008, will provide approximately $18 billion of tax incentives for investment in renewable energy, carbon capture and sequestration demonstration projects, energy efficiency and conservation. The bill will also extends $27 billion of expiring temporary tax provisions, including the research and development credit, special rules for active financing income, the State and local sales tax deduction, the deduction for out-of-pocket expenses for teachers, and the deduction for qualified tuition expenses. In addition, the bill provides almost $10 billion of additional tax relief for individuals  through an expansion of the refundable child tax credit and a new standard deduction for property taxes. The bill would be primarily offset by closing a tax loophole that allows individuals that work for certain offshore corporations, such as hedge fund managers, to defer tax on their compensation and would delay the effective date of a tax benefit that has not yet taken effect for multinational corporations operating overseas.

http://waysandmeans.house.gov/...

I've been hearing about an MIT (student) project to build low-cost solar concentrators using off the shelf materials since January when the project was part of the Independent Activities Period.  (IAP happens in January and anyone from a professor emeritus to a student to a janitor can offer a non-credit course.  It is a hold-over from the student demonstration days of the Sixties™ but less and less of interest is happening during IAP as the years go by.)

Yesterday, I went to see their prototype.  Their breakthrough is not in technology but in materials.  They use standard mirrors that sit in a frame so that they "sag" into a shallow parabolic shape and focus up to 1000 suns on a black coil which can then heat water to as high as 400º F.  This is "low" temperature steam, capable of providing process heat but not enough to run a steam turbine.  The machinery that moves the concentrator to track the sun is an off the shelf TV satellite dish motor.  The model I saw does not yet have an automatic tracking system but, again, off the shelf components are available.  It is an impressive machine.

Don’t Fear Tomorrow
By David Glenn Cox

The future does not belong to those who write telephone books or repair horse harnesses. The future belongs to the innovators, those who bring new ideas to the table. In a zero sum game, more of the same is less. Clinging to the past is an admission of defeat. The President is at it again, telling us the Saudi Arabian increase in oil production is not enough; we must drill in ANWR. He tells the truth about the problem then gives us an answer that is a lie.

I have an idea that may help some with the trash vortex problem out in our oceans. At the very least it may help others start thinking of their own ideas.

President Bush today announced plans to drill in the Arctic National Refuge and to increase efforts to derive oil from shale.  These policies by themselves will keep the price of gasoline high for the next several decades.