Geothermal Power For Your Home

August 15, 2006
by Adam Stein (excerpt from terrapass.com)(emphasis added)

Malcolm Gladwell tells us that geothermal energy isn’t as exotic as we think. His own father recently started using geothermal energy to heat and cool his home. The conversion allowed him to throw away his old oil-fueled furnace — despite living in chilly Ontario.

Six feet down, the earth stays a constant and comfortable temperature — between 50° and 60° all year round. By burying some water pipes and then running the fluid through a heat exchanger, you can produce ambient air that warms you in the winter and cools you in the summer.

It’s a little more complicated than that. Because humans like it around 70° in the winter, a compressor is needed to bring the temperature of the air up a bit. But the net energy and cost savings are still considerable. And the air quality in the house has improved, because the furnace is no longer sucking up oxygen.

Most remarkable, perhaps, is how simple it is (to) tap geothermal energy:

I think it is also worth noting how absurdly low-tech the system is. It is pvc pipes and a compressor. My father lives in Ontario, where the winters can be vicious, and has thrown out his furnace! …One of the frustrating things about the current discussion over our dependence on imported oil is the persistent notion that real solutions will require some future technological breakthrough. I think we have a lot of the answers. We just haven’t made consumers and public officials aware of them.

(I believe that this is worth looking into, especially if updating or installing a climate control system anyway.-Buddha)

EPA denies California's waiver request (unprecedented)

Environmental Defense: Finding the Ways that Work

(Hey Kids-Buddha),

EPA's decision to deny California's waiver request is an outrage.

Moments ago, the Environmental Protection Agency denied California's waiver request to cut global warming pollution from automobiles.

Seventeen other states plan to implement similar programs. EPA's action today is nothing more than a heavy handed stroke to limit the authority of states to fight global warming and protect our environment.

Send an email to EPA administrator Stephen Johnson right now and join me in condemning this decision.

This is the first time EPA has ever denied a waiver request under the Clean Air Act. It is a major blow to our efforts to cut global warming pollution from cars.

The administration is putting the brakes on state action to address the global warming crisis.

Doing nothing about global warming is bad enough -- but going out of your way to block the leaders who are trying to solve this is an outrage.

Send an email today.

Three landmark court rulings earlier this year offered a clear legal path for EPA to grant the waiver. In April, the Supreme Court ruled that carbon dioxide is a pollutant covered under the Clean Air Act and that the EPA has the clear obligation to protect Americans from global warming.

More recently, in separate cases, a federal judge in Vermont and another in California rejected efforts by automakers to repeal the state emissions laws. In these decisions, the judges made clear that states can pass laws under the Clean Air Act to limit pollution from tailpipes, but left it to EPA to grant a waiver allowing states to proceed.

The federal courts also dismissed automakers' claims that they did not have the technology to meet such standards.

In his December ruling, California Judge Anthony Ishii wrote:

Given the level of impairment of human health and welfare that current climate science indicates may occur if human-generated greenhouse gas emissions continue unabated, it would be the very definition of folly if EPA were precluded from action.

We have been waiting two years for EPA to decide on this waiver request. Until today, EPA had granted all 50 previous waiver requests over the last 40 years.


Fred Krupp
President, Environmental Defense (excerpt)

Bush Orders Cuts in Nuclear ("Nucular") Weapons

By H. JOSEF HEBERT, Associated Press Writer (excerpt)(This Hebert guy is one to watch.)

WASHINGTON - President Bush has approved "a significant reduction" in the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, cutting it to less than one-quarter its size at the end of the Cold War, the White House said Tuesday. (At first I thought that shrub had been abducted and replaced by aliens, but no such luck. Read on and you'll understand.-Buddha)

Meanwhile, the administration faced a setback in its hopes of developing a new, more reliable and robust warhead that would eventually replace the existing, aging warheads.

The broad omnibus spending bill expected to be approved by Congress eliminated money for the Reliable Replacement Warhead for the current fiscal year. The administration had asked for $88 million for design and preliminary work on the proposed warhead.

"This (warhead) would have sent the wrong signal around the world encouraging the very proliferation we are trying to prevent," Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., a critic of the new warhead program said. (GO FEINSTEIN!-Buddha)

U.S. Congress and Senate Have Approved Fuel Economy Mandate

By H. JOSEF HEBERT, Associated Press Writer (excerpt)

WASHINGTON - Congress by a wide margin approved the first increase in automobile fuel economy in 32 years Tuesday, and President Bush plans to quickly sign the legislation, accepting the mandates on the auto industry.

The energy bill, boosting mileage by 40 percent to 35 miles per gallon, passed the House 314-100 and now goes to the White House, following the Senate's approval last week.

Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada acknowledged that they didn't get all they wanted — unable to push through a tax package that would have rolled back $13.5 billion in tax breaks for oil companies and used the money to help spur wind, solar and biomass energy development and conservation programs.

The centerpiece of the bill remained the requirement for automakers to increase their industrywide vehicle fuel efficiency by 40 percent to an industry average of 35 mpg by 2020 compared to today's 25 mpg when including passenger cars as well as SUVs and small trucks.

Democrats said the fuel economy requirements — when the fleet of gas-miser vehicles are widely on the road — eventually will save motorists $700 to $1,000 a year in fuel costs. They maintain the overall bill, including more ethanol use and various efficiency requirements and incentives, will reduce U.S. oil demand by 4 million barrels a day by 2030, more than twice the daily imports from the volatile Persian Gulf.(Perhaps we can stop exchanging troops and incomprehensible dollar amounts on a mid-east oil empire some year soon.)

"While the president's alternative fuel standard and CAFE proposal would have gone farther and faster (are these people stupid or just so cynical that they believe that we are all imbeciles?-Buddha), we are pleased that Congress has worked together on a bipartisan way that provides the chance for the president to sign a bill that does not include tax increases." said White House press secretary Dana Perino.

The bill requires improved efficiency standards for lighting, commercial and government buildings, and appliances such as refrigerators, dishwashers and freezers. It also tells the Energy Department to issue efficiency standards more quickly. Light bulb efficiency will have to increase 70 percent over today's most widely used bulbs by 2020.

Environmentalists widely hailed passage of the legislation, especially the first increase in auto fuel economy since 1975, although expressing disappointment that the oil taxes and a proposal to require utilities to use renewable fuels did not pass.

[It's not as big a step as I'd like to see (let's get a sustainability moonshot going internationally), but at least it's in the right direction this time.-Buddha](emphasis added)

Gomer Huckabee

This photo is just too much fun not to share. (taken from Crooks and Liars)

Help me, help you!

This blog monster is becoming almost too big to manage. So I am soliciting tech support from the community. Hopefully someone can offer a better way to lay this out so that it's easier to navigate. Please keep in mind that I'm trying to save the world on a shoestring budget. I have a reasonable understanding of sustainability, but I am somewhat (understatement) computer illiterate. In the meantime I will just continue to feed the monster and watch it grow.

Buddha

60 Second Wombat Sermon

This link was sent by Janet. She is a friend from my tribe in Michigan. It is quick, amusing, and to the point. Fun for little kids and the older kids who raise them.

Sustainable development: the bigger picture (subtitled)

Subtitled video from the U.K. addressing sustainability and the triple bottom line. 8 1/2 minutes long. Allow to load.

Move Over Kyoto — Here Comes a ‘Copenhagen Protocol’

December 15, 2007, 8:56 am

So agreement was finally reached in Bali. After an hours-long public standoff Saturday in which the unthinkable happened — boos and hisses at a treaty conference — the world’s nations adopted a common two-year “road map” leading to the first comprehensive update to the ailing 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The last update, the Kyoto Protocol, only binds three dozen industrialized countries to cut emissions, and many of the adherents are not on track to hit their targets by 2012, when its terms expire. The new agreement will likely lead to a future set of limits allowing Kyoto parties to keep on capping greenhouse-gas emissions and trading carbon credits.

For those not affected by Kyoto’s limits, including the two giants in the global greenhouse — the United States and China — the timetable does not lock in any binding steps to cut emissions.

But it does move everyone a little further down the decades-long road to diverting from unfettered burning of fossil fuels and forests. That is significant, given the scope of the task in a world more than 80-percent dependent on coal and oil and with a (likely) tripled energy appetite by mid-century.

By Andrew C. Revkin (excerpt)

Tranforming Energy Trailer - Planning for Global Warming

I am really looking forward to seeing this movie. A quote from the trailer "I don't think we'll run out of oil, I don't think we'll run out of coal, I just think we'll run out of patience with stupid people." A film looking at positive solutions for a sustainable energy future.

Eco Village- centre for alternative technology

I have a link to these folks here on the site. We very definitely need similar projects in the U.S., preferably specializing in each of our different bioregions. Are there any people reading this who can sponsor such a project or perhaps universities or foundations who can get the ball rolling? Think of the possibilities when we shift our attention toward positive solutions. We can transform the world!

Commander-in-Chimp

Just some fun photos kids. I just seem to be finding some amusing stuff on shrub lately. "Rarely is the questioned asked: Is our children learning?" (Shrub—Florence, S.C., Jan. 11, 2000) How about it kids: Are you finding anything useful and informative here?

Bicing in Barcelona

Erica Barnett
December 10, 2007 1:23 AM

These people are riding bicycles provided by Bicing, a nine-month-old service that bills itself as “your new public transport in Barcelona!”

The service functions much like a car-sharing service. Once you register with the company (you have to be a resident of Barcelona, and it costs 24 euros) and activate your swipe card, you can use any one of Bicing's 1,500 bikes, which are designed to prevent people from stealing parts, and to be recognizable. The first 30 minutes of every trip are free, and you can return your bike to any Bicing location around the city (there are at least 100)--one key improvement on car-sharing services, which typically require a user to return the car to the location where he or she picked it up. Every half-hour over the initial free half-hour costs 30 eurocents, making Bicing the cheapest public transport system in Barcelona. You can keep any one bike for up to two hours, and you can always return a bike, run your errand, and grab another for no charge. The bikes seem to be very well-maintained, and everyone uses them—old people, little kids, teenagers on cell phones--everyone.

According to the web site, “Bicing has to be understood as a way of public transport , so that you move from one place to another.” What a great concept--the idea that bikes should be a public service, just like the metro or buses, available at minimal cost to all citizens. In places with less comprehensive public transportation than Barcelona, the impact of a program like Bicing could be huge--replacing the many short trips that are typically taken by car with equivalent short trips taken by bike.

The Bicing program is funded with 2.23 million euros a year in parking fees on drivers who park in the city center--a nice flip on the usual model (here in the US, at least) of funding roads by imposing taxes on everyone, including those who choose not to drive. Since its launch in March 2007, Bicing has grown to serve 90,000 users, and Barcelona Mayor Jordi Hereu has proposed increasing the number of bikes to 6,000 by next summer, and the number of bike stations to 400. In light of Bicing's success, Madrid and other Spanish cities are considering similar services.

(Photo by author).
Erica Barnett (excerpt taken from Worldchanging)

George Bush Doesn't Care About Black People (Music Video)

It's been a little over 2 years since Hurricane Katrina annihilated New Orleans and a lot of the city is still uninhabitable. Disasters like this and genocide in Darfur are what we should be using our military capabilities for. Bush had diverted the funding to maintain the New Orleans levee system as well as the military assets to swiftly and effectively deal with this needless and easily preventable disaster a long time prior for the meatgrinder in Iraq. Looks a lot like war on, or at least a systemic problem of second class citizenship for people of color in this country.

I believe the way forward is to strive for a convergence of the ecological sustainability and social justice movements. Unite and get active in any way you can!!!

THIS POST IS NOT FOR KIDS!

Money, Sustainability and Power - a snapshot

Nice compilation of video clips, music, and still images. Check out the anti-banking quotes from some titans of finance. Solid message.