DEADLY BREW - THE HUMAN TOLL OF ETHANOL

More "Ethanol, Schmethanol"


Video fans... Here's a powerful little documentary on the human price of ethanol. Look down the list of vids on this site and prepare to have your soul rocked.

I don't like the idea of Bloomberg running for prez as an Indy... But I like his website and his news channel. Both are straight-ahead, no hype and competent.

Will Starve for Oil

THE OTHER OIL SHOCK
Asymptotic Short Sightedness

I love "asymptotic," the word. Maybe most people say "through the roof" or "scary growth" or "to the moon!" (Thank you Ralph Cramdon.) Here are some asymptotic graphics:


See how those lines shoot up, faster and faster as time goes by? That's asymptotic, baby. Any fool can see that eventually they go almost straight up, right past disaster into the catastrophere.

These are from a NYTimes online article about another pending disaster resulting from short term thinking: "Hydrocarbons bad. Biofuels good." Never mind the inevitable impact on the cost of food. Never mind that irreplaceable forests will be destroyed to plant more palm oil trees. Never mind that more people will starve and the net effect on the environment will be negative. Never mind thinking a little ahead of the nose on your face. (I guess I'm angry. Dang.)

You faithful readers of the Duffster's blog will recall that I've pounded this theme here and here along the way. There are much smarter ways to wean us from icky black stuff from the ground. Throw our vast combined intellect and money at the task of tapping the unlimited clean energy of the sun (thermal and photovoltaic) and the earth (geothermal, wave energy, wind). Then run everything on the electricity that can generate. We have to do it like all life depended on it. It does.

Water -- Some Good News!

Making Liquid Gold

Back in October, this blogster offered the BIG FOUR solution package for the pending water crisis. (Put your hand on a water faucet and believe... because it's true and maybe the scariest result of coming climate change.) In short, those four solutions are: 1. Drip irrigation on a huge scale for agriculture. 2. A national pipeline system for redistributing flood water. 3. Catch and store every drop of rainwater that hits our roofs. 4. Desalination of sea water on a huge scale.

This week in the Wall Street Journal was a great article about the technological and financial progress toward large scale desalination. Not "huge" yet, but promising. I like their graphic.
(You might conclude this plant is run on pure solar power - it's not, but it should be... plus wind, geothermal and, heck, I'll say it, nuclear*. Anything but hydrocarbon energy.)

Ring our sea-to-shining-sea country with bigger and better desalination plants, (sequestering the salt of course) and immunize the U.S.A. against the curse of the coming super drought.

Not to mention BIG BUCK$ for our economy. If we build bigger and better desalination technology, they will come, bearing billion$. I can also see a giant fleet of water supertankers, carrying precious fresh water to the world's thirsty and parched. Fresh water will eventually become more valuable than oil. Write that down somewhere.

*If there was ever an issue that should bring compromises
from all sides of the environmental battles, it's water.
Nothing will be so destructive to humanity as water shortages.

Big Biz Busts John Edwards

Where Has John Gone?

Have you noticed a sudden drop in the amount of coverage in the "mainstream media" of John Edwards? To the casual viewer it looks like the Democratic nomination contest has become strictly Obama vs. Clinton.

The populist theory about the Populist Candidate is that he has stepped over the line in his criticism of "Big Business, the corporations that own and control most of Congress these days." So sayeth John Edwards, loud, clear and long. So those corporations - which own a lion's share of the mainstream media - have just sent down the word to their media minions to start ignoring him.

Dang.

Now we read that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is going to raise another $60 million specifically to fight any populist, "anti-business" candidates for President. Guess who has top billing in that fight? Here's the way the match-up looks:



John Edwards, Populist /// Thomas Donahue, Pres U.S. C of C

Under Donahue, the U.S. Chamber has become a Republican Tool, fighting tooth and nail against anything pro-consumer, pro-environment or pro-civil rights. (In another Orwellian distortion of the English language, all these have been re-labeled "anti-business.")

So raise heck with your favorite mainstream medium. John Edwards is being disappeared from their screens and pages, and it just ain't right.