The proper way to write a law to require the use of NON-fossil-fuel
energy to make electricity is to cap and lower the carbon dioxide
put into the air per 1000 megawatt years. Do it on a company-by-
company basis, not a power-plant-by-power-plant basis. A coal
fired power plant produces 14.7 million tons of CO2 per 1000
megawatts in one year. Lower the amount of CO2 allowed per
1000 megawatt years each year. Allow the private sector to figure
out how to do it. If you just require that a certain percentage of
power come from renewable resources, the production of CO2 will
diminish only slightly because of the "Spinning Reserve" problem,
described below.

Wind energy wastes energy because the wind varies so much that
a "spinning reserve" is required in most locations. The coal fire
has to be kept burning so that the steam turbine will keep spinning
fast enough to generate electricity instantly when the wind dies.
If you are running the steam powered generator at the spinning
reserve rate, you may as well use the steam as your energy source
and forget about the wind. Wind turbines are decorations, not
sources of energy for the grid until we have room temperature
superconductors or super batteries. There are special locations
and circumstances where wind energy is useful, but wind cannot
replace coal and nuclear any time soon. The object of the new
law must be to shut down coal fired power plants by replacing
them with base load sources that don't make CO2.

We don't have batteries that are good enough and cheap enough to
solve the problem of wind variability yet. We need research into
energy storage and room temperature superconductors. The
research will take an unknown amount of time. We don't have
that time. Batteries and room temperature superconductors have
been under research for a very long time already, so don't expect
any breakthroughs next week.

There is one and only one practical way to replace coal fired
power plants at the present time. That one way is nuclear power.
Nuclear power works for base load and nuclear power is clean and
safe. Nuclear fuel is recyclable. There is no such thing as
nuclear waste. Since we need to build 10,000 new nuclear power
plants worldwide to replace coal fired power plants, there will be
more than enough jobs. Nuclear power is the greenest.

I am NOT connected with the nuclear industry in any way. I am
a retired Department of the Army civilian engineer and scientist.

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From: Earth Policy Institute
Published July 3, 2008 11:44 AM
enn
CUTTING CO2 EMISSIONS 80% BY 2020 TO AVOID
DANGEROUS CLIMATE CHANGE

WASHINGTON, DC — “When political leaders look at the need
to cut carbon dioxide emissions to curb global warming, they ask
the question: How much of a cut is politically feasible? At the
Earth Policy Institute we ask a different question: How much of a
cut is necessary to avoid the most dangerous effects of climate
change?”? write Lester R. Brown, Janet Larsen, Jonathan G.
Dorn, and Frances C. Moore in a premiere Earth Policy Institute
blueprint, “It’s Time for Plan B: Cutting Carbon Emissions 80
Percent by 2020.”?
80by2020 book
By burning fossil fuels and destroying forests, we are releasing
greenhouse gases, importantly carbon dioxide (CO2), into the
atmosphere. These heat-trapping gases are warming the planet,
setting in motion changes that are taking us outside the climate
bounds within which civilization developed.

We cannot afford to let the planet get much hotter. At today’s
already elevated temperatures, the massive Greenland and West
Antarctic ice sheets—which together contain enough water to
raise sea level by 12 meters (39 feet)—are melting at accelerating
rates. Glaciers around the world are shrinking and at risk of
disappearing, including those in the mountains of Asia whose ice
melt feeds the continent’s major rivers during the dry season.
Delaying action will only lead to greater damage. It’s time for
Plan B.
The alternative to business as usual, Plan B calls for cutting net
carbon dioxide emissions 80 percent by 2020. This will allow us
to prevent the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, already at
384 parts per million (ppm), from exceeding 400 ppm, thus
keeping future global temperature rise to a minimum.
"We need to mobilize at wartime speed," says Brown, President of
Earth Policy Institute. "Cutting carbon emissions 80 percent by
2020 will not be easy, but it may be the key to saving
civilization." First, investing in energy efficiency will allow us to
keep global energy demand from increasing. Then we can cut
carbon emissions by one third by replacing fossil fuels with
renewable energy sources for electricity and heat production. A
further 14 percent drop comes from restructuring our
transportation systems and reducing coal and oil use in industry.
Ending net deforestation worldwide can cut CO2 emissions
another 16 percent. Last, planting trees and managing soils to
sequester carbon can absorb 17 percent of our current emissions.
None of these initiatives depends on new technologies. We know
what needs to be done to reduce CO2 emissions 80 percent by
2020. All that is needed now is leadership. To read the full
blueprint, see here.:
80by2020 book
Contact Info: Reah Janise Kauffman, Media Contact
(202)496-9290 x12
rjk@earthpolicy.org
Janet Larsen, Research Contact
(202)496-9290 x14
jlarsen@earthpolicy.org
Earth Policy Institute
1350 Connecticut Ave. NW, Suite 403
Washington, DC 20036
Website : Earth Policy Institute http://www.earthpolicy.org/

Plan B 3.0: Mobilizing to Save Civilization
by Lester R. Brown

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The defining characteristic of a failing state is the inability of a
government to provide security for its people. Somalia, Sudan, the
Democratic Republic of the Congo, Haiti, and Pakistan are among
the better known examples. Each year the number of failing states
increases. “Failing states,” notes Brown, “are an early sign of a
failing civilization.”

“Even as the accumulating backlog of unresolved problems is
leading to a breakdown of governments in weaker states, new
stresses are emerging. Among these are rising oil prices as the
world approaches peak oil, rising food prices as an ever larger
share of the U.S. grain harvest is converted into fuel for cars, and
the spreading fallout from climate change.”

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"Six Degrees" by Mark Lynas Downloaded from:
Six steps to hell

'Six steps to hell' - summary of Six Degrees as published in the Guardian 23 April 07:

By the end of the [21st] century, the Earth could be more than 6C hotter than it is
today, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. We know that
would be bad news – but just how bad? How big a rise will it take for the Alps to
melt, the oceans to die and desert to conquer Europe and the Americas? Mark
Lynas sifted through thousands of scientific papers for his new book on global
warming. This is what the research told him…

The following is an article by Mark Lynas based on his book Six Degrees: Our
Future on a Hotter Planet. It was published in the Guardian on 23 April 2007. The
original version is available here.

1ºC: Nebraska isn’t at the top of most tourists’ to-do lists. However, this dreary
expanse of impossibly flat plains sits in the middle of one of the most productive
agricultural systems on Earth. Beef and corn dominate the economy, and the Sand
Hills region – where low, grassy hillocks rise up from the flatlands – has some of
the best cattle ranching in the whole US. But scratch beneath the grass and you
will find, as the name suggests, not soil but sand. These innocuous-looking hills
were once desert, part of an immense system of sand dunes that spread across the
Great Plains from Texas in the south to the Canadian prairies in the north. Six
thousand years ago, when temperatures were about 1C warmer than today in the
US, these deserts may have looked much as the Sahara does today. As global
warming bites, the western US could once again be plagued by perennial drought –
devastating agriculture and driving out human inhabitants on a scale far larger than
the 1930s “Dustbowl” exodus.

1ºC is 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit. Since the year 1750, we have already caused 1.3
degrees Fahrenheit of global warming. You didn't notice it because you are not
300 years old. The rate of global warming continues to speed up. It won't take
much longer. Only another half a degree Fahrenheit and Americans stop eating.
American civilization collapses and 99.99% of all Americans and Europeans die.
Cannibalism happens.
Read: "Collapse" by Jared Diamond and "The Long Summer" by Brian Fagan.
Something like 2 dozen civilizations have already disappeared because of climate
changes smaller than the one we have already caused. Starvation was the cause of
death.

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As long as you keep messing around with wind, solar, geothermal and wave
power, the coal industry is safe. There is no way wind, solar, geothermal and
wave power can replace coal, and they know it. The coal fire has to keep on
burning in case the wind dies or the sun goes down. If you quit being afraid of
nuclear, the coal industry is doomed. Every time you argue in favor of wind,
solar, geothermal and wave power, or against nuclear, King Coal is happy.
ONLY nuclear power can put coal out of business. Nuclear power HAS put coal
out of business in France. France uses 30 year old American technology. So
here is the deal: Keep being afraid of all things nuclear and die either when [not
if] civilization collapses or when H2S comes out of the ocean and Homo
"Sapiens" goes extinct. OR: Get over your paranoia and kick the coal habit and
live. Which do you choose? I put quotation marks around "Sapiens" because it
is not clear that most of us have enough brains to avoid extinction when it is
clearly predicted and the safe path has been pointed out. Nuclear is the safe path.

PS: Nuclear is the cheapest and safest source of electricity. Nuclear life cycle
CO2 output is the lowest per kilowatt hour because it takes a huge number of
windmills or solar collectors or wave machines or whatever to produce the same
power as a nuclear power plant. All of those windmills or whatever have
manufacturing processes that make CO2. Hydro power requires an enormous
amount of concrete. The first step in making concrete is heating limestone to
drive off the CO2. That is one of the sources of CO2 from hydro power. The
price for electricity for the various sources of power include the total life cycle
costs. The cost to build the reactor is not much different from the cost to build a
coal fired power plant and the money comes from the same source. Whoever
would pay for the reactor is the same person who would pay for the coal burner.

Nuclear is the cheapest and the only full time replacement for coal.
Nuclear power would be much cheaper than it is if nuclear were allowed to be as
unsafe as the other sources of power. Nuclear power plants are self-insured.
Tax money is NOT involved and would not be mentioned if it were not for the
civil disturbances caused by coal company shills, alias protesters. The nuclear
industry needs and deserves protection from people who are obviously either
mentally ill or very misinformed. When tax money is mentioned with respect to
nuclear power, the money is the extra money that is wasted because of pointless
protests.

There is NO SUCH THING as nuclear waste. There is fuel that is being wasted
for political reasons and because the coal industry has driven Americans paranoid.
The coal industry's reason for doing so is the $100 Billion per year cash flow
they receive as long as you are afraid of all things nuclear. If you remain afraid
of all things nuclear and prevent the conversion from coal to nuclear everybody
dies. The cure is for everybody to go to college and get a 4 year degree in a
hard science [physics or chemistry] or engineering, or for Americans to start
acting like the French people with respect to nuclear power.

I have never worked for the nuclear power industry.

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Yucca Mountain contains an enormous supply of nuclear fuel that
should not be wasted. We don't recycle nuclear fuel because
spent fuel is valuable and people steal it. The place it went that it
wasn't supposed to go to is Israel. This happened in a small town
near Pittsburgh, PA circa 1970. A company called Numec was in
the business of reprocessing nuclear fuel. I almost took a job
there, designing a nuclear battery for a heart pacemaker. [The
army offered me more money to work on nuclear weapons
effects.] [A nuclear battery would have the advantage of lasting
many times as long as any other battery, eliminating many
surgeries to replace batteries.] Numec did NOT have a reactor.
Numec "lost" a quantity of reactor grade uranium. It wound up in
Israel. The Israelis have fueled both their nuclear power plants
and their nuclear weapons by stealing nuclear "waste." See:
Pittsburghlive

It could work for any other country, such as Iran or the United
States. It is only when you don't have access to nuclear "waste"
that you have to do the difficult process of enriching uranium,
unless you have a Canadian "CANDU" reactor or a British
Magnox reactor, both of which run on unenriched uranium.
Numec is no longer in business. The reprocessing of nuclear fuel
in the US stopped. That was the only politically possible solution
at that time, given that private corporations did the reprocessing.
My solution would be to reprocess the fuel at a Government
Owned Government Operated [GOGO] facility. At a GOGO
plant, bureaucracy and the multiplicity of ethnicity and religion
would disable the transportation of uranium to Israel or to any
unauthorized place. Nothing heavier than a secret would get out.

I have no financial stake in the nuclear power industry, and I
never have. Nobody is paying me to say this.
See:
http://www.hyperionpowergeneration.com/
Factory made nuclear reactors.

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Global Ocean Wind Energy Potential according to NASA

Wind Energy Potential according to NASA
Large images [On the original web site. If you look at the images, you see
that the best wind is at very INconvenient locations, like near Antarctica and in the
North Pacific ocean.]

"Wind energy has the potential to provide 10 to 15 percent of the world’s future
energy, according to Paul Dimotakis, chief technologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion
Laboratory. Once windmills are installed, wind can be converted to electricity
inexpensively. But not everyone likes wind farms. The giant collection of whirling
blades mars scenic views and can kill birds and bats, particularly if located in a
high-traffic flyway. To minimize these risks, one solution may be to place wind
farms in the ocean. Wind tends to blow stronger over the ocean than over land.
The ocean presents a smooth surface over which wind can glide without
interruption, while hills, mountains, and forests tend to slow or channel wind over
land.

But, as any sailor could tell you, wind over the ocean isn’t consistent. In some
places, the air is still, while in others, the wind blows fiercely. To identify potential
wind farm locations, NASA scientists Tim Liu, Wenqing Tang, and Xiaosu Xie, all
at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, mapped out average wind intensity over the
ocean between 2000 and 2007. They created their maps from data collected by
NASA’s Quick Scatterometer (QuickSCAT), which measures wind speed and
direction over the world’s oceans. The satellite sends pulses of microwave energy
through the atmosphere to the ocean surface and measures the energy that bounces
back from the wind-roughened surface. The energy of the microwave pulses
changes depending on wind speed and direction. The scientists averaged
QuikSCAT’s measured wind speeds by season, and then calculated the wind
power density, the amount of energy that could be derived from a wind turbine in a
given location. Their maps for the winter and summer seasons are shown here.

Wind strength is influenced by seasonal patterns, land-ocean interactions, land
topography, and ocean temperatures. All of these interactions are evident in this
pair of images. Areas of high wind power density, where winds are strongest, are
purple, while low power density regions are light blue and white.

The largest patterns shown in the images are seasonal patterns. In December,
January, and February, winter storms fuel strong winds in the mid-latitudes of the
Northern Hemisphere. In June, July, and August, winter reigns in the Southern
Hemisphere, and the pattern is reversed. The Asian monsoon also controls the
seasonal distribution of wind. In June, July, and August, strong winds gust across
the Bay of Bengal and the Arabian Sea. From December to February, the monsoon
winds blow over the East China Sea. Finally, the trade winds trace their way
across the tropics, stronger in the winter than in the summer."

==================article continues at the URL above=========

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Seeing his name, forces one to scroll down to look for sane comments; but here we go again, A M hogging the space. Please, Alternet, gag him.
The esteemed groups, in the above article, are spokes-people for an endangered planet. Why does the deluded Asteroidminor think he knows best?

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My choice would be Robert F Kennedy Jr. and if not for that position then as head of the EPA and head of returning EPA to the charge it once held (protecting the environment). His book, Crimes Against Nature, is an outstanding example of his sensitivity to the issues.

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Everything, including yourself, is made of atoms. All atoms have nuclei. You
have many atomic nuclei inside yourself since you are made of atoms. The
simplest nucleus is one proton. That would be a hydrogen atom. An oxygen
atom has 8 protons and either 8, 9 or 10 neutrons in its nucleus. All other nuclei
also have neutrons. Uranium has 92 protons and either 143 or 146 neutrons. If it
has 143 neutrons it is U235. If it has 146 neutrons, it is U238. Nuclear fuel is
only 2% to 8% U235, the kind that fissions/divides, providing energy. The rest is
U238 that doesn't fission. A nuclear reaction happens when a neutron is captured
by a nucleus. If a U235 nucleus captures a neutron, the nucleus and the atom split
approximately in half and 3 more neutrons are released because the 2 smaller
nuclei don't need so many neutrons. If a U238 nucleus captures a neutron, it
ejects an electron and the neutron becomes a proton. The U238 thus becomes
Plutonium 239. Plutonium is fissionable, which means that plutonium is a good
fuel. If you add Thorium to the fuel, you can make more fissionable uranium. If
a Thorium atom nucleus captures a neutron, it ejects an electron and the neutron
becomes a proton. The Thorium atom thus becomes U233. U233 is fissionable.

Depending on the design of the reactor and the mix of the fuel, the fuel % in the
reactor can either grow or shrink. It is kind of like the fuel gauge can go either up
or down, but it is more like the reactor can run hotter or cooler over time. The
temperature is kept constant by adjusting the control rods. A breeder reactor is a
reactor designed to make the fissionable part of the fuel load grow rapidly.
Normally, fuel is left in the reactor for about 10 years, or 10% of the fuel is
replaced each year. The reprocessing step sorts out the fuel and puts the
percentage of fissionable fuel back to the starting percentage. In the process,
plutonium may be removed and either wasted or used as fuel. If we add thorium
to the fuel, we can make more uranium than we put in. Since the earth contains
more than twice as much thorium as uranium, it would be wise to make thorium
into uranium. By reprocessing nuclear fuel, we get an enormous, many centuries
long fuel supply. The products of fission are also removed when fuel is
reprocessed. These are just other ordinary atoms that are no longer useful as fuel.
The quantity is very small. We should reprocess fuel to keep the fuel load at the
correct percentage of fissionable fuel for the particular reactor design. Instead, we
go through the expensive process of making more "virgin" fuel for each new fuel
load. This greatly increases the price you pay for electricity. We are not
reprocessing nuclear fuel for political reasons.

I have zero financial interest in nuclear power, and I never have had a financial
interest in nuclear power. My sole motivation in writing this is to avoid extinction
by H2S gas. H2S is how global warming kills everybody if we don't act.

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Would have to be a person who actually knows what energy IS.
Innumerate humanitologists obviously DO NOT know what
energy is because energy is a mathematical concept. That limits
the choices to people with degrees in hard sciences and
engineering. I would pick somebody with a Ph.D. in Physics. A
physicist would be seen as neutral and unbiased in the choice of
energy sources. A physicist would have the required
mathematical skill and ability to make rational choices, and the
required knowledge and ability to acquire more knowledge as
needed.

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"Hope." "Change." "God bless 'Merkuh." "Now isn't the time for differences..." "Now is the time for Unity." "We've got time yet." "We can't do it overnight." "Bootstraps" "roads" "more efficient [gasoline powered] cars" "bailout the economy"... blah, blah, blabbity blah.

All owning class code for no you lower class fuckers, you don't get a leg up. This ain't no welfare state. Eat cake, dammit, and trust us to do what's best for you pathetic peons.

Come 2012 I bet a beer not one part of the plan will be implemented, and the "progressive" plan will be pooh-poohed as "we tried it and it didn't work."

From the film 48 Hours, "Bullshit, ... too stupid [to execute a progressive plan]."

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