Thursday, 09 August 2012
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Climate Change + Oil, Fracking, Earthquakes, Tsunami's, & Alternative Energy Solutions.
The basic electricity creation equipment was invented in the 1800's. It was discovered that by using the flow of water, hydro electricity could be created. For this dams were built. It was also discovered that if you boil water the rising steam could turn a turbine, coal was used to light the fire. Then it was discovered that oil was an even more efficient fuel source and was used for burning in many different combinations, such as in fuel for cars, electricity generation, boats etc. To manage this large companies were created as oil extraction requires lots of heavy equipment and therefore lots of investment in an outdated and dangerous technology. These people got rich and with riches came power. To protect this investment alternative energies were suppressed. Now we have reached a point where natural disasters have become a part of life... and still the charade continues. If we act now, shut down oil companies and use their spare-parts/assets to restructure THEN we can save billions. Further steps and we can save the millions that are destined to die while our planet swings wildly trying to find a new equilibrium... a new equilibrium can can never arrive as long as the practices that created it continue.
Thus we have put together a new world order on top of an increasingly destabilized earth - imagine fighting a war on a destabilized earth that can be even further destabilized by using high intensity electromagnetic equipment(?) and/OR explosives. If aliens existed and were planning to invade then all they would have to do is shoot down oil rigs, cause oil spills (set all that on fire) and cause a few earthquakes. The shortest fight in the history of man.
Some scientist once said if he could find an immovable spot he could move the world. That immovable spot can never exist on the earth for many years to come. Decades... if we don't stop it now.
This post provides an overview in a size that helps with perspective. Newsbites can't present whole pictures of our situation... especially with liars and disinformation in the market of news SHOWS.
First, if you destroy the earth beneath your feet... use sophisticated methods to shatter the earth to extract gasses and minerals (fracking).... remove all the oil and water... IT WILL COLLAPSE. Put a crust on a hole and expect it to stay forever is not just silly it's retarded...
The Layers of Earth
Extract: What is the use of locating seismic discontinuities? Locating these disturbances enable scientists to map the inner regions of the Earth. This science, known as tomography originates from the knowledge gained from discontinuities.
Tomographists have found that this planet is divided into six regions: the inner core, the outer core, the lower mantle, the upper mantle, the transition region, and the crust (oceanic and continental).
Here is a brief synopsis of the depths of each layer (in kilometers):
0- 40 Crust
40- 400 Upper mantle
400- 650 Transition region
650-2700 Lower mantle
2700-2890 D'' layer
2890-5150 Outer core
5150-6378 Inner core
From another angle (extract)...
Geologists have known for about 100 years that the Earth is composed of four layers; the Crust, Mantle, Outer Core, and the Inner Core . Scientists still argue about the makeup of these layers and exactly how each layer interact.
A geologist, by the name of Andrija Mohorovicic, discovered in 1909 that earthquake waves near the surface moved slower than earthquake waves that passed through the interior of the Earth. He also noticed that the P (primary, first and strongest) waves that passed through the interior of the Earth did not do so in a straight line. These waves were bent or deflected by something!!!
He decided that the outside layer or Crust was made of less dense material (Rock) and the next layer, the Mantle was much denser. This would explain why the earthquake waves moved slower through the crust. Waves of all kinds move faster and straighter through denser, more solid objects.
Today scientists believe that the crust and the rigid, outer zone of the mantle makes up a layer that is called the Lithosphere . The lithosphere is broken into 12 large pieces that are called plates. The zone directly under the lithosphere is made of a flowing, denser layer called the Asthenosphere. Scientists believe that the plates ride on the asthenosphere, which flows due to convection currents.
From Britannica...
Plate tectonics...
Extract from Universe Today: The interaction of plates cause boundaries called plate boundaries and faults. These can either be convergent, divergent, or transforming boundaries. This can cause different things. For example, if the boundary is convergent like when two continental plates are colliding can cause the formation of volcanoes and young mountains. They also cause other events like earthquakes and tsunamis.In a nutshell....
Plate Tectonics in a Nutshell The theory of plate tectonics is a relatively new scientific concept. While its forerunner—the theory of continental drift—had its inception as early as the late 16th century, plate tectonics only emerged and matured as a widely accepted theory since the 1960s . In a nutshell, this theory states that the Earth’s outermost layer is fragmented into a dozen or more large and small solid slabs, called lithospheric plates or tectonic plates, that are moving relative to one another as they ride atop hotter, more mobile mantle material (called the asthenosphere). The average rates of motion of these restless plates—in the past as well as the present—range from less than 1 to more than 15 centimeters per year. With some notable exceptions, nearly all the world’s earthquake and volcanic activity occur along or near boundaries between plates.
Note: That ALL tectonic plates or intersection are not known (we can't actually see under the earth, we can send out echoes like the Dolphins and get a sense of our surroundings).What the complexities are we can't be sure BUT we do know how things work generally...
From An Atlas: The crust of our planet is cracked into seven large and many other smaller slabs of rock called plates, averaging about 50 miles thick. As they move (only inches per year), and depending on the direction of that movement, they collide, forming deep ocean trenches, mountains, volcanoes, and generating earthquakes.
Picture of Oil Deposits
Petroleum wells occur between layers on non-porous, impervious rocks. The schematics of such a well is shown below...
Oil deposits are found with water, dust particles, rocks, salt and sand. Wherever there is such a well, natural gas is also found accumulated in pockets of spaces within rocks.
Petroleum can be extracted from oil wells by drilling. Wherever natural gas is found, a petroleum well close by is a possibility. The first oil well was found in Pennysilvania in the USA in the year 1859. In India the first oil well was found in 1867 in Makum in Assam. These days oil wells are generally found under the sea and therefore off shore oil wells have to be dug by building platforms at sea
Types of oil and other wells...
Removing the contents of the ground beneath our feet can make the ground beneath our feet unstable! (Note: the world in like a globe, i.e. it's round)...
Sinkhole Florida: Sinkholes can happen anywhere water can erode a vertical channel that connects to a horizontal drain, a situation that allows a column of solid material to wash away, Missouri State's Gouzie explained.Example 1
Example 2
An example of a sinkhole fixing company...
(Note: This technique will probably only work for small sinkholes, note the kind that formed off the coast of Japan after the last earthquake and tsunami, which is probably just one of the first in a coming chain of natural man made disasters. )
more on making of a sinkhole
Lessons...
1. IF YOU MAKE HOLES IN THE GROUND BENEATH OUR FEET THE GROUND WILL CAVE AND CAUSE EARTHQUAKES.
2. IF YOU REMOVE OIL AND GAS FROM AREAS NEXT TO FAULT LINES THE EARTHQUAKES WILL BE BIGGER.
3. LARGE EARTHQUAKES OF A CERTAIN TYPE ARE PROVEN TO CAUSE TSUNAMIS.
4. DESTROYING OURSELVES THROUGH EARTHQUAKES AND TSUNAMIS WHILE HEATING UP THE EARTH TO FUEL THIS PROCESS IS OUR CURRENT PATH.
Fracking can cause even more sinkholes and earthquakes...
Fracking uses various techniques to smash the rock and extract gas from it, the funny thing is the debate right now is between chemicals that are used in fracking, not destroying the ground beneath our feet for an outdated fuel source!....
What's Up With Drilling and Earthquakes? —By Kate SheppardThere has been increasing concern about the potential role of fracking in earthquakes. The worries prompted the the US Geological Survey to look into it, and scientists found that the increase in earthquakes is likely man-made, but probably caused more by wastewater disposal than fracking itself. Now, a fabulous new piece from EnergyWire looks a little more deeply at the wastewater connection.
Reporter Mike Soraghan visited Oklahoma, where state officials are taking their time investigating the connection between the industrial processes and a magnitude-5.6 quake that damaged homes and highways along the Wilzetta Fault last year:
The oil companies that operate the nearby wells say they couldn't have triggered the quake. But scientists say injection certainly can unleash earthquakes. University of Oklahoma seismologist Katie Keranen, who has been studying the earthquake since the day it happened, says there's evidence to back up Loveland's hunch.
"There's a compelling link between the zone of injection and seismicity," Keranen said at a seismological conference in April. She's one of a handful of scientists who see evidence of such a connection.
Like Loveland, people who see potential connections between the quake and drilling activities are resigned rather than resentful. Most seem ready to wait while the state gathers information.
The whole article is an informative read on the state of science and policy when it comes to these quakes....
Note: The following extract is about an earthquake in Oklahoma and how calmly they are handling it. Oklahoma's are very self-assured people who may think the end of the world is coming (amongst the very religious) but little things like earthquakes. because they are just destabilizing the ground beneath thier feet, is not something that bothers them much.
(They are a hardy people, not smart, just hardy.)
Victims think drilling triggered shaking, and that's OK...
PRAGUE, Okla. -- Jerri Loveland sees a connection between the oil drilling that surrounds her home and the earthquake last November that upended her life.
The magnitude-5.6 convulsion toppled her chimney and buckled her tornado cellar. It inflicted about $50,000 in damage to the farmhouse she shares with her husband, John, and their two young children on a gravel road about 45 minutes east of Oklahoma City.
They had no earthquake insurance, so they don't have the money for repairs. But if they don't fix the damage by September, they fear they'll lose their homeowners insurance.
"I'm not sure what we're going to do. Hope for the lottery, maybe," she said as she showed a visitor how a decades-old addition split from the house.
Some of her neighbors in this rural patch dotted with cattle and oil wells blame "fracking," or hydraulic fracturing. But coming from an oil industry family, she sees the connection as having more to do with the millions of gallons of salt-laden water that comes up with the oil and gets reinjected in deep wells nearby.
In rare cases, that wastewater can lubricate faults and unleash earthquakes. Loveland didn't know before the earthquake that her house sits nearly on top of the Wilzetta Fault, the one that ruptured in November.
"I don't think it was the fracking. I think it was the injection wells," she said, pointing over trees toward an injection well about half a mile away. "But what do you do?"
What people have done in other states -- Arkansas, Ohio and Texas -- is file class-action lawsuits, push for stricter seismic rules and shut down injection wells.
But not in Oklahoma. State officials here are taking a slower approach than their counterparts in Ohio and Arkansas and continuing to let the companies inject near the active fault. The Oklahoma Corporation Commission, which oversees drilling, is working with the Oklahoma Geological Survey to determine whether the quake was triggered, or "induced."
"We're continuing to look at it. It's a little different than what's happened in these other states," said Corporation Commissioner Dana Murphy, who leads the panel. "There's been injection activity in this area for a long time. And there's naturally occurring earthquakes here.
The oil companies that operate the nearby wells say they couldn't have triggered the quake. But scientists say injection certainly can unleash earthquakes. University of Oklahoma seismologist Katie Keranen, who has been studying the earthquake since the day it happened, says there's evidence to back up Loveland's hunch.
"There's a compelling link between the zone of injection and seismicity," Keranen said at a seismological conference in April. She's one of a handful of scientists who see evidence of such a connection.
Like Loveland, people who see potential connections between the quake and drilling activities are resigned rather than resentful. Most seem ready to wait while the state gathers information.
"I assume many people in town think it's the injection. I don't doubt they caused it," said Jim Greff, city manager in Prague, the city closest to the quake's center. "Until the Corporation Commission steps up or someone at the [state] Geological Survey steps up, I don't know that anything can be done."
'Shaking, shaking, shaking'
It was just a few minutes before 11 on a Saturday night when the earthquake struck. John and Jerri Loveland had just finished watching Oklahoma State University beat Kansas State in football.
"They had won and everything was going on and the house started shaking," Loveland recalled. She ran upstairs to get their daughter, a toddler. John got their son, and they ran out the door.
After a solid minute of shaking, they stepped back inside and heard a hissing sound. Their pipes were broken. They turned off their water well, got in their car and drove 70 miles to stay with relatives.
About 2 miles away, Joe Reneau said it sounded as if a plane crashed into his yard. The convulsions crumpled, split and tilted the solid concrete slab his home was built on. It would take 33 steel piers driven into bedrock to right it.
"It was just shaking, shaking, shaking," Reneau recalled.
Then the top half of his chimney crashed through the roof of his den.
Farther south, toward Meeker, the quake buckled the blacktop of U.S. Route 62. To the west, in Shawnee, a turret atop the stately administration building at St. Gregory's University severed and crashed to the ground.
The upheaval cracked walls for miles around, knocked over dressers, bounced plates off shelves and broke open cracks in the flat, red earth. At least two people were injured by falling bricks, and state officials tallied up damage to nearly 200 homes and businesses.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency declined to provide disaster aid, but the U.S. Small Business Administration issued about $2 million in low-interest loans in the area.
Aftershocks continued for weeks after, as strong as magnitude 4. Six months later, in early May, a magnitude-3.9 quake struck the same area.
As frightening as it was, Loveland thinks the "foreshock" was scarier. In the early morning of that Saturday, at about 2 a.m., she and her husband were roused from their sleep by a magnitude-4.7 convulsion, sending them scrambling outside with their children.
"We didn't know what was going on," she recalled.
That foreshock was centered a little less than a mile from a drilling site with two injection wells owned by Spess Oil Co., a small operator from Cleveland, Okla., about 70 miles north of Prague. One theory holds that the foreshock triggered the "main shock," which was felt as far away as St. Louis. It was the strongest earthquake ever recorded in Oklahoma.
'Too much of a coincidence'
It would not be the biggest U.S. earthquake suspected of being triggered by oil and gas activities. According to a recent National Research Council report, that would be a magnitude-6.5 earthquake in 1983 near Coalinga, Calif., that injured 94 people. Researchers have linked it to oil extraction.
But at magnitude 5.6, the Oklahoma quake would be the largest caused by wastewater injection.
And Joe and Mary Reneau think it was. Joe said that if the earthquake and its aftershocks are plotted, they line up with the injection wells in the area.
"That's too much of a coincidence," said Mary, seated next to Joe in their living room on a June afternoon. "I definitely believe that. Just about everybody around here thinks it is."
Smaller earthquakes tied to oil and gas activities in the past few years have triggered bigger reactions in other states.
In Texas, Chesapeake Energy Corp. shut down two wells near the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport in 2009 after they were linked to much smaller, magnitude-3.3 quakes (Greenwire, March 11, 2010).
Ohio this year called in a team of seismologists from Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory to study a series of earthquakes in Youngstown that culminated in a magnitude-4 event on New Year's Day. Three months later, state officials announced that the quake had likely been caused by a new injection well, which had already been shut down (Greenwire, March 9). They also proposed rules banning new injection wells near faults. Earlier this month, Gov. John Kasich (R) deemed the situation an emergency and told regulators to implement them immediately (EnergyWire, July 12).
In north-central Arkansas, several residents are pursuing a class-action lawsuit against the operators of four wells linked to a "swarm" of earthquakes as large as magnitude 4.7 (EnergyWire, July 5). State officials say the shaking diminished after regulators shut down all injection last year.
In those states, however, large-scale oil and gas drilling is newer than in Oklahoma and not woven so tightly into the economy.
Oklahoma squeezes a Texas-sized love for the oil and gas industry into a state four times smaller. The signs are hard to miss. The grounds of the state Capitol in Oklahoma City are dotted with oil rigs. The University of Oklahoma's geology school bears the ConocoPhillips brand. Oklahoma City's skyline is dominated by the new Devon Energy Center tower, and its beloved basketball team plays in Chesapeake Energy Arena.
"Oklahoma relies on this resource," said Oklahoma Geological Survey seismologist Austin Holland. Prague's Greff echoed, "Oil and gas is big in Oklahoma."
Oil and gas is big, as well, in Prague, the city closest to the quake's epicenter. The biggest employer in town is New Dominion LLC, a Tulsa company that pioneered large-scale "dewatering" -- a production method requiring a lot of wastewater disposal -- in Oklahoma.
Two of the five members on the city council were New Dominion employees until one resigned earlier this year. The company bought water rights for the city and land for a fire station. And the company's annual "New Dominion Dayz" bash is the second-biggest event in Prague each year, after its Kolache Festival.
New Dominion has been generous with the state Geological Survey, as well, donating $100,000 worth of seismic equipment to measure a swarm of earthquakes in Oklahoma City's eastern suburbs.
Given the industry's involvement with the city, Greff shows little surprise when he's asked whether Prague is showing undue deference to drillers.
"It's not true of me," Greff said in an interview in his office. "If they want to give us things without asking for anything in return, I'll take it."
The industry's popularity is one of the reasons that Joe Reneau sees no point in taking on the oil companies. "I'd be run out of town," he explained. But Reneau, who retired back to Oklahoma 25 years ago after working in military intelligence in Washington, D.C., said he's ready to challenge the oil companies in court -- next time.
"If it were to happen again, I would be soliciting donations for a lawsuit to put this thing in the court system to get a definitive answer: Are they or are they not related to fracking and the saltwater wells?" he said. "So long as there's not a court action, I don't think anybody's going to do anything. Everything's going to be swept under the rug."
'They're kind of a savior'
Jean Antonides' voice has taken on a rare mocking tone.
"This is it. This is King Kong," he says. The vice president of exploration for New Dominion is standing next to his pickup truck on a gravel pad and pointing to a 6-foot metal tower of valves.
"This" is the Wilzetta saltwater disposal well, which happens to bear the name of the fault that ruptured in November. It's one of three such wells within two and a half miles of the quake's epicenter. It could fit inside most suburban backyard sheds.
Black plastic pipes stick out of either side, like outstretched arms reaching into the red dirt. Water is coursing into the pipes from the oil wells that surround it in the green and brown fields beyond. From there, it's flowing down more than 4,000 feet into a formation called the Arbuckle.
To Antonides, who usually speaks in a more earnest tone, it's silly to think that his company's well caused the quake.
"That's people watching too many Superman movies," Antonides says. "Some individuals pick only the data that serves their purpose."
He adds that having earthquakes may not be such a bad thing. Smaller earthquakes such as the one in November might be preventing bigger, more dangerous earthquakes by relieving stress on underground faults.
"What happens if there had not been that release of energy?" he asks. "They're kind of a savior. They help keep down the big ones."
Such sentiments are not generally shared by the seismological community. Some say smaller, man-made quakes have usually presaged larger eruptions. Others have looked into setting off controlled earthquakes. But they found that although they could start them, they weren't sure whether they could stop them and almost certainly couldn't control them. In addition, a magnitude-5 quake releases only about one-thousandth of the energy of a magnitude-7 quake.
Antonides thinks the November earthquake was caused by the weight of extremely heavy rains in the area that fell days before the earthquake after months of drought.
"The volume is just immense. It's the rate of change," he says. "That was the trigger point for the Wilzetta fault. That relative weight change was the trigger point."
The 3,000 or so barrels (126,000 gallons) a day that New Dominion poured into the Wilzetta well in the month before the quake is tiny in comparison with that, he says. And he says it's significant that New Dominion doesn't need to use pressure to push water down the Wilzetta well. Instead, the water flows freely and even creates a vacuum in the well.
That's not true of the Spess wells. About 2 miles away, down gravel roads and a rutted two-track, they're only about a thousand yards apart as the crow flies. They inject much less water than the New Dominion well, but it has taken increasing amounts of pressure to get the water down. In 2000, Spess used no pressure. But after that, it started taking more pressure to inject the brine, as high as 500 psi in 2010. In the company's 2011 report to the state, filed in March of this year, the pressure was down to 250 psi.
The Spess wells are even less imposing than the New Dominion well. They were drilled as production wells in the 1940s and '50s, and they show their age. They both have a patina of rust, and broken fencing at one of the wells surrounded standing liquid on a recent afternoon in June. Piles of rusting well parts are strewn nearby.
Steven Spess, listed on state forms as the agent for the company, said in a brief phone interview with EnergyWire that there's no chance the company's wells had anything to do with the earthquake.
"None whatsoever," he said. "We put in such a small amount of water."
But some of Keranen's fellow seismologists agree that there is evidence to support the idea that the earthquake is connected to the injection wells.
University of Memphis seismologist Steve Horton, whose findings were part of the basis for the well shutdown in Arkansas last year, posted a research report earlier this year citing a correlation among the Spess wells, the New Dominion well and the location of the quakes' epicenters (EnergyWire, April 19). He warned that Oklahoma authorities are risking another damaging earthquake if they continue to allow injection into the fault.
But what brought national attention to the question of whether the Nov. 5 quake was man-made was a March U.S. Geological Survey report that said a "remarkable" increase in earthquakes is "almost certainly man-made" (EnergyWire, March 19).
That finding did not include the November earthquake, but the author of the USGS report, seismologist Bill Ellsworth, told EnergyWire in April that "the largest preponderance of evidence" points to the Oklahoma quake, in addition to a Colorado quake earlier in 2011, being caused by injection (EnergyWire, April 23).
The height of stupidity...
Links On Fracking...
Fracking DID cause ELEVEN earthquakes in Ohio last year
Ohio Earthquake Likely Caused by Fracking Wastewater
Maps: The Secrets Drillers Can Hide About the Fracking in Your Backyard
More Evidence On Fracking...
News Report: "In what the Pennsylvania governor says will 'level the playing field for gas exploration', a controversial bill has been passed, rendering previous zoning laws void"
Mother Jones On Fracking:
There are plenty of reasons to worry about fracking—groundwater contamination, methane leaks, that flaming tap water thing. But can it really cause earthquakes? That's the question the US Geological Survey set out to answer after a spate of tremors in the Midwest—an area not usually known for earthquakes—alerted scientists to the possibility that some of them might be man-made.
Seismic activity in the Midwest started increasing around 12 years ago but picked up significantly in the past few years, says seismologist Bill Ellsworth, the lead author of a new USGS study examining potential links between fracking and earthquakes in the region. Since 1970, the baseline for earthquakes in the Midwest measuring above a 3.0 hovered at around 21 per year, but beginning in 2001, that number began to rise. There's been a "remarkable increase" in the past few years: The number of 3.0-plus earthquakes rose from 29 in 2008 to 50 in 2009, then to 87 in 2010, and in 2011 to a staggering 134. Something unusual was going on, but what? As Ellsworth and his colleagues at USGS ask in the study, "Is this increase natural or manmade?" And if it's man-made, is fracking—which has ramped up in the region in the past several years—to blame?
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On The Keystone Pipeline
[Bot Bites] XL Pipeline, Fracking and Oil Scandals
The Keystone XL Pipeline Scandal
[Bot Bites] The GOP Are Messing With The Economy Just To Get Obama!
Citizen voices (US Citizen's rights vs oil company profits - as there are no long-term civilian benefits)
1. Citizens don't want their property destroyed: "See the land owners and citizens of Nebraska as they voice thier concerns about the Trans Canada XL Pipeline which could affect the protected Sandhills and drinking water supply"
3. Evidence for making people's lives difficult (yhe less money you have the more high oil prices affect your standard of living - i.e. it lowers it) - connects to safety net cuts... thus applies towards article 3 section 3 of the US constitution... "Oil Speculation Bubbles Are Pushing Up Oil Prices"
Modern oil detection methods are relentless, it's like we are after EVERY drop of oil...
Hunting every drop of oil with a desperation fueled by the gamblers on Wall Street (i.e. no new investments still the movements of gamblers, i.e. stock prices, dominate "news" media in the States - Should be allowed ONLY in Las Vegas)...
(Image source)
OFFSHORE DRILLING is not worth the risks...
Certainly, the push for offshore drilling by conservatives and republicans isn’t prudent energy policy. Offshore drilling is also shortsighted policy that doesn’t result in energy independence, so these offshore nonrenewable energy reserves should be preserved.
Furthermore, offshore drilling has seemingly insignificant but cumulative negative ecological impacts in addition to major negative ecological impacts. More from Dan DeWitt via Tampabay.com:
We would be able to see those rigs, of course, but not the releases of mercury and other toxins in the “mud” used to lubricate drill bits. There could be devastating spills such as the one coming from a wellhead (a modern, high-tech one, by the way) that is currently spewing thousands of barrels per day off the coast of Australia, or smaller ones that in the United States account for a total of 3,898 barrels, on average, every year, according to an industry group.
Drilling so close to shore means these spills would go directly into estuaries and seagrass beds off Hernando and Citrus that are vital to the gulf’s fishery.Government of "we the people" is necessary for any human society... but the government has become part of the problem...
[ Note: This image is edited from "Capitalism Visualized" - I found the link to the above image from BillMoyers.com (at the bottom of the page of Bill Moyers Interview of David Stockman on "Crony Capitalism") ]
Quick Study...
2. OVERVIEW: The Science of Weed, Inventions (like Space Flight), and Oil Politics
Fuel
3. Energy/Oil Terrorism (Documentary "Fuel") - Director Josh Tickell takes us along for his 11 year journey around the world to find solutions to America's addiction to oil. A shrinking economy, a failing auto industry, rampant unemployment, an out-of-control national debt, and an insatiable demand for energy weigh heavily on all of us. Fuel shows us the way out of the mess we're in by explaining how to replace every drop of oil we now use, while creating green jobs and keeping our money here at home. The film never dwells on the negative, but instead shows us the easy solutions already within our reach.
In Depth...
1. Corruption In The Department of the Interior (deals with oil companies)
A. Sex For Oil Scandal At Interior Department (CBS/ AP) Government officials handling billions of dollars in oil royalties engaged in illicit sex with employees of energy companies they were dealing with and received numerous gifts from them, federal investigators said Wednesday. The allegations of bad behavior involve 13 government employees in Denver and Washington, reports CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson. Those accused are workers who sell U.S. mineral rights to oil companies. Such sales are one of the government's biggest sources of revenue besides taxes. But the Inspector General for the Interior Department says they rigged contracts, and engaged in illegal moonlighting, drugs, sex and gift-taking from oil company representatives, according to three reports released Wednesday. The reports revealed startling allegations including that an employee attended a so-called "treasure hunt" in the desert with all expenses paid by an oil producer, and that a former supervisor - who bought cocaine from a colleague then boosted her performance award - had sex with subordinates, and steered government contracts to an outside business where he also worked, Attkisson reports.
B. Billions Missing From U.S. Indian Trust Fund
In his testimony before Congress, John Echohawk, director of Native American Rights Fund, called it "yet another serious and continuing breach in a long history of dishonorable treatment of Indian tribes and individual Indians by the United States government." Arizona Senator John McCain, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, bluntly called it "theft from Indian people." These men were describing the single largest and longest-lasting financial scandal in history involving the federal government of the United States. With no other recourse left at their disposal, NARF, along with other attorneys, filed a class action lawsuit in federal district court on June 10 on behalf of more than 300,000 American Indians. The suit charges Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt, Assistant Interior Secretary of the Interior for Indian Affairs Ada Deer and Secretary of the Treasury Robert Rubin with illegal conduct in regard to the management of Indian money held in trust accounts and managed by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. If the lawsuit's claims are correct, and there's an overwhelming body of evidence that suggests they are, then the federal government has lost, misappropriated or, in some cases, stolen billions of dollars from some of its poorest citizens.
2. XL Pipeline, Fracking and Oil Scandals
[BTW, Koch company declared 'substantial interest' in Keystone XL pipeline: Document filed with Canada's Energy Board appears to cast doubt on claims by Koch Industries that it has no interest in the controversial pipeline.]
Securities Fraud & The Demolition of Building #7
Exclusive Timeline: Bush Administration Advanced Solyndra Loan Guarantee for Two Years, Media Blow the StoryShould We Build A Wall Around Texas To Protect The US?
BTW???...
Ron Paul Encyclopaedia - Quick Overview
Ron Paul Encyclopaedia - Foreign Policy
Health Care, Individual Mandate & "The War Party" (Where I disagree with Ron Paul)
Moment Of Zen...
This is robber baron capitalism (i.e. Has Fox News Become A Cult Of UN-Constitutional Capitalists? - The answer is YES.)...
Explanations...
The Hypnotic Techniques Of Glenn Beck
The GOP's "War On Science" Part 1 (For Ex: Glenn Beck)
Rush Limbaugh & GOP's strategy is to take baseless, unresearch rumor as fact...
Second, if you look at the treasonous activities that have led to our current situation (see above)... you will notice that certain people are liable for our current damages to a point where death sentences are appropriate. Simple take their money they have made through theft and lies and redistribute it in a way the alleviates the damage being done by this mad race to make money off our planets natural resources before they are used up... the lies to cover up the lies made to cover up even earlier lies will have to end.
FROM NY TIMES: From highways in Texas to nuclear power plants in Illinois, the concrete, steel and sophisticated engineering that undergird the nation’s infrastructure are being taxed to worrisome degrees by heat, drought and vicious storms.
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Note: Most PhD's, even the ones who do thier research with honor, are terribly uneducated and/or unread - This is my part 1 to explain this phenomenon = The Fragmentation of Knowledge Part 1 [Or, The case against over-specialization i.e. PhD's] (Do I have to write a part 2?)
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Anyways, climate change is real (carbon heats up creating a "greenhouse effect") - volcano's release particles that can block heat that causes cooling such as the mini-ice age of the middle/dark ages... BTW, intentionally causing volcanoes to explode is dumb and anyone who suggests that should not be allowed to think, just make devices they are told to make (just in case).
In the fierce and sometimes ugly fight over global climate change, we finally have an answer coming from the earth itself: the weather is telling us climate change is here and we are causing it. Theoretical physicist Michio Kaku is among the scientist who say the world is giving us signs that climate change is already happening (to see how he explains it, watch the video above). This summer, there have been relentless droughts, wildfires, melting glaciers and unprecedented storms – all happening at the same time. And around the world people are demanding something be done about it. Even in the United States, ground zero for climate change denial, six in ten Americans say they believe it is indeed happening. But political leaders are missing in action – cowed by a vociferous climate change denial club, which is actually now shrinking faster than the polar ice caps. By Christiane Amanpour
The frozen history of climate change...
Scientists Lonnie Thompson and wife Ellen have made it their personal quests to unlock the frozen history of our climate. He is one of a small group of scientists whose research actually led to the discovery of global climate change. And she leads a major polar research team at the Ohio State University, where they both work.Extracts of Scientific and Social-Economics Studies from The Guardian...
Why do economists describe climate change as a 'market failure'?
Unregulated markets have overproduced CO2 because the costs are not priced into the transaction
When free markets do not maximise society's welfare, they are said to 'fail' and policy intervention may be needed to correct them. Many economists have described climate change as an example of a market failure – though in fact a number of distinct market failures have been identified.
The core one is the so-called 'greenhouse-gas externality'. Greenhouse gas emissions are a side-effect of economically valuable activities. Most of the impacts of emissions do not fall on those conducting the activities – instead they fall on future generations or people living in developing countries, for example – so those responsible for the emissions do not pay the cost. The adverse effects of greenhouse gases are therefore 'external' to the market, which means there is usually only an ethical – rather than an economic – incentive for businesses and consumers to reduce their emissions. As a result, the market fails by over-producing greenhouse gases.
Economists concerned about this market failure argue for policy intervention to increase the price of activities that emit greenhouse gases, thereby providing a clear signal to guide economic decision-making at the same time as stimulating innovation of low-carbon technologies. In order to ensure that emissions cuts are spread out across the economy as inexpensively as possible, economists tend to favour policies that ensure that all businesses and households face the same price on carbon – such as a tax on emissions or an emissions trading scheme.
The greenhouse gas externality is accompanied by a number of other market failures, including those arising from a lack of information about how to reduce emissions, network effects and a lack of innovation incentives. These call for a package of interventions including, but not restricted to, a price on carbon, according to economists concerned about climate change.
For example, new networks are likely to be important in several areas of low-carbon energy supply – such as the 'smart' electricity grid and electric vehicle charging points. But such networks can be difficult to establish through market forces alone, because in the early days of a network the benefits may be very limited, despite the potentially huge benefits that can be achieved once the network reaches a critical mass. Take electric vehicles: they're inconvenient if charging points are few and far between, but much more useful once a large network of charging points is established. (This is an example of a positive type of externality: when a network increases in size, every member of the network benefits, even though they have not paid for this benefit.) As a result, policy support may sometimes be necessary to help kick-start useful networks.
In the case of innovation, markets currently fail to offer sufficient incentives for the development of low-carbon technologies. An innovative idea that can be copied or used with no financial payment for its inventor may not materialise in the first place, as there is little incentive to invest in developing the idea. Policy interventions such as subsidies for R&D can help to overcome this barrier.
Antarctic ice reveals trapped secrets of climate change
Cores drilled from the icecap are going on show at London's Science Museum. The centuries-old information they contain could help scientists predict Earth's future weather
Air gets trapped by snow as it falls. Then more snow falls on top. Pressure builds up and snow is eventually converted into ice – with air bubbles trapped inside. The deeper you drill, the older the ice – and air bubbles – that you find. "If you drill several kilometres down you find samples that are almost a million years old," says Rapley. "That is why we think of ice cores as treasure troves of climate history."
By drilling down to a particular layer, the oxygen isotopes in a core sample's air bubbles will tell you the global temperature for the time that the air was trapped in snowflakes. This temperature can then be compared with the air's carbon dioxide content. Similarly, salt and dust contamination provides information about sea levels and the spread of deserts across the globe at any given time over the last 800,000 years. Such information has been key to the prediction of future global weather patterns and will form an important background to this week's climate talks in Cancun, Mexico.
"The one critical feature we get from these measurements is that the temperature of Earth's atmosphere and its carbon dioxide content are locked together in a coupled system," adds Rapley. "If one of those variables increases, the other will also rise. Hence the worry about the amounts of carbon dioxide we pump into the atmosphere. If unchecked, these could lead to global temperature rises of up to six degrees Celsius by the end of the century."
Thinning glaciers driving polar ice loss, satellite survey findsSatellite survey of Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets reveals extensive network of rapidly thinning glaciers that is driving ice loss in the regions
A comprehensive satellite survey of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets has revealed an extensive network of rapidly thinning glaciers that is driving ice loss in the regions.
The most profound loss of ice was seen along the continental coastlines, where glaciers speed up as they slip into the sea. In some regions, glaciers flowing into surrounding waters were thinning by nearly 10m a year.
Scientists used data from Nasa's ICESat (Ice, Cloud and and land Elevation Satellite) to piece together a picture of the changing fortunes of glaciers on the ice sheets. The satellite bounces laser light off the ground, allowing researchers to measure the terrain with extraordinary precision.
The survey, compiled from 50m satellite measurements taken between February 2003 and November 2007, shows glaciers thinning at all latitudes in Greenland and along key Antarctic coastlines. Thinning penetrated deep into the interior of the ice sheets and continues to spread as ice shelves melt into the sea.
"We were surprised to see such a strong pattern of thinning glaciers across such large areas of coastline. It's widespread and in some cases, thinning extends hundreds of kilometres inland," said Hamish Pritchard who led the study at the British Antarctic Survey.
In Greenland, glaciers in the south-east were found to be flowing at speeds of more than 100m per year, during which they thinned by 84cm. More slow-going glaciers lost around 12cm a year.
Rajendra Pachauri says glaciers mistake in IPCC report was 'human failure'Head of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change admits error but defends use of 'grey literature'
And he said: "We have been less than adequate in informing the public that, yes, there was an error but that does not take away anything from the fact the glaciers are melting at a very rapid rate.
"This is where our communication skills need to be enhanced."
Even if the Himalayan glaciers did not melt by 2035, glaciers around the world were in decline, with water supplies predicted to fall and the melting ice contributing to sea level rises, he said.
"Although there was this error, there's a whole lot of valid information and assessment on glaciers which we can only ignore at our own peril and the peril of generations yet to come," he said.
World's glaciers continue to melt at historic rates
Latest figures show the world's glaciers are continuing to melt so fast that many will disappear by the middle of this century
Glaciers across the globe are continuing to melt so fast that many will disappear by the middle of this century, the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS) said today.
The announcement of the latest annual results from monitoring in nine mountain ranges on four continents comes as doubts have been cast on how much climate scientists have exaggerated the problem of glacier melt, which is seen as a leading indicator of how much the planet is heating up.
Last week the head of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) apologised for "a paragraph" in its four-volume 2007 report which warned there was a "very high" risk that the Himalayan glaciers, on which at least half a billion of the world's poorest people depend for water, would disappear by 2035.
However the director of the WGMS, Professor Wilfried Haeberli, said the latest global results indicated most glaciers were continuing to melt at historically high rates.
"The melting goes on," said Haeberli. "It's less extreme than in years [immediately before] but what's really important is the trend of 10 years or so, and that shows an unbroken acceleration in melting."
Haeberli also repeated his warning that many glaciers are set to disappear in the next few decades, due to an expected continuation in the rise of global average temperatures. The most vulnerable glaciers were those in lower mountain ranges like the Alps and the Pyrenees in Europe, in Africa, parts of the Andes in South and Central America, and the Rockies in North America, said Haeberli.
Greenland ice sheet melted at unprecedented rate during July
Scientists at Nasa admitted they thought satellite readings were a mistake after images showed 97% surface melt over four days
The Greenland ice sheet melted at a faster rate this month than at any other time in recorded history, with virtually the entire ice sheet showing signs of thaw.
The rapid melting over just four days was captured by three satellites. It has stunned and alarmed scientists, and deepened fears about the pace and future consequences of climate change.
In a statement posted on Nasa's website on Tuesday, scientists admitted the satellite data was so striking they thought at first there had to be a mistake.
"This was so extraordinary that at first I questioned the result: was this real or was it due to a data error?" Son Nghiem of Nasa's jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena said in the release.
He consulted with several colleagues, who confirmed his findings. Dorothy Hall, who studies the surface temperature of Greenland at Nasa's space flight centre in Greenbelt, Maryland, confirmed that the area experienced unusually high temperatures in mid-July, and that there was widespread melting over the surface of the ice sheet.
Climatologists Thomas Mote, at the University of Georgia, and Marco Tedesco, of the City University of New York, also confirmed the melt recorded by the satellites.
However, scientists were still coming to grips with the shocking images on Tuesday. "I think it's fair to say that this is unprecedented," Jay Zwally, a glaciologist at Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Center, told the Guardian.
The set of images released by Nasa on Tuesday show a rapid thaw between 8 July and 12 July. Within that four-day period, measurements from three satellites showed a swift expansion of the area of melting ice, from about 40% of the ice sheet surface to 97%.
Zwally, who has made almost yearly trips to the Greenland ice sheet for more than three decades, said he had never seen such a rapid melt.
About half of Greenland's surface ice sheet melts during a typical summer, but Zwally said he and other scientists had been recording an acceleration of that melting process over the last few decades. This year his team had to rebuild their camp, at Swiss Station, when the snow and ice supports melted.
He said he was most surprised to see indications in the images of melting even around the area of Summit Station, which is about two miles above sea level.
It was the second unusual event in Greenland in a matter of days, after an iceberg the size of Manhattan broke off from the Petermann Glacier. But the rapid melt was viewed as more serious.
"If you look at the 8 July image that might be the maximum extent of warming you would see in the summer," Zwally noted. "There have been periods when melting might have occurred at higher elevations briefly – maybe for a day or so – but to have it cover the whole of Greenland like this is unknown, certainly in the time of satellite records."
Lora Koenig, another Goddard glaciologist, told Nasa similar rapid melting occurs about every 150 years. But she warned there were wide-ranging potential implications from this year's thaw.
"If we continue to observe melting events like this in upcoming years, it will be worrisome." she told Nasa.
The most immediate consequences are sea level rise and a further warming of the Arctic. In the centre of Greenland, the ice remains up to 3,000 metres deep. On the edges, however, the ice is much, much thinner and has been melting into the sea.
The melting ice sheet is a significant factor in sea level rise. Scientists attribute about one-fifth of the annual sea level rise, which is about 3mm every year, to the melting of the Greenland ice sheet.
In this instance of this month's extreme melting, Mote said there was evidence of a heat dome over Greenland: or an unusually strong ridge of warm air.
The dome is believed to have moved over Greenland on 8 July, lingering until 16 July.
Facts and resources about climate change, covering science, politics and economicsThird, we have to focus on alternative energy solutions (or as CNN call's em "Eco Solutions"), both cheap and sophisticated ones... and get everyone involved, especially middle & high-school kids (thier science text-books/training needs quick updating). The cheap ones need to be disseminated in line with basic nutrition while the earth is rehabilitated through cleanup operations and hemp for fertilization and industrial use for a sustainable future - while increasing our scientific knowledge and devices to deal with the upcoming man-made catastrophes (short-term - quick aid - devices for alleviation of discomfort AND long-term solutions)...
1. A simple invention using bottles of water with bleach to light shacks/huts for the poor or recently displaced by a natural disaster (which are and will continue to become more frequent in a swinging pattern, i.e. from floods, to droughts and cold spells, kinda like an alarm clock).
More expensive, backup, solution...
2. Clay pot cooler (no ice!)
Globe Aware is cataloguing small-scale "Green" projects for use in the local communities in which we operate. These simple videos, along with other training materials, will be used in coming up with project ideas!
3. Air conditioning using the invention above for cooler water (not ice cubes unfortunately)
Some practical applications:
1. In India...
2. In the Sudan...
Also, switching to a hemp based economy is easy, re-fertilizers the soil... and boosts/creates several industries (such as oil, paper, textiles, nutrition and durable goods). This provides an opportunity for the whole world to build a stable foundation on economics based on agricultural and manufacturing principles. Even a recession is a self-sufficient agrarian economy with a strong manufacturing base that supplies itself and others will be a peaceful and stable one (the nonsense of using stock markets as economic indicators has to stop as well... that's another area, besides the oil companies that have allot of theft and outright conflicts of interest that they have legalized - it's another source for imprisoning culprits (through strong evidence) and using that wealth to reboot our planet.
Some ancient technology for a new age...
Some materials have been around so long, and seem to have appeared on the world scene so suddenly, that you have to be open to the possibility that they may have been cultivated and used a long time ago (i.e. before recorded history). In particular I'm talking about that plant that got a bad name because of a slander campaign by an ancient american logging company. Here is a little about hemp (the marijuana plant) from a textile type website:
The first use of hemp fibre dates well back into the mists of time and is one of the first plants known to have been cultivated. About 10,000 years ago, hemp industries appeared simultaneously in China and Eurasia for the production of a textile fibre. One of the oldest known relics of human industry is a trace of hemp fabric from about 8000BC in the “Cradle of Civilisation” at Catal Huyuk (Ancient Mesopotamia).Hemp has played a vital role for humanity for many thousands of years, supplying the worlds strongest natural fibre, used for rope, clothing, sail cloth, and many other uses including being a vital food source - the seed oil is very high in the nutritionally valuable omega 3 alpha-linolenic acid (ALA).The United States of America’s founding fathers were strong advocates of a hemp-based economy for their new country. In fact, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were hemp farmers. In 1871 Thomas Jefferson said, “Hemp is of first necessity to commerce and marine”. In other words, to the wealth and protection of the country, today few people realise that hemp was once so vital to world commerce.The first two drafts of the Declaration of Independence were written on hemp paper, as were most of the books of the time. The first Levi’s were constructed of recycled hemp sailcloth for the California '49ers with steel rivets so that the pockets would not rip when filled with gold. Many famous artists such as Van Gogh also painted some of their greatest works on hemp canvas.
Industrial hemp is cultivated to minimize the THC. A pretty good article on hemp/marijuana and its uses is located here. The following are a few random extracts:
One important potential use for hemp is the production of paper. From 75 to 90 percent of all paper in the world was made with hemp fiber until 1883: the Gutenberg bible (15th century), Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland (19th century) and just about everything in between was printed on hemp paper.An acre of hemp produces 4.1 times as much paper as an acre of trees. Hemp can also be harvested every year while trees take 20 years or more to grow to harvest. Since hemp builds topsoil, it can be grown on the same acre of land year after year. Many acres of forest could be saved by industrial cultivation of hemp for paper alone.Practical, inexpensive fire-resistant construction material, with excellent thermal and sound-insulating qualities, can be made by heating and compressing plant fibers to create strong construction paneling. This paneling could replace dry wall and plywood. Hemp is a logical choice for such a purpose. C&S Specialty Builder's Supply near Eugene, Oregon, in conjunction with Washington State University, has demonstrated the superior strength flexibility and economy of hemp composite building materials compared to wood fiber - even in the production of beams.On another front, using hemp as a biomass fuel could eliminate our dependence on imported fossil fuels. A study completed in the early l990s at the University of Hawaii found that biomass gasification could meet 90 percent of that state's energy needs. Biomass can be converted into virtually every form of energy used, including methanol to power automobiles. Since methanol is a cleaner fuel than petro-based fuels, this would lead to reduced auto emissions.According to the UNICEF report State of the World's Children, a child dies every 2.3 seconds as a result of malnutrition. According to the Institute for Food and Development Policy, twenty million children die of malnutrition every year. These numbers are staggering, and are on the rise. Here again, hemp can come to the rescue.When hemp is grown for seed, half the weight of the mature, harvested female plant is seed! Hemp is also a hearty plant that flourishes in almost all climates and in marginal soils. This means it could be grown in poor countries to provide food where it is most needed. Australians survived two prolonged famines in the 19th century using almost nothing except hemp seeds for protein and hemp leaves for roughage.No other single plant source can compare with the nutritional value of hemp seeds. Both the complete protein and essential oils contained in hemp seeds are in ideal ratios for human nutrition.Hemp is a disease-resistant weed and grows easily compared to other crops. Food crops are disrupted by drought but hemp actually helps soils alleviate droughts. It sets the standard in retaining topsoil and re-foliating arid land. Hemp can also be used for the production of cloth spun from its fiber. Hemp cloth is softer, warmer, more water absorbent, stronger and more durable than cotton. The well-known clothing manufacturer Patagonia has found that hemp has eight times the tensile strength and has four times the durability of cotton. The possibilities represented by hemp cultivation are tantalizing: reduce or eliminate deforestation, free us from dependence on fossil fuel and their damaging by-products, and provide a positive impact on chronic world hunger.
You have seen what damage a tornado or hurricane can do to a house made of wood (well, in the States they use a sort of light wood mix of something or the other - it is so light that if you walk through one of their mass produced houses you can feel wooden boards in the house creek and walls shake with your footsteps). Most houses are built to be cost effective and then insurance is expected to cover expected statistical damages in times of good weather or bad weather (a cycle which tends to go up and down, [see the graphs/actuary tables]). Hemp/low THC marijuana, is easy AND fast to grow. The best part is you can make a plastic lighter and stronger than steel. If you made a properly secured house of proper building materials, a tree hitting the house will simply fall down after hitting it. And depending of the level of strength of the house, most tornados and hurricanes will have no effect.
Here is some old technology developed by Ford:
And here is a modern reinvention of some ancient technology:
We can literally makes houses, cars and planes made of weed! Imagine how much cheaper it would be to be able to grow our cars and planes. Plus, there may even be a way to replace every metal in an object, such as a plane, so electrical storms won't be able to affect the circuitry or the lives of the pilots/passengers.[not too sure on this, a bit behind on my plant and quatum tech science] - [Note - In any new tech you have to keep in mind that electricity and magnetism can do both, cause damage to aircraft and passengers, and so both must be blocked from effective spaceflight and/or fighting in space - and they have to be considered together as electricity can create magnetism and magnetism can create electricity] This isn't just for people with arable farmland. Hemp is literally a weed. That means it grows like a weed as well. So the amount of work that would be needed for a productive crop would be less than that needed for crops that are NOT weeds.
How to easily create arable land for hemp and other edibles:
1. Reclaiming desert....
2. Vertical farms
(which can also be made to go underground and blend with the landscape - which is a better idea, in my opinion, except for cities of countries like Bangladesh)...Video...
The Problem
By the year 2050, nearly 80% of the earth's population will reside in urban centers. Applying the most conservative estimates to current demographic trends, the human population will increase by about 3 billion people during the interim. An estimated 109 hectares of new land (about 20% more land than is represented by the country of Brazil) will be needed to grow enough food to feed them, if traditional farming practices continue as they are practiced today. At present, throughout the world, over 80% of the land that is suitable for raising crops is in use (sources: FAO and NASA). Historically, some 15% of that has been laid waste by poor management practices. What can be done to avoid this impending disaster?
A Potential Solution: Farm Vertically
Abandoned Food Factory to be Transformed into Chicago’s First Zero-Energy Vertical Farm!
Some ideas to get started switching to a new energy platform...
A wave power developer has said tests of a device off Scotland's coast exceeded expectations.
New Wind Turbine Design Good for Rural, Urban Environment...
Image of new wind energy devices for cities...
Link: UK offshore windfarms – interactive
Brazil is set to open the world's first algae-based biofuel plant in 2013...
Brazil is set to build the world’s first algae-based biofuel plant, which could convert seaweed into as much as 1.2 million liters of fuel each year. Located in the northeastern Brazilian state of Pernambuco, the facility will be built on an ethanol-producing sugar cane plantation, and will utilize carbon emissions from the plantation. If everything goes to plan, the biofuel plant will go into production by late 2013.
These electric blue solar sunflowers energize a field in Austin, Texas!
@class), " "), " post-content ")]/div[1]/div[1]/div[2]/a[1]" data-ls-site_keyword_uuid="a6d88284-08fd-4973-9fd7-9f6b0fc2492d" data-ls-sequence_code="-1" data-ls-name="autotroph" data-ls-internal="false" data-ls-existing="true" data-ls-destination_uri_publisher="http://autotrophdesign.com/" rel="nofollow">Autotroph has sent us diagrams of a wonderful concept that could save Maryland's ailing tobacco barns from extinction. Fundamental to both the region's history and landscape, these beautiful structures have been displaced by development and neglect. So the Santa Fe and Baltimore-based design firm designed a tripartite solution that preserves Maryland's @class), " "), " post-content ")]/div[1]/div[1]/div[2]/a[2]" data-ls-site_keyword_uuid="c3a25956-b556-4186-9770-3d76398e6fda" data-ls-sequence_code="-1" data-ls-name="iconic tobacco barns" data-ls-internal="false" data-ls-existing="true" data-ls-destination_uri_publisher="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_barn" rel="nofollow">iconic tobacco barns, creates housing for single families, and supports sustainable development.
See inside NYC's very first self-powered building, which was unveiled last night...
Unveiling a new building in 99 degree weather with no air conditioning doesn't sound ideal - unless, that is, said building is the first one in NYC that can power itself. Dubbed the Delta, the self-sustaining residential property was opened to the press last night by green developers Voltaic Solaire, and the balmy conditions in the city just happened to be the perfect opportunity to showcase its smart design. If you've been following our coverage of the Delta, you know that it is equipped with solar panels and a vertical wind turbine that allow it to meet 100% of its energy needs without tapping into the grid.
Frank Gehry just unveiled a green home in New Orleans that is targeting LEED Platinum certification!
Brad Pitt Recruits Frank Gehry to Design Sustainable, Two-Family Home For Make It Right in New Orleans Read more: Brad Pitt Recruits Frank Gehry to Design Sustainable, Two-Family Home For Make It Right in New Orleans | Inhabitat - Sustainable Design Innovation, Eco Architecture, Green Building
Tiny off-grid cabin in Maine is completely self-sustaining
Florida Eco-Village Will Be the First Affordable Net-Zero Townhome Development in the US...
Imagine combining solar, wind, farm towers (both above ground for city life and below ground to preserve the countryside) and geothermal together for individual housing...
Geothermal...
Most of us know that a full refrigerator uses less energy than an empty one, because anything’s that denser than air will better store the cold. Opening the door of an empty fridge causes cold air (weighing less than an ounce) to rush out and fall to the floor. Warm air enters. When the door closes, the unit cycles on, and the process repeats. That’s sort of how @class), " "), " post-content ")]/p[2]/a[1]" data-ls-site_keyword_uuid="06682c7d-6e72-45b1-a5af-cf7098159404" data-ls-sequence_code="-1" data-ls-name="thermal mass" data-ls-internal="false" data-ls-existing="true" data-ls-destination_uri_publisher="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_mass" rel="nofollow">thermal mass construction works. Beefy Styrofoam and concrete walls on an insulated foundation cut both heating and cooling loads. It’s vastly more efficient to keep a relatively massive structure at a steady temperature than it is to manipulate the air with energy-intensive HVAC systems. Read on for a closer look at this @class), " "), " post-content ")]/p[2]/a[2]" data-ls-site_keyword_uuid="f1e73dda-5a54-4516-bb28-6831839459ae" data-ls-sequence_code="-1" data-ls-name="green building strategy" data-ls-internal="true" data-ls-existing="true" data-ls-destination_uri_publisher="http://inhabitat.com/sustainable-building/" rel="nofollow">green building strategy!
A 3,000 square-foot home with 10ft ceilings has about 12.7 lbs of air inside that wants to dart about, changing temperature. But the walls of a same-size thermal mass house might weigh 350,000 lbs – and this weight stubbornly resist thermal gains or losses.
There’s also something called the thermal mass effect. Thick walls absorb heat during the daytime, which is released to the interior at night when it’s colder. That’s why @class), " "), " post-content ")]/p[6]/a[1]" data-ls-site_keyword_uuid="16752b04-6668-4a26-a15f-f04b90de06c6" data-ls-sequence_code="-1" data-ls-name="desert dwellings" data-ls-internal="true" data-ls-existing="true" data-ls-destination_uri_publisher="http://inhabitat.com/exceptional-earth-walled-home-is-a-desert-oasis/" rel="nofollow">desert dwellings have traditionally been made of adobe, or @class), " "), " post-content ")]/p[6]/a[2]" data-ls-site_keyword_uuid="ac04b054-694b-46ab-9506-3bb9854a958c" data-ls-sequence_code="-1" data-ls-name="mud bricks" data-ls-internal="true" data-ls-existing="true" data-ls-destination_uri_publisher="http://inhabitat.com/mecopress-machine-makes-lego-building-bricks-from-mud/" rel="nofollow">mud bricks. “We heat and cool our homes like an empty refrigerator, which doesn’t make any sense from a physics standpoint, because air has basically no mass,” says Joe Britt, an engineer and father of three who built his own thermal mass home in upstate New York.
Modern thermal mass homes feature walls and floors made from layers of concrete and insulating foam; everything’s embedded with radiant pipes. These inexpensive, familiar materials make for a home with a tight energy envelope that resists fire, termites and rot. The exterior can be finished any number of ways. While thermal mass construction, or TMC, costs about 20 percent more than a stick-built house, that’s quickly offset by the energy savings, particularly in extreme climates. Some thermal mass houses are round, but that’s a matter of taste, not structural necessity.
Most contractors use manufactured precast panels delivered to the job site. @class), " "), " post-content ")]/p[7]/a" data-ls-site_keyword_uuid="9ea4d328-7b12-4f40-82ff-5f76aebbdb0a" data-ls-sequence_code="-1" data-ls-name="dow chemical company’s t-mass" data-ls-internal="false" data-ls-existing="true" data-ls-destination_uri_publisher="http://dow-styrofoam.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/732/~/what-is-thermomass-or-t-mass%3F" rel="nofollow">Dow Chemical Company’s T-Mass is one popular brand; with the proper equipment, walls go up in a day. A caveat: last-minute design changes aren’t feasible.Britt poured his walls in place using @class), " "), " post-content ")]/p[8]/a" data-ls-site_keyword_uuid="74eafd32-469d-4264-87e6-30cbd9431d96" data-ls-sequence_code="-1" data-ls-name="insulated concrete forms" data-ls-internal="false" data-ls-existing="true" data-ls-destination_uri_publisher="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insulating_concrete_form" rel="nofollow">insulated concrete forms, known as ICFs. Building with ICFs is less expensive and more flexible than precast, but it takes 27 days to cure the concrete.
NREL Report Shows Existing Solar Technology Could Power the Entire US!
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Some ideas are incomplete...
This deals with rising tides and thunderstorms (not tsunamis or monster waves)...
This deals with the need for more farming land, but not waves or any sort...
This underwater skyscraper is a self-sufficient city at sea!
Underwater Skyscraper is a Self-Sufficient City at Sea
Ocean levels are rising around the globe, so rather than tethering our buildings to the sinking shoreline why not suit them for a life at sea? That’s the approach behind the Water-Scraper, a futuristic self-sufficient floating city. A special mention in the eVolo Skyscraper Competition, the design expands the concept of a floating island into a full-fledged underwater skyscraper that harvests renewable energy and grows its own food.Combining the ark idea with the farming idea (the lower structure adds stability making it much less likely to overturn in a large wave), would be a great idea for stable oceanic housing. If we stabilize our current situation then we won't need these type of solutions on a large scale for about 15-20 years. If we don't only the super rich can escape on these. I think if such structures are built by anyone connected to the above scandals, that ship should be destroyed.
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Some ideas are just plain dumb and should not make it past the brainstorming stage (certainly not to full blown artwork stage!!! - The earth and moon gets hit by thousands of meteors a year, they burn up in the earth's atmosphere... there is no atmosphere on the moon)...
This is going in the right direction but it's not enough (too slow). A complete change to recycled and hemp based cardboard products as soon as possible (2-3 years) would be best...
For Clean Water
This spherical Solarball purifies water using sunlight!
BBC: 'Super sand' to help clean up dirty drinking water
Contaminated water can be cleaned much more effectively using a novel, cheap material, say researchers.
Dubbed "super sand", it could become a low-cost way to purify water in the developing world.
The technology involves coating grains of sand in an oxide of a widely available material called graphite - commonly used as lead in pencils.
The team describes the work in the American Chemical Society journal Applied Materials and Interfaces.
In many countries around the world, access to clean drinking water and sanitation facilities is still limited.
The World Health Organization states that "just 60% of the population in Sub-Saharan African and 50% of the population in Oceania [islands in the tropical Pacific Ocean] use improved sources of drinking-water."
The graphite-coated sand grains might be a solution - especially as people have already used sand to purify water since ancient times.
Basic water filtration....
Gigantic water-harvesting skyscrapers...
Another effective clean water solution is... Water desalinization
Potable water for all? A European team develop a solar-powered, low-cost desalination system. http://bit.ly/PMqdJG
What Pakistan is able to accomplish with no funds and tons of corruption (why the USA is so low on the corruption charts is obvious if you read this whole post carefully)...
1. Solar powered tubewell (won't work in the States due to fracking)3. Villages can easily produce "bio gas"
(Combining these with the cheap lighting, hemp and irrigation techniques above - with traditional clay pot irrigation techniques such as this and this, agricultural economies have a complete solution to start and move forward with)
Some Advances From CNN International...
On farming and creating more versatile farming bases....
PICS: 11 NYC Rooftop Farms you might not know about. Including one that grows veggies in kiddie pools! http://su.pr/Af2TPd Urban Farming
Rooftop Green Sky Growers produce thousands of pounds of fish and veg in Florida http://bit.ly/Mu7m5w
On Space Travel/Bases...
The methods that we are using to reach space are derived from ideas that are over a century old:
This is the direction the future of space flight must go for cheap, individual space craft to be developed. i.e. planes not rockets...
1. We have planes that can fly at over 60 miles above the ground.
2. Already rockets are becoming out of date... "Earlier this month, the two of them said they will build an air-launched orbital delivery system. To do this, Paul Allen’s company Stratolaunch Systems will have to build the world’s largest aeroplane." This is the direction (minimum) that we have to go for global sustainability and probably the next generation of tech AND spaceflight...
Related:
Useful for space living - can also be used to set-up a robot space station, on a place like Mars for example, like setting up a forward base (first came across this idea in the Star Wars books): [Science] Check out this 'replicator'
Solar flight:
What we have...
What we could, conceivably, build...
(from a fantasy sci-fi movie about Mars called John Carter)
Notes:
Who Killed The Electric Car?... And More Links From PBS
For dealing with death: [Buddhism] Introduction to Buddhism as a "Philosophy" & The Nature of "The Self" and Easy Mood-Control/Stress-Relief
Here are some examples of kids making big innovations... both in science and art...
17-Year-Old Girl Creates Nanoparticle That Kills Cancer, Wins $100,000
The $100,000 Zhang earned comes with first prize in the Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology. Her project, “Design of Image-guided, Photo-thermal Controlled Drug Releasing Multifunctional Nanosystem for the Treatment of Cancer Stem Cells,” was apparently as complex, thorough, and revolutionary as it sounds.
The nanoparticle Zhang created is already being referred to as something of a “swiss army knife” in the area of cancer treatment. That’s not to say it’s dull and rusty because
Iyou didn’t take care of it whenI wasyou were out camping, but rather that it has a whole bunch of useful applications. The nanoparticle is delivered to tumors via the drug salinomycin where it kills cancer cells and deposits gold and iron-oxide materials to help with MRI imaging.Not only is this impressive in its own right, but let me remind you this girl is 17. She’s got a lot of time ahead of her. She spent about 1,000 hours developing this particle since 2009 (when she must have been 15) and she wants to continue to study chemical engineering, biomedial engineering, or physics. She hopes to someday be a research professor. Thank god, because if she said she wanted to be a poet, we might have a problem on our hands
6 Teenage Inventors That Changed The World
#6. Superman Was Invented by High School Kids
#5. The Inventors of Hip-Hop Were Age 17 and 12
#4. Sam Colt Was in His Late Teens When He Invented the Revolver
#3. A 17-Year-Old Designed the 50-Star American Flag
#2. A 15-Year-Old Invented the Snowmobile
#1. A 15-Year-Old Invented Braille
Related:
About Education (An Introduction)
Education, Learning and NLP (Nuero-Linguistic Programming)
Problems With The "No Child Left Behind" Act In 3 Interviews
[Education] Lies In US History and Textbooks
[Bot Bites] "The Dumbing Down of America" Example 2 - Sarah Palin
[Bot Bites] "The Dumbing Down of America" Example 3 - Michelle Bachman
17 cent chick pea
Interesting miscellaneous ideas...
The world's first pedal-powered submarine lets you swim through the sea like a fish!
Watch this earthquake-proof wooden house survive a 7.5 magnitude quake! http://su.pr/1VDBxs
Shelter@Rainforest: Self-sufficient net zero longhouse supports sustainable reforestation in Malaysia http://su.pr/1FbqBm
Casa 34 is a long rectangular home with a green roof and an enviable view in Chile http://su.pr/2KBJcS
Scientists at Australia's Murdoch University have created a salt-based battery that could make renewable energy storage a lot more affordable http://bit.ly/QIUJZI
BTW, On feeding the world (combining food towers, hemp and chickpeas with other crops)... "executive director of the United Nations' World Food Programme, said a 17-cent package of nutrients with a chickpea base can meet the needs of a hungry infant, and more than enough food is grown to feed everyone,".
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Scientists Have Warned New York Officials About Hurricane Sandy-Like Dangers for Years http://inhabitat.com/nyc/scientists-have-warned-new-york-officials-about-sandy-esque-dangers-for-years/
Does your state candidate hate climate change, evolution, or science funding? Check the list: http://ow.ly/eUyxH
Mitt Romney's dim view of FEMA may be justified—at least when his own party is in charge of it http://mojo.ly/Rw5kX4
How natural disasters like Sandy synthesizes American individualism and American government: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/30/superstorm-sandy-us-crisis
Not a Polar Bear in Sight: Arctic Ocean Diaries No. 11 http://mojo.ly/RsJ2DN
Short but necessary @NewYorker piece on #sandy, climate change, and politics http://j.mp/RsuLqx
How climate change makes Superstorms like Sandy more destructive http://thkpr.gs/Sdu9px #science
New Images: Superstorm Sandy Recovery http://abcn.ws/T1oK63
How ironic: Release of important climate change report delayed due to #Sandyhttp://huff.to/QV5hE8
No matter what the disaster, the religious right always finds a way to blame "the gays"... http://www.salon.com/2012/10/30/fear_the_almighty_wrath_five_natural_disasters_caused_by_gays/
Note:
Another problem with fundamentalist preachers is there tendency to
label natural disasters 'gods punishment' on whoever it happened to is
so rampant that Stewart refers to it in the following video:http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-june-18-2008/there-will-be-flood
WATCH: Mitt Romney proposes gutting FEMA and leaving disaster relief to states. Or privatizing it: http://bit.ly/PJEsTn
[Changing the temperature of the oceans does
eaffect world weather. Has anyone seen that movie where the northern
hemisphere got frozen?] "And these changes would appear to be taking
place; this past July was, as was very widely reported, th
hottest month in US recorded history, accompanied by the worst drought
since 1956. Additionally, this past September was reported by the
National Climate Data Center in their recent State of the Climate Report
to be the second-warmest September ever for global sea surface
temperature.
The EPA notes that increased surface temperatures
are causing an increase in precipitation—an unevenly distributed
one—which will cause some areas to experience stronger storms and
hurricanes, while “shifting storm patterns will likely cause some areas
to experience more severe droughts.”
Read more: Did Climate Change Increase the Severity of Hurricane Sandy? | Inhabitat New York City" http://inhabitat.com/nyc/did-climate-change-increase-the-severity-of-hurricane-sandy/
In this photo, cars float in a flooded subterranean basement in NYC's Financial District.
Tonight Anderson reports on the aftermath of the storm at 8 and 10pm
ET. Tell us what it's like in your area, and post your pictures on
ireport.cnn.com
(Photo credit: Andrew Burton/Getty Images)
http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/
Blizzards... https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=489414761078559&set=a.162132393806799.30950.155869377766434&type=1&theater
Notice the floods (from a category 1 storm surge) AND the Blizzards... and you realize that, to some extent, this is possible = MOVIE: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0319262/ "The Day After Tomorrow" STORY:
Jack Hall, paleoclimatologist for NORAD, must make a daring trek across
America to reach his son, trapped in the cross-hairs of a sudden
international storm which plunges the planet into a new Ice Age.
"For politicians, an ounce of disaster preparation is worth nothing." http://ow.ly/eVpjp
Long Run - Oysters can clean water.Reefs for habitat & coral. And reefs for shoreline management http://www.reefball.org/
Also, Artificial "Junk" Reefs for fish habitat and coral (cheaper for larger scale construction/reef-development) http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/04/artificial-reefs-around-the-world/100042/
Can farms bounce back from superstorms like #Sandy? http://mojo.ly/RstoLP
How giant tunnels protect Tokyo from flood threat http://edition.cnn.com/2012/10/31/world/asia/japan-flood-tunnel/index.html?hpt=hp_c1
Christiane Amanpour
@camanpour
Former New York Gov. @EliotSpitzer tells me: Ignore climate change at your peril
http://bit.ly/Q7prhc
The world's first commercial vertical farm is now up and running in Singapore! http://bit.ly/XvaOoD
Fire powered cell phone chargers spotted near NYU in Downtown Manhattan.
The PG-1 power generator creates a temperature differential across the
thermoelectric module inside the unit. Heat flows from the higher
temperature surface to the lower temperature surface creating an
electrical output. When the electrical circuit is completed, electrons
flow and generate electrical power.
http://www.tellurex.com/products/thermoelectric-pg1.php
IMAGE: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=524723527538964&set=a.511276265550357.118088.508674659143851&type=1&theater
Solar Battery backup! http://www.mysolarbackup.com/