Saturday, August 30, 2014

Friday, August 22, 2014

clean coal adds prohibited

The UK (as in England Scotland etc.) they have been suffering a nightly barrage of bullshit adverts on the tele about clean coal.  Well that ends.  It's deemed false advertising says the government, there is no such thing as clean coal.  It's dirty and kills when mined, hauled, burned, it's ash is handled.
I wish they were banned in the US.

And I might add, the so called Obama war on coal is a war on smoke, if you scrub the smoke you can burn all you want.  Thankfully yesterday in Memphis one of the nations dirtiest coal fired plants was given a death sentence.  No later than Dec. 31 2018 the fire will go out, replaced by natural gas plant and clean wind energy.    The NG plant is not good news though so long as fracking and habitual and willful methane leaks are allowed in the industry.

Thursday, August 21, 2014

Don't give your trash collector your High Tech Trash


 
E-waste.  High Tech Trash.  Did you know in Japan almost all of it is recycled.  In the US almost all of it goes to the land fill.  Why are we throwing away the richest ore stream in the world?

10 to 20 ounces of gold per ton is in this stuff.  No gold mine in the world has ore that rich.  It also has large amounts of silver, hugh amounts of copper, some aluminum, platinum and trace amounts of rare exotics.  It also contains hugh amounts of lead, mercury, fire retardants and dozens of highly poison and crippling chemicals.

Where is it? Computers, cell phones, microwaves, copiers, fax machines, DVD players, TV's, music players of every sort large and tiny, coffee makers, alarm radios, hair dryer, pocket calculators, game player, GPS, digital camera, batteries, ect.  We each have 20 to 70 of these things and throw one out every few weeks.

There are a number of firms in the US processing this, but it's a drop in the bucket, Europe is processing far more, and safely.  Asia is the destination for much of this, but rather than in grinders and furnaces it's done with kids burning and cooking down components, killing them. Well that's an issue, but for us the issue is to handle it safely in our community.  On a recent trip to Arkansas I passed a house surrounded by junk cars, not unusual there, but I noticed a half dozen TV's and old computers laying in the weeds, not good, nor is sending it to landfills.

The materials in these devices cannot be gotten out by you or me, taking them apart is even dangerous, break a circuit board and you get showered by microscopic doses of mercury, lead and fire retardant chemicals and heavy metals.  You have got to turn them over to a recycler.  A few appliance stores will take them back, a few manufactures will pay shipping, but for the most part you need to keep your eyes peeled for a community recycle day, or like I have near my home a recycle center, though they only take computers cell phones copiers and fax machines and batteries, at least it's a start.  I stop over there 2 or 3 times a year with my contribution.

Recycling of is a hugh net savings to the world when dealing with dangerous metals and chemicals, material used to produce a "chip" amounts to 630 times the mass of the final product.  As a teenager a friend of mine had a TV in the pasture, we set it on a brush pile, lit it on fire and threw bricks at it till the hot thing broke.  What a disaster, though we didn't know, those old TV's had several pounds of lead dust in them, and mercury vapor.  Breaking it in a roaring fire updraft surely was a disaster we made unaware of.  By the way, mercury floats for 1 year, no part of the world is without mercury pollution, it's found in polar bears.

Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Climate Science - 1824 to the present


The Short History:

  • 1824 - Joseph Fourier discovered the greenhouse effect.
  • 1859 - John Tyndall discovered that H2O and CO2 absorb infrared confirming the Fourier greenhouse effect.
  • 1896 - Svante Arrhenius proposed human CO2 emissions would prevent earth from entering next ice age (challenged 1906).
  • 1950’s Guy Callendar found H2O and CO2 did not overlap all spectra bands, therefore warming from CO2expected (countered the 1906 objections against Arrhenius).
  • 1955 - Hans Suess identified the isotopic signature of industrial based CO2 emissions.
  • 1956 - Gilbert Plass calculated adding CO2 would significantly change radiation balance.
  • 1957 - Revelle/Suess suggested oceans would absorb less CO2 causing more global warming than predicted.
  • 1958/60’s - Charles David Keeling proved CO2 was increasing in the atmosphere.
  • 70’s/80’s Suke Manabe and James Hansen began modeling climate projections.
  • Current: NCAR, GISS, Hadley, CRU, RSS TLT, UAH, MSU, Glacier Melt, Sea Level Rise, Latitudinal Shift all confirm models.
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"Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed."   Mahatma Gandhi

1955 is when we found out there are two kinds of  CO2, one that is constant and naturally occurring, moving from plant to sky to sea and round again. it has been hammered by sun light for eons.  The other is from underground coal, oil and gas, from millions of years hidden from the sun and it contains a different isotope than the other, it carries a marker, a fingerprint known as C14.  This is pollution, this is what is rising in our atmosphere, not the naturally occurring form but this one, one that was stored out of harms way by nature.  This is the cause of global warming, it can be identified and counted, this is why we know we are the cause of a change in the worlds ecosystems due to new weather patterns that will almost certainly bring a lower standard of comfort to humans and decimate much of nature as we know it.  In it's place will come poison ivy and mosquitos.  

Monday, August 18, 2014

Every coal burning power plant has an ash dump.

Toxic coal ash dust at the Making Money Having Fun Landfill in Bokoshe, OK.





































And some coal ash is radioactive.  Even terrorist don't have a way to expose us to radioactive material as effectively as our own utilities.  1) Strive to use less energy (don't give money to a polluting monopoly). 2) Ask your state house representative and senator to sponsor a Coal Ash Fugitive Dust Control law.




Saturday, August 16, 2014

Screw Chiquita Bananas

Chiquita announced they will move from the US, to a lower tax haven.  NEVER WILL I BUY ANOTHER BUNCH of their fruit.  Not one.  Guaranteed.  I have a number of brands I don't buy, and I stick to it like glue.  Boycott is my vote.  Vote with your pocketbook, do not give them a penny.  Tell your store manager and the produce manager you want a different brand, tell them other stores carries a different brand.

Assholes, American corps don't pay much tax as it is.

Friday, August 15, 2014

Lewis Black on the godly rights a-hole slamming Robin Williams


FUCK YOU Rush Limbaugh. Your statements were beyond cruel and stupid. They were intolerable. Enough is enough from you. You are an idiot. Don't you ever demean the death of another human being. He was my friend. You disgust me.

Thursday, August 14, 2014

Where is all that stock market money going?

In the rare moments lately that the right isn't claiming voter fraud solar energy and little kids from south of the border are only minutes from killing this nation once and for all, you will probably hear this.  Obama is spending every dime we have, dems are running up the debt, government is unstable and should not be in charge of the money, wall street and the rich should.   Am I right?  OK.

Then where is all that money going in the last two months when trillions have been pulled from the stock market, corporate bonds and mutual funds.  It's going into government bonds.  Government bonds, yes, US government bonds.

Doesn't sound like the government is so scary after all.  The stock market dipped due to so much money headed to the security of Obama's US government.   And, a-n-d, fucking AND, the national debt has been cut by over 50% since 2011.  50%.  Anyone hear about this?  Anyone hear how fast the debt is shrinking?  Fox?  Anyone?

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

And low, the angle of death said, "die, die, die you ignorant proteus".

A group of conservatives and religious zealots are calling on Sarah Palin to form a new party to attack and destroy the GOP.  Yes, do it.  Open the gates of hell.

War, huh, what is it good for?

A general was shot dead today in Afghanistan.  I wish it didn't happen, I wish he was alright.  But it pisses me off that the news launches into a life story of him and his family, his service history.  All those thousands that died with a low rank insignia on their uniform, they were equal to him, no evening news or front page story for them.  We should have been out of there already, let those people get back to their tribal customs, thats what they want.  It's a lifestyle that does not fit us, it's harsh, mean, but it fits them, let them return to it.

Saturday, August 2, 2014

Blue Iowa

These wind mills will make hundreds of millions of dollars of clean energy over the next 30 years, at prices lower than coal and usually lower than natural gas. Wind and solar energy, both from free immaculate sun light.

Friday, August 1, 2014

Bet you didn't know oil spills don't cause pollution, firemen do.

Near the farm passes a whole raft of pipelines, not on my land, but near, so I get these safety mailers all the time warning about digging and so on.  Look at this statement from NuStar, one of the biggest pipe owners, it's under the header Health Hazards as advice if there is a leak.  "Inhalation or contact with material may irritate or burn skin and eyes.  Fire may produce irritating, corrosive and/or toxic gases.  Vapors may cause dizziness or suffocation.  Runoff from fire control or dilution water may cause pollution"
I'm glad to know all this, it's good info.  But did you notice that the oil spill doesn't cause pollution, it's firemen's water that pollutes.  So, maybe they stay at the station, let it burn, then there's no pollution.