By Patrick Barry Web edition
Science News
Wednesday, August 13th, 2008

Burying carbon dioxide from coal-fired plants could increase other pollutants. As pollution bad guys go, carbon dioxide may be the media darling, but trying to capture it and lock it away could allow other repeat offenders to go free.

Power plant emissions that cause acid rain, water pollution and destruction of the ozone layer may actually be made worse by capturing the CO2 and pumping it deep underground, a new study reported online and in an upcoming International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control suggests.

This increase of other emissions is largely because collecting and burying CO2 — a process called carbon sequestration — requires additional energy, new equipment and new chemical reactions at the plants. And using current technology, meeting all of these requirements releases extra pollutants. Read the complete Post.

Visit the conference website now.
Hold these dates for the Fifth U.S. Conference
on Peak Oil and Community Solutions:
October 31- November 2, 2008
Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan

Why Attend This Conference?

Skyrocketing oil prices, mounting geopolitical tensions, grave economic realities, and dangerous climate changes are threatening our lives and communities like never before.

The age of cheap, abundant fossil fuels is coming to an end, and urgent action is required to transform our over-consumptive society into one that uses far less energy.

By acting now to reduce household energy use and re-localize economic production, we can create resilient, sustainable communities that will be able to weather the coming economic and ecological storms. Read the complete Post.

The Era of Catastrophe? Geologists Name New Era After Human Influence on the Planet
By Mike Davis, Tomdispatch.com. Posted August 11, 2008.

A striking report from the front lines of science suggests we’re officially entering a period in which humanity may simply outrun history itself.

Editor’s note: This TomDispatch article has been edited for length. You can read the original here.

1. Farewell to the Holocene

Our world, our old world that we have inhabited for the last 12,000 years, has ended, even if no newspaper in North America or Europe has yet printed its scientific obituary.

This February, while cranes were hoisting cladding to the 141st floor of the Burj Dubai tower (which will soon be twice the height of the Empire State Building), the Stratigraphy Commission of the Geological Society of London was adding the newest and highest story to the geological column. Although the idea of the “Anthropocene” — an Earth epoch defined by the emergence of urban-industrial society as a geological force — has been long debated, stratigraphers have refused to acknowledge compelling evidence for its advent.

At least for the London Society, that position has now been revised. This new age, they explain, is defined both by the heating trend … and by the radical instability expected of future environments. In somber prose, they warn that “the combination of extinctions, global species migrations and the widespread replacement of natural vegetation with agricultural monocultures is producing a distinctive contemporary biostratigraphic signal. These effects are permanent, as future evolution will take place from surviving (and frequently anthropogenically relocated) stocks.” Evolution itself, in other words, has been forced into a new trajectory. Read the complete Post.

by Rex Weyler
From his “Deep Green” column
Original article

As the era of cheap liquid fuels draws to an end, everything about modern consumer society will change. Likewise, developing societies pursuing the benefits of globalization will struggle to grow economies in an era of scarce liquid fuels. The most localized, self-reliant communities will experience the least disruption.

Oil is a fixed asset of the planet, representing stored sunlight accumulated over a billion years as early marine algae, and other marine organisms (not dinosaurs) captured solar energy, formed carbon bonds, gathered nutrients, died, sank to the ocean floors, and lay buried under eons of sediment. Like any fixed non-renewable resource, oil is limited, and its consumption will rise, peak, and decline.

World oil production increased for 150 years until the spring of 2005, when world crude oil production reached about 74.3 million barrels per day (mb/d), and total liquid fuels, including tar sands, liquefied gas, and biofuels reached about 85 mb/d. In spite of the efforts since, and tales of “trillions of barrels” of oil in undiscovered fields, liquid fuel production has remained at about 85.5 mb/d for three years, the longest sustained plateau in modern petroleum history. Discoveries of new fields peaked 40 years ago. Read the complete Post.

Article by: Amanda Ripley for TIME magazine

The world had long assumed that Americans were just unrepentant energy pigs. If gas prices went up, well, we kept our Explorers aimed at the horizon, and little changed. We truthfully didn’t have lots of options. Unlike Europeans, we didn’t have jobs we could bike to or convenient public transit. Gasoline prices never stayed high enough long enough to force those kinds of shifts in how we lived.

Full article here

1. Globalized Jobs Return Home

2. Sprawl Stalls

3. Four-Day Workweeks

4. Less Pollution

5. More Frugality

6. Fewer Traffic Deaths

7. Cheaper Insurance

8. Less Traffic

9. More Cops on the Beat

10. Less Obesity

Hey, I decree that civil servants must chill on Friday - Utah Governor Jon Huntsman

Starting next month, thousands of government employees will only work 4 days per week, in an effort aimed at reducing energy costs and commuters’ gasoline expenses.

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Starting next month, it will be “TGIT” for Utah state employees. As in: “Thank God It’s Thursday.”

In a yearlong experiment aimed at reducing the state’s energy costs and commuters’ gasoline expenses, Utah is about to become the first state to switch to a four-day workweek for thousands of government employees.

They will put in 10-hour days, Monday through Thursday, and have Fridays off, freeing them to golf, shop, spend time with the kids or do anything else that strikes their fancy. They will get paid the same as before.

Read rest of article here

Summary

• yearlong experiment aimed at reducing the state’s energy costs and commuters’ gasoline expenses, Utah is about to become the first state to switch to a four-day workweek
• Golf courses expected to benefit greatly from the extra free time
• Republican Gov. Jon Huntsman’s order will affect about 17,000 out of 24,000 executive-branch employees.
• Turning off the lights, the heat and the air conditioning on Fridays in 1,000 of 3,000 government buildings will save about $3 million a year out of a state budget of $11 billion
• many states are looking at cost-saving measures, including expanded telecommuting, compressed workweeks and more flexible schedules.

Old ideas, revived in an era of new relevance…bring on the “new normal.” Kudos to another Republican for grabbing another low hanging fruit! I wonder if Mr. Huntsman stole this idea from the Work Less Party manifesto?

In praise of slow - Sen. John Warner, R-Virginia

WASHINGTON (AP) — An influential Republican senator suggested Thursday that Congress might want to consider reimposing a national speed limit to save gasoline and possibly ease fuel prices. Sen. John Warner, R-Virginia, asked Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman to look into what speed limit would provide optimum gasoline efficiency given current technology. He said he wants to know if the administration might support efforts in Congress to require a lower speed limit.

Read rest of story here

Synopsis:

• Congress in 1974 set a national 55 mph speed limit because of energy shortages
• 55 mph speed limit saved 167,000 barrels of oil a day, or 2 percent of the country’s highway fuel consumption, while avoiding up to 4,000 traffic deaths a year.
• Spokeswoman for DOE says “If Congress is serious about addressing gasoline prices, they must take action on expanding domestic oil and natural gas production.”
• fuel efficiency decreases rapidly when traveling faster than 60 mph. Every additional 5 mph over that threshold is estimated to cost motorists “essentially an additional 30 cents per gallon in fuel costs,”

Hip hip hooray for a Republican…wow that sounded weird.

EcoDensity here to stay

Despite Mayor Sam Sullivan’s electoral loss, the plan to increase city densities has widespread support

Frances Bula, Vancouver Sun

Published: Thursday, June 12, 2008

VANCOUVER - For the past two years, EcoDensity has been ridiculed as a marketing ploy, an empty phrase for self-promotion by now-deposed Mayor Sam Sullivan, a giveaway to developers, and a recycled version of existing Vancouver policy.

But it was also praised as a much-needed and exciting kickstart for Vancouver in thinking about how to build a more sustainable city.

Read rest of article here

EcoDenisty - A flashy name or a mechanism for change? Time will tell