Category Archives: Climate change

China, U.S., and Russia energy deals: bad news for Sabal Trail fracked methane pipeline?

The U.S. and China made a historic deal on climate change this week.


Here’s the good (it’s real, it’s huge, and it’s positive economically
for both countries), the bad (nuclear is first on the list of those “clean energy” sources), and the ugly.
Also this week China made a second huge natural gas deal with Russia:
what does that mean to the current U.S. push for LNG exports,
including the proposed Sabal Trail pipeline gouge through Georgia?

The Deal

Rebecca Leber, The New Republic, 12 November 2014,

The World Has Waited for the U.S. and China to Take Action on Climate Change. They Just Did.

President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping announced on
Wednesday commitments to reduce both countries’ greenhouse gas
emissions. The surprise announcement, which came while Obama visits
Beijing this week, is the clearest sign yet the two countries are
serious on climate change.

After months of negotiations Continue reading →

Sabal Trail pipeline disruptive for what gain? –Valdosta Today

The same Monday that
the Dougherty County Commission passed a resolution against the Sabal Trail pipeline,


Valdosta Today editorialized against it.

S.E. (Chip) Harp, Valdosta Today Editor, 27 October 2014,

Proposed Pipeline will Disrupt south Georgia, but for What Gain?,

SASSER — The proposed (and likely) Sabal Trail natural gas
pipeline will impact most residents in south Georgia, bringing
additional natural gas supplies to Florida “while increasing
the diversity and reliability of the region’s energy-delivery system
and positively impacting the economy in the Southeast, specifically
Alabama, Georgia and Florida”, per Sabal Trail reports.

However, as has been seen already, it will also have a negative
impact on many area businesses, landowners and residents, especially
agricultural-based businesses. One of those affected is produce and Continue reading →

NYC Schools to use more solar power; how about in sunny southeast?

Solar high schools: not just for

Dublin, Georgia anymore.

New York City, and Rochester, NY, too!
How about solar Lowndes High School?
Or the new Valdosta High School?
Or since Valdosta has already
put solar at its Mud Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant,
how about on other city buildings?
How about on the county palace?
Or in Hahira, Dasher, Remerton, or Lake Park?

Erin Durkin wrote for New York Daily News 29 September 2014,

24 NYC schools getting solar panels in $28M project — and City Hall could be next, Continue reading →

Georgians march in NYC for climate action

It’s a start.
At least New York City is already doing something.
Time for Georgia to stop burning more fossil fuels and uranium
and get on with solar power.


By Lisa W. Foderaro, NY Times, 21 September 2014,

At climate change march in New York, a clarion call for action,

Participants from across the country began arriving early on Sunday
morning at the staging area near the American Museum of Natural
History. Rosemary Snow, 75, stretched her legs after a nearly
14-hour bus ride from Georgia.

Continue reading →

All of the above: mercury water, methane fracking, radioactive waste, water overuse; EPA go clean renewables instead –Susan Corbett




South Carolina Sierra Club Chair Susan Corbett summed up
the problem with

the EPA’s carbon rule:
it opposes one poison while promoting others.
We can make a real green clean energy policy
based on conservation, efficiency, solar, and wind energy.
Remember, you can still

send in your own comments directly to EPA.


SC Sierra club, chair at EPA Atlanta hearing, by Elaine Cooper on YouTube 30 July 2014: Continue reading →

Climate Rally and EPA Hearings next week in Atlanta



High noon rally Tuesday and 9AM to 8PM hearings Monday and Tuesday 29-30 July 2014
at the
Sam Nunn Atlanta Federal Center, Main Tower Bridge Conference Area, Conference Room B, 61 Forsyth Street, SW, Atlanta, GA.
Plus you can comment online, maybe about

mercury from coal Plant Scherer
in the Alapaha River and how shifting to “natural” gas just promotes
more fracked methane pipelines like that

Sabal Trail boondoggle.
EPA could take a second step on methane, and we can get on with
faster, cheaper, cleaner, and far more environmentally beneficial

solar power in the sunny southeast.
For details see the

Sierra Club
or
WWALS
or
SpectraBusters postings.

-jsq

Solar Power Hot Topic on LAKE blog

Some like pithy posts, and others like long historical
summaries: see
the Solar Hot Topic for the latter.


I’ve just added links about solar parking lots, Oakland, CA, Dublin, GA and Lowndes High Schools, and super-lobbying group ALEC’s efforts in every state
legislature to oppose solar power.

Solar will win, simply because it’s already cheaper than anything else
and the prices keep going down. The fossil industry will delay as long
as possible to suck up more profit, but even Wall Street has turned
against fossilized utilities that aren’t doing renewables yet. We the
people will win. We just need to stop the fossil junkies from doing more
damage before they lose. The sun is already rising.

-jsq

Solar freakin’ roadways




Solar Roadways has raised $1,884,633 in six weeks from Earth Day to now
on a goal of $1,000,000 in indiegogo
(which was already

a record for most contributors with 36,000 people at $1.5 million).
Yes, to all those who have asked me, I think it could work.
Add solar roadways to rooftop solar and solar farms and wind,
and
the EPA’s new CO2 rule (which doesn’t even do much about coal for years
and does nothing about about “natural” gas)
will seem like a quaint baby step in a few years after this happens: Continue reading →

Energy Policy Act of 2005 considered harmful



The same Energy Policy Act of 2005 that

subsidized dirty oil and fracked methane including LNG exports
also funded

that oxymoron “clean” coal such as Southern Company’s Plant Ratcliffe
in Mississippi,

ethanol production lining the pockets of Monsanto, and

the $8.3 billion loan guarantee
to Georgia Power for the new nukes at Plant Vogtle.



2005 was a very long time ago in solar PV years:

prices are halved, and installed solar power production is up more
than ten times and growing exponentially like compound interest.
We need to stop throwing money at dirty, water-sucking,
centralized baseload 20th century non-solutions and get on with
clean 21st century distributed solar and wind power
for jobs, for energy independence, and for clean air and water,
not to mention less climate change.

-jsq

The fragility of centralized energy systems

All

thermal power generation requires water for cooling,
with nukes so vulnerable no private insurer will cover them anyway
and failing frequently in recent heat waves.
“Natural” gas is no better than coal or oil for water use;
maybe worse because all those pipelines vulnerable to backhoes
or corrosion or attack.
Even hydro is vulnerable to lack of rainfall.
Carbon sequestration doesn’t get good marks, while
conservation and efficiency get rave reviews from
a study of insurance perspectives on power generation.
What’s the one power source this article about insurance risks does not say
is fragile in the face of climate change?
Hint: look up.


Limiting Liability in the Greenhouse:
Insurance Risk-Management
Strategies in the Context of
Global Climate Change,
by
Christina Ross, Evan Mills, and Sean B. Hecht,
Stanford Environmental Law Journal and the Stanford Journal of International Law,
Symposium: on Climate Change Risk, Vol. 26A/43A:251, 2007.



Supply-side energy choices that may be made to reduce the
carbon-intensity of energy services have their own distinctive
liability characteristics. For example, switching to lower-carbon
electricity generation technology based on thermal power plant
technology (e.g., by substituting natural gas for coal) results in
systems that are still heavily dependent on water resources for
cooling. The Electric Power Research Institute has documented
considerable risks to traditionally cooled power generation systems
as a result of climate
change-induced droughts.242 Similarly, “zero-emissions” hydroelectric
generating systems are also sensitive to rainfall patterns.

242
Denis Albrecht,

Electric Power Research Institute, Presentation:
Climate Impact on Water Availability for Electricity Generation
(April 11, 2006) (presentation slides associated with the Electric
Power Research Institute).

Centralization considered harmful

Continue reading →