Planet Earth Needs You

  Earlier this month Secretary of Energy, Jennifer Granholm, made a little quip statement about owning an electric vehicle to a reporter. His question was, " Obviously, we have the acute issues with the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack.  But looking more holistically in a macro view, how does this speed up the efforts at DOE to move in more of a renewable direction since this is going to have an impact on people at the pump?" Her response was, " Yeah, I mean, we obviously are 'all in' on making sure that we meet the President’s goals of getting to 100   percent clean electricity by 2035 and net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.  And, you know, if you drive an electric car, this would not be affecting you, clearly." I honestly do not see the connection between a gas shortage and the development of a green energy infrastructure.   But, that aside, I was not surprised that the conservative media immediately put forward their argument against electrifying al...

             Fukushima daiichi nuclear disaster So many news articles on the climate emergency are showing up on line. I just saw one titled “It’s Crunch Time and Biden’s Climate Gambit Faces Steep Hurdles.” I want to share some thoughts on some of its main points.   I am not going to comment on the political statements in this article and leave that to the political pundits. But I would like to make counter arguments to the scientific and economic arguments presented by the various groups mentioned in the article. Let’s start off with this statement from the article:   “Republican leaders on Capitol Hill say forcing utilities to turn away from coal, oil and gas will mean higher electric bills.”   At the very least this statement is false because coal has been priced out of the market by all other sources of energy. So saying that to ‘stop burning coal’ is going to make electric bills higher is ridiculous. It’s akin to sayin...

  Methane gas is a significant greenhouse gas, roughly 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide.  Agriculture and in particular animal agriculture is a large source of this greenhouse gas. The key sources of methane in animal agriculture are the belching of methane from ruminant animals and the decomposition of their waste. Digestion alone produces 30 to 50 quarts of carbon dioxide and methane gas, per hour, per animal! T remendous quantities of farmland are also needed to support the meat and dairy industry for grazing or for the growing of feed. In developing nations land must be cleared of forests which if left intact would capture carbon dioxide. Furthermore nitrogen fertilizers used to grow the feed puts nitrous oxides into the air which are almost 300 times more potent than CO2. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimates about 14.5 % of GHG’s or 7.1 gigatons of CO2 equivalent, can be attributed to the livestock sector annually. This is broadly equivalent to...