JMG’s Posts

• Bankrupt biofuel barons brawl but Big Bro's budget battered

  The Corndoggle 0

  Posted 7 months ago

  The Portland, Ore. "Willamette Week" has a fairly decent piece on the (fiscal) implosion of the outrageously heavily subsidized ethanol plant in Clatskanie, Ore., which (briefly) produced some "homegrown" motor fuel using 100% imported corn and 100% imported natural gas.

• Oregon's folly

  Oregon tries to undo ethanol leg. while 'enviros' lobby for biofuels subsidies 0

  Posted 7 months, 1 week ago

  Oregon is struggling to undo bad ethanol legislation.

• Biocharged

  George Monbiot cautions against grasping for environmental miracle cures 0

  Posted 7 months, 2 weeks ago

  George Monbiot is the best environmental writer in English.

• Algal biodiesel -- also a magic pony

  High energy requirements make the manufacture of algal biofuel prohibitive 35

  Posted 8 months, 1 week ago

  Robert Rapier has an important post on the prospects for algal biodiesel:

• Why not medium-speed rail? 8

  Posted 8 months, 1 week ago

  The always-excellent Sam Smith, a keen observer of politics and society as a journalist for over 50 years, introduces an outstanding long piece on the high-speed rail money in the stimulus:

  There's nothing wrong with high speed rail except that when your country is really hurting, when your rail system largely falls behind other countries' because of lack of tracks rather than lack of velocity, and when high speed rail appeals more to bankers than to folks scared of foreclosing homes, it's a strange transit program to feature in something called a stimulus bill.
  
  One might even call it an… Read More

All Posts

JMG’s Recent Comments

• Click here to view comment in original post

  Coal is the meth of the energy world. It's a killer.On Report finds massive hidden energy costs, mostly from coal posted 2 weeks, 2 days ago 5 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  There's another business trying for that niche, based in Salem, Oregon. http://www.willamettelive.com/story/Organic_Fingers_offers_organic_lunch_options_to_schools_and_daycares113.htmlOn Is privatization the answer to the school lunch mess? posted 1 month ago 13 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  Interesting use of the "appeasement" story -- as historian Michael Parenti and others have noted, the British didn't "appease" Hitler, they tried to use him as their bulwark and then their sword against Soviet Communism, which is what they disliked much more than they disliked Hitler (to the extent that they disliked Hitler at all in 1938, which wasn't all that much or by all that many).  By giving him Czechoslovakia, they hoped to turn Hitler towards the east and away from the West, not because they thought this would "appease" him but because they hoped he would launch his assault on the USSR much sooner than he actually did (summer 1941).  There were plenty of British and US elites happily doing business with Germany in 1938, with many of the US continuing to do so right up to Pearl Harbor (See, e.g., Edwin Black's "IBM and the Holocaust").

   

   

  On James Lovelock and the End Times posted 3 months ago 8 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  I have a master's from WSU ... this is really sad.  Like Michigan State, Washington State is apparently more of a corporate research facility with some sports teams than a university.

  On UPDATE: Washington State University reinstates freshman reading of 'Omnivore's Dilemma' posted 5 months, 2 weeks ago 40 Responses

• Click here to view comment in original post

  Ocean fishing is an example of a few participants in a setting that's capable of detecting cheating, and all the participants have an incentive to keep dealing with each other -- it's zero-sum for them (if he cheats, I lose out). 
  
  SOx and NOx trading are, again, a few participants in a very visible setting that's capable of being measured to a gnat's ass with stack monitors.  And, again, the participants have every incentive to keep each other honest, because the value of their emissions reductions depends on everybody participating honestly.
  
  Now, consider CO2, emitted by everyone who burns any fossil fuels -- whether they be a power producer or a small lawnmower driver and with "reduction" occurring in a bewildering variety of little-understood ways, with CO2 sinks behavior apparently changing by the second.  Now how is it that we're supposed to be able to detect cheating?  Of course, we all know that no big financial firms ever cheat or ignore flashing red warning lights and signs that the assets they are trading are not quite what they seem . . . oh, also, CO2 has a half-life measured in centuries, quite distinct from SOx and NOx.
  
  I'm all for cap and trade when certain, obvious conditions are met:  few participants, easy transparency/close monitoring, well understood sources and sinks (removal or reduction mechanisms -- in the case of NOx and SOx, burning less).
  
  Anyone who says the SOx and NOx emissions control programs are good models for CO2 cap and trade either doesn't understand how the SOx and NOx programs work, doesn't understand the carbon cycle, or both.

  On Cap and trade works! posted 6 months, 3 weeks ago 4 Responses