Comments amazingdrx has made

Ad nauseum, good point bio-d!   It's easy to forget it's a real informal fallacy.  Repetition, a main feature of the "big lie" tactic.

"Death panels" and "clean biofuels" and "drill baby drill", oh my.  It's scary in the deep, dark rhetorical swamp.

The false dilemna fallacy provides great distraction.  "We're better than tar sands!"  Hehehey.

Luckily big mass production scale money is going into electric cars, rail, and maybe even trucks sometime soon.  It is looking like a trend now, all-electric urban cars, buses, trucks, and plugin hybrid suburban/rural vehicles.

Can we get an HVDC national electron super highway built, like the interstate highway system got built in the past century?  It's a new century, let's all holler real loud and insist on it.  A renewable energy powered century.  Our nation, mother earth and all life, including humans need it.  How about following the lead of that radical president, Eisenhower. 

If we build it ...solar, wind, biogas, storage, electric transportation  investors and manufacturers will come. 

When will water conservation be taken seriously?  Drip irrigation, waste water recycling, no water flush composting toilets, and air pressure/water mist cleaning and washing.

And raising cattle where no irrigation is needed to provide forage.  If it's too dry for grass it's too dry for cattle.  That business is a victim of climate change because drip irrigation will not work on grazing land.  Growing feed crops with spray irrigation is too costly in terms of cash and water to ever pay its own way.  Subsidies of scarce cash and water are better spent elsewhere.

$$ spent on water conservation and water applied only to crops where drip irrigation and maybe soon, robotic organic agriculture, that has the potential of using even less water than drip irrigation.  Organic agriculture that builds healthy soil and uses mulch to reduce evaporation losses, and saves waste stream water with biodigestion, allowing it to be used for irrigation safely, free of pathogens.

Very good job pointing out the gains Joe.

We will have to settle for that.  Memorize this article and keep repeating it to your rebellious green progressive friends everyone.

These are dark days for any kind of "global warming" based initiatives.  Only around 10% of US know or care about these issues, and politicians know that.  It makes any support of green legislation very dangerous in terms of smear campaigns coming into this next congressional election season.

We progressive voters will never be satisfied with anything our reps can do about our concerns.  We will probably support a third party in 2012.  And even being seen talking to us is dangerous for them.

Loyalty is not a quality of progressive green voters, we mainly vote on issues.  The really faithfilled voting population are the loyal ones.  That's who politicians need to pander too.  So let's not be too put out by the sudden negative "'tude" towards us on the part of the people we campaigned for and helped elect.  Just get ready to fight a naderite progressive third party effort that could lose congress or even appoint a bush-clone.  President Palin?  Who likes the sound of that?  Cheney and bin laden, actually the whole bin laden clan.

I guess the question I should ask now Sean, is what would make people, individuals and corporations invest in efficiency and renewable energy?  Safe, secure above average returns on their investments, of course.

How to get those returns?  Sell the power and/or realize savings on energy bills.  Long distance transport is necessary to connect buyers and sellers.  Government could build that, an HVDC smart grid, that would be analogous to the interstate highway system.

This could also allow a good return on investment in storage.  Investors woiuld back solar, wind, biogas, or storage where it was most cost effective, solar in deserts reghions, wind on the plains or coasts, biogas in farming areas, and storage like compressed air in underground caverns or solar thermal in sunny areas or battery and thermal storage in buildings.

That's where government investment ought to go, into a national HVDC smart grid.  A utility company here could invest in solar in Arizona to sell power to customers here.  No time to waste, what the tVA was to the last century, an HVDC smart grid could be to this century.

This is a great issue to follow Umbra's advice on and mellow out.  Support full reproductive and other rights for women, then let them make their own decision. 

Don't even whisper about forcing population control, and certainly never ever mention eugenics.  That's just flat out insane.  With advocates like mr. burr we don't need enemies.  Shunning is called for of anyone expressing these extremely offensive views.

Lead by example, then let your kids, friends, and the culture decide. Quality beats quantity.  Better to have fewer people living within the means that our biosphere provides without damaging it, than trying to outpopulate other national, ethnic, or religious groups as seems to be the human cultural norm so far.

Time to change that regrettable history or perish as a species.  Women will decide rightly on this, the survival of mother earth and quality over quantity if given the freedom they ought to have.  It is powerful patriacal cultures that insist on limitless population growth to provide endless consumers and fodder for the war machinery.  Free women, we can all trust them to do the right thing.

The ocasional 12 child mom will be balanced by one ot two child moms.  No problem.  And let's not make the 12 child mom feel bad either, that won't help anyone.

Another barely noticed milestone!  But look at the capital behind this, mass production could make these cost competitive.  No more NIMBY objections once megawatt floating wind can be located out of sight offshore.

Now wave power should be added to this same platform.  It could double the output.

Furthermore think of the protection for coastal marine life from international factory fishing.  A whole string of these can block huge miles long nets used by these ocean life killing operations.  That will also protect local fisheries and fishermens' livelihoods.

These are the liberty ships of this antiwar renewable energy re-evolution.  Every shipyard should be humming, producing these as fast as liberty ships were produced for WW II. 

Well dan, Obama is speaking in a few minutes.  Will he go on to brainwash american kids tomorow?  How can real americans let this happen?   Do you want to see poor Glenn Beck cry?

Way to let your country down.

Did Van jones take his supporters' (my) advice in resigning, or was this a forced "resignation"?  How would he have gotten anything progressive through this administration?  Not gonna happen.  It is like me trying to activate the local party here, run as it is by former reagan 'pubs.

Anyway, it is the right decision.  Good for you, now you can get back in the fight.

Now the question is this.  Should a campaign to get a total advertiser boycott of the steaming pile of beckscrement continue?  Or is it better for progressive reform to have as many idiots like beck, palin, "joe the plumber", drug limboob, o'really(?)...  and so forth in prominent media roles as possible?

Have they effectively extended thier own wing nut status into ABC news now that Jake Tapper and others decided to give the truther BS credibility?  I think so.  The further the wing nut rant enters the so-called main stream media, the more people will realize how polluted that "stream" is with wing nut contamination.  Do most MSM producers still have Drudge up on their computer screens 24/7?  Most likely, but now add worldnutdaily to those screens too.  What's next Jake?  Birthers on the weekend talking head shows?

Will only 5, 6, 7...dollar gas, millions more family medical emergency bancruptcies/foreclosures, and expanding the oil wars get reform back on the public agenda?  It looks like it.  Let the beckscrement flow while rome burns, maybe enough of US will get sick enough of it to demand reform?  Otherwise we the people are set to enter sleep mode again.

(Hehey, very funny.  The local control freak reaganites here use ALL CAPS too.  They even talk in ALL CAPS)

My twitter rant on this steaming load of MSM-enabled (coal lobbyist) becks-crement.

That's all this load deserves, a bunch of barely coherent tweets.  You'll notice now cheney is predicting another 911.  if it happens he can say he told you so and return to power.  Would saudi billionaire wingnuts like that outcome?  I think so.

Anyway, that's enough of that.  let's talk about who in this administration ought to get the axe.  Rhambo, he is selling us out on healthcare reform, that just came out in the release of "secret" emails he sent reassuring his insurance industry sponsors. 

Will this traitorous creep get 100 million as a lobbyist the year after he is ejected from government?  or will he get 100 million from each sellout?  on healthcare, climate legislation, financial industry re-regulation, credit card company regulation...and on and on.  because he will betray us over and over and over..that is clear.

What sort of filthy blackmail does this sewer rat have on Obama that he hasn't been fired already?  Or is Obama ok with the sellout?  only time will tell.  Our party has been taken over by raygun repubs.  We thought we won?  Nope.  It was a nice fantasy though.

Can Van jones bypass Rhambo and get us green jobs anyway?  Highly doubtful, just resign and rejoin the battle van.  The real basttle, because nothing is being acomplished in this administration.  Is Rhambo really Rove in a mask?  Probably.  Corporate power won this last election.

There is one person we can still trust, Howard Dean.

Does the rejuvenation of soil as a carbon sequestration mechanism constitute geo-engineering?  If it were acomplished globally with a wholesale shift from chemical ag to organic fertilizer from waste stream biomass it could be, and actually would remove enough GHG to equal other geo-engineering schemes.  Consider the elimination of nitrous oxide (300x the GHG effect of cO2) from chemical fertilizer and the reduction of methane (20x the GHG effect of CO2) emissions from chemical fertilizer run off bio-reacting with cellulosic biomass in soil and wetlands.

Natural prairie soil stores 1.8 tons of CO2 per acre per year.  Going organic with ag soil and restoring conservation land to its former sequestration rate might do it, actually reverse global climate change.

And the biogas produced through waste biomass digestion and organic fertilizer production could backup a 100% renewable grid, while offsetting 20 times the CO2 from the biogas energy production.

Overlooking the possibility of using wind/wave powered low cloud formation for not only reflectivity, but also  for rain and snowfall increase in strategic areas like glaciers, tundra, deserts, and ice caps, is a striking omission.  Think of deserts flooded with rainfall and greenery, turning all that CO2 into soil carbon sequestration potential via a huge increase in photosynthesis.  And consider the artic summer, with 24 hour sunlight, with an extra thick ice cap, tundra, and glacial cover of snow from low cloud formation during frigid winter.  That's huge reflectivity during the hottest solar absorption season in the most delicate climate for ice melt and feedback methane release.

The total potential is huge, and fuel less with wind/wave powered floating "ships" that can be directed to take advantage of weather paterns to maximize these effects of rain/snow fall.

I would rather see renewable energy backed by organic ag and biomass recycling as a fix, but if we are too late, the low cloud solution seems feasible and the lesser of geo-engineering evils.

I've got to point out though that mother nature most l;ikely will use geo-engineering as drought and ice melt sets in.  Land is rising in alaska as glaciers melt and the countervailing force of the weight of ice is removed and magma pressue pushes relentlessly upwards.  There are signs that volcanic activity will ocurr due to the loss of aqifers in drought and glacial mass.  Yellowstone's hot springs and geysers cool the rock capping the magma bubble, and the weight of the water hold the cap down.

When/if aquifer water evaporates from the area and is not replenished by rainfall will the supervolcano erupt?  Will that cause years (as in 1816) or deacdes with no summer, thus cooling the planet into a mini ice age?

Good heads up on cage-free eggs, what a scam.

I am considering worm farming to provide extra protien for chickens.  Plus  rotational foraging with moveable quarters.  Could mown forage be dried & frozen for winter chicken feed?  Ther's got to be a way around feed store bills and contamination, without paying for organic feed.

Yep, distributed generation & distributed storage.

This is how conservation fits in.  What are the really big building electrical loads? Heating and cooling.  If heating is done with solar then stored and cooling is done with ground loop fluid circulation those loads almost dissapear.  And by using heat storage the sun can do water/home heating directly.

Home heat storage for the big loads and backup battery storage at home for emergencies and demand/supply offset timing.  Plugin cars can also be used to offset solar supply and demand.

Gar, I think CAES with solar furnace thermal salt storage is more efficient.  Maybe a secondary refrigerant powered turbine generator could still capture waste heat from the CAES solar thermal system?  that would maybe boost total efficiency and cut cost per kwh of 85% capacity factor electric power.  then fill the other 15% with biogas/natural gas in a solid oxide fuel cell, with the waste heat powering the CAES turbine.

That lower cost affordable design would be better, and harvesting extra power only to use it in energy wasting electric resistance heating, while blocking solar radiation that ought to be used for heating instead, really makes this kind of a foolish design.  All flash and no substance.  Too bad, but that apparently is a large part of the culture of silicon valley startup land.

Better to send that extra 8 kw capacity back into a smart grid, and use cogeneration for water and home heating.  And ground source cooling.

Really these youngsters make this whole effort very compelling, but they need better direction.  Form follows function, maybe a good principle to remember, straight from the forebears of organic architecture.  Organic architecture really ought to be green shouldn't it?

My sense is that it is the ivy leaguers in their academic towers moved to silicon valley that need a wakeup call, maybe the more progressive green students could help with that?  Nothing wrong with a 440k 800 ft2 house.  But real green ought to be around 44k for a truly green 800 ft2 organic home.

It looks like 5 of those firefly oasis batteries will will equal a gallon of gas in terms of range for a plugin vehicle.  A 40 mpg vehicle will get 40 miles from 5 of these batteries.  The retail price is rumored to be around 500 bucks a copy.

Figuring maybe 60 mpg from an ultralight aluminum frame/carbon fiber plastic car, 4 batteries would be enough.  At under 1000 dollars for batteries, manufacturing level wholesale prices, it seems that around 14k retail would be possible for a plugin hybrid.  BYD in China says they can mass produce their plugin hybrid and sell it for 16k.  It has a standard steel frame/body, way heavier and more expensive than need be.

The lighter car would also be safer.  And it would need far less hosrepower, making the backup generator lighter and smaller.  Fiberforge already has the carbon fiber mass production technology.  Firefly has the batteries.  Electric drive companies already make the power systems.  All the components are made right here in the USA. 

Why can't we buy them at car dealers already? 

There is a somewhat cheaper and more practical way to do this, get solar energy from the roads, thaw ice on the road without salt (eco-friendly safety), and later when/if solar cells can be adapted to road surfacing economically, they can go over this other energy capturing system.

Plastic tubes would be inserted in existing and new roads, a heat circulating fluid would be pumped through the road surface tubes when it is hot from solar radiation, then the hot water would go into a genearating system similar to Rasor technology's closed cycle turbine generator.  It uses refrigerant gas to power the turbine, so that even 140 degree water can power it efficiently.

The refrigerant can be condensed with underground source cooling, then in winter the pump can reverse and circulate ground temperature (55 degree F) to melt snow.  Resistance heaters, the method suggested in the article would be to power intensive, it would kill the efficiency of the solar system.

Once the black road surface was melted off, and ythe sun sahined after a storm, the heat turbine system would powerr up again.  In winter refrigerant from the turbine could be cooled in colder winter air, improvibng the efficiency of the turbine system even with a cooler road surface.  It's the temp difference that produces the power.

If solar cells can be developed and tested, they can be installed over the heat collecting road surface.  Then solar PV/heat turbine generator solar cogeneration, coupled with road way ice melting, could cover a lot of the road and parkinbg lot surfaces, more in hotter, more solar intense areas of the planet.  This could be used on large building roof surfaces too.  Here's another major stimulus area.

Not to mention that ground source building heating/cooling could be run off of these same systems in roads and parking lots and on roofs.  Would it power the whole grid?  Along with wind power and conservation i believe it would.

Here's a good way to understand what the 2 dollar per watt solar cell price point mentioned in the link means.  Each watt of cell capacity produces around 3kwh of power per year.  At the retail price for electricity of 11 cents per kwh, that would mean a 6 year payback for the solar cells.  33 cents per year times 6 years is aproximately 2 bucks.

After 6 years your electricity would be free.

A coal or natural gas plant costs close to 2 bucks per watt, but it never pays for itself in savings like solar does.  Why?  Because the cost of the fuel is always there.  Not only that, the cost of the fuel always rises with inevitable shortage and price manipulation.  And the cost of GHG climate change and pollution always increases too.

So you get what you pay for, ever cheaper electricty costs as wind and solar pay off their intial cost, or ever increasing prices for energy and the inflation it produces at the very base of the economy.  Devaluing the currency and value of other elements in the economy like human labor, invention, and initiative.

The figure I found was around 5.4 % veggie to meat protein conversion for grass fed beef.  That's around 19 to 1, 19 parts veggie protein to 1 part meat protein output. Efficiency is around 30% for eggs.  Milk is the most efficient.

Of course almost all egg and milk protien output is eaten by humans, with beef the percentage consumed by humans is lower.  We like the better cuts of meat, hot dogs are not as popular.  A lot of the beef protein goes for dog food.  Some is even fed back to cows!?  These factors kind of wreck the raw 5.4% efficiency figure and put the ratio around 30 to 1 or more.

Good point on invertabates though, insects, worms, and so forth.  The compost to worm to chicken to egg pathway is very efficient and great on GHG sequestration.  Free range chickens also convert grass and insects.

Go organic grass fed and eat less meat, more eggs and milk, and more veggie protein.  That's a recipe for carbon sequestration in the soil and protein efficiency.  The health benefits of shunning antibiotic, hormone, and herbicide/pesticide laden meat, dairy, and poultry products are priceless.

Excellent article Lou.  The mercury issue is very encouraging.  Now can we find organic farm raised fish, catfish or otherwise?  Organic feed is expensive, that is hurting organic dairy farmers lately.

Would anyone take a chance investing in organic fish farming?  Interesting article topic, maybe I'll blog it up.

Yep Anil, it is strange how simple most of this stuff is and also how difficult it is to get it mass produced.  Electric cars, fuel cells, solar cells, wind machines, biodigestors, electric trains, batteries, all invented anywhere from 100 to thousands of years ago. 

Given a benevolent dictatorship it would be child's play to reconstruct the energy and agricultural economy into a renewable organic form that not only canceled human GHG but actually reversed climate disaster with carbon sequestration in soil, wetlands, forests, and prairies.  Everything needed to get it going already exists, except the will.

Now where's that ring of power, hehehey.

Volcanic thermostat:  evidence of land rising in Alaska and Yellowstone where glacial water & ice is waning indicates that volcanic activity might increase with climate change.  Extended drought and glacial melt due to human produced GHG could trigger a catastrophic event like the volcanoe induced 1816 "year without a summer".

Could a decade without any summer be triggered by multiple volcanic eruptions over that decade?  How much would that cost humanity?  How many lives would be lost, how severe a depression causing huge financial losses, and how much disruption of life as we know it could occur?

Should we listen to science and act now, creating a huge economic boom from the new energy economy, or should we listen to faithbased hollering in the service of big energy corporate power?

Let mother earth's volcanic thermostats start erupting and we are in a world of hurt.  But maybe exxon's stock will go up in the meanwhile.  I say screw exxon & halliburton & that oil company funding the "dick armey", and the politicians they rode in on.

Vegetable protein versus animal protien: it is undeniable that vegetable protein production emits a fraction of the  nitrous oxide (emitted by chemical fertilizer, 300x worse GHG than CO2), methane (emitted by fertilizer interacting with stored soil and wetland biomass), and CO2 (emitted by fossil fuel related inputs and burning biomass to clear land to grow crops), compared to the equivalent animal protien produced with commercial ag.  Put 30 units of veggie protein into a cow and you get one unit of animal protein in the form of meat.  Milk and eggs take less veggie protein.

Over 50% of human produced GHG is due to chemical agriculture.  Go organic with biodigested waste biomass and organic fertilizer, rotational grazing, and robotic organic agriculture, powered with solar/wind electriciuty, and that GHG nearly dissapears.  Whether vegetable or animal food is the final product.  And the biogas produced can back up a renwabley powered smart grid that charges electric vehicles, powers electric mass transit, and powers ground source heating/cooling as a substitute for fossil fueled heating/cooling. That eliminates most of the rest of human produced GHG.

By reviving soil sequestration of carbon with organic agriculture, climate change can even be reversed.  If we support farmers like Coleman with local organic community agriculture maybe the changes necessary to halt climate disaster will happen in time.  If we keep on eating agri-chem meat it won't.

So pay 8 bucks a pound for local organic meat, instead of 2 bucks a pound for chem meat, then eat 1/4 the meat you usualy eat.  Your budget comes out even, your health is boosted inestimably, and your conscience clears.  Substitute for the protein lost with organic eggs and dairy products, but once again eat less of them to compensate for price difference.  Fill in the rest of your dietary protein with veggie protein like beans, corn, and so forth.

Oh yeah, and cook your food yourself instead of paying for food cooked by disgruntled minimum wage workers at fast food restaraunts.  Another big plus, far less bodily secretions in your food! hehehey.

Yeah Dave and Alida and anyone else who is interested email me,  iieo@hotmail.com

Or you can check my tweets or my blog too, feel free to comment on my blog, no registration necessary.  Or tweet me @amazingdrx.

I have a lot of stuff on water conservation, prevention of aquifer contamination,  and GHG prevention with waste biomass biodigestion, organic fertilizer, and biogas energy as a backup for solar and wind powered smart grids.  Also robotic organic agriculture that uses pinpoint liquid organic fertilizer/watering.

Also on domestic water conservation, no water flush suction operated composting toilets and Bucky Fuller's fog gun air pressure/water mist cleaning and washing system.

"And, my god, flouridation. Don’t forget flouridation"

They always go for our "precious bodily fluids".    (video..General Ripper from Dr Strangelove on Flouridation)

Keith Olbermann has been doing a Dr Strangelove (Peter Sellers) imitation lately to satarize Lou Dobbs, hehehey.

Well no, that needed no debunking it is obviously a simple confusion.  The CO2 is not emmited from the electric car, it is emitted by the power plant producing the electricity, no figures are needed to prove that.

 You actually did just what I was inferring, proved that electric cars are responsible for a fraction of the GHG of gasloine powered cars, even if they are charged on our partially coal fired power grid. 

The trouble with talking points constructed to confuse is that they usually end up confusing those gullible enough to swallow/regurgitate them.  Hehey.

If one payed a farmer 10 bucks per week for a cow share, then received 4 gallons of milk, that would work out to 33 cents per pound I believe?  Check my figures.  You could turn the milk into yogurt, butter, cheese and just drink the milk.

Farmers are going broke now with the price under 20 cents per pound for regular milk and under 30 cents for organic milk.  I would pay more for local semi-organic milk, say 12 bucks per week for a  4 gallon share, it's still a great deal.

I think CSAs could make this happen, legally and safely.  Furthermore, members who wanted pasturization could use CSA community owned equipment to do that.   In my view only 10% of consumers would go through the effort to join a CSA like this and get most of their food this way.  But that alternative would pressure the rest of the market to reform or lose market share.  Not a bad result for society as a whole and CSA members.

Tie in monopoly fighting with a cleaner, safer, more organic (not necessarily pure organic), local food supply and the synchronicity might add up to a 10% market share in a few years.

Debunking the old talking point about the GHG emissions of electric cars charged up on coal fired electricty is an endless task.  Oh well, thanks for doing it again.  But watch the thread, it will pop up again over and over. 

Just as all the goofy anti-climate change talking points, the "birther" lunacey, and now the "deather" (the screwball claim that healthcare reform is designed to kill the elderly) mass insanity;  this hogwash is endlessly recycled by the bottom feeding "teabagging" wing nuts and their lobbyist/effnews handlers.  So it goes.  Ignoring it is dangerous too, as we learned in the case of the Kerry campaign targeted by the swift boat big lie tactics.

Now will we ignore the meeting disruption by payed goons?  I hope not.  The time for non-violent response is now, today, at every meeting targeted by the "dick armey".  Armey's lobbying firm is organizing and paying the thugs disrupting the townhall meetings on healthcare.

Consider this, even jabberwacky's (D&D) marvelous/magical hydrogen fuel cell might replace batteries given a nanotech storage lattice for hydrogen that stores the gas at near liquid density levels at ambient temperature/pressure. There is already a pretty good result in research on storing methane (natural gas, biogas) in a nanotech lattice in this fashion. A structure that holds a zinc atom in a carbon nanotube for instance, might just do that for hydrogen.

It could be stored as nanotech zinc hydride, which liberates the hydrogen gas with gentle heating. No deadly dangerous 3000 psi hydrogen hose needed! I still lie nanotech lead/acid for the near future, they are working on it in Iran right now. An unlikely location? The first battery, invented in ancient times, was discovered in the region by archeologists.

Even aircarft might be battery or biogas/hydrogen fuel cell powered given nanotech storage densities and a hybrid design that uses hybrid turbine/electric powered engines during the high power takeoff phase of flight.  Microwave laser powering the takeoff and climb out phase might be possible too, with all electric storage power for the cruising phase.

Great news!  Nissan was wise to avoid hybrid development.  This vehicle could be easily converted to extended range with a backup generator for longer trips.  Just when things looked darkest for the climate and th4 economy, inovation and mass production may rescue us from fossil fuel, it seems more and more likely.

Ignore the wing nut trolls, reality will always be a stranger in this crowd.  Don't expect reason from the reason-less.

You know the military industrialists would love to have a laser that would shoot down missles, small enough to fit in a drone plane.  EEstore might make that possible, along with a solid oxide fuel cell turbine.  Boeing was working on a fuel cell drone powerplant.  the missle shooting laser they have now only fits in an airliner sized plane.

How much useful green technology is suppressed by military secrecy?  How much of that is by design to prevent a new energy economy from replacing the old oil/coal military industrial monopolies?

No human infestation of planet earth, no history.  We are but a moment's blight upon the biosphere.  dig this crazy mother earth diary idea.  Each "day" in mother earth's diary is equal to 365,000 years.  We techno-humans who are wrecking the climate and killing the oceans occupy only a few minutes at the end of one of those days.

More beer!  This is a good trend, talking up local organic beer and peace, love, and understanding.   Have a beer with your antagonists.  I just did this last night, had some Leinekeugels Sunset Wheat  (note the blueberry top note) with Palin/Beck fans. 

This is comedy at it's finest, humoring the birther/deather (deather = the "Obama's socialist medicine will kill old folks" crowd) palinite legions with real beer. Even though Leine's is now a corporate beer it retains the family legacey.  With a bit of coriander.

The palinites drank 6 beers a piece, I had three, hehey.  Desperation?  i guess they figure chain smoking and chugging a 6-pack is a good way to get ready for armageddon?

Still, it would be better to have a nice coriander, blueberry top note organic home brew, but after all the work of grinding the malt, sparging, fermenting, and bottling would I want to share it with people who hate Obama and heart Palin & Beck?  Clearly bud light is good enough for them, hehey. Which proves Obama is a man of the people.

ps.  Best to chant "Socialism, socialism..we want socialized medicine!" when the haters get too astringent.  Very funny.

Well maybe it is worth a fight Dave.  I used to buy raw milk right from a farm and make my own butter, it was great.  The milk certainly tasted great.  i nevcer got around to making cheese though, something I'd like to try.  I had no idea of the history of the problem with mash feeding, it is coming back again from ethanol fuelishness.

Legalize it!!  Wisconsin ought to do it too.

Given the amount of used equipment out there at bargain basement scrap prices, local farmer/consumer coops can easily meet legal standards for dairy processing.  Here in Wisconsin there are cooperative cheese factories with all the equipment needed, individual cheesemaker/farmers come in and do a batch of their particular specialty cheese all in stainless steel legal food processing facilities without the cost prohibitive over head.

The resulting cheese can then be sold by the cheesemaker at reasonable prices/profits directly to consumers.  Could similar models work with other dairy products?  And even with eggs and meat and frozen, smoked, or canned food?  Yep. The expertise and equipment is out there, unused thanks to monopoly gaming, so put the people back to work.  Retirees advbising part time with younger workers learning the trade.

No neeed to fight the unwinnable battle against food industry "safety" concerns, that are really all about monopoly games.  Besides which, even one lawsuit over injuries from raw milk, even one that was a fake incident funded by industry lobbyists would kill the coop movement.

Better to avoid this obvious trap.  People can actually get raw milk by owning their own cow, even if they pay a farmer to milk, feed, and care for the cow.

If coops could capture 10% of the food market, it would scare the food industry into at least an appearance of reform.  There's a movement stirring.  Local, organic, and real cooperatives owned by producer/consumer members.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Compare this level of expansion to the ramp up of WW II war production.  If wind power were expanded as quickly as war production was, how long would it take to lower the unemployment rate to pre-recession levels?

Now add in all the other manufacturing and installation of solar, smart grid, ground source heating/cooling, electric commuter rail, and plugin hybrids.  The demand is there, chinese and european industries are busy meeting that demand, wouldn't it be a wise choice to at least match the competition?

At the pathetically slow rate of investment and expansion we have now, we are flushing our economic future down the drain.  Apparently that is aok in the board rooms and halls of government.  The rats who hide behind faux patriotism are only in this for themselves, they are turning US into the UK.  A has been on the global stage.

Would it be too jingoistic to promote new energy economy investment & manufacturing as a a way to compete peacefully with the rest of the world?  Climate concerns have turned into wing nut talking points, thanks to scientifically illiterate media.  No one is wading through climate arguments except a few wackjobs and die hard climate campaigners like Gore and Romm.  Not exactly electrifying to the average reader!  Rhetorical sominex in fact.

The way to get this energy re-evolution going is the same way WW II war production was pushed, national security, this time around to prevent war and economic disaster.  The debt built up by oil wars and paying for oil itself will destroy US unless we become a first order manufacturing nation once again.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog

Yes Emily these oil and other fuel wars are endless, because of the nature of fuel, namely eventual scarcity.  Renewable energy is different,  there is a virtually endless supply.  Only the devices necessary to convert renewable sources to useful forms is in short supply.

But that can be cured with mass production, then instead of energy prices rising with time/scarcity, energy prices stabilize as the dewvices become less expensive and more efficient.  This is a much better energy economy from an inflationary picture.  And also in terms of preventing  monopolization  and manipulation of energy prices.

Chinese industrial policy seems to have grasped this reality already.  How long will it take our leaders to act to catch up?  Maybe too long?  Tesla motors, google, and others seem to get it, including warren buffet, with his investment in BYD plugin hybrid.

33,000 ft2 of bioreactor would make 20,000 dollars worth of ethanol per year.  How much would the bioreactors cost?  @20 dollars per square foot, the return on investment would be 30 years.

Could the cost be brought down with mass production?  Or would the cost be even higher, even up tp 50 dollars per square foot?

How many miles of travel in an electric car would an acre of solar panels provide per year?  How many miles would an acre of bioreactor ethanol provide if it were burned in an internal combustion vehicle?

How much would the solar electric miles cost compared to the ethanol based miles?  And finally, are there enough acres of rooftops and non-arable land available to even mount enough bioreactors to support our internal combustion transportation economy?

I know there are enough rooptop acres and wind farm locations to supply the miles we need with electric transportation.

The dodge of recycling CO2 merely provides an excusae to keep burning coal and other fossil fuels.  Going plugin hybrid should no longer be delayed, especially by tenuous experiments like this.

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Ethics investigations and expensive litigation on the governor's salary?  Thi(a)nks, but no thi(a)nks.  She needs big fauxnews money and speaking fees and book advances..oh my.  Now she'll have the time and resources for her and bristol to go for the double mother/daughter octomom title!!

Sarah&Bristol+16!!  That's the road to the white house.

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It's great to hear this discussion raised again.  How about some exposure of waste stream recycling/organic agriculture and soil carbon sequestration now?  Prairie and wetland sequestration are huge potential sources of GHG savings too. 

A recent "Real Time" with bill maher featured Montana gov brian schweistzer touting coal fired carbon capture and sequestration under ground, almost unopposed by the rest of the panel.  We need to come out strong when these schemes come up, and make it clear that coal CCS is worse than useless.  And that forest, prairie, and wetland sequestration and industrial scale organic ag, and soil carbon storage are the real methods for reversing climate disaster.

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Thanks Jessica, wouldn't one think this would be obvious to business observors?  Google has had huge success with their new mode of capitalism.  Do the founders even care if the emp;oyees end up owning the company?  I bet it would be their most fervent hop when they go to their reward(s).

This bends the whole standard capitalist model of nepotism, feudalism, and endless war around into pragmatic idealism.  The founders, driven to do what they do for the sheer creative joy, giving into a zen model.  "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"?  How about "Zen and the Art of Capitalist Creativity"?

Adopt eastern philosophical principles, mix liberally with capitalism, make an earth saving, empathy friendly, financially secure, global cultural re-evolution.  Auuuum.

And maybe follow "the oracle of Omaha's" lead and start working with the chinese people to get the change we need.  isn't buffet really midwestern zen? He has been that way a long time. Taking traditional rural values, the zen of the prairie, right into the halls of power.

Warren buffet buys into BYD motors, the chinese plugin hybrid maker:

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2009/5/25/4200114.html

Great video.  I think robotics have great application in organic farming.  Insect repellant/resistant plants placed in with crops, strip cropping, nitrogen fixing mulch crops like alfalfa between rows, muclching, pinpoint watering/organic fertilizer, robotic planting, harvesting, insect capture, and weed removal: all these applications acomplished with a renewably powered programmable robot would boost organic farming productivity far beyond chemical ag.

And vastly lower costs at the same time.  Furthermore all the huge GHG releasse related to chemical ag would be eliominated (over half of human GHG is ag related).

A vast manufacturing base would be created, replacing the chemical, oil, and agribizz industries and huge, costly  subsidy programs that are now involved in monopolizing the food supply.  Healthcare costs would drop as dangerous substances are removed from the food chain, like antibiotics, hormones, pesticides, non-nutritive additives that boost obesity, and herbicides.

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The good jobs produced by the robotic farming industries and farms could replace those lost in conventional ag, chemical, and oil industries.  Huge energy sources would be opened up from organic waste stream biodigesation and fertilizer and energy production.  There is a whole new industry in itself, backing up renewable energy with waste stream biomass recycling.

Ask a college engineering team to work with their ag students on this, start a contest among  schools as in other engineering challenges.  simply managing a small garden with simple robotics at first, then on to  planting..all the way to harvesting.  Why not?  or should we let chinese students pioneer this alone?  Why shouldn't ours be onboard this re-evolution?

We plumbers (pro/am) implore you! No dye please!! That stuff is disgusting and stains the hands.

Best to give a link ot two to composting toilet articles in this sort of piece though.  Stop the sludge!

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Great article Todd! this really is the kind of technology that will work, they need to cool these with liquid and collect the waste heat.  Solar cogeneration adds efficiency.

10 sun concentrating collectors have reached 38% efficiecy in NREL testing.  triple the power output per area of collector with 1/10nth the silicon, that is a winning combination if it can be done practcally.

There is a better way, that adds cogeneration for water heating and mounts behind windows, or under glazing mounted on a roof.  thi needs minmal tracking and can be firther enganced with solar tracking mirrors reflecting extra solar power opn the collector.

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Yep, well said! To quote the article:

Critics of EVs note that plug in vehicles, by contrast, have a long way to go as well, because much electric power still comes from highly polluting coal plants.

Sorry nope. A very old talking point, refuted over and over here.

Electric vehicle advocates dispute that, saying their cars can be plugged in at night in homeowners’ garages, to take advantage of burgeoning solar, wind and other renewable sources during off hours.

Wrong again! but consistent.

Hydrogen is made from foassil fuel, with the CO2 emitted into the air.  Or it is made from water with electrolysis using the same electrical sources that charge EVs, very inefficiently.

Plugin hybrids have the potential to eliminate 90% of fuel use and power cars from a 100% renewable grid, as that transition is made.  BUD in China has a 16k 60 mile battery range coroola style vehicle inmass production right now.  hydrogen can't get there from here, or anywhere.

(one has to wonder about the scientific/technical expertise of the editor of this piece)

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The trouble with dismissing this nonsense is that it is the tip of the iceberg.

For instance: Up until about 15 years ago, foamy pollution was evident just below the papermill dam here on the Wisconsin River.  How was it "cleaned up"?  large golding tanmks were installed to mix the contaminated water exiting the plant with river water, so the foam would not be evident in the much diluted effluent.  A fake fix.

But legal! Why? Because pollution is measured as a percentage of water/air, and industry has virtually unlimited water use.  This green (stream) washing has been repeated 10s of thousands of times across the country.  Did it help stop pollution?

Joe Barton claims that concentrating the breath of 1000s of runners constitutes pollution under point-source rules, but obviously the runners breathing as on any normal day, not in a group, creates the same total amount of GHG.

So spread the nat gas drill rig pollution all over western ground water and it's ok?  But having it come from one point source like a refinery would be regulated?  or dilute nuclear waste in ocean water and it's harmless?  We have work to do to defeat this creative bioshpere destruction in the name of the corporate bottomline.

How to really stop industrial pollution and GHG?  Instead of greenwashing it.

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Look out if walmart buys BYD, auto showrooms at walmart?  They already sell tires and do oil changes.  Obama could encourage walmart to build US auto factories.  This whole ethanol scam, and other scams to keep gas guzzling going flies in the face of a real free market hurricane of change.

Electric "fuel" costs the equivalent (in miles driven per dollar) to 70 cents per gallon.  If you have solar panels on your home or garage electric fuel would be free, after a few years payback period.  Detroit and the oil industry is fighting a losing battle, do we want our economy to go down with them?

Wouldn't it be better to make GM and Chrysler  adapt?  Than make US all bankrupt?  We own their sorry asse(t)s now.

So is this car! The BYD plugin hybrid with 60 mile battery range for 20k.  Maybe 16k after production ramps up?

Why didn't chrysler make a deal with BYD?  Make these cars here.

Great article Catherine.  As the comments indicate, it got to the stinky heart of the matter.  You might want to do an article on Bucky Fuller's Dymaxion bathroom.

Dymaxion Bathrooms are to be equipped with "Fog Gun" hot water vapor showers that use only a cup of water to clean hygienically without soap. Remarking that "Nature had designed humans to separate urine and excrement. Both are valuable chemistry, and should be collected for further use,"

A new system that solves the transport issue of human waste to the composter, waterlessly, is now available.  It's basically just a shop vac blower mounted on the outside compost containment.  A simple fo-it-yourself system could be constructed with an inexpensive shop vac and a few 55 gallon drums, plastic ones last longer and are lighter.

Our ancient design sewer systems waste a scarce, indespensable  commodity, fresh. clean water, to transport waste.  Thus contaminating the water.  Composting toilets can't use water flushing as it would interrupt the composting action.  With this waterless vacuum flush system waste is transported out of the house/apartment into a composter.  This can serve even huge buildings.  Although with skyscrapers anaroebic energy generating biodigestion is called for.  A proposed building in China uses the methane from waste to generate a large propostion of it's electricity.

Anyway, the point is that water free composting toilets that allow the convenience of indoor plumbing and the comfort and utility of dealing with composting and waste removal outside the home are now available.  Coupled with bucky's "fog gun" these have the potential to reduce domestic water use by 90%.  

Oh and check this urine to fertilizer demo on video!   Bucky's system separated urine for processing, this same suction system would remove urine to a separate collection tank for dessication and either onsite or remote fertilizer conversion.   

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Very nice Sarah!  Now these are shorts or underwear?  Or both?  this is a good story to tweet!  I think I will.        http://twitter.com/amazingdrx

Once the whole waste stream is boiled down to sludge it's toxic, no way around that.

So separate it, early on.  Urine is contaminated by drugs, but it can be converted to organic fertilizer and the drug compounds can be broken down.  Feces can be digested along with fiber waste to make energy and fertilizer.  The oil and chemicals  in storm drains that is so very toxic needs solar furnace treatment to become harmless.

Mixing it together really makes a toxic mess, wether it's burned, buried, or whatever.

Anyone remember being lectured here on the scientific method, at length ad nauseum?  Any of you experts here to review this self regulated science?  see any possible problems?  hehey.

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Great job Maria!  I would have helped out but I stopped posting here in frustration a while back.  Waiting through 4 interminably slow  page refreshes, then losing the comment 50% of the time, compared to twitter,it  is too stressful to battle the same old talking point corporate apologist quietism couched in supposed scientific objectivity.

Lawrence will gladly wait until the verdict is in, but then will he accept the connection between viral evolution and human, pig, and other animal waste consumed by pigs?  This was the same old story with the avian flu from china, now long forgotten.  The scientific connection was made but is now of little interest to media.

The answer is, no.  Lawrence won't admit he was wrong.  He won't have to.  By the time the science is done, blocked all the way by smithfield, it's mexican partners, the mexican government, lobbyists, and corporate lawyers, he won't be interested anymore.  kind of convenient.  Thanks for shaming me into the difficult task of commenting on the neo-grist (hehey, a tribute to DR's obsession with neoliberalism).

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Outstanding Tom, thanks.  This story is developing, but i'm pretty sure it already proves biodigestion of the waste stream and organic ag is the solution.  It also argues for local agriculture and small business food processing and production, as opposed to multinational corporate chemical hormone antibiotic GHG intensive GMO industrial ag.

More as this develops.   @amazingdrx

Fine statement Bill.  Thanks to Sen.Nelson, who we in wisconsin are especially proud of, I hear loons nearly everyday.  And see eagles.  And hear and just ocasionally see wolves.

What would have happened withouy him and his creation, Earth Day?  I like grist, even after this new, improved bastardization, but compared to nelson and his legacey, it doesn't compare at all.  on any scale.  Sorry grist.  it's the truth.  Probably best to remember that when dissing Earth Day.

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Becaise pursuing the same biotechnology and expecting different results is insane?  just a guess.

I know why i oppose agri-chem biotech monocrop ag.  I have to guess on the broad popular objections.

Bio-acumulation of toxins, drug resistant disaese evolution, GHG emissions, soil carbon sink destruction, aquifer destruction, hormone related disease, tasteless food, obesity, slave working conditions, mass starvation, the list goes on and on.

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Nonsense like this would never have gone unchallenged in the old gristmill.oh well,check the archives.

The ironic part,just as main stream media starts covering green alternatives, like the msnbc interview of cisco and GE heads on the smart grid, the mutiyear task of bringing this stuff to their attention with our blogging efforts pretty much stops. 

@amazingdrx

Use her full title Kate, bachman (stomach) turner in overdrive.  A recall election, that's the cure.  But is it better to leave her alone and wait for 2010?  I thnk so.

Maybe we will even see a Palin/Bachman GOP ticket in 2012?  Yes!!  Gibber jabbering wing nut fools, they help bring about change we can believe in.  By alienating the electorate from the very causes they support.  kind of ironic eyyh?

Meanwhile ice caps melt while they fiddle.

@amazingdrx

Great stove design, any video available of it in action?

"The other finalists were Carbonscape, a joint New Zealand/UK venture to fix biomass carbon by turning wood into biochar—a kind of charcoal that can be used as soil conditioner, buried as a carbon sink, or burnt as a highly-efficient fuel"

Wheeew, this points out EXACTLY what is wrong with biochar. Many misinformed people will believe that burning the biochar "as a highly-efficient fuel" will actually result in GHG savings.

twitter: @amazingdrx blog

yeah Eric good news! maybe if industrial factory fishing were curtailed fish populations would return? It's worth a try. How about if greenpeace rates the various fish products available, from mcdonald's to the local fish market? It might direct a boycott of industrial fishing? Food that tastes good but kills life in the ocean in the process, ought not create joy. But rather disgust. twitter: @amazingdrx  blog

That is how Obama is approaching energy policy, apolitically. Chu is on the right page.

Possibly the best arguments for a new energy economy are economic, in terms of green job creation as a stimulus and lowering reliance on monopolized fuel and manipulated markets,and lowering energy prices along with lowering GHG. Green energy is a positive for all parties concerned.

twitter: @amazingdrx

oh so you want to hear a widespread delusion do you? Check the latest "Real Time" with Bill Maher.

Not once but thrice, a think tank wing nut repeats the lie, "solar costs 10 times what coal costs!", he wasn't challenged.  Can we get that video excerpt and transcript and a rebuttal?  It would be good.

@amazingdrx

Don't mix computers with cars

If you really want one on your battery electric vehicle to moniter the systems, use a laptop.  

The demise of the ICE car was signalled by the unwieldy ultra-costly melding of computers and combustion to arrive at a few percent more HP, they haven't been used to increase mileage.

Would you like to be stranded on the road as frequently as your PC has a glitch?  That's what you have with computer controlled internal combustion gas guzzling.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

More and more stuff

Growth doesn't have to consume more and more finite resources.  

Growth, jobs, manufacturing, and investment can be aimed at using renewable resources to recycle the wasteful mess we already have made.

We need more and more renewable energy, organic ag, and energy conservation stuff.  That's your source of economic growth.

The old sources, underground coal, oil, and minerals  combined with the atmosphere and water of planet earth via combustion is a recipe for disaster on a global scale, the final end of growth of our current industrial so-called civilization.

The bacteria on the petri plate have about used up the growth medium with this DNA, time to find a new code that lets us go on growing in a new direction.

The new code:  it involves using the free energy we get from the fusion reactor 9 minutes away as light flies, to recycle everything we have consumed and excreted to poison our petri dish.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

Well sure JMG

I'd rather see the old ones converted to plugin hybrids, and no new ones built, but that is virtually impossible.

I like the idea of electrified rail taking the place of new car manufacturing, car conversion could provide jobs for auto workers too.  

It isn't likely unless a major depression sets in, and in that case we probably won't be building new trains either.  Just scrounging, living off the old stuff and making do.  

That might happem, who knows?  But I'm not rooting for it.  As much as I despise the consumption=happiness addictive culture.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

Expensive carbon

Whay made carbon fiber  expensive in the past, the exotic element, Carbon?  Nope.  

It was limited supply and hand labor to mold it into shape.

Lovins' company, Fiber Forge changed that, now carbon fiber thermoplastic parts can be stamped out like steel.

Check it out.

http://www.fiberforge.com/

It's how he envisions his Hypercar being mass produced, as a unibody from 8 (?) seperate stamped parts that glue together.

This is why I keep insisting that all the R&D has been done, now government needs to order a million of these cars.  Auto companies will not take the leap on their own.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin