Comments howardgw has made

climate change reports

The change in administration happily has resulted in the release of important information, as attested by the four climate change reports cited by Grist. In late December 2008 another very important report=Abrupt Climate Change=by the USGS, NOAA, and NSF was released. Land managers and informed citizens need to wade into this information soon. Either we plan changes in the way we live, or nature will do it for us.

Howard Wilshire

oil shale

As they say in the industry, oil shale is the energy source of the future, and always will be. Having an energy content of an equal weight of baked potatoes, production of oil from shale (a misnomer)probably yields less energy than required to get it, especially using Shell's scheme, is especially dirty if mined and retorted at the surface, and uses water that we don't have. The economics of this endeavor completely ignore the value, in dollars, of the services the natural landscapes provide us. If you want more information on this matter, and how oil shale fits into our overall energy problems, try The American West at Risk: Science, Myths, and Politics of Land Abuse and Recover, published by Oxford University Press, 2008.On BLM finalizes plan for leasing oil shale in U.S. West posted 1 year ago 10 Responses

No drilling in Utah wilderness

Opening Utah's magnificent wildlands for oil and gas exploration has nothing to do with energy security or independence. Despite the extremely poor prospects of finding enough oil and gas to make a net gain in energy at all, and a profit only at high prices, the Bureau of Land Management is approving invasive exploration activities in many lands of high natural and scenic values: for example, the Lockhart Basin, Hatch Point, Dome Plateau, Goldbar Rim and others. Even Wildlife Refuges, protected for  some wildlife values, are not protected from oil and gas exploration and production: 27% of the nation's 575 refuges have been either explored, drilled and exploited, or laced with pipelines. 105 refuges contain a total of 4,406 oil and gas wells, 1,806 currently active. Production from these wells is a tiny proportion of total U.S. production, itself only 30% or so of consumption.

At the request of Congress, the USGS performed a qualitative assessment of oil and gas potential in National Monuments approved and expanded under the Clinton Administration, which did close them to exploration/production. Of 19 monuments, only 4 had any prospects, and those for only modest amounts of oil and gas with no relevance to energy independence.

In contrast, the oil industry claims undiscovered reserves of as much as 4 billion barrels of oil in and adjacent to the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. The whole region contains only 24 geologically favorable oil and gas sites, all of which have been explored for many years. One site has trickled out 25 million barrels of oil since its 1964 discovery, barely more than one day of current consumption over 35 years.

Reckless opening of valuable natural lands to energy exploration can only worsen the nation's energy position. Hopefully, Obama will reverse this trend.

Information from: The American West at Risk: Science, Myths, and Politics of Land Abuse and Recovery
On Obama looks to reverse Bush's drilling efforts in Utah posted 1 year ago 2 Responses

McCain's oil platform photo op

First let me say that McCain's 300 mile helicopter round trip for a photo op is an extravagant use of fossil fuel that seems somehow at odds with his endorsement of energy conservation.

Just as irritating, however, is the loose use of numbers. Are the 160 million barrels of oil that supposedly underlie the platform the resource (about 30% of which can be produced) or the proved reserves? What is the relevance of a field already in production to the areas from which McCain wants to remove the regulatory wraps? We already know that off-shore oil wells are producing only 27 percent of the nation's miniscule production, and drilling the areas currently under moratorium can, on the basis of optimistic guesswork, add only 7% more in 20 years.

Obama should have stuck to his guns.

Howard Wilshire

Hillary Clinton on the environment

Almost all of Clinton's positions on the environment are reactionary. There is a little, but very little,  new thinking suggestive of leadership. The ugly C word (conservation) is not an element of her plan, and she, like most of the candidates, utters nonsense about energy independence. On An interview with Hillary Clinton about her presidential platform on energy and the environment posted 2 years, 3 months ago 32 Responses

more oil availability

I can't believe that anyone, let alone the NY Times and Grist, is hyping steam and CO2 injection for enhancing oil production. These techniques have been around a long time. Guess how the steam is made for the Bakersfield CA aging (discovered 1899) fields. By burning natural gas piped in from Wyoming. This is like changing gold to lead--the oil is low quality heavy dregs, and the natural gas is a very precious commodity, which, like good oil, we are squandering.On But Wait, There's More posted 2 years, 8 months ago 3 Responses

Biofuels

The 3 pieces under Fill 'er up have some very useful information, but two significant points are overlooked:

1. the focus is entirely on fuel, but the fuel is supposed to run something, like cars and trucks. They do not come out of thin air, but use other nonrenewable materials that, like oil, are on depletion curves. Manufacturing the vehicles also takes lots of energy.
   
2. we cannot hope to replace significant amounts of fossil fuels with biofuels, NRDC notwithstanding. NRDC's scheme calls for a lot of rich folks who can afford 50+mpg cars and "smart growth" has to supplant many thousands of acres of dumb growth already on the land.
   

Biofuels

The 3 pieces under Fill 'er up have some very useful information, but two significant points are overlooked:

1. the focus is entirely on fuel, but the fuel is supposed to run something, like cars and trucks. They do not come out of thin air, but use other nonrenewable materials that, like oil, are on depletion curves. Manufacturing the vehicles also takes lots of energy.
   
2. we cannot hope to replace significant amounts of fossil fuels with biofuels, NRDC notwithstanding. NRDC's scheme calls for a lot of rich folks who can afford 50+mpg cars and "smart growth" has to supplant many thousands of acres of dumb growth already on the land.
   

Green is the new dead

There is good documentation that we continue to pollute soil and groundwater with traditional burial methods. Readers might be interested in two sources of information:  U.S. Geological Survey National Mapping Information. [Online]. Available: http://geonames.usgs.gov.
U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, Protecting the Nation's Groundwater from Contamination, (Washington, DC U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, OTA-0-233 1984), 244 p.
On Green-burial movement gets more ambitious posted 3 years, 3 months ago 14 Responses

same old same old

I wonder if Obama knows that when Brazil diverted its sugar crop to ethanol, the price of sugar went up 48%? You can't just jump on one facet of a problem and expect meaningful relief. The resource ramifications of our car-hungry society go far beyond fuel. Try checking out what goes into making a car, and how many of those resources are reaching their limits.  

Our transportation energy problem cannot be solved by seeking substitute fuels that will allow us to go on doing what we are doing. Our only salvation is to radically reduce our demand for gasoline.On Barack Obama chats with Grist about energy independence and ethanol posted 3 years, 8 months ago 7 Responses

corn ethanol

The amount of land required to offset a significant amount of fossil fuel transportation uses is much in debate. Under current crop yields and conversion efficiency, corn yields about 358 gallons of ethanol per acre annually and switchgrass 165 gallons per acre. Replacement of current U.S. gasoline demand (139 billion gallons per year) by corn ethanol would require 407 million acres and replacement by switchgrass ethanol 840 million acres on an equal energy basis. These land requirements exceed the current total U.S. cropland, leaving no land for growing food. The Natural Resources Defense Council has proposed a program to reduce land requirements for switchgrass to replace not only current demand for gasoline, but that projected from current trends to be in demand by 2050 (289 billion gallons per year) to as little as 6 million acres. 66 percent of this gain is the result of conservation and 34 percent the result of technological improvements in crop yield and conversion processes and juggling existing cropland uses.
The rush to biofuels has some major problems: Almost the entire focus of current considerations is on replacing present and future demand for fossil fuels with plant products. The highly concentrated energy contained in fossil fuels came from the same generic feedstock as we are presently proposing, yet it was distilled by millions of years of geologic processes. Today's biofuels do not have the benefit of those processes, so their energy yield is far below that of fossil fuels.
To put the matter in perspective, worldwide primary power consumption is about 13 trillion watts (Tw) per year, with fossil fuels supplying 11 Tw of that power (85 percent). Replacing just the U.S. fossil energy consumption with bioenergy confronts a basic energy imbalance: each year the nation uses 85 percent more fossil fuel energy than the total energy amount stored annually in all U.S. plant biomass. Replacing current world fossil fuel demand with biomass would put more than 10 percent of the earth's land mass--nearly all agricultural land--into fuel rather than food crops. This means that the earth simply cannot grow enough biomass to supply energy at U.S. consumption levels.With world demand projected to require another 30 Tw by 2050, our choice becomes driving or eating, but not both.
This focus on what goes into the tank also ignores the fact that the tank, and the vehicle carrying the tank, do not come out of thin air. Many of the components of vehicles come from mined products that are increasingly scarce, the recovery of which requires ever-increasing amounts of energy.
On Ethanol is suddenly all the rage in D.C. and Detroit posted 3 years, 8 months ago 18 Responses

Cape Cod wind farm

Wind and solar energy are likely the most benign sources of electricity available to us, and there are ample opportunities to tap into them without wrecking other valuable assets. What is missing is any national policy to site facilities in environmentally acceptable locations. We are unnecessarily knocking heads over battlegrounds chosen by companies with no national or environmental interests. This can only ensure continued poor siting choices, as exemplified by the Cape Cod project.On RFK Jr. and other prominent enviros face off over Cape Cod wind farm posted 3 years, 9 months ago 57 Responses