October 27, 2008
An Abdication in Detroit
Carl Pope, Huffington Post, July 6, 2006
San Francisco — Last week, the Ford Motor Company joined the parade of stunningly hypocritical auto manufacturers by announcing that it was abandoning its goal of selling 250,000 hybrid vehicles per year by the end of the decade. Instead, Ford joined other automakers in promising to make 2 million flexible fuel vehicles. “In a joint letter sent Wednesday to members of Congress, General Motors, Ford and DaimlerChrysler AG announced a new promise to double annual production of vehicles that run on alternative fuels, to 2 million per year.” Congress promptly responded to the announcement by refusing, once again, to increase fuel economy standards.
But the auto industry knows that making two million “flexible-fuelled vehicles” won’t dent our dependence on oil. First, the “alternative fuel” they are touting is a mix of gasoline and ethanol called E85, because it is 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline. Regular cars can, and often do, burn ethanol-gasoline mixes that are up to 10 percent ethanol already — so the real difference with E85 sounds like it might be an impressive 75 percent.
But the reality is far different. First, it takes a fair amount of fossil fuels to make ethanol — diesel fuel for tractors to grow the corn and transport it, natural gas to make fertilizer for it, and gas or (worse) coal to distill it. But this doesn’t matter so much, because 99 percent of these flexible fuel vehicles never see a drop of E85 but run on gas instead. That’s according to a March 2002 study by the Bush Administration.
Since there are fewer than 700 gas stations selling E85, out of 176,000 stations in the U.S., these flexible fuel vehicles will mainly burn the same gasoline that the rest of the fleet does. For example, within 25 miles of my home there are NO gas stations selling E85 to the public! So, the actual savings from this big new auto industry commitment will certainly be trivial at best. Unfortunately, it gets worse.
The auto industry gets bogus fuel economy “credits” for selling flexible fuel vehicles, as if these vehicles were actually all burning ethanol-based fuel. As a result, U.S. gas consumption is actually going to go UP as a result of the auto industry’s latest maneuver. The Bush Administration’s study estimated that the combination of the fuel economy loophole and failure of 99 percent of the flexible fuel vehicles to use E85 would result in an increase in U.S. oil dependence of 17 billion gallons by 2008. On the other hand, we could easily reduce consumption by 50 percent by using more-efficient vehicle technology, the solution that Congress — and the auto industry — just rejected. ed. note: Did you notice the recent spike in food prices? These are connected folks.
Again, William Clay Ford and the rest of the auto know these numbers. This is not something someone just dug out. They don’t care.
If we really want to kick our oil addiction, we’re going to have to do it from the grass-roots up. That’s why the Sierra Club has just launched “Smart Energy Summer” — a campaign to connect Americans with the real solutions to our energy and global warming problems — ones that our leaders know about, but just won’t embrace.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/carl-pope/an-abdication-in-detroit_b_24523.html
7 Comments | 
'Take out the Trash', Class Warfare, Clean Energy, Climate Change, Corporate Social Responsibility, Dark Side of Capitalism, Dumb Assery, Economics, Environment, Farm Subsidies, Peak Oil, Renewable Energy, Republicans are not the only corrupt politicians we fac, Science & Technology, Smoking Gun, Speaking Truth to Power, Sustainability, Sustainable Society | 
Permalink
Posted by A.Citizen
June 28, 2008
Yep, while Senator Obama as lining up like a good lil’ trooper to sign off on Cheney’s Energy Bill….
‘Cheney’s Energy Bill….’
Man that just sounds wrong does it not? ‘Cheney ‘s’ ‘Energy’ ‘Bill’. Huh….Yeah, according to the Big Men of the ‘Sphere Kos, Marshall and Bowers if’n Barry does it or is for in, for no matter how short a time, why then it must be ‘progressive’. Have I got that right ‘BoneHead’ Bowers?
Oh…goody…
Where was I? Oh, yeah a sustainable society, something we don’t have. Something nobody really gives a f$%k about even though they’re always talking about it. Someone better get serious soon. The Japanese are dead serious about it. See, they don’t have a lot of desert which is a central resource America is ‘rich’ in and which Scientific American’s The Grand Solar Plan takes advantage of to produce all of our electricity needs, including converting every car to plug in, by 2050. Cost, $420 Billion. Sound outrageous? Read the article at the end below.
Nope, no desert but plenty of Sci-Fi and lots of Outer Space. The Japanese take advantage of both in:
‘Rope the Sun, Suzuki-san!’
Kakuda, Japan—In a recent spin-off of the classic Japanese animated series Mobile Suit Gundam, the depletion of fossil fuels has forced humanity to turn to space-based solar power generation as
global conflicts rage over energy shortages. The sci-fi saga is set in the year 2307, but even now real Japanese scientists are working on the hardware needed to realize orbital generators as a form of clean,
renewable energy, with plans to complete a prototype in about 20 years.The concept of solar panels beaming down energy from space has long been pondered—and long been dismissed as too costly and impractical. But in
Read the rest of this entry »
3 Comments | 'Boys on the Blogz', 'Take out the Trash', An Inconvenient Truth, Anna Nicole Smith, Apathetic Citizenry, Barack Obama, Carbon Tax, Clean Energy, Climate Change, Dumb Assery, Economics, Environment, Global Climate Change, Leadership, Sustainability, Sustainable Society, The Bear Says | Permalink
Posted by A.Citizen
May 29, 2008
Algae: a carbon-neutral energy platform fueled by sunlight. Photo by Steve Jurvetson.
In light of the skyrocketing cost of petroleum-based fuels, 100 years ago was now is an ideal time to look into the sorts of technologies which deserve more attention from you, me, the broader investment community, environmentalists, and our “government.” (That last one makes me want to both laugh and cry.)
One exciting new areas of research we should look into involves a technology called “renewable gasoline” and which is manufactured from algae — not corn. No food crops required. The folks leading in this technology are a San Diego-based company called Sapphire Energy, and their announcement of May 28, 2008 is noteworthy:
Pioneering effort alters ‘food vs. fuel’ debate, supports American energy independence with revolutionary platform that harnesses microorganisms, sunlight, CO2
Leading investors commit over $50 million to scale effort; production innovator Brian Goodall hired, team leader behind first biofuel 747 flight
Sonoma, California – May 28, 2008 – Sapphire Energy announced today they have produced renewable 91 octane gasoline that conforms to ASTM certification, made from a breakthrough process that produces crude oil directly from sunlight, CO2 and photosynthetic microorganisms, beginning with algae.
“Sapphire’s goal is to be the world’s leading producer of renewable petrochemical products,” said CEO and co-founder Jason Pyle, speaking from the influential Simmons Alternative Energy Conference. “Our goal is to produce a renewable fuel without the downsides of current biofuel approaches.
“Sapphire Energy was founded on the belief that the only way to cure our dependence on foreign oil and end our flirtation with ethanol and biodiesel is through radical new thinking and a commitment to new technologies.”
The end result — high-value hydrocarbons chemically identical to those in gasoline — will be entirely compatible with the current energy infrastructure from cars to refineries and pipelines.
Not biodiesel, not ethanol. And no crops or farm land required.
The Sapphire platform offers vast advantages – scientific, economic and social – over traditional biofuel approaches.
Company scientists have built a platform that uses sunlight, CO2, photosynthetic microorganisms and non-arable land to produce carbon-neutral alternatives to petrochemical-based processes and products. First up: renewable gasoline. Critically important, in light of recent studies that prove the inefficiencies and costs of crop-based biofuels, there is no ‘food vs. fuel’ tradeoff. The process is not dependent on food crops or valuable farmland, and is highly water efficient. “It’s hard not to get excited about algae’s potential,” said Paul Dickerson, chief operating officer of the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy “Its basic requirements are few: CO2, sun, and water. Algae can flourish in non-arable land or in dirty water, and when it does flourish, its potential oil yield per acre is unmatched by any other terrestrial feedstock.”
Scalability key to success
Sapphire’s scalable production facilities can grow easily and economically because production is modular, transportable, and fueled by sunlight – not constrained by land, crops, or other natural resources.
“Any company or fuel that hopes to solve the biofuel conundrum must be economically scalable – and that requires conforming to the existing refining distribution and fleet infrastructure,” said Brian Goodall, Sapphire’s new vice president of downstream technology. Goodall led the team responsible for the highly visible, first-ever Virgin Atlantic “green” 747 flight earlier this year. In addition to a three-decade career in the petrochemical industry, he is a corporate inductee at the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
[Press Release continues…]
In fact, Sapphire states that research is an introduction to an entirely new sub-category of fuel research that they refer to as Green Crude Production. See their take on
Even more encouraging is that this sort of research appears to be going in several directions at once. C|Net recently reported the following:
Sapphire said that it developed an algae process to avoid the controversy over using land for fuel crops instead of food crops.
But at this point, algae fuels are largely experimental and no company is making fuel on a commercial scale.
GreenFuel Technologies, which had to scale back a pilot site, said that it has landed a large European customer to make fuel from algae but has not shared any more information.
Sapphire is not the only company creating technology to make hydrocarbons from plants. Others include LS9, Amyris Biotechnologies, Codexis, and J. Craig Venter-founded Synthetic Genomics.
The advantage of this approach is that the fuels can be integrated into existing transmission infrastructure and can run in cars or planes without modification.
Let’s all keep our eyes on these companies and their technologies.
4 Comments | Clean Energy, Economics, Environment, Renewable Energy | Permalink
Posted by malcontent
May 4, 2008
planning the next great big give away to your corporate pals, gonna be hard to top the farm bill that’s for sure, but…well, you see…What with:
Impeachment of the table….
Another 178 Billion for Bush’s excellent adventure….
No action on literally dozens of folks accused of everything from child rape to big time embezzlement to a guy changing legislation after it was sighed by your best pal Mr. Decider…..
Some have made up their minds like this lady:
That it’s time for you to go. Go away where you can no longer damage the Democratic Party, no longer damage our nation, no longer damage our society.
As mah cousin Pat allu sez: ‘Don’t let the door knob hit ya where the good Lord split ya!’ on your way out.
Leave a Comment » | 'Take out the Trash', 100 Hours, Action, Campaign Sites, Class Warfare, Clean Elections, Dumb Assery, End the War in Iraq, Environment, Farm Subsidies, Impeach Bush, Impeach Gonzales, Justice, Leadership, Madame Speaker Pelosi, Mid-Term Election, Military Keynesianism, Nancy Pelosi, Neocons, Noteworthy Blogs, Populism, Progressive Democrats, Progressive Education, Progressive Movement, Rahm Emmanuel, Republican Criminals, Republican Lies, Republican Perverts, Speaking Truth to Power, Spineless Dems, Sustainability, Sustainable Society, The Bear Says, The Money Party, The People Party, Truth, Voter Guide | Permalink
Posted by A.Citizen
April 17, 2008
From the ‘Boyz on the Blogz’ naive outrage at how their guy, Barry, was treated in the latest debate, hey lots of us have been saying, ‘Look out the corporatist media is just biding their time and then the ‘Clinton Rules’ will become ‘Barry’s Bylaws’. So it happened and the ‘Big Men’ of the ‘sphere are outraged.
So what?
Due to headache and other issues I will not bore you with I’m gonna play A-Lister and just give you few linkys to play with:
Uh….oh, and I do mean this….. Do you have your two weeks supply of food, water and medicine? Some ammo would not hurt.
But things are just hunkey-dorey in Miss Nancy’s House….. I suggest massive doses of this to make ya feel a bit better.
Well, at least the economy is settly down…rigtht? Right?...Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight?
Looks like Barry might have some work to do on that Unity thingy……. warning if you don’t think there are some
truly enraged White People out there do not clik on this link. And no, don’t blame me. I’ve been listening to this for 45 years.
Why McSame looks so cool, calm and collected as he fumbles question after question…..
Ahnuld nears success in the ‘conservative’ ‘War on Education’ they’ve been waging for 50 years.
RiverDaughter asks, nicely, what do Obamaphiles want?
Hopefully more substance soon. Gonna be writing a lot since the number of sites I’m welcome at is…..heh…heh…shrinking
Leave a Comment » | 'Boys on the Blogz', 'Slimeball' McCain, 'Take out the Trash', 100 Hours, An Inconvenient Truth, Anna Nicole Smith, Apathetic Citizenry, Campaign Strategy, Candidates for President, Carbon Tax, Cindy for Congress '08, Congress, Democratic Majority, Dumb Assery, Economics, Education, End the War in Iraq, Environment, Fascism, Healthcare for all Americans, Hillary Clinton, Iraq, Joe Liebermann is insane, Madame Speaker Pelosi, Military Keynesianism, Nancy Pelosi, Noteworthy Blogs, Populism, Progressive Movement, Renewable Energy, Republican Criminals, Republican Lies, Republican Perverts, ReThuglican, Smoking Gun, Speaking Truth to Power, Spineless Dems, Sustainability, Sustainable Society | Permalink
Posted by A.Citizen
March 25, 2008
….with my ‘Edwards Chosen for President by Convention. meme…..
Lotta folks are pretty damn clueless. The Democratic Party machinery is determined not to lose this opportunity to start reversing the ReThug hegemony. They see their chance to do so slipping away with the divisive Obama and Clinton campaigns hammering each other into damaged good, so damaged that McSame will be able to sneak into office, and they are not happy.
This is how ‘not happy’ they are.
Guys like this don’t get up and make this sort of statement on their own. And you know what? I can live with a Nobel and Emmy award winning President.
Gore/Edwards 08!
Kinda has a nice sound to it don’t it?
Leave a Comment » | 'Boys on the Blogz', 'Slimeball' McCain, 'Take out the Trash', An Inconvenient Truth, Barack Obama, Campaign Strategy, Candidates for President, Democratic Majority, Draft Al Gore, Elizabeth Edwards, End the War in Iraq, Environment, George W. Bush, Global Climate Change, Hillary Clinton, Impeach Bush, John McCain, Kool-Aid Drinkers, More and Better Progressive Democrats, Progressive Democrats, Progressive Movement, Republican Criminals, Republican Lies, Speaking Truth to Power, Sustainable Society, The Bear Says, The People Party, Truth | Permalink
Posted by A.Citizen
March 5, 2008
y Noam N. Levey, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
March 4, 2008
WASHINGTON — After a year of toy recalls that shook public confidence in product safety, Senate Democrats and influential industry groups are facing off over how the government regulates everything from baby cribs to all-terrain vehicles.Backed by consumer advocates, lawmakers are pushing to give the public broad access to information about potentially dangerous products and to increase penalties for companies that make or sell harmful products.But the campaign has run into fierce opposition from manufacturers and retailers, which have succeeded for decades in limiting regulation of consumer goods.Industry lobbyists have descended on Capitol Hill to head off tougher rules they say will trigger more lawsuits and slow the removal of dangerous products from the marketplace.Their efforts paid off late last year in the House, where industry groups thwarted a major overhaul of the Consumer Product Safety Commission. The Bush administration has also signaled opposition to giving the public more information and to expanding enforcement.
As debate shifts to the Senate this week, the battle is shaping up as a test of how much influence industry groups still wield, even with their traditional Republican allies now in the minority.
“This is a big one for us,” said Stephanie Lester, a lobbyist for the Retail Industry Leaders Assn. The association is part of a sprawling coalition, assembled by the National Assn. of Manufacturers, that for more than two decades has effectively shaped the agency charged with overseeing its members.
The Consumer Product Safety Commission is less than half the size it was at its peak in the late 1970s, before the manufacturers coalition was created. It has fewer enforcement tools than other regulatory agencies, such as the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration or the Food and Drug Administration. And it is effectively barred from publicizing information about potentially harmful products without authorization from manufacturers.
“The [manufacturers] coalition is extraordinarily powerful,” said Michael Lemov, senior legislative counsel for Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy group founded by Ralph Nader. Lemov helped write the legislation that created the consumer commission nearly 40 years ago.
“They are up on Capitol Hill all the time, year after year,” he said. “Consumer groups can’t match that.”
The National Assn. of Manufacturers routinely spends millions on lobbying, according to data compiled by the nonprofit Center for Responsive Politics. In 2006, the association’s $13.2-million lobbying tab placed it 16th on the list of Washington’s biggest spenders on lobbying.
But record toy recalls last year — and the arrival of a Democratic Congress — seemed to signal a new political landscape in Washington.
Read the rest of this entry »
Leave a Comment » | 'Take out the Trash', Action, Environment, Farm Subsidies, Fascism, Fast Food Nation, Healthcare for all Americans, Progressive Movement, Safe Food | Permalink
Posted by A.Citizen
February 23, 2008
Like him or not if he becomes President he’s gonna be important. Very important, this sound obvious to you does it? Well Sara Robinson of Orcinus has been on a sabbatical from there to produce a post I believe everyone needs to read.
Here’s the teaser quote:
There’s one thing for sure: 2008 isn’t anything like politics as usual.
The corporate media (with their unerring eye for the obvious point) is fixated on the narrative that, for the first time ever, Americans will likely end this year with either a woman or a black man headed for the White House. Bloggers are telling stories from the front lines of primaries and caucuses that look like something from the early 60s — people lining up before dawn to vote in Manoa, Hawaii yesterday; a thousand black college students in Prairie View, Texas marching 10 miles to cast their early votes in the face of a county that tried to disenfranchise them. In recent months, we’ve also been gobstopped by the sheer passion of the insurgent campaigns of both Barack Obama and Ron Paul, both of whom brought millions of new voters into the conversation — and with them, a sharp critique of the status quo and a new energy that’s agitating toward deep structural change.
Sounds like a fairly typical post about Senator ‘Change’ and his effect, so far, on the political process this Presidential election year. Well, when you read the title of this piece, please clik on same and read the whole thing, which is:
You will quickly see that it is anything but that. As Bush has cheerfully assured his followers ‘Politics has consequences…’ and Obama repeatedly asserts, ‘I am about change….’ politics now becomes perhaps the most important thing in every citizen’s life. We no longer have the luxury of ignoring politics and by extension what our government, yes it’s still ours if we can muster the spine to assert our ownership, does to protect and foster our success as a society. The good times are over homer and they will remain unreachable until you and I climb up and demand our government, that is the people in it, start doing what is required to rebuild what the raving lunatics of the ‘conservative’ ReichWing have destroyed.
Leave a Comment » | American version, Apathetic Citizenry, Civil Rights, Class Warfare, Clean Elections, Clean Energy, Climate Change, Community, Economics, Education, End the War in Iraq, Environment, Fascism, Free Market, Healthcare for all Americans, Individual Responsibility, Peak Oil, Privatization, Progressive Democrats, Progressive Movement, Public Financing for Fair Elections, Republican Criminals, Republican Lies, Republican Perverts, Safe Food, Science & Technology, Speaking Truth to Power, The Bear Says, The Money Party, The People Party, Two Americas | Permalink
Posted by A.Citizen
February 23, 2008
I’ve had many a conversation with Stevan and he’s one of the most knowledgeable and progressive people we’ve had attend our D/L, Oakland events. Here is an announcement from him regarding his candidacy for State Assembly 15.
Toward a California that is "governable" and works for the citizens
California faces a number of hurdles and challenges that make it close to ungovernable by the legislature. In my view, the only way to get to the reform that we need is to put it forward as a package. There have always been a fair number of people who don’t trust the legislature and historically there is some basis for that. All too often legislators are working for their own interests or special interests, not the interests of the majority of citizens who vote for them.
California is one of only a very few States that requires a 2/3 vote to pass a budget. The California economy is the 7th largest in the world. It’s shrunk, it used to be 6th. An economy this large, that requires a 2/3 vote to pass or be held hostage to a tyranny of a minority is absurd. It will take a Constitutional amendment to change.
Campaign finance reform. Our system now is one of legalized bribery. It’s time for truly "Clean Money" provided by public financing so our elected representatives will be working for us, the people who put up the money to get them elected.
Competitive redistricting with no "safe seats." There will always be a few natural enclaves, but there are many more areas where if we do rational and competitive redistricting that truly makes sense, citizens will be far more likely to trust their representatives. It’s time to compete on ideas that actually work for the people trying to live the California dream.
End term limits! Term limits destroy all institutional memory and promote short term thinking to long term problems. It would make more sense to limit the amount of time a legislator can be speaker of the Assembly or Pro Tem of the Senate, than to throw the good legislators out with the bad.
Proposition 13 reform. California is revenue challenged. In 1974 when this proposition passed, it was sold to the citizens as a way to keep retired people from losing their homes due to increasing property taxes. Why then are commercial properties like oil refineries that never change hands, covered under Prop. 13 when they are making record profits? Real Estate Limited Partnerships also can have a complete turnover of all the partners without triggering a sale that would change their tax status. Why is any commercial property that charges market rate rents given what amounts to a huge windfall tax subsidy at our common expense? Another point is when Prop 13 was passed, the top Federal tax rate on millionaires was 71%. When Reagan cut that to 33%, we went from being a country that could afford a space program and be the creditor to the world to one that now can’t even repair infrastructure and we’re the largest debtor nation in the world. California’s share of Federal tax dollars is correspondingly smaller.
Making a "package deal" of these essential reforms would go a long way to making California governable, making the legislature relevant and effective again, and making the California dream something once again in reach of most Californians.
I’ve spent a great deal of time over the last several months doing what’s necessary so my parents are less likely to lose their home in San Francisco. It’s going to take many more months over the next year. Therefore I am withdrawing from the Assembly race in District 15.
Thank you for your support and interest in my campaign.
Stevan Thomas
Elected Delegate Assembly District 15
California State Democratic Central Committee
Member I.B.E.W.
Leave a Comment » | 'Take out the Trash', California, Campaign Sites, Clean Elections, Community, Environment, Free Market | Permalink
Posted by A.Citizen
February 16, 2008
From Grist, a pretty cool blog, we have:
A recent issue of Scientific American featured a "Solar Grand Plan." Its authors described a way for the United States to obtain nearly 100 percent of its electricity and 90 percent of its total energy, including transportation, from solar, wind, biomass, and geothermal resources by end-of-century. Electricity would cost a comfortable 5 cents per kilowatt hour.
U.S. carbon emissions would be reduced 62 percent from their 2005 levels. Some 600 coal and gas-fired power plants would be displaced. The federal investment would be $400 billion over the next 40 years ($10 billion a year) to deploy renewable technologies and suitable transmission infrastructure.
If that future seems too good to be true, then look at two other studies during the past 13 months that have reached similar conclusions: one sponsored by the American Solar Energy Society (PDF), the other by the Nuclear Policy Research Institute and the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research. All three concur that energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies can satisfy the nation’s demand for power without additional nuclear or fossil-fueled power plants.
If $400 billion seems unaffordable, consider: It’s less money than the federal government already has spent on the Iraq war, only a third of the $1.2 trillion that some experts now predict the war will cost, and only a sixth of the federal government’s current annual subsidies for fossil and nuclear energy.
Kinda takes yer breath away don’t it.
Makes me want to go down in the basement and rustle up some rope for the likes of these assclowns:
Senator Reid 
Senate Minority Leader
Senator Boxer 
Senator Feinstein 
Give ’em a call and ask ’em why we pay their salaries if they can’t figure this out?
1 Comment | 'Take out the Trash', End the War in Iraq, Environment, Farm Subsidies, Peak Oil, Privatization, Progressive Movement, Science & Technology | Permalink
Posted by A.Citizen
Bear Republic Action Group 