Blatant Reality

He took his sweet time in deciding who to endorse but now Gore has finally paused to take a moment from his crusade to endorse Obama.

In a letter to be e-mailed to Obama supporters, the former vice president and Nobel Prize winner wrote, “From now through Election Day, I intend to do whatever I can to make sure he is elected president of the United States.”

 

(…)

 

“Over the past 18 months, Barack Obama has united a movement. He knows change does not come from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue or Capitol Hill. It begins when people stand up and take action,” Gore wrote. “With the help of millions of supporters like you, Barack Obama will bring the change we so desperately need in order to solve our country’s most pressing problems.”

 

The former vice president also asked for donations to help fund Obama’s effort – the first time he’s asked members of his Web site AlGore.com to contribute to a political campaign.

It really does make me cringe to think of all the mayhem Gore is going to be able to accomplish with a Democrat President and a Democrat controlled congress.

A new process for purifying water by using algae has energy potential as well.

The algae are a component of the system that treats and filters the wastewater by removing certain contaminates, such as phosphorous, and breaking down solids. According to Limcaco, “the system is basically an algae farm using the wastewater as fertilizer”. The resulting sludge is a mixture of wastewater solids and algae. This mixture is then thermally treated using a process similar to gasification, a technology that has been around for years. During the thermal process, oils are removed from the sludge mixture in stage one, and the remaining solids are gasified to produce electricity and high grade fertilizer in stage two.

 

The system has numerous environmental and cost benefits. First, the carbon dioxide emissions generated by the thermal process are looped back into the Algaewheel system where the algae thrive on the gas, which gives the system a negative carbon footprint, and potential carbon credits. Second, the use of algae in the filtration and treatment process also reduces the need for some chemical-based treatments. Third, the energy produced by the system is used in the operation of the facility in the form of heat and electricity, and depending on the size of the facility, it is possible to generate excess energy that could be sold to the electric grid. Fourth, oils extracted from the wastewater sludge and algae mixture can be used to produce bio-fuel. Lastly, the solid byproducts are 95% less than a traditional system because the only byproduct of the process will be a small amount of solids which can be used as high grade fertilizer. The fertilzier is safe to transport and easy to dispose as compared to the traditional handling of wastewater sludge byproduct, which often involves transporting and dumping hundreds of tons of sludge on farm fields or in a landfill.

Now this, from an environmental standpoint, will have all the greens jumping up and down for joy at the thought of such an eco-friendly water purification. However, at this point I am just waiting for the little side note that this system is extremely expensive and not economically feasible. The good news is that as I continued reading, I never did find that. In fact, this is what the article said about costs (my emphasis):

The combination of reduced chemical usage, self-contained energy production, and minimal byproducts delivers a remarkably environmentally friendly and cost efficient system. In fact, the operating and maintenance expenses of this type of facility are less and tend to be much more stable over the facility’s useful life because part of the energy costs and the treatment costs are not subject to the price fluctuations of energy and chemicals. According to Limcaco, the operating and maintenance cost of an Algaewheel plant can be up to 30 percent less than a similarly-sized traditional facility. To top it all off, the useful life of the facility is estimated at 30 years, which is about 30% greater than traditional facilities.

If this actually is the case, then by all means we should invest in these facilities. I’m all for “green” alternatives if they are both economically feasible and efficient. With the added potential of a non-crop biofuel, this process is definitely something to keep a close eye on.

I’m sure the alarmists will have some crazy explanation for why Wisconsin and Iowa had one of their coldest winters this past year. However, I bet the answer will contain a lot of stutters and/or accusations of the questioner as being a holocaust denier.

Wisconsin had its 33 coldest winter on record, nearby Iowa its 19th coldest in 114 years. The cool weather continued into the spring with the 22nd coldest spring on record in Wisconsin and 24th in Iowa.

 

The severe weather and heavy rainfall has been the result of rapid COOLING in the northern tier of the United States and Canada not global warming. The flooding exceeded the floods of 1993 when rapid cooling following the eruption of Pinatubo produced a similar kind of cooling with a strong suppressed jet stream that brought a steady stream of storms and flooding.

If this is global warming then I sure will hate what happens if I’m alive when we experience global cooling.

Happy Father’s Day to all of you father’s out there!

The founder of the Weather Channel once again blasts Gore about his Global Warming Scam and questions why he or his cronies won’t be willing to debate. It was posted on the Drudge Report but I felt it was so good that I should link to it here also.

I suspect you haven’t heard it because the mass media did not report it, but I am not alone on the no man-made warming side of this issue. On May 20^th, a list of the names of over thirty-one thousand scientists who refute global warming was released. Thirty-one thousand of which 9,000 are Ph.ds. Think about that. Thirty-one thousand. That dwarfs the supposed 2,500 scientists on the UN panel. In the past year, five hundred of scientists have issued public statements challenging global warming. A few more join the chorus every week. There are about 100 defectors from the UN IPCC. There was an International Conference of Climate Change Skeptics in New York in March of this year. One hundred of us gave presentations. Attendance was limited to six hundred people. Every seat was taken. There are a half dozen excellent internet sites that debunk global warming. And, thank goodness for KUSI and Michael McKinnon, its owner. He allows me to post my comments on global warming on the website KUSI.com. Following the publicity of my position form Fox News, Glen Beck on CNN, Rush Limbaugh and a host of other interviews, thousands of people come to the website and read my comments. I get hundreds of supportive emails from them. No I am not alone and the debate is not over.

 

In my remarks in New York I speculated that perhaps we should sue Al Gore for fraud because of his carbon credits trading scheme. That remark has caused a stir in the fringe media and on the internet. The concept is that if the media won’t give us a hearing and the other side will not debate us, perhaps we could use a Court of law to present our papers and our research and if the Judge is unbiased and understands science, we win. The media couldn’t ignore that. That idea has become the basis for legal research by notable attorneys and discussion among global warming debunkers, but it’s a long way from the Court room.

According to the Heritage Foundation, there may be some hope that the Global Warming Alarmists won’t get any of their legislation passed any time soon.

On the surface it may seem as though the Senate moved closer to “doing something” about global warming since 54 Senators said they would have voted for cloture on Lieberman-Warner last week compared to only 43 votes in favor in 2003. But as the New York Times points out, 10 senators (including liberal Senators from rust-belt states) said they would not have actually voted for final passage of the bill unless it was amended to help industries sensitive to high energy prices. So in the span of five years, the environmentalists only gained one vote. And looking at the political environment ahead, their case will only get weaker.

Now that is some good news however I don’t think our luck will last for long. If Democrats win it big this November, I don’t know how long the alarmists will be kept at bay.

Well it has been about two weeks (so I guess it should be Week 13?) since I have put a picture up to help put you in a weekend mood. Why? Basically the reason is that for the past two weeks I haven’t really had a weekend off. However, this week is different so I thought it would be fitting to post a “Tranquil Tableau” for you. Enjoy.

Hunting Island, Beaufort S.C.

Here is a post from over at Right Wing News that describes what will happen if Obama wins the presidency and Democrats gain several members in Senate and the House. The legislation that will most likely be passed will be quite grim. Take a look.

Forecasters are predicting another year that might have a high number of powerful storms. Unlike the previous couple of years where the predictions didn’t come true, the weathermen have learned from their mistakes and have adjusted accordingly. However, even though tracking and forecasting of individual storms has gotten increasingly better over the years, long term seasonal forecast like these are not nearly as reliable. Therefore, take this prediction with a grain of salt. Read the whole Pajamas Media article here.

Agenol and the Mexican company BioFields have teamed up to grow algae that produces ethanol. However, there is a difference between this method and other methods of creating biofuels from algae. This method allows the algae to continually produce ethanol without having to kill the algae in the extraction pocess.

Several algae companies are trying to enter the biofuels business by drying and pressing the organisms to make vegetable oil that can be processed into biodiesel.

 

Woods said Algenol will use a process he invented in the 1980s to coax individual algal cells to secrete ethanol. That way, the fuel can be taken directly from the vats where the algae is grown while the organism lives on, using far less energy than drying and pressing the organisms for their oil.

 

Algenol plans to make 100 million gallons of ethanol, about the average annual capacity of one traditional U.S. distillery, in Mexico’s Sonoran Desert by the end of the 2009. By the end of 2012, it plans to increase that to 1 billion gallons — more than 10 percent of current ethanol capacity in the United States, the world’s top ethanol producer.

If they can reach their estimated production level by 2012, I think many people will start to see algae as having major potential for a sustainable energy source. However, I wouldn’t get your hopes up too much about this yet. The article has this little disclaimer later on:

How well the system would work, what kinds and volumes of nutrients would be needed and how much water would be required are unknowns, Steelman said. And gaining market share from politically-established players in the U.S. Midwest and Big Oil could be difficult, he said.

Yea that first line says it all and basically negates all the numbers and dates they have in the previous paragraphs. The process may work in a lab but getting everything up and running always is another thing entirely.