Blatant Reality

Well, who would have guessed that a small county in central Missouri would be the first in the nation to house an algae biofuel production plant.

Saline County is on the verge of leading a historical breakthrough in renewable fuel.

 

Green Star Products Inc. announced today, July 31, that EcoAlgae USA has received a signed resolution from the Saline County Commissioners to construct a commercial algae production facility in conjunction with an integrated biorefinery complex.

 

The EcoAlgae project will involve algae production at the heart of this biorefinery complex because its high production biomass feedstock only requires sunlight, CO2 and brackish or saltwater.

 

“(This will be) the first facility of its type in the nation,” said Marshall-Saline Development Corporation Executive Director Roy Hunter, the man who spearheaded this project. “It’s going to bring national recognition to Saline County as a renewable fuels region.”

 

“(This) should make us a home base for research and advanced renewable fuels in the future.”

 

According the United Biorefineries Corporation algae produce 100 times more oil per acre than traditional food oilseed crops.

You can bet that I will be following this story closely. I hope this deal goes through because it will be interesting to see what the actual production numbers will be for one of these plants. I mean, some projections have algae biofuel as being one of the most efficient biofuels so far but then you have those that say algae is still way too expensive.

I don’t know what exactly will happen but it is good to see the US getting in on the algae action.

David Dilley, who is a climate researcher with Global Weather Oscillations and firm believer that the moon will bring about global cooling, predicts that the El Niño this year will be the strongest one seen in the past decade.

Meteorologist and climate researcher David Dilley of Global Weather Oscillations Inc. (GWO) says a recurring gravitational cycle called the “Primary Forcing Mechanism (PFM) for climate”, will act like a magnet and cause the South Pacific high pressure center to be pulled out of its normal location in October and November, setting the stage for a moderate to strong El Nio to form in December.

 

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Mr. Dilley says the PFM gravitational cycle that controls the formation of an El Nio peaks approximately every 4 years, and it will again peak during this September into January. As this occurs, the tropical South Pacific Ocean and atmospheric winds will respond rapidly and cause the formation of a moderate to strong El Nio by Christmas. This will likely be the strongest El Nio in over 10 years, and cause disruptions in weather patterns during the winter months in the Northern Hemisphere, and summer months in the Southern hemisphere.

 

The technology used in forecasting the upcoming El Nio is the same used for predicting the natural cycles of global warming and cooling. PFM gravitational cycles pull the atmosphere’s high pressure systems northward or southward by as much as 3 or 5 degrees of latitude from their normal seasonal positions.

 

These cycles correspond nearly 100 percent with the last 24 moderate to strong El Nio occurrences since 1914, and with global warming cycles that recur approximate every 230 years, and mega global warming cycles that occur every 116,000 years. Additional information on the El Nio and the peer reviewed computer e-Book “Global Warming - Global Cooling, Natural Cause Found” is available at http://www.globalweathercycles.com.

When it refers to “El Nio” in this article, it’s the exact same as El Niño as far as I can tell.

Brazil is looking to expand its nuclear power programs and plans on having a new plant operational by the time they host the FIFA World Soccer Championship in 2014.

The Brazilian government has authorized the company, Electronuclear, to go back to work on the nation’s third nuclear power plant.

 

Work on the Angra 3 reactor, near Rio de Janeiro, has been stalled for 22 years by a lack of money and political issues.

 

But the administration of President Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva is turning to nuclear power to meet electricity needs that are growing with the country’s booming economy.

 

“Things have changed a lot, and today it’s clearer to everyone that nuclear energy has a role to play in the Brazilian electrical system, just like the other forms of producing electricity, which can’t be dismissed,” said Leonam Guimaraes, an Electronuclear spokesman.

 

Brazil is the 10th-largest energy consumer in the world, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. It’s the third-largest consumer in the Western Hemisphere, behind the United States and Canada.

 

The two operational nuclear power plants in Brazil supply about 3 percent of the nation’s electricity, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

I was perusing Barack Obama’s Environmental Fact Sheet when I stumbled on this paragraph and just decided to point some of the ironies that it presents.

Reduce Health Risks Caused by Mercury Pollution: More than five million women of childbearing age have high levels of toxic mercury in their blood and approximately 630,000 newborns are born every year at risk. The EPA estimates that every year, more than one in six children could be at risk for developmental disorders because of mercury exposure in the mother’s womb. Barack Obama fought a Bush administration rule that would have imposed very weak emissions reductions on utilities, delaying meaningful reductions in power plant mercury emissions for another two decades. Recognizing that one major cause of mercury also comes through the air from across the oceans, particularly from China, Obama introduced legislation to ban the export of elemental mercury, and he successfully pressured the U.S. Department of Energy to stop its proposed sale of large quantities of mercury to companies overseas. Obama also introduced legislation to phase out the use of mercury in the manufacture of chlorine.

 

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As president, Barack Obama will continue his fight, begun as a community organizer, to protect our children from health hazards and developmental disabilities caused by environmental toxins, such as lead, mercury, particulate matter, and industrial land waste. Obama will fight to clean brownfields, restore abandoned industrial riverfront sites, and give communities the tools they need to eat healthy foods and expand livable, walkable neighborhoods.

Why is this ironic? Well, for one, he is a big fan of Compact Fluorescent Bulbs(CFL’s), ranking it among solar panels and wind turbines that other countries use as “clean” technologies (page 5) and supporting a phase out of incandescent bulbs (page 7).

It turns out that these CFL bulbs, contain mercury, the very substance he is railing about in the above paragraph. This means that upon breaking a CFL, one has to basically follow a hazardous waste procedure to remove the broken pieces from your house.

I don’t know about you but I have broken quite a few light bulbs and up until this point all I have had to worry about is getting cut by a piece of glass. Now, Obama wants to forcefully put a source of mercury, a chemical that he even admits is dangerous, into our homes. This sure sounds like he is increasing our children’s risk of coming in contact with mercury, not “protecting” them from it.

Oh, and another ironic thing, ALL Compact Fluorescent Bulbs are made in China, the very place where Barack Obama is worried about mercury coming from. See this speech by Rep. Ted Poe (R-Texas) for more information about this (At 4:00 for China part).

Oh Obama, so many inconsistencies, so little time.

UPDATE (7/31/08): Looks like there is an alternative to CFL’s that will still cut down on energy costs. Huh. Who knew?

As you have probably gathered from reading this site, I’m a big fan of Algae and its potential to be the best biofuel out there. However, the widespread commercial development of algae seems to still be a few years down the road due to the the production costs.

At present the cost of producing biofuel from algae is too high,” said Professor Michael Borowitzka, project leader at Murdoch University. “It costs Aus$12 a kilogram, but we need to bring that down to Aus$1 a kilogram using well adapted algae strains and improving all the production processes.”

 

Professor Borowitzka has been working on finding elite strains of algae and developing applications for microalgae for 30 years and says the size of land required to produce fuel from algae was tiny compared to that needed for agricultural-based biofuels such as canola, sugarcane or corn. “For Australia to produce one per cent of biodiesel from algae you’d need a 100 square kilometre size plant – which is small compared to up to 2000 square kilometres required for the same amount to be produced from canola.”

Aus$12 to Aus$1? That’s a big jump. Luckily for us, there are many strains of algae so the solution could be as easy as just finding the right strain. Also, given that algae is just a single cell organisms, scientists can potentially alter the DNA of a strain of algae to help lower the production costs. However, if the high costs are not associated with the algae itself but with the refining process, well, advances in this field could be stalled for a while. I sure hope algae doesn’t go the way of the hydrogen car.

Well another day, another alarmist claim. This time alarmists are claiming that Global Warming will disproportionately affect African Americans. Take a look.

Alright, as you can probably tell, I have gone in more of an environmental direction with my website (with a conservative slant, of course) and I’m trying to stick to stories only pertaining to this genre. However, this story is just too weird to pass up.

It seems that Rhesus Monkeys actually live and roam free on an island in South Carolina. They were put there by the government and are basically our nations source of monkeys used in scientific experiments. Sounds crazy? Just watch the video below.

Hat Tip The Palmetto Scoop

In this episode of Penn and Teller’s show Bullsh*t, they take on the whole alarmist environmental movement. It’s a great episode that points out the mob mentality of many “environmentalists.” Plus, as an added bonus, you get interviews with environmental figures like Bjorn Lomborg and Patrick Moore denouncing the alarmists. Overall, this episode is very entertaining and well worth the watch.

Little Green Footballs has the video here if you want to watch it. Keep in mind that it’s 30 minutes long and does have some foul language.

Bjorn Lomborg, author of “Cool It” and “The Skeptical Environmentalist”, will be attending the American Legislative Exchange Council’s National Forum in Chicago. If you have the credentials to get in, I would go and hear him speak.
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The BBC has come out with a new two part drama that looks at the evils of mankind…excuse me, I meant the evils of global warming. The show is called Burn Up and will be airing in the UK and Canada but if it is a success I’m sure it will be making its way here to the US. Mike McNally at Pajamas Media has a review about the show that you should read.