The Worldwatch report Red, White, and Green: Transforming U.S. Biofuels offers an assessment of the policies, technologies, and market factors that have driven the rapid expansion of the biofuel industry over the past decade, but that have left some 21 percent of U.S. annual capacity idled in the first months of 2009. The report also looks at the impacts associated with large-scale production of “first-generation” biofuels such as corn-based ethanol and soy biodiesel.

“Biofuels production today can be more harmful than helpful,” said Jane Earley, co-author of the Worldwatch report. “As a renewable energy source, bioenergy should continue to be seen as a promising part of a sustainable energy future, but we must begin the transition to second- and third-generation biofuels immediately.”

Studies suggest that the environmental costs associated with the current biofuel industry—including water pollution, wildlife habitat loss, and declining freshwater resources—likely outweigh the benefits. Claims about the climate change benefits of biofuels are often inflated, as many of these fuels in production today lead to minimal, if any, reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

The report emphasizes that diversification of feedstocks and technologies—including production of “second-generation” fuels such as cellulosic ethanol and “third-generation” fuels such as algae biodiesel—would provide a more stable basis for large-scale biofuel production. It also argues for the increased use of biomass for electricity production, including for transportation uses by way of electric vehicles.

Three broad efforts in U.S. policy could make biofuels production more environmentally sustainable and help ensure that use of the fuels contributes to both energy security and global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, according to the report. These include spurring the rapid development of cellulosic and other advanced biofuels, developing sustainability standards upon which government support for the fuels would be conditional, and creating a holistic energy policy across all transport-related sectors.

“The state of play within the biofuels industry has changed dramatically in the last two years alone,” said Alice McKeown, report co-author. “As the economics of the fuels shift and as new policies and technologies emerge, we have the opportunity to ensure that clean and sustainable biofuels, rather than just more biofuels, are a priority.”

The steady rise of corn as a biofuel was powered almost entirely by large corporate interests. Large agribusiness companies that were more interested in profit than sustainability. We were never going to grow enough corn, to make enough fuel to power our auto industry, and the damage that our large mono-culture agriculture system does to the planet is unsustainable anyway. I am glad that 2nd and 3rd generation biofuels that use less land, less water, and are scalable are now moving in to take corns place. The problem is going to be that these large companies are going to fight the change.

More dust covers snow in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado than previously documented.

Current mountain dust levels are five times greater than they were before the mid-19th century, due in large part to increased human activity in deserts.

“Human use of desert landscapes is linked to the life cycles of mountain plants, and changes the environmental cues that determine when alpine meadows will be in bloom, possibly increasing plants’ sensitivity to global warming,” said Jay Fein, program director in the National Science Foundation (NSF)’s Division of Atmospheric Sciences, which funded the research in part.

This year, 12 dust storms have painted the mountain snowpack red and advanced the retreat of snow cover, likely by more than a month across Colorado.

Scientists like Chris Landry, pictured, simulated dust effects on snowmelt in experiments.

“Desert dust is synchronizing plant growth and flowering across the alpine zone,” said Heidi Steltzer, a Colorado State University scientist who led the study. “Synchronized growth was unexpected, and may have adverse effects on plants, water quality and wildlife.”

“It’s striking how different the landscape looks as result of this desert-and-mountain interaction,” said Chris Landry, director of the Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies (CSAS) in Silverton, Colo., who, along with Tom Painter, director of the Snow Optics Laboratory at the University of Utah, contributed to the study.

“Visitors to the mountains arriving in late June will see little remaining snow,” said Landry, “even though snow cover was extensive and deep in April. The snow that remains will be barely distinguishable from the surrounding soils.

Earlier snowmelt by desert dust, said Painter, “depletes the natural water reservoirs of mountain snowpacks and in turn affects the delivery of water to urban and agricultural areas.”

With climate change, warming and drying of the desert southwest are likely to result in even greater dust accumulation in the mountains.

In an alpine basin in the San Juan Mountains, the researchers simulated dust effects on snowmelt in experimental plots. They measured dust’s acceleration of snowmelt on the life cycles of alpine plants.

Experiments included using black fabric to absorb the Sun's energy; dust was added to other sites.

The timing of snowmelt signals to mountain plants that it’s time to start growing and flowering. When dust causes early snowmelt, plant growth does not necessarily begin soon after the snow is gone.

Instead, plants delay their life cycle until air temperatures have warmed consistently above freezing.

“Climate warming could therefore have a great effect on the timing of growth and flowering,” said Steltzer.

Competition for water and nutrient resources among plants should increase, leading to the loss of less competitive species. Delayed plant growth could increase nutrient losses, decreasing water quality.

Similarity in flowering times and plant growth will result in abundant resources for wildlife for a short time rather than staggered resources over the whole summer, Steltzer believes.

“With increasing dust deposition from drying and warming in the deserts,” she said, “the composition of alpine meadows could change as some species increase in abundance, while others are lost, possibly forever.”

The research, to be published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) this week, is the first to focus on the phenomenon of social norms in the context of China’s conservation efforts, said scientist Jianguo “Jack” Liu of Michigan State University (MSU).

The study focused on a mammoth government initiative called Grain-to-Green that pays Chinese farmers to convert cropland back to forest.

“Much of the marginal cropland in rural communities has been converted from agriculture to forests through the Grain-to-Green Program, one of the largest ‘payment for ecosystem services’ programs in the world,” said Alan Tessier, program director in the National Science Foundation (NSF)’s Division of Environmental Biology.

“Results of this study show that a community’s social norms have substantial impacts on the sustainability of these conservation investments.”

Liu’s research was funded through NSF’s Coupled Natural and Human Systems (CNH) Program. CNH is co-funded by three NSF Directorates: Biological Sciences; Geosciences; and Social, Economic & Behavioral Sciences.

While money is a key factor in whether people sign up for the voluntary program, peer pressure also plays a surprisingly large role, Liu said.

“That’s the power of social norms,” he said. “It’s like recycling. If you see your neighbors doing it, you’re more likely to do it.”

A representative survey of households in China’s Wolong Nature Reserve for giant pandas found that both government payments and social norms had “significant impacts” on citizens’ intentions of re-enrolling in the Grain to Green program.

“In other words, people’s re-enrollment intentions can be affected by the re-enrollment decisions of their neighbors and tend to conform to the majority,” says Liu.

Xiaodong Chen, a doctoral student at MSU and lead author of the paper, said government officials should leverage these social norms along with economic and demographic trends when deciding how to support conversation programs such as Grain to Green.

“We found that, without considering the social norm factor, conservation payments may not be used efficiently,” Chen said.

“But if the government considers social norms as it decides where to invest money, it could obtain more environmental benefits in communities that are supportive of these programs than in those that aren’t.”

Added co-author and MSU scientist Frank Lupi: “Simply by taking account of the social norms, more conservation can be obtained from limited conservation budgets.”

The moral of this story is, do good for the planet, and make sure your neighbors know you are doing it. Peer pressure them into changing their ways. It’s science, and it’s good for the planet.

The vote was close. Know that all of your efforts — whether a signed petition, a donation, or a call — made a difference in the outcome. Together, we are truly showing the power of government by the people and for the people.

It’s not over though. The debate moves on to the Senate where our opponents will redouble their efforts. There will be more distortions and foot dragging, but the momentum is on our side. We must not only have the senate pass the bill but TOUGHEN IT. Call then now and tell them that they should be MORE AGGRESSIVE with the carbon reduction efforts, investment in green jobs, and new standards for efficiency.

Today, we have something to celebrate. For the first time in decades, we have taken bold action to help solve the climate crisis.

Call 877-9-REPOWER (877-9-737-6937) and we’ll connect you to your Representative right after providing you with talking points. (We’re expecting high call volume, and if you are unable to be connected please use our secondary line, 866-590-0971.)

When connected to your Representative’s office, just remember to tell them your name, that you’re a voter, and that you live in their district. Then ask them to “vote ‘yes’ on comprehensive clean energy legislation.”

——

Today the U.S. House of Representatives will vote to determine the fate of the American Clean Energy & Security Act (H.R. 2454). Please contact your Member of Congress to ask him or her to vote in favor of this legislation.

A renewable electricity standard (RES) is a policy to ensure that a growing percentage of electricity is produced from renewable sources, like wind power. To create a long-term commitment to renewable energy, the U.S. needs to adopt a strong national RES. This policy would foster a sound investment climate for renewable energy manufacturers to invest billions of dollars in new facilities and employ hundreds of thousands of Americans in high-quality jobs.

Although the current RES provisions aren’t reaching President Obama’s campaign goal of 25% renewable energy by 2025, passing this bill out of the House of Representatives is an important step in the legislative process. We also ask that you contact your Senators and ask them to help strengthen the RES in their version of the bill that will come up for a vote in the near future.

When you talk to your senator tell them:

Here’s what’s WRONG with the legislation:

• The Nobel-prize winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change says that to avoid the worst climate impacts such as intense droughts, super charged hurricanes and increased heat waves, the U.S. and other industrialized countries must cut their emissions by 25-40% below 1990 levels by 2020. This bill, as it’s currently written, only calls for a 4% reduction by 2020. And there’s very little chance those targets will be improved.
• These weak targets are made even worse by 2 billion tons per year of allowable offsets. Offsets allow polluters to put off for more than a decade real cuts in their emissions The offsets are so high that they will exceed the actual pollution reductions required until at least 2026 — that’s time we don’t have!
• Coal-fired power plants are the single largest source of global warming pollution in the U.S. In order to tackle climate change, we need to begin phasing out coal immediately. But instead of phasing-out coal plants, ACES will actually encourage the growth of a new generation of coal-fired plants! To add insult to injury, tens of billions of taxpayer dollars would be spent on the myth of carbon capture and sequestration — an untested and unproven technology that is decades away from full-scale deployment even by the most optimistic estimates.

Click here to contact your Senators and Representative to express your support for a strong national RES.

more info here

IBM will gather many of the top minds in science, industry and technology to explore the next frontier of electrical energy storage and advanced battery systems - key technologies that will power smarter energy grids, support widespread use of electric cars, and allow for the storage of large amounts of renewable energy - at its annual Almaden Institute in San Jose, California, on August 26 and 27.

The goal of the 2009 Almaden Institute is to catalyze long-term, concerted efforts to create next-generation rechargeable batteries capable of storing ten times more energy than today’s most powerful Lithium-ion batteries. Speakers include Nobel Laureate and energy expert Burton Richter; Marc Tarpenning, co-founder of Tesla Motors; and Deborah Gordon, co-author of 2 Billion Cars.

“High density, scalable energy storage technologies are emerging as the greatest game changer for this new era of renewable energy sources and smarter grids,” said Sharon Nunes, vice president, Big Green Innovations, IBM. “Today, the vast majority of the world’s oil is burned for transportation. Energy sources, such as wind and solar power, fluctuate continuously. We believe the solution may lie in the development of an efficient, affordable energy storage network.”

IBM Research’s Almaden Institute brings together eminent, innovative thinkers from academia, government, industry, research labs and the media for an intellectually charged and vigorous dialogue that addresses fundamental challenges at the very edge of science and technology. Previous Almaden Institutes have launched major research projects in cognitive computing, service science and healthcare informatics.

Leveraging expertise in materials science, nanotechnology, green chemistry and supercomputing, scientists at IBM Research’s Almaden lab in San Jose, California, are undertaking a multi-year research initiative around a grid-scale, efficient, affordable electrical energy storage network. The team plans to explore rechargeable Lithium/Air systems, which have the greatest energy density of all practical battery systems and are inherently safer than traditional Lithium/ion systems.

IBM intends to partner with industry leaders, academia and others in this collaborative endeavor. The company would license any intellectual property that may result from this research rather than manufacturing battery cells.

IBM Research teams across the world apply advanced materials science, physics, modeling tools, materials science, physics, and integration expertise to address emerging environmental management opportunities. IBM is focused on several areas related to energy and the environment, including energy efficient technology and services, carbon management, advanced water management, intelligent utility networks and intelligent transportation systems.

The company’s focus on exploring battery technologies stems from IBM’s Big Green Innovations initiative. Announced in November 2006, as part of IBM’s investment in 10 new businesses generated by InnovationJam, Big Green Innovations has concentrated its efforts on water management, alternative energy and carbon management.

A new snapshot of natural disasters trends based on data from 1974 to the present reveals that:

In 2008, some 750 natural disasters occurred worldwide, a 22 percent decline from the record 960 that occurred in 2007. While the number of smaller catastrophes (Categories 1 and 2) fell in 2008, major catastrophes continued an upward trend.

Worldwide, the annual average number of hydrological disaster events has tripled since the 1980s, while meteorological and climatological events have nearly doubled.

Economic losses from disasters totaled $200 billion, of which $45 billion was insured. Adjusted for inflation, 2008 was the third most expensive year ever recorded.

The new natural disasters update is based on Munich Re’s systematic recording of natural perils that began in 1974.

It seems clear to me that our poor stewardship of the earth is coming back to bite us. And not just in our wallets. Wars are starting over migrations caused by lack of water (Sudan), future wars might be caused over migration caused by sea level rise (Bangladesh/India/Pakistan). Guess the eco-slogans shouldn’t have been “save the planet” but rather “save the people.” We are really the ones at danger here.

That about sums it up, we are borrowing money from China, so that we can pay dictators who oppress their own people for oil…

If there was ever a situation that was unsustainable this is it.

Now that we have that bit of unpleasantness past us, here is the position.

I did this job for a year, and frankly it made my life a lot better, if you think you have the skills, and the awesome sign up! If you want to discuss this job more, contact me using the contact form above.

———————–

We are now accepting “applications” for our Program “House” Supervisor positions. We are looking to fill both positions, Wellfleet and Bourne.

AmeriCorps Cape Cod
Program Supervisor – Residential
(2 Positions)
Definition
Professional, administrative, supervisory work directly related to the AmeriCorps Cape Cod program, Corps members, and program provided residences; all other related work as required.

Supervision
Works under the general direction of the Resource Development Office Manager and under the direct supervision of the AmeriCorps Program Coordinator. Position requires direct supervision of up to 30 AmeriCorps Cape Cod Corps members and any community participating in program events. Work is performed in close communication and cooperation with other program staff, Advisory Board members, Resource Development Officers and community partners and volunteers.

Job Environment
Work is performed in both office and field settings; some exposure to adverse weather conditions; work requires conducting programming and trainings in a variety of locations. Operates computers, standard office machines, automobile/truck/van, hand tools and audio visual equipment; may also use specialized tools or equipment based on responsibility. Requires on call status for emergency and residential response and occasional evening, weekend, and overnight commitments. Makes frequent contact with Advisory Board, public officials, town offices, teachers, principals, and other public organizations. Has access to confidential information, such as member files. Workload will fluctuate due to deadlines and unforeseen events as a result of grant funding and the nature of a residential AmeriCorps program. Errors could cause delays and loss of services, injury to others, damage to buildings and equipment and cause adverse public relations.

Essential Functions
The essential functions or duties listed below are intended only as examples of the assorted types of work to be performed by this position. The omission of specific statements of duties does not exclude them from the position if the work is similar, related, or a logical assignment to the position.
• Work with the Resource Development Office Manager and Program Coordinator to develop, implement, and accomplish current and future program goals and objectives in compliance with all county, state, and federal guidelines
• Live full-time in one assigned program residence
• Supervise up to 30 Corps members and enforce disciplinary procedures with members violating program policies and unsatisfactory performance.
• Responsible for the creation of a safe, respectful, and comfortable residential living environment for members; insure timely communication with Program Coordinator on all safety, security, or other residential issues
• Facilitate weekly house meetings and dinners
• Responsible for the day to day upkeep and maintenance of one program residence
• Demonstrate and promote a commitment to service
• With other program staff, maintain and build relationships and collaborations with AmeriCorps Cape Cod Advisory Board, Barnstable County legislative delegation, local public officials, and the Massachusetts Service Alliance to address community needs
• Promote program outreach efforts by attending community meetings and functions, communicating with media outlets, and developing community relationships
• Assist with the development, scheduling, and implementation of Corps member trainings, workshops, retreats, and special events
• Support the Individual Placement process including placement development, selection, management, and evaluation
• Responsible for the Group Service Project process including project development, selection, implementation, community volunteer engagement, tracking, and evaluation
• Support the Corps members in the recruitment, engagement, and management of community volunteers
• Support the Corps members in the development, scheduling, presentation, and evaluation of community education programs
• Participate in Corps member evaluation and feedback process
• Support member development through service learning, service reflection, leadership development, and individual coaching
• Responsible for orchestration and supervision during emergency response efforts of Corps members and staff
• Problem solve, mediate conflict, and trouble shoot in day-to-day program operation
• Responsible for timely record keeping, data tracking, program reporting, and program evaluation
• Responsible for day to day oversight of program vehicles, tools, and equipment including upkeep, regular maintenance and needed repairs
• Assist with the recruitment of new AmeriCorps members
• Perform similar or related work as required or situation dictates

Recommended Minimum Qualifications
Education and Experience
• Bachelor’s Degree: Biology, Environmental Science, Social/Community Services, and/or related field preferred.
• One year of direct service, project supervision, team leadership or an equivalent combination of education and experience
• Previous AmeriCorps or other national service experience desirable

Knowledge, Ability, and Skill
Knowledge
o Knowledge of local, state, and national service and volunteer networks
o Knowledge of team building, facilitation and group dynamics
o Knowledge of conflict resolution and mediation
o Knowledge of volunteer recruitment, management and interaction
Ability
o Ability to develop, coordinate, and maintain public and private sector relationships
o Ability to communicate effectively with a wide range of constituents
o Ability to effectively operate under high stress, time sensitive situations, and emergency.
o Ability to create and implement trainings, workshops, and educational programs
Skill
o Strong organization and project management skills
o Strong supervision and interpersonal skills
o Strong written, oral, and verbal communication skills
o Strong computer skills

Special Requirements
• Valid Massachusetts Motor Operator’s Vehicle License or the ability to obtain by hire date.
• Reliable vehicle. Position will require significant traveling within Barnstable County.

Physical Requirements
• Frequent moderate to strenuous physical effort required.
• Occasional field service around water; ponds, rivers, ocean
• Field work consists of navigating uneven terrain, occasional lifting of 50 pounds or more, and utilization of hand and power tools. Work requires ability to effectively operate under high stress, emergency, and time sensitive situations.
• Minimal physical effort generally required in performing duties under typical office conditions. The employee is required to sit, stand, talk, hear and must work before a computer for an extended period of time. May be required to lift materials up to 30 pounds, including books, computers equipment, and audio-visual equipment.

This job description does not constitute an agreement between the employer and the employee and is subject to change as the needs of the employer and requirements of the job change.

This position is offered each year contingent on the appropriation of grant funding allocated by the Corporation for National and Community Service.

Here are the details you need to know:

§ You must submit a cover letter, resume, and contact information for 3 references (current members can include a program staff as a reference but please include at least 2 other “outside ACC staff” references. IP service partners are fine.)

§ Information should be submitted to:

Barnstable County Human Resources

Attn: AC Program Supervisor

P.O. Box 427

Barnstable, MA 02630

Applications will be accepted from Thursday, June 25th to Thursday, July 2nd at 4:00pm.

§ The official start date for these positions is Tuesday, September 1st, 2009. However, we will be asking the Supervisors to participate in some training starting either the 28th or the 29th of August. Some additional money will be paid for the training days.

§ Interviews for the positions will happen sometime in mid-July.

Mary

Watch the whole thing, but the payoff is at 10:45…for all fellow Dune nerds, you’re welcome.

Take the time to check this out, Environmental scientist David Keith proposes a cheap, effective, shocking means to address climate change: What if we injected a huge cloud of ash into the atmosphere to deflect sunlight and heat? The nice thing about this talk is that he raises real objections to this technology, as well as some reasons for why we might want to do it. I will let you decide if it is a good idea or not.

For some more reading on this topic see here and here.

Home is a tone-poem about the planet. Based on the breathtaking aerial images of Yann Arthus-Bertrand, this visual masterpiece attempts to do Planet Earth justice on the computer screen - for that is where is it designed to be watched - leaving the viewer with a deep desire to retain and heal what there is and what we are destroying.

That seems to be the intention, anyway, and for large parts of it my emotions were pulled from one pole to another, between awe and disgust, love and hatred, peace and anger: let there be no doubt, the message that modern human civilization is a turbulent and vile force for ecocide comes through like a shout.

So, I did wonder why the start of the movie along with the YouTube viewing platform is an advert for PPR. “PPR is proud to support HOME”. That’s what it says. PPR is a luxury goods company, responsible for driving the unsustainable addiction to fashion across the world, eating up resources faster and faster so we can never keep up with the unreachable dream we are constantly sold. And yet, somehow, they support this. What a blatant and terrible piece of greenwashing! I make no bones about how wrong this is - the message is already confused and we haven’t yet started.

But there is more that I need to criticise: First, the narrator refers to hunter gatherer lives as hard, short and “scrabbling for food” when we know that hunter gathering can be completely the opposite if done properly. This is a very unenlightened “enlightenment” attitude, unfortunately. Second, the movie doesn’t acknowledge that agriculture and the birth of cities was the first great downfall for the ecology (it simply says it was the first great “revolution”, in positive terms). There is no mention of semi-cultivated / domesticated food usage and permaculture: both of which are (still) common today. Third, the narrator refers to fossil fuels freeing humans of their “toil” on the land. When non-industrial life is couched in such negative terms, this is hardly likely to encourage people to turn away from civilization. “Comforts” and “human genius” with reference to our use of oil is the reverse, while showing huge cities, these words put a positive spin on our addiction to growth.

This is all in the first third of the movie; then at 25 minutes it gets good - very good. For the next hour, the movie becomes a cutting, and very well argued critique of our current situation: beautifully shot with sublime and frightening images that accompany an inarguable case against our toxic treatment of every ecosystem on the planet. The comment about trees and humans, “Our cells talk the same language, we are of the same family” suggests it wants us to connect with nature. After half an hour of this necessary battering I was feeling pretty down. What we clearly need is to reconnect with the real world and reject anything that refuses to be connected and tries to keep us disconnected. To stop this horrific system in its tracks.

It is obvious that “Home” is no longer a good place to be, if we carry on treating it like our doormat. But my concern is not just of our ecology: some of the language in this film jars terribly. At 58 minutes we hear: “Denied access to daily necessities like water, sanitation and…electricity”. Electricity? There is a residual “need” for industrial civilization evident here, otherwise surely it would have said, “and, because city living has substituted technology for tools, electricity.” Then we are told: “Hunger is spreading once more.” This suggests the filmmakers only see the “good” times as between the rise of agriculture (6000 BP) and the overurbanization of the Earth (now).

With 10 minutes to go I was bombarded with tales of good things that are going on: reforestation, education, preservation, New York getting all its fresh water from the surrounding lakes…hang on. How much water? What would the lakes be like without the extraction? And a log raft is floating down the river in Gabon - written on the side is “Sea Hope”. Or does it mean: “See Hope”?

“Let’s be responsible consumers” - Stop right there! I am not a consumer, I am a human being. Where is the return to the world where we didn’t destroy by default: carbon capture and storage, wind farms, solar panels tumble across the screen. We must keep consuming but let’s do it sustainably; but we must keep consuming because the movie won’t dare acknowledge what is so obvious. After all, what would the sponsors think?

Give me the choice and I would only show the beautiful and frightening middle section, and then ask: “What do you want to do now?” I think at least some of us would come up with something that might actually give us a future.

———-

To watch “Home” go to http://www.youtube.com/user/homeproject

Keith Farnish
http://www.amatterofscale.com

Because I had to do this for my job, and because I tried and failed to get out of it, I am going to try and make it up to the planet by figuring out how much co2 I have pumped into the air, and find a way to prevent that much from going up in the future. At least then I will have negated my harmful impact by reducing my emission in the future.

So first figuring out how much co2 I produced.

I flew in a Airbus A320 200 from Boston to Phoenix, and then in another Airbus 320 200 from Phoenix to San Jose.

It looks from my admittadly poor information that the plane has a capacity of 5252 gallons of fuel. And from the Airbus website it looks like the max range for the plane is basically a trip from New York to LA (a pretty good approximation of my journey, even though I took 2 planes) so lets assume that they used all of it. They most likely burned less fuel, but because the co2 is pumped directly into the high atmosphere we can assume it is doing more damage, and thus if there was a couple gallons left un-burned this would make up for it.

So now we need to figure out how much of that co2 was “mine” There were 150 passengers on both flights (full plane). I had only one small carry on, and I am a pretty slim guy, so I didn’t use up as much of that fuel as some people…seriously people how long are you going to be where you are going? Do you really need to bring two hundred pounds of stuff with you…but I digress.

So 5252 gallons/150 passengers = 35 gallons per person. I am going to make the trip back so lets double that to 70 gallons of jet fuel.

Now we need to know how many pounds of co2 was in that 70 gallons of fuel. Jet fuel is basically kerosene, so lets find out how much co2 is in a gallon of kerosene. I found different numbers online but most where around 23 pounds of co2 per gallon.

so 70 gallons of fuel burned times 23 = 1610 pounds of co2…ouch.

So how will I avoid this much co2… one method would be to avoid burning fuel in the future. Because I don’t have my own jet I can leave in the garage I will instead endeavor to not drive my car (I know, I know, the shame…I have one, but it sits in the drive way most of the time).

So how many miles must I NOT drive my car to make up for this.

co2 in a gallon of gasoline = 19.4 pounds.
so 1610/19.4 = 83.9 gallons of gas I need to avoid being burned.

My car has a fuel tank of 17 gallons, so I need to avoid burning 5 tanks of gas…my car gets about 400 miles per tank, so I need to avoid driving 2000 miles.

Hmm thats a lot. I already ride my bike to everything, so in good faith I can’t claim the thousands of miles I ride my bike every year as “offset” miles because I wasn’t going to drive anyway. So not driving is not going to cut it.

In all honesty I ran the numbers for turning down the heat, for insulating my home, and for a lot of other things and it is going to take me YEARS to offset this amount of co2. I think most carbon offset programs are scams, and many of them are shady at best. I have slimmed down my carbon footprint to a pretty small level, and when I do something silly like fly across the entire country it really inflates it. I guess I should go out and plant a couple hundred trees, and or perhaps work to reduce someone else’s carbon footprint to make up for my own foolishness.

If you have any suggestions please do let me know.

More here and here

I would rather see some actual action, but at least we have him on film agreeing to it.

Kind of a large level overview of global warming…for the ten of you who have not heard about this stuff yet this will give a good overview (this video is from 2007).

For more info on the larson b ice shelf they talk about see here and here.

Alternatively, it might just mean that a hell of a lot of people have lost faith with the entire electoral system (the turnout was historically low, at 43.1%) and most of these people are to the left of centre. That would make a lot of sense; after all, the so-called democratic systems of government that perpetuate in the industrial West, are little more that a sop to real democracy, masking the real power behind governments: the corporations.

That’s certainly my view. I didn’t vote, not because I don’t think my vote won’t make a difference in the final result; not because I am turning my back on those who fought and died for this right; not because I am apathetic — I didn’t vote because whatever happens to the balance of power in any parliament, the overall plan stays the same. The BNP may have gained a couple of seats, but that says a whole lot more about the people that didn’t vote than it does about those who did vote.

And in a strange way, that makes me happy. It suggests that people are starting to open their eyes and realise that the whole system is terminally corrupt, and destructively unsustainable both in environmental and social terms. In this setup, the best move anyone can make is to reject the entire system — not prop it up by deluding yourself that your vote will change things.