Climate Walruses

Climate change deniers have been in full throat since the breaking of SwiftHack (often poorly and misleadingly named as "Climategate".) This supposed "scandal" is a calculated piece of propaganda, timed for maximum impact on the Copenhagen conference and transmorgified and regurgitated for brazenly craven reasons by the right-wing noise machine.

Their intellectual coherency, the relevancy of what they say... it reminds me of something I heard once...

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes--and ships--and sealing-wax--
Of cabbages--and kings--
And why the sea is boiling hot--
And whether pigs have wings."

You cannot relate such nonsense to anything real; it is all blather and pomposity masquerading as deep thinking. Fortunately, there are some who cut through the miasma of misdirection.

Our oceans are in serious trouble. US Representative Jay Inslee (D-WA) brought factual relevancy as well as some authentic passion to a hearing on the damage happening to them from climate change:

Rep. Inslee confessed to having "a little emotion" about the issue of the fisheries in the shallow Pacific coast waters and whether they could survive the growing acidification. This is the key part (about 4:03 in the video):

I want to ask: Is there anybody in this room, including the two witnesses, and my Republican colleagues, and my Democratic colleagues, and anybody in this room, who has information to suggest that the oceans are not becoming more acidic? Has anybody got information like that? Anybody? Has anybody got an explanation why the oceans are becoming more acidic, other than the fact that there is massive amounts of carbon dioxide going into the atmosphere? Has anybody got an explanation for that?

Crickets.

Lost in the sturm and drang about whether climate change is "real" are indisputable effects such as the encroaching death of our oceans due to radically increased carbon in the atmosphere.

The buffering long provided by the oceans is starting to fail.

The skeptical response usually falls back on the history of carbon concentrations in the atmosphere, arguing that carbon concentrations have been higher for much of geological time.

The objection that the carbon dioxide level was higher in past eons is specious. It's not that it has been higher, it's the rate at which it is changing which alarms. Given sufficient time species can adapt to changing temperatures, changing pH levels, or changing concentrations of atmospheric constituents.

Imagine the windshield on your car is covered in frost (this doesn't require much imagination around western Washington the past week or so!) One way to deice it would be to heat it up slowly with the car's defroster, which would slowly melt it away. Another way would be to pour warm water on it; you'd rid it of the ice in a trice, but the rate of temperature change would almost certainly break the glass. The glass ends up at the same temperature, but the rate makes all the difference.

The rapidity of the change in atmospheric carbon concentrations is breaking our oceans.

The concern trolls speak portentously about "junk science" and the supposed corruption of science to political ends. Their sincerity, however, rings hollow.

"I weep for you," the Walrus said:
"I deeply sympathize."
With sobs and tears he sorted out
Those of the largest size,
Holding his pocket-handkerchief
Before his streaming eyes. 

What do you think will become of the oysters if the climate walruses prevail?

Our Energy Future

Interest is surging in nuclear power as a solution to our energy future. Why? Advocates argue that nuclear is clean energy, produces no carbon emissions in operation, makes continuous, firm power, and reduces our dependence on foreign oil.

Any currently plausible plan for commercial scale nuclear power relies on conventional uranium-fueled nuclear power plants (UFNPP) that use fission reactors. (Despite decades of research and advocacy for thorium-based and fusion reactors, they remain impractical.) The uranium, like oil, coal or gas, must be extracted from the earth, and is not replenished naturally in human time-scales.

Current nuclear technology cannot be described as renewable; but, given its supposed clean tech benefits, does that matter?

Replacing fossil fuels with nuclear would have an arguably positive effect on the environment by reducing carbon emissions, at least in operation. (The environmental impacts of uranimum mining, plant construction and waste disposal remain problematic.) The economic impacts are troubling, given the enormous cost of nuclear energy compared to all alternatives, and the enormous but nearly impossible-to-quantity costs of waste disposal.

There are other challenges [pdf]:

Nuclear energy must become dramatically more attractive to utilities, governments, and publics around the world. This would require reducing costs, preventing any substantial accident, avoiding terrorist sabotage, finding politically sustainable solutions to nuclear-waste management, and ensuring that nuclear energy does not contribute (and is not seen as contributing) to the spread of nuclear weapons to proliferating states or terrorist groups.

While these challenges are real, they can perhaps be solved given sufficient political skill and technical effort.

Uranium fuel supply, however, is a different kind of challenge.
 
If the United States were to sharply increase its use of nuclear power, from whence would the uranium fuel come? The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) is sanguine, declaring in the announcement of its core study of uranium supply and demand (the "Red Book") that:

... new discoveries and re-evaluations of known conventional uranium resources will be adequate to supply nuclear energy needs for at least 100 years at present consumption level. Growing demand and higher prices have spurred greater investment in exploration and led to larger identified conventional uranium resources over the past two years.

But the present consumption level will almost certainly change, as the IAEA admits:

The demand picture is increasingly complex, with significant nuclear power builds underway in China, India, Korea, Japan and the Russian Federation, and phase-out programmes underway in several European countries. Yet the report notes that new builds along with plant life extensions should increase global installed nuclear capacity in the coming decades, thereby increasing demand for uranium. Projections for 2030 indicate a range of expected growth in demand from a low estimate of 38% to a high case of roughly 80%. Demand, however, is increasing, and will increase more sharply still if current discussions in the US Senate play out.

Thus, when considering only the currently projected increase in demand from this identified capacity growth, global supply might not last even 70 years. Climate change policy globally and partisan politics in the US will likely spur even more growth in UFNPPs and demand for uranium, shortening the timeline further.

A typical UFNPP in the US receives an NRC operating license for 40 years which is routinely renewed for an additional 20 years. To make the economics of nuclear power work, the plants need to operate for 60 years. With the long lag times to permit and build plants, however, the uranium supply will not be secure for the full lifetime of operation for plants yet to be built. This will, of course, have a major impact on the overall economics of any UFNPP project.

The supply of uranium is of two kinds. The IAEA, in its latest summary [pdf] writes of uranium:

Supply exceeded demand until 1990 when that relationship was reversed. The gap between newly mined and processed uranium (primary supply) and uranium requirements that developed after 1990 was filled by secondary supply including highly enriched uranium (HEU) from military stockpiles and inventory drawdown. In 2003, total demand was covered about equally by primary and secondary supply.

In other words, in 2003, only just over half of demand was met by new mining, with about 40% coming from previously mined but unused supply, and on re-purposing uranium originally part of weapons. (This so-called Megatons to Megawatts Program provides about 10% of US uranium supplies by the dismantling of former Soviet warheads. Would that there were more of this sort of swords-to-ploughshares program for weapons of all kinds throughout the world.) While energy security is rightly seen as an increasingly key part of national security, it is unlikely that the weapons stockpile will be cannibalized for its uranium to any great degree. At length, the secondary supply will become exhausted and the primary supply must increase to match demand.

The IAEA supply estimates are not beyond question. Michael Dittmar, a researcher at CERN in Switzerland believes the Red Book numbers are suspicious, if not wholly unreliable [pdf]:

Analysis shows that neither the 3.3 million tons of “assured” resources nor the 2.2 million tons of inferred resources are justified by the Red Book data and that the actual known exploitable resources are probably much smaller.

At The Oil Drum there is disagreement about short-term supply problems, but a recognition that the long-term picture is other than the IAEA picture would have it. Others see shortages of uranium by 2050.

One of the leading uranium consulting entities, Ux Consulting is cautious in its Uranium Market Outlook:

The market that we now find ourselves in is like no other in the history of uranium. Production is far below requirements, which are growing... Supply has become more concentrated, making the market more vulnerable to disruptions if there are any problems with a particular supply source. Another source of market vulnerability is the relatively low level of inventory held by buyers and sellers alike.

So far, this transition has been subject to considerable price volatility. The question is whether this volatility will continue. This will depend on the procurement, inventory, and investment decisions that are made in anticipation to and in reaction to the developing trends. Will governments get into the act, and how might this affect the future market? What other surprises may there be?

The global supply is not uniformly distributed, and any aggregate numbers mask the considerable differences in geographic concentration, economic feasibility and political availability. Much of the future increase in world-wide supply is thought to be coming from Kazakhstan and secondly from Africa and Canada. While the bulls see increased exploration and production making up for the inevitable decline of the secondary supply, the heterogeneous nature of the suppliers should give one pause.

The US supply situation is not favorable. Per the 2007 Red Book, annual uranium demand in the US was 22,890 tonnes. Domestic production, however, was barely 2,000 tonnes. The total identified uranium resource which is feasibly extractable in the US, assuming a resource price of less than $130/kg, is 339,000 tonnes. US domestic uranium supply, assuming 100% extraction, would last less than 15 years at current consumption rates.

Security concerns around nuclear power stem not just from keeping the materials and technologies away from the bad actors, but also on not becoming dependent on others for uranium supply. China, India and other countries are net importers of uranium to feed their ambitious and growing programs. The United States imports almost all of its uranium today, with about half coming from Canada and half from Russia. The gap between demand and supply will only grow as pressures mount to replace dirty coal plants with something else.

The United States continues to have a serious and potentially existential problem with its dependence on oil imports from foreign countries with capricious policies and despotic leaders. Decades in the making, this situation is the result of our failure to transition from an oil-based economy following the Hubbert's Peak in US oil production in the early 1970's. Instead of aggressively finding and adopting a different and indigenous energy source, we chose to become dependent on foreign suppliers.

Today our electricity generation has no significant reliance on foreign supply. An increased reliance on generating electricity by UFNPPs risks repeating the historic mistake of our reliance on foreign oil. What confidence do we have in our uranium supply in 2030? Or 2050? Is there a future risk of a uranium cartel akin to today's OPEC, composed of Kazakhstan, Russia, Niger and others indifferent, corrupted or even hostile to our interests? Perhaps we can rely on Canada and Australia to remain friendly and cooperative, but 40 years is a long time, and climate change will re-order the world in ways we cannot readily predict.

Can we afford to make the same mistake a second time? Nuclear power using uranium may be a brief stepping-stone on the journey to a secure energy future, but it is not the destination.

Distributed Hydropower for Military Use

Renewable energy has many benefits, but usually saving lives isn't one of them. However, Hydrovolts turbines have the potential to do just that for the United States military.

Marine Corps Major General Richard Zilmer is based in Fallujah, Iraq, and has responsibility for dangerous Anbar province. He and his 30,000 troops generate electricity from diesel generators for cooking, refrigeration, communications, charging batteries and especially for cooling their tents in the 135-degree weather.

The fuel for these generators comes over land in long, snaking convoys of slow-moving and vulnerable tanker trucks. These convoys have been a repeated target of attack and, even with considerable security measures, are extremely vulnerable and very risky for all personnel involved. In an urgent 2006 memo to commanders at the Pentagon, Zilmer warned that US forces "will remain unnecessarily exposed" and will "continue to accrue preventable ... serious and grave casualties" unless they were provided with "a self-sustainable energy solution."

The problem is not new, and dates back at least to the US military effort to drive Iraq out of Kuwait in 1990. A 2004 study by the Rocky Mountain Institute outlined how, "before the recent rise in oil prices, the U.S. Army spent some $200 million annually on fuel and paid personnel an estimated $3.2 billion to transport it. The Defense Energy Support Center reports that in 2005, the U.S. military spent around $8 billion on some 128 million barrels of fuel; in 2004, it spent $7 billion on 145 million barrels." The cost of fuel is higher now than in 2004, and will almost certainly continue to climb.

In response, the US Army's Rapid Equipping Force (REF) may soon solicit proposals from companies to supplement front line diesel generators with renewable-energy power stations using a mix of solar and wind power. Such an approach continues a growing interest in alternative energy sources by the Pentagon.

Projected costs for a hybrid solar/wind solution are high, as much as $100,000 compared to about $20,000 for a comparable Hydrovolts turbine. Wind and solar are also inherently variable and intermittent, and so still require a ready supply of diesel fuel and the risks that entails.

Notes Zilmer: "Continued casualty accumulation exhibits potential to jeopardize mission success." A Hydrovolts turbine solution could provide electrical power in deployments near moving water without an expensive and dangerous supply chain and the mortal risk to soldiers and civilians it entails.Adds Al Shaffer, the executive director of the Pentagon's Energy Security Task Force about efficiency from renewable energy: "We save money; we simplify our logistics supply line, which makes us a more effective fighting force; we free ourselves from dependence on oil controlled by our adversaries; and above all we save lives." Weaning the military, however partially, from oil dependence also has strategic value long term.

Thankful

Hydrovolts has made a lot of progress in the past year. There is much for which we are thankful!

Being recognized. By entrepreneurs. By the clean tech community. By investors. By the media.

Having a great entrepreneurial team. Expertise, engineering, and experience.

Technological validation. Going from an idea to a full Flipwing prototype making power.

Commercial validation. Purchase inquiries from 15 countries (and counting!) A hosting agreement for a demo project. Engaged customers. (More on all of this in a new post soon.)

Being small. It's a good thing in a crummy economy:

If you think of the big companies as dinosaurs who’ve just been hit between the eyes with a gigantic meteor, remember that you’re the smart, agile, adaptable monkey who’s going to inherit the earth.

Policy momentum. Better policy. Sober but hopeful vision. Slowly, slowly, changing attitudes.

Finally, thanks to all of you for advising, challenging, supporting and encouraging us. Thanks to the thousands of you who have visited our web site, voted for us, and come to our pitches and presentations. Thanks to the dozens of you who follow our Twitter feed, look at our LinkedIn company page, watch our Youtube channel, and join our Facebook fan page. And thanks to the awesome few who have subscribed to this blog, our blog lurkers and visitors. You are all greatly appreciated.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Newpreneur of the Year

Hydrovolts won a $5,000 prize as a national finalist for Newpreneur of the Year in a contest sponsored by Alibaba.com and Inc. Magazine. The grand prize winner was Joel Smith and Forward Mobility, a Washington State maker of medical devices, including the innovative Freedom Leg. Although Hydrovolts did not win one of the top prizes we were very pleased to make it all the way to the finals; the $5,000 prize will be a big help in the construction of a full-size version of the Flipwing turbine.

Hydrovolts CEO Burt Hamner gave the 90-second elevator pitch, which, according to the scoring criteria, emphasized the business, the impact of the recession, and how Alibaba.com plays (or will play) a role in its success. Sorry for the initially shaky video, the result of some jostling and (finally) finding a stable shooting posture:

All of us at Hydrovolts would like to thank the thousands of you that voted for us on-line. The voting was to select the finalists for the trip to San Francisco. Unfortunately, as some of you found, the voting system had some problems, so, in the end, Inc.com Publisher Whelan Mahoney made a great decision: to invite all the competing companies!  We were ecstatic to go to the finals, and we really enjoyed meeting and talking with our fellow "newpreneurs" and keynote speaker Tom Peters.

Tom Peters, author of In Search of Excellence,
makes a point to Burt Hamner and the rest of the audience
at the Newpreneur of the Year finals in San Francisco.

There were over 1000 original entrants in the competition, each of whom submitted an essay describing their business, the impact of the recession and how Alibaba was or would be key to its success. Burt's essay was one of only 30 selected. These 30 competed in six regional competitions of 5 semifinalists each, giving a stand-up elevator pitch (with no PowerPoint!) and answering questions about their business from a panel of expert judges. Chris Leyerle gave the elevator pitch at the regional semi-finals in Seattle:

Hydrovolts COO Chris Leyerle shows the turbine
prototype at the regional semifinals in Seattle.

Congratulations to Joel, Forward Mobility, and the rest of our fellow finalists. And thank you to the good folks at Alibaba and Inc. for a great gala evening at the Bently Reserve in San Francisco, the national recognition and some money to help Hydrovolts succeed!

Hydrovolts press release [pdf]

Hydrovolts wins National Sustainability Award

Hydrovolts, already a winner of the Sustainability Award in the Pacific Northwest Clean Tech Open in Seattle, last night also won the first Clean Tech Open (CTO) National Sustainability Award.

The Award includes a prize package of $20,000 worth of software and services that will help Hydrovolts measure and improve its sustainability efforts.

The Regional and National Sustainability Judging panels consisted of sustainability executives and thought leaders. They chose Hydrovolts first from amongst the nearly 300 original entries because of the company's commitment to all three areas of sustainability:

• Product--the sustainability of the turbine itself, as measured by its overall impact and end-user savings in carbon emissions, waste, water and chemicals.
• Process--the sustainability of the methods the company plans to use in its operations and in manufacturing the product, including impacts on the environment, mitigation approaches and quantitative process analysis.
• Pitch--the sustainability of the company's environmental and social efforts that uniquely create value for employees, customers, communities and other stakeholders. It includes transparency and disclosure, employment practices, investors, social equity and community responsibility.
  

The presentation of the Award came towards the end of an eventful day at San Francisco's Masonic Center that also included an exhibition by CTO finalist, semifinalist and alumni companies, demo presentations, videos from the entrants in the international ideas contest, keynote speakers, and much celebration of the growing success of the CTO.

 Hydrovolts co-founders Chris Leyerle and Burt Hamner
show the turbine prototype during the morning exhibition.

The CTO has been a powerfully positive experience for Hydrovolts. Said Burt:

Unlike any other business contest we know of, the CTO really digs down deep into the roots of sustainable performance. They provided tools and guides to examine almost every aspect of a business with a green lens, while constantly staying with proven management principles that startups need to succeed. The CTO sustainability training for entrepreneurs is gutsy, not gushy.

Added Chris:

The educational value, caliber of coaching, and prescriptive instruction throughout the CTO far exceeded my expectations. The CTO has been instrumental in helping us build our skills, craft a better plan and create a stronger business. I heartily recommend the CTO to both aspiring and seasoned entrepreneurs.

In accepting the Award, Burt noted the importance of incorporating sustainability measures into all aspects of  company operations, including into the standard financial statements. He commended the CTO for championing sustainability throughout the process and for highlighting its importance to the broader entrepreneur and business community.

Hydrovolts would like to congratulate the Grand Prize Winner, ecoFactor, and salute the other 10 finalist companies who competed at the Gala. All are exciting businesses with huge potential, and we are pleased to have made so many new friends amongst our fellow contestants, judges, mentors and others. The organizers and hundreds of volunteers of the CTO deserve recognition for their outstanding effort and the superb success in building the CTO from a California competition to a national one. They could use some help, too, for next year, so if you can, be a sponsor or volunteer, or make a donation.

Many people have helped Hydrovolts throughout the CTO process and without which winning this prestigious Award would not have been possible. We wish in particular to thank those that provided mentoring, feedback and ideas on the sustainability parts of the business: Joshua Skov, Itzel Orozco, and Kiran Jethwa. Thank you all!

CTO Press Release

UPDATE: fixed a broken link and some broken grammar...

Hydrovolts wins PNW Clean Tech Open

On October 29th Hydrovolts won the inaugural Pacific Northwest Clean Tech Open (CTO) and, as a regional finalist, now heads to San Francisco to compete in the national finals November 16-17. The CTO also recognized fellow semi-finalists Green Lite Motors and LivinGreen Materials as regional finalists. Each of the three regional finalists wins a package of cash and in-kind services worth at least $50,000.

Hydrovolts also won the CTO Sustainability Award in recognition both of how its turbines promote sustainability for its customers and the communities in which they are used as well as how the company is being built to use business practices that are in themselves sustainable. CEO Burt Hamner's more than 15 years as an international consultant in cleaner production has been a large benefit to Hydrovolts in shaping its sustainability approach.

 

We're off to San Francisco Monday morning for the grand finale Tuesday at the Masonic Center on Nob Hill. If you're in the Bay Area or traveling there, come see us! The Clean Tech Open is a nonprofit and the Awards Gala is intended as a fundraiser. Tickets normally go for $129 and up – but I have some discounted tickets which will give you a 40% reduction – just use this code: CTOGala when you register.

 

The Pacific Northwest Awards Gala was held at Seattle's ACT Theater following an afternoon investor showcase and exhibit by all ten of the CTO semi-finalists. Washington State Governor Christine Gregoire provided an inspiring keynote speech on the importance of clean technology for the state, the country, and the world. The Governor also toured all of the exhibits and spoke with each of the companies.

Hydrovolts CEO Burt Hamner shows the company's unique technology and business to Washington State Governor Christine Gregoire. Looking on are Pacific Northwest CTO Co-Chair Byron McCann and Hydrovolts Co-founder Chris Leyerle.

Said the Governor: "In its first year the Clean Tech Open has become a critical driver for the type of technology innovation our state needs to create new green jobs and find clean energy solutions for our future. I commend the contestants and the Clean Tech Open community for their dedication to our state's green economy and improving the way we produce and use energy."

Hydrovolts CEO Burt Hamner and Washington State Governor Christine Gregoire recall the days when both worked at the State Department of Ecology.

In accepting the Sustainability Award Burt thanked the CTO organizers profusely for their enormous efforts, the amazing quality of the coaching and the sterling caliber of the many mentors that worked tirelessly to make the entire process such a resounding success. "There are many many people I would like to thank--too many to name, but you know who you are. We could not have done this without you." Burt also saluted all of our fellow semi-finalists, noting their formidable abilities and ingenuity. "We were even a bit intimidated by the strength of our competitors; these are all excellent companies."

Perhaps because he had already spoken, Burt was uncharacteristically speechless in accepting the recognition as one of the three finalists, saying only after a great pause: "Wow!" and "Thank you so much!"

There are far more people we could thank ("you know who you are"!) than time and space will allow. However, we would like to explicitly thank two of the many people who worked with us, exhorted us to aim higher, focused us where we were vague, spotted weaknesses, pushed us to be more specific and generally did what all good coaches do--made us better. Thank you first and foremost our two CTO mentors, Kendall Bodden of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, and John Castle of the University of Washington. We recommend both of them highly to anyone looking for dedicated and valuable guidance in building their business.

All of us at Hydrovolts would also like to congratulate our fellow finalists and recognize all of our fellow semifinalists with whom we have spent the last many months side-by-side working, learning, and encouraging each other. This has been an amazing journey, and it has been a privilege to have been a part of such a high energy, motivated and stimulating group. We wish all of our fellow CTO alumni continued success in their businesses.

Clean Tech Open press release
Xconomy.com news article

Tech Flash post 

Zikkir post

Futurist Glen Hiemstra post 

More pictures at hydrovolts.com

Vote for Hydrovolts

Do you believe in Clean Energy? Then vote for it!

We need your help.

As a reader of this blog chances are you believe in clean energy and its importance for our future.

Hydrovolts is the only clean energy company in a national competition that relies on popular voting, and, while we are catching up, we are still lagging behind.

Vote for us! Give clean energy get the national recognition it must keep getting to make the mission in which we believe into a national movement.

Please vote for us! It takes literally 10 seconds, and just 2 mouse clicks. No registration, no giving your email.

Oh yeah, you can vote very day through Friday, November 6, so vote early and please... vote often!

Tell your friends. Broadcast on Facebook and Twitter. Know someone running a relevant email list? Please tell them too! The world needs distributed hydropower! The country needs more momentum behind clean energy!

Thank you!! VOTE HYDROVOLTS!

--------------------
About us:

Hydrovolts makes power from water by building small hydrokinetic turbines that generate electricity from fast flows for agriculture, industry and sustainable community development world-wide. The turbines literally drop in without dams, weirs, or changes to the watercourse of any kind in as little as an hour. They create electricity at a fully capitalized cost of less than $0.02/kWh and typically pay for themselves in less than 5 years.

--------------------
Learn more about us here:

http://www.hydrovolts.com (web site)
http://hydrovolts.blogspot.com (blog)
http://www.youtube.com/Hydrovolts (YouTube)
http://www.twitter.com/Hydrovolts (Twitter)
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Seattle-WA/Hydrovolts/89890402343 (Facebook fan page)

--------------------
The competition:

Inc. Magazine and alibaba.com are sponsoring this high-profile national contest called "Newpreneur of the Year" to recognize an outstanding new start-up company in the US.

There were over 1000 entrants from which 30 (5 each in six cities nationally) were selected based on an application essay. Each of the 5 then competed in a stand-up competition giving 90-second elevator pitches and answering questions about their businesses from a panel of expert judges.

The current phase involves voting by anyone who cares to do so to select 5 from the final 13. These 5 will go to the national final in San Francisco where they will again be judged on merit to pick the winner.

The final 13 are an eclectic group, and include some interesting companies and business models. Hydrovolts is, however, the only clean technology company in the group.

While doubtless some would benefit from a costume company, a new breath mint or folding ballet slippers, Hydrovolts is the only company that can have a powerfully positive impact on the lives of more than a billion people!

VOTE FOR RENEWABLE ENERGY!

How to Save Paper and Ink

Minimizing waste has been an interest of mine since the 60's.

Green Print is a great piece of software that can really help on the Reduce part of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. I've been using it on my laptop and home computer for more than a year. Exactly as it promises, it saves lots of paper and ink.

It also provides a really simple way to turn documents into PDF so you don't need to print them at all.

It installs as a printer driver which makes it really easy to use; just pick it like any other printer. When you print to it, it creates a preview screen that allows you to choose which pages not to print. For programs that have a print preview this is perhaps not as useful, but it's indispensable for printing stuff off the web (like boarding passes or travel receipts) that often print these maddening extra pages of advertisements or are completely blank except for a header/footer. The program can even be set up to largely strip these automatically.

This saves money, of course, but it also is a small step to reduce the impacts fueling climate change. The program not only tracks how many pages you've saved but also how much less carbon you've put into the environment.

Do you care about climate change? Then do something. This could be a good step. Or you could do something more.

Detour

Sorry all to have been away so long. Busy, but in a good way. Will return to more frequent posting soon.

The Hydrovolts Turbine - IV

Here's another video of the flume testing at the University of Washington noted in the last post. It shows tests of the Hydrovolts Flipwing Turbine using various numbers of blades:



Other posts on the Hydrovolts Flipwing Turbine:
The Hydrovolts Turbine
The Hydrovolts Turbine - II

The Hydrovolts Turbine - III

Thanks to the assistance of Professor Bruce Adee and his students at the University of Washington, we had some fun testing of the Hydrovolts turbine in their flume. The video shows testing of a 5-blade design in a 0.5 m/s current:



Having a really low cut-in speed is another advantage of the patent-pending cross-axis design.

Other posts on the Hydrovolts Flipwing Turbine:
The Hydrovolts Turbine
The Hydrovolts Turbine - II

Senator Inhofe: Oil and Gas Don't Pollute

How did this man become a US Senator?



Says James Inhofe, the Senate's biggest climate change denier (via):

People complain that we are buying — importing from the Middle East — oil and gas. And then they find out that we have it all right here. We don’t have to do that. If their argument there is “Well, we don’t want to use oil and gas because we think it pollutes” — which it doesn’t — but if that’s their argument, then why are we willing to import it from Saudi Arabia and other countries in the Middle East?

Oil and gas aren't polluting!? Is there something else in the water in Oklahoma that causes this kind of insanity? How can anyone take this man seriously? Of course, only in Oklahoma did every single county vote for John McCain over Barack Obama, so re-electing Inhofe twice may seem, well, OK.

Math is Math

Looks like this will be an El Nino year, perhaps a strong one, which pleases some for the schadenfreude it provides:

1998 was the hottest year on record because of an extraordinarily powerful el Nino that heated up the entire planet dramatically. But because it was so hot, climate disruption deniers have been using it as the starting point from which they claim, wrongly, that “the global temperature has been cooling for a decade now.” This false claim was strengthened by the lucky coincidence that 2008 turned out to be a la Nina year, when the global temperature dropped significantly. Climate disruption deniers then took advantage of an unfortunate fact of least-squares linear trend estimates - they’re VERY sensitive to endpoint variation, especially in short, noisy datasets. And not only is global temperature noisy on a monthly and yearly basis, but ten years is a woefully short amount of data. And don’t even get me started on Joe D’Aleo’s, Lord Monckton’s, and Ross McKitrick’s 5-year “trend” from 2003 to 2008 which, conveniently enough, has another el Nino to la Nina transition.

So now, with a new el Nino heating up the summer and autumn global temperatures by some as-yet-unknown amount, climate disruption scientists and activists have their own convenient endpoints to the data. 1999 was a la Nina year, after all, and 2009 is an el Nino year, so any trend calculated from 1999 to 2009 will be huge, given that global temperatures for July through December are significantly warmer on average than January through June. It’s not outside the realm of possibility that 2009 could be warm enough to turn the supposed “cooling trend” into a “warming trend” all by itself. And that’s the first reason I’m happy about a new el Nino.

Of course, we’re talking weather here, not climate, and the exact same statistical tools that I and others use to debunk the bogus cooling trends touted by deniers could be used against any climate scientist who touts a hot 2009. But that brings me to the second reason I’m happy about el Nino - I’m actually looking forward to climate disruption deniers screaming “a hot year in 2009 is only weather, the cooling trend since 1998 is a real trend!” Because in return, I get to call the denier a hypocrite.

Math is math, after all. If the data statistics says that there’s too much noise in the data to extract a meaningful trend from 1998 to 2008, the the same will almost certainly be true from 1999 to 2009. And as a result, any denier who looks at the 99-09 trend and says “that’s just weather, not climate” or “the trend has endpoint problems that make it inaccurate” or even “you cherry-picked your endpoints” will immediately be revealed as a liar and a hypocrite.

Yes, it will be amusing to see the responses from those who confuse weather and climate, have been shouting about supposed global cooling, how Al Gore got it wrong, how cold spring has been this year, blah blah. No, I won't link to them, but they're easy to find if you search on something like "global cooling trend".

Shale Game - II

Oil shale development continues to wait:

The Obama administration has been granted a third extension of a deadline for responding to lawsuits that challenged the Bush administration’s oil shale decisions. The government says it needs the input of people nominated but not yet confirmed for top offices overseeing public lands.

U.S. District Court Judge John Kane on Friday agreed to postpone the deadline until Aug. 31.

The environmental groups' lawsuits challenge the Bush administration's oil shale decision on environmental grounds as well as for failing to set royalty rates high enough to provide the legally required fair return for the use of public resources.

Interestingly, both the environmental groups and the industry groups (Shell and the API) agree on the postponement, albeit for different reasons. For the enviros, delay forestalls the rapacious development. Forestall long enough and it might never happen. Industry doesn't mind the wait because the cost of development is not feasible currently, and won't be until the price of oil (or its future prospect) rises above $80 or so per barrel and stays there. Unless the global economy turns around that could be a long wait.

The government has said it needs time for the new administration to determine the appropriate course of action.

The government's motion specifically begs time for the confirmations of Bob Abbey as director of the Bureau of Land Management and Wilma Lewis as assistant secretary for land and minerals management in the Interior Department.

Both had a hearing in front of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee last Thursday. John McCain (R-AZ) announced the next day that he would oppose the confirmation of both until the Obama administration takes a position on a land swap enabling a copper mine in his state. McCain spokeswoman Brooke Buchanan said that McCain intends to place holds on both nominees if and when they come before the full Senate for a final vote. He seems ready to allow the nominations to proceed if he gets his way on the copper mine bill [pdf], but the Obama administration has stated that they need more time to study that too.

I'd like to think that the Obama administration wants to carefully assess oil shale development as I wrote last November. And perhaps they will. For now the Obama administration is likely stalling for time, taking advantage of the willingness of both parties to delay. The reason they present to the court, wanting to have their key staff in place, is reasonable, and the court agreed to the extension. But how long will having staff in place take? Will these public servants have anything like the time they need for a detailed review and the filing of legal briefs between their (eventual) confirmation and August 31? Even without the threat of a hold, the confirmations could take a while; Republicans haven't exactly expedited the process for Obama's nominees in general, and these seemed destined for special treatment.

Delay satisfies a political purpose as well. Obama has a lot of moving parts in his legislative agenda, and a large, visible and critical piece is climate change legislation--the Waxman-Markey bill, HR 2454. Oil shale is one of a few current issues that pit environmentalists against the legacy energy industry (others include offshore oil and gas drilling, so-called clean coal, and nuclear power.) While Waxman-Markey is still on tenterhooks it is expedient to defer decisions on these other matters as much as possible, keeping some powder dry for the later fight, and forcing the opposing sides to largely hold their fire. All parties have more at stake right now than just a decision on oil shale.

Unless oil prices rise dramatically, rekindling imminent development interest by Shell, the oil shale lawsuit will be repeatedly delayed because no one benefits by moving it forward in the near term. By not taking sides (yet) the Obama administration prevents needlessly aggravating either camp while it attempts the tortuous guiding of Waxman-Markey into law. McCain, in pursuit of his tactical parochial interest may actually be helping Obama's strategic objective. Environmentalists, while suspicious of Obama's commitment to the environment prevent for now the development of oil shale by delay. Developers expect delay to increase their bargaining power, as they expect energy costs to increase and pressure for domestic fossil fuel development to grow.

In some respects, all of this maneuvering will in time prove a sideshow; any apolitical decision on oil shale development will necessarily be one based on a resource more critical and more threatened than energy supplies or political capital--water.

Worth at Least a Thousand Words

If you like graphical presentations of data you need to take a look at Gapminder. Some beautiful and fascinating interactive graphs. Spend some time with the visual display; there are a lot of controls allowing customizable views, speed, ability to highlight particular countries/regions, etc. Find the small arrows on each axis and the bubble size legend to select any 3 sets of data to correlate over time. Change axes between linear/logarithmic to better separate the data points.

Here's an interesting chart correlating total CO2 emissions, emissions per person and total population by country. Notice how little the change in emissions is from increases per person rather than population growth. Also, check out the paths of China and India. Here's with the data correlated to total energy consumption instead of population. Watch China's acceleration of the past few years. Great stuff.

UPDATE:  To get an idea of some of the things this tool can do, check out this presentation:

You've never seen data presented like this. With the drama and urgency of a sportscaster, statistics guru Hans Rosling debunks myths about the so-called "developing world."

Environmental Crime Doesn't Actually Pay

The bogus canard that protecting the environment entails damaging the economy lives on.

It's not true, of course, as I've argued before. Now David Roberts has compiled an interesting list that makes the same point more broadly by refuting the negative proposition: according to several separate studies, screwing up the environment costs more than taking care of it.

One thing they all have in common: an environment-degrading practice often defended as necessary to economic health is revealed, upon closer inspection, to be uneconomic. I wonder how many other allegedly economic environment-degrading practices would also be revealed uneconomic if examined with a fresh eye?

It’s almost like the economy is embedded in an environment, and degrading the latter ultimately degrades the former.

Not almost: the environment is the framework that allows an economic system to exist. Damage to the environment leads inescapably to damage to the economy.

The Climate Change Game

9 1/2 minutes long, but quite worthwhile:

The Art of the Possible

When all is said and done there's a lot more said than done.

This is especially true in politics and sadly is becoming only too true as the legislative sausage factory grinds out the American Climate and Energy Security ("Waxman-Markey") bill, HR 2454. President Obama hailed the US House vote in favor:

The energy bill before the House will finally create a set of incentives that will spark a clean energy transformation of our economy....

This legislation will finally make clean energy the profitable kind of energy. That will lead to the creation of new businesses and entire new industries. And that will lead to American jobs that pay well and can't be outsourced.

Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), was considerably less eloquent, calling it a "pile of shit." (via)

The bill next goes to the Senate, where opposition is stronger and prospects for passage perilous at best. Opponents attack from both sides. Most Republicans, so-called Blue Dog Democrats, the US Chamber of Commerce, and many business interest groups fret that it will cost jobs or amount to a tax on the economy that will further impair economic recovery or worse. Most of their arguments are appeals to emotion, however, and a factual review of their claims shows virtually all to be distortions or outright lies. Many progressive Democrats and some environmental interest groups worry that the bill has become so eviscerated by compromise that it is worse than no bill at all:

At the heart of the issue is a belief among some progressives that the bill's standard for carbon emission reductions have been set too low, and that the measure itself is too easy on both the coal industry and farmers. Already, according to Hill aides, Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) has said that he will not support the bill regardless of whether his own amendments are approved. High-ranking officials involved with whipping votes tell the Huffington Post that there are at least three or four other liberals who are withholding their support.

Kucinich voted against it. Others, such as Lloyd Doggett (D-TX) ended up voting yea. There's no dispute that the bill passed by the House is significantly weaker than the one first envisioned. Many carbon allowances were given away to industry groups and utilities (although not as many to the oil and gas industry as they would have liked). The Renewable Energy Standard targets were watered down.

For me, the largest criticism of the bill is that it devotes far too little funding for renewable energy R&D (via):

The legislation will be voted on at a time when China, Korea, and Japan are all investing large sums to create domestic clean energy industries. China will invest $300 -- $600 billion over the next 10 years in solar, wind, nuclear power, high speed rail, and electric cars. South Korea, with an economy 1/10th the size of the U.S., has pledged to spend $40 billion over the next four years on renewable energy programs. And Japan, which already leads the world in hybrid engine and solar panel technologies, has pledged to cut its domestic reduction of carbon emissions, already among the lowest in the world on a GDP per capita basis, a further 15% through the deployment of renewable energy technology. The three nations meet in August to develop a strategy to combine China's low-cost manufacturing the Korea and Japan's engineering know-how.

As a presidential candidate, Barrack Obama promised repeatedly to invest $150B over 10 years on innovative renewable energy technology. Waxman-Markey appears to be the obvious vehicle to fulfill the bulk of that commitment, yet the money is not there: at best, it allocates $6B to $9B rather than the full $15B per year many of us had hoped to see. The 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act ("ARRA") allocates an additional $32.6B over ten years [pdf] for renewable energy R&D, smart grid, demonstration projects, and battery research; however, taken together the total still falls short.

So the rhetoric is not matching the reality, begging the question is the bill worth supporting? Will defeating it lead to a better piece of legislation or doom all progress on climate change and government support for renewable energy? There are a lot of potential reasons to vote against this bill and its many shortcomings and imperfections. Could the bill be better? Oh yes, in dozens of ways. Should it be defeated so as to start afresh and craft a better bill? The history of efforts at healthcare reform are instructive, as they closely parallel this new, massive, and critically needed effort.

Defeat of Waxman-Markey will ensure years of subsequent inaction on climate change and real energy security, which delay would be absolutely catastrophic for the country and the planet. It would also embolden opponents and calcify their intransigence. No later bill will likely be better rather than worse, if one were to emerge at all.

Imperfect as it is, Congrees should pass Waxman-Markey, strengthening it as much as can politically be done, and then promptly get to work to enact further, and better legislation. This is not the time to let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

The Hydrovolts Turbine - II

In my last post on the Hydrovolts Flipwing Turbine I was deliberately vague about exactly how we've managed to make a cross-axis rotor ("paddlewheel") spin when entirely submerged. Well, the patent is filed so here's an explanation.

The animation shows the patent-pending Hydrovolts Flipwing Turbine in action. The view is end-on with the water flow coming from the right. At the 12 o'clock position, one of the four flipwing blades is pinned against the central axle, providing drag resistance to the current, which pushes on it causing the turbine to rotate counter-clockwise. As the flipwing blade moves past the 9 o'clock position the current pushes the blade open, and it flips backwards from the hinge on the outer edge so the blade is parallel to the current. It remains in the open position through the 3 o'clock position, where it again becomes pinned to the central axle, catching the water current and forcing the turbine to rotate.

Stern Words in Seattle

Addressing climate change "is not all sack cloth and ashes."

So said Professor Lord Nicholas Stern, who was in Seattle this past Thursday, where I was fortunate to be able to meet him at a private breakfast gathering in the Mayflower Park Hotel. Stern, best known for his eponymous report, is on a tour promoting his book, The Global Deal: Climate Change and the Creation of a New Era of Progress and Prosperity. Stern is the former chief economist at the World Bank and has held a variety of senior economic policy positions in the UK government and has taught and researched at MIT, Ecole Polytechnique, the Indian Statistical Institute and People's University of China.

Stern spoke extemporaneously for about 30 minutes and took questions for nearly another 30. As one might expect from a professor at the esteemed London School of Economics, his tone was measured but purposeful with the power of his presentation coming from the force of his words rather than the style of its delivery. He's very soft-spoken and only once betrayed a flicker of emotion, when asked about the role the media has played and needs to play in educating people about climate change. He seemed a touch exasperated as he termed "insane" the media's relentless need to provide (faux) "balance" by always pairing a climate change denier with reality-based scientists.

Early on Stern declared that addressing climate change was "all about economics" but later said (accurately) that "the problem comes down to political will." Both matter of course, but I was struck by how much his remarks focused on the politics of addressing climate change and the educational challenges. Some of the questioners suggested it was more than just political will but also social pressures and and the selfish behaviors that are the Tragedy of the Commons.

Stern hit the large themes of his book, which in turn is based on his earlier paper "Key Elements of a Global Deal" [pdf] first published on the LSE website a year ago to the day. The following are combined notes, as best as I could take them, from both his talk and the Q&A, organized loosely by topic. Any errors are assuredly mine, not his.

On the global extent of the problem
Stern started by stressing the global nature of the problem: contributions of greenhouse gases (GHG) to the atmosphere from anywhere increases the incidence and likelihood of bad consequences everywhere. Climate change is quite obviously a global problem, and storms and extreme weather events are increasing in frequency and intensity. He also briefly alluded to the increasing occurrence of anomalous weather: flooding, droughts, signs of desertification.

On the science of climate change
He did not spend much time summarizing the state of the science. I knew about a quarter of the attendees, and if they were representative of the room as a whole, everyone present was already well aware of the salient climate change facts. (I suspect too that they were also largely united in favor of action rather than delay.) He noted the core problem: If we change nothing about what we do, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide will reach 700-800ppm by 2100 and lead to an average increase in global temperature of 5°C, and "we haven't a clue how to cope with that." Humankind has survived a drop of 5°C in global average temperature in the past but never a rise of that amount. Anticipating a standard denier argument he added, "of course there have been fluctuations in human history, but nothing like this." The core "science is 200 years old" starting with Fourier, and "all the time evidence is coming in to support the theory of GHG-caused climate change." The state of the science on climate change? It's settled. "Delay is very dangerous."

On developed vs. developing world
Stern's key point: "Rich countries have to take the lead; it cannot work by rich countries pointing fingers and lecturing other countries." The perception abroad of what the US can do and be has changed in the aftermath of the Bush era; US leadership now is both more possible and more expected. Currently US per capita carbon emissions are 20 tons annually. Europe is 10-12 tons. China is 5. By 2050 the per capita figure needs to be down to 2 tons as a global average. This is "a big ask." China, Brazil and others have their own carbon plans today. These plans could be more aggressive, but that will only be possible if the rich countries take a position of leadership on setting and working towards more aggressive goals themselves. The politics going into this fall's global meeting in Copenhagen will entail a lot of "hard bargaining" from India, China and other developing countries over emissions targets. The strategy from the industrialized countries should be one of obtaining "a commitment to commit" from the developing countries, which will require the US and Europe to take the first large steps. The developing countries will follow this lead because "they know they are vulnerable" should inaction on climate change continue. On a practical level, richer countries must engage in "technology sharing" with poorer ones to mitigate the growth in per capita carbon emissions in those countries. Such sharing would also provide political support for the leaders of developing countries to forgo the dirty carbon growth path and its promise of economic bounty that the rich countries took in their day but which now must be replaced with a new way.

On how to regulate carbon
There's no significant economic reason to pick between a carbon tax and some form of cap-and-trade system; both put a price on carbon emissions as a way of providing an economic incentive towards their reduction. Stern wryly noted the "lack of total sincerity" of some advocates and that some were pushing the tax precisely because having a "tax" makes for an easier target politically. However structured, a cost of $50/ton for CO2 by 2020 would be a powerful incentive for technological progress of the right kind.

On transportation
It's pointless for any policy to be based on the idea that people will give up their own personal transportation (cars.) The policy has to find a way to make that indispensable part of modern industrial life possible in a way that is compatible with a sensible carbon policy. Electricity will need to be the power source for cars.

On coal
"Coal is a problem." Coal has been promoted as a solution to energy security, but it is the only source that fails to pair energy security with climate change mitigation. About 50% of the world's electricity comes from coal, and we cannot suddenly stop using it, so we need to deal with that reality. It took "much too long" but at least, at long last, in the UK there is now a policy that no new coal plants will be built unless they have a full carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) system. We need to devote greater effort to finding a viable CCS approach, as well as greater plant efficiency, for now, as we work to replacing coal with renewable sources.

On what doesn't work
"If you ask for things that can't be done you just marginalize yourself." He cited the calls by some to immediately shut down coal plants as an example of this. We must be practical and realistic in what we choose. The current approach to global development, especially by the large institutions like the World Bank is "a disaster" because it lacks the relevant big picture context on promoting growth of the right kind. It proceeds "project by project" treating each in isolation rather than as part of a coherent whole with interlocking and cumulative impacts. Most dangerous would be trying to reinflate the bubble economy. The seeds of the bubble just burst were sown right after the "madness" of the dot-com bubble. "Rekindling the old growth story is rekindling the past."

On growth
"Low carbon growth is the only growth option." Carbon growth will no longer be possible or sustainable due to its rising cost and environmental consequences. "Clean tech will be the big driver of growth" just as other transforming technologies of yesteryear (autos, computers, etc.) were the engines of growth in their day.

On the role of government
Need "real investment" and "real policy" that focuses on clean tech as the initial leader and ongoing catalyst of economic growth. Our society is a "dynamic creature" that needs only the right kind of public policy guidance. The government cannot be completely neutral on technology choices but it can and should set broad policy to restore economic vitality via growth of the right kind. "The linkage between public policy and private sector response is very powerful." An example of this is French government support for high speed rail, which resulted in the best such in the world, the TGV.

On educating and communicating
It is "very important that people understand the risk" posed by climate change, but motivating an "unengaged" populace will require a "steady calm explanation of how dangerous delay is." "How do we persuade people and get them to come together on this? Quite a lot of progress comes from good communication." Need to employ the right kind of methods, "get the argument right" and be creative. Stern cited Yann Arthus-Bertrand's book Earth from Above being used in French schools as an example of what is needed. Stern expressed encouragement that the pace of growing awareness has really picked up, and noted that business leaders generally and the heads of large companies in particular have become aware to the danger to a much greater degree in the last 2-3 years. This is starting to really shift the attitudes of politicians, who lag in their understanding compared to the public.

On what we must do
"We need a collaborative response to a very clear human danger" like the global community was able to do in response to past crises. Solving the climate change challenge "will be the largest collaboration the world has ever seen" but not unprecedented, as the world collaborated before on smallpox eradication, for example. Much of this will need to come from collaboration amongst political leaders and their countries. "There's a tremendous amount we can do" including zero-carbon transportation, efficiency (which saves money and doesn't cost much), stopping deforestation, and especially planting more trees (to which he referred several times) as this has a "carbon-negative" benefit that is quite strong.

Stern stated flatly that 2010-2020 are the "crucial" years for the pace of adoption by the developing world of measures to address climate change. While the "political dynamics are strongly in the right direction" and current signs are "strongly encouraging" it is nonetheless "very worrying how far we have to get." Ours is "the first generation that can destroy humans' relationship to the planet."

"If we fail our problems are enormous" but "we have to be extremely positive about what we can do...you can see what we have to do."