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Two stories about burning wood as a bio-fuel to make electricity, one at LiveScience and one at EmptyWells.

EmptyWells seems like a pretty cool blog … apparently cool enough to be listed in GoogleNews.

The wood thing seems kind of retro, but if it can be harvested intelligently and burned cleanly, I’m OK with it. I guess the funny thing is that I have bio-diesel and ethanol in my mind as “the bio-fuels” and I’m surprised by wood. It is much simpler though, and doesn’t require the processing that the liquid fuels do. If its efficiency is good (power generated per ton of CO2 released), it should be a win.

Alternative Energy ~ Renewable Energy has a good post on Green Tags.

I’m just starting to look into it, but as a general idea it seems similar to the TerraPass I bought for my cars.

Surfing this morning, I also stumbled across Community Energy, a company which operates wind farms, and also seems to offer Green Tags of a sort. You can “buy wind” or “adopt-a-windmill” at their site.

I’ll have to look at these more carefully after I wake up ;-). It couldn’t hurt to kick one of these guys a few bucks.

After railing for a couple days about the hydrogen boondoggle, maybe it is time to point to a non-boondoggle. The Energy Future Coalition is an unlikely alliance to fight US oil dependence.

At first sight their plans look pretty practical.

Still thinking about this today and leaving comments all over the place. If I was selling hydrogen I’d be a spammer.

Anyway, I blogged another item just to quote this article at the Washington Times:

According to conference organizers, hydrogen energy promises zero emissions, no dependence on foreign oil, and an unlimited supply of energy.

When someone promises you “an unlimited supply of energy” isn’t that time to check your wallet? (or where our tax dollars and energy focus are going?)

[Technorati search for "hydrogen boondoggle"]

[Update: as I learned on the Energy Outlook blog, a lot of this boils down to "well to wheels" energy comparisons. Or in the case of green electricity sources "power plant to wheels" comparisons. This four page pdf from the EUROPEAN FUEL CELL FORUM has a lot of good comparisons on the last couple pages. It contains the following quote on natural gas to hydrogen conversion:]

Steam reforming of natural gas provides no lasting solution, because in comparison with natural gas vehicles the overall efficiency can not be improved, nor can the emission of greenhouse gasses be reduced by conversion of natural gas into synthetic gaseous hydrogen. Carbon dioxide sequestration is not even considered at this time.

I said, on some random (but much higher profile) blog, that I’d like someone to reassure me that hydrogen power for cars isn’t a boondoggle, and that it makes sense.

I’m still waiting, with a fairly open mind (I try).

I did happen to search google with the words “hydrogen boondoggle” … and darned if I didn’t get 4,420 hits. The top article covers my concerns pretty well.

At my most cynical, I actually think “oil folks” back hydrogen because it is a long ways off. It allows them to show concept cars and “hydrogen highway” filling stations for the next 10 or 20 years … without really interfering with business as usual. Too bad for them, but lucky for us, that the Japanese Hybrids threw a wrench in those works. We now know that there are good short-term improvements to be made, and increasingly we want them.

I do understand that we’ll have to move away from gas/diesel cars at some point. It’s just that I see it as a timeline stretching out decades:

• First we convert to more efficient gas/diesel cars (including hybrids)
• We can easily bring natural gas cars into the mix (much of the infrastructure is in place)
• Finally (10,20,30 years from now) we can bring in electric and hydrogen cars

The point is do it when it makes sense, not as a boondoggle based on incomplete technology.

Maybe I’m a little bit behind the curve, but until I upgrade my cars from the “average” mid-20 mpg, I can certainly buy a TerraPass for them.

Any similar plans out there? I like that this one supports wind power investments … and here I was just talking about wind power YIMBYs.

Despite the inflamitory title I’ve given it, a moderate story:

In Africa and throughout the developing world Borlaug and most other agronomists now teach forms of “integrated pest management,” which reduces pesticide use because chemicals are sprayed at the most vulnerable point in an insect’s life cycle. Borlaug says, “All serious agronomists know that pesticides must be kept to a minimum, and besides, pesticides are expensive. But somehow the media believe the overspraying is still going on, and this creates a bias against high-yield agriculture.” Indonesia has for nearly a decade improved rice yields while reducing pesticide use by employing integrated pest management. The use of pesticides has been in decline relative to farm production for more than a decade in the United States, where the use of fertilizer, too, has started declining relative to production.

Such developments have begun to sway some of Borlaug’s opposition. The Committee on Sustainable Agriculture, a coalition of environmental and development-oriented groups, has become somewhat open to fertilizer use in Africa. “The environmental movement went through a phase of revulsion against any chemical use in agriculture,” says Robert Blake, the committee’s chairman. “People are coming to realize that is just not realistic. Norman has been right about this all along.” One reason the ground is shifting back in his direction, Borlaug believes, is that the green parties of Europe have been frightened by the sudden wave of migrants entering their traditionally low-immigration nations, and now think that improving conditions in Africa isn’t such a bad idea after all.

Read the full story here (found at ongoing)

After following some discussions at TreeHugger and sustainablog, I was wondering if there shouldn’t be some sort of register on-line for people to declare that they DO want wind power in their backyard. I guess I hit a vibe, because there is a story about YIMBYs in The Japan Times Online:

One seminar explored public perceptions of wind power, and the first speaker, Dr. Letherios Pavlides, made it clear that what was formerly a NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) technology is quickly becoming YIMBY: Yes, In My Back Yard!

They even give an optimistic report on costs:

In contrast, using a 2-megawatt wind turbine to generate electricity for one year can cost as little per kilowatt-hour (kwh) as coal, without producing the same 8,300 tons of carbon dioxide.

Of course, that might be balanced a bit by this Cornell Daily Sun report on people who declare themselves “NIABY:”

Last week, 20 residents in the immediate area of the proposed site brought a petition to the Dryden Town Board, asking the board to study any proposal very carefully and change the zoning law specifically to not allow industrial wind farms. The petition states the residents’ concerns as: turbine noise, visual impacts, strobing effects, nighttime flashing of FAA-mandated lights, decline in property values, bird and bat deaths, threats to air traffic to and from Tompkins County Airport and quality of life effects due to proximity to wind turbines.

“Basically, we want Cornell to take things really, really slowly because we think that there are bad environmental, health and quality of life and animal impacts” said Stuart Davis, senior lecturer, english, and resident in the immediate area.

He added, “This isn’t a NIMBY thing, this is NIABY, ‘not in anyone’s backyard.’ I would not wish it on anyone unless it is safe and efficacious.”

Ah well, I guess I can do a few counts at Google (”wind power yimby” = 51, “wind power niaby” = 52, “wind power nimby” = 19,100) and at Technorati (”wind power yimby” = 0, “wind power niaby” = 0, “wind power nimby” = 55). I don’t suppose on the surface that looks good.

[Update: an interesting article on wind power and NIMBYs at Energy Outlook. I hadn't thought about it, but it seems obviously once stated: that wind farms need both steady winds and an energy market that can accept their variable output. Click here for most recent Google News on Wind Power.]

Surfing the web, I still see the weak argument that consensus is not science. I feel a little cantankerous this morning, so I’ll take that one on. It certainly won’t take long.

I started watching the “global warming” question 10 or 15 years ago. Written out longhand, the question is “will anthropogenic global warming adversely affect future generations, yea or nay?” I think 10 years ago it was a fair answer that not enough was known, and many research projects were started. Over the course of the these last 10 years a lot of results have rolled in. Most of them favor the “yea” position, and most scientists have ended up on that side. The weak riposte is that “consensus is not science.”

How sick is that? Most evidence piled up on the “yea” side, but it has somehow become reverse-evidence to the “nay” folks. They tell us, that somehow, having more scientists and more evidence, makes the other side wrong.

Think about it.

I just popped in a few lines of code to fight comment spam. They are nothing special, they just ask you to type in your name twice, but that might be enough.

After all, why should the spammers put in special code for this when (as far as I know), I’m the only one with this cheezy anti-spam technique?