Alternative Energy and Renewable Fuels are today's headliners and attention grabbers. I have been doing quite a bit of research on the state of play for the future of fuels, I wanted to see what the advances were and what the possible impacts and hindrances to their widespread deployment really are, sans green-washing and hype. So I took a little surf over the Internet and looked at many hours of amazingly boring videos of lectures and focus groups on the subjects, pain I endured to bring you this update on the state of play in the field of alternative fuels.

I really wanted to know where we are headed and how fast and what could trip us up along the way, now I am no expert in this field and I would greatly appreciate any input you, my readers, can provide that covers anything I missed this time through.

The Technologies Read More »

Evil oil companies! Record prices for gasoline in the US have prompted even the greenest amongst the government to pause their green washing of America to pounce on the oil companies for allegedly doing what they wanted, getting people to drive less. Carbon Taxes, Cap and Trade will all work to raise fossil fuel prices and force consumers to change their habits, this is the basic premise of these policies, so now as the prices rise and they see the real effect that their policies would have had if enacted, they seem to be singing another tune.

So if the market is doing for you what you were getting resistance from others to do yourself, I am forced to ask, "What is your beef with oil prices?"

I wait patiently for the driving season increase in fuel prices here in BC which will happen at the exact same time our now famous Carbon Tax wi ... Read More »

I am kind of at a loss for words here, I guess the simple thing would be just to attempt to explain what is happening. The "scientists" over at RealClimate.com have challenged the German climate modellers who recently published their "peer reviewed" paper on the results of their new climate model runs to a wager on the validity of their predictions. This new paper Keenlyside et al. 2008 makes some short term, single decade,  long predictions regarding the global combined land and ocean surface temperature record. The basis of the wager is simple; Read More »

I do not know about you but I hate being put on hold, or "Ignore" as I call it, when you are trying to reach someone who is much too busy to be bothered with you. This seems to be the case with Global Warming and the Earth. Seems the planet is far too busy with real climate issues to be distracted by the AGW theory, much to the dismay of the climate faithful world-wide who are now simply falling back to the climate change argument that they set-up for just this purpose.

Recently in the journal Nature German climate scientists published new results of a coupled ocean-atmospheric model that now shows a decade out prediction, the result is cooler temperatures until at least 2015. This is similar to the last run that predicted cooler temperatures until 2009 followed by a 50/50 chance of renewed warming that came out in 2005. This re-modelling of the climate is starting to be ... Read More »

We all have been reading the back and forth on bio-fuels and how they are and alternatively not affecting food prices and supply. The common advocate argument is simple, corn and wheat cannot possibly be affecting the price the rice so there must be something else to blame. Well the problem is one of interdependencies in the food supply and it something that everyone is missing in the debate. I will walk you through how wheat and corn being turned into fuel actually does raise the price of rice.

The Formula is Simple

The easiest way to show how wheat and corn demands for bio-fuels are responsible for the pressure on rice supply is with some math and a basic understanding of commodities and agriculture. The formula can be described as a simple one of total demand less the availability of wheat of corn. I use this ver ... Read More »

I've just read an article on MSN / Sympatico called "The cheapest way to save the Earth", which actually made sense to me - and it is about lifestyle changes!

Now a caveat: I don't actually agree with it all, but I do agree with the main premise - that going green is not about buying all the latest and greatest eco-alternatives that come along. Something I have been saying for years: you cannot consume your way out of catastrophic man made global warming (if you are so inclined to believe in it) to arrive at a better place.

The point that resonates the most with me, and which I have always consider ... Read More »

I swear this is true, for the last three years I have had a running joke with colleagues and family about investing in what I termed "Beaker Meat", or the cultured muscles of livestock animals grown in a laboratory and sold as a consumable food product. I read about the technology in a magazine, Scientific American I think, on a flight to Europe, I was very intrigued with the science and possible uses for it as a food source, everyone I explained it to seemed to find my notion quite ridiculous and I started a running joke about the virtues of "Beaker Meat" and how this investment was the future of food. Now Andrew Revkin the King of Climate Change at The New York Times, has published this gem of an article, "Can People Have M ... Read More »

I was reading the press about, as well as, the new study itself by Sloan and Wolfendale regarding the theory of cosmic rays and cloud formation in regards to global warming. Apparently their research shows no link between cosmic rays and clouds. This theory was advanced in the book by Svenmark called "The Chilling Stars" and is a theory that has been repeatedly attacked by the AGW and cited by the "deniers". The main point of this paper is summed up in the abstrac ... Read More »

 I just read a news article and saw confirmation on CBC that Al Gore is coming to Montreal, Canada this weekend April 4-6, 2008 to indoctrinate a new legion of climate faithful, some 200 people will join the coveted environmental "World According to Gore" rolls. First Al Gore is not a teacher, he is a preacher, he is training people to give a science based presentation without any real understanding of the science as clearly pointed out by the alarming numbers of errors in his movie, and task them with "finding any available venue" from which to "spread the word". I seem to remember similar organizations based on the teaching of a single point of truth that participated in this sort of indoctrination of the chosen into the ranks of the faithful, then sent them out into the world to convert as many as they could. They gave rise to the almost as ridiculous business of rescuing and deprogramming people at the behest ... Read More »

I was just sitting here having a overwhelming feeling of nostalgia for the good old days, you remember those right? That was the time when the environmental movement was the fringe element, when going green was a tolerable background noise in society's media and marketing system. This was before governments fell under the spell of Anthropogenic Global Warming and succumbed to the pressures of the  environmental special interest lobby. The world before carbon taxes, innovation fund levies, congestion charges and rising food and energy costs. I remember when advertising was geared around extolling the advantages of a product, not it's greenness and eco-friendly impacts, never mind the product is rubbish as long as it has a number of green endorsements making it superior to competitors. Those good old days when friends and neighbours did not argue about trees shading someone's solar panels, the solar panel owner taking his neighbour to cour ... Read More »