dark skies, sunny spirits
Regarding Carbon Capture from Coal (and other places)
The following was my complete response to Bob Williams Bnet article about carbon capture as it relates to coal.
Click here to view Bob’s article.
Its painful to watch and listen to these hot issues play themselves out. What someone is really looking for is something that doesn’t and never will exist…which is a way to keep using more and more energy, to make more and more stuff and keep everything as usual without anyone ever really having to face up to the reality of it all.
Carbon capture (cc) while possible is a red herring. The promotion of the idea appeases the public by giving them what I coin as “environmental hope”. Whether anyone believes cc is viable or not it is irrelevant because it serves to divert attention from other environmental problems that have real solutions that could be easily handled with technologies and other strategies right now. Our governments are not really interested in solving the real problems by promoting practical and viable ideas because these would continue to reduce demand on energy and materials. While this is truly what is needed in terms of the environment, it doesn’t fit into the equation of greed and the illusion of wealth, which is really the real agenda.
Carbon and coal are “inseparable” therefore, if carbon capture is adopted as a viable means of greening energy production it becomes a new layer of energy consuming technology in and of itself. Everyone pays for it and it becomes entrenched in power production to maintain the environmental quality standards. I understand its not cheap and since lots of money is flowing into into R and D for it, we’ll see lots of players lining up at the trough. I do hope something good and viable and feasible comes out of it. It would be great if coal could be made cleaner, if coal is something we need to use on such a large scale. But with carbon capture technology we will use even more coal to get the same electrical power generation. This equates to even more coal extraction projects, open pit mines, etc.
Here is a quote taken from a government of Canada publication regarding the problem I have just stated indicating innefficiencies that increase fuel use by up to 40%:
“All technologies as applied to energy generation effectively reduce efficiency, increasing the amount of CO2 created (and therefore necessary to capture) per unit of energy produced. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has estimated that the increase in energy required to capture the CO2 is between 10% and 40% depending on the technology; the natural gas combined cycle requires the least and pulverized coal requires the most.(4) Capturing CO2 is the most energy-intensive phase (and therefore the largest contributor to CO2 releases and costs of energy production) in a complete carbon capture and storage mechanism.”
(Tim Williams, Science and Technology Division
10 March 2006)
Furthermore, it could increase the cost of energy by over 90%. Again this is taken from another research paper prepared for the Government of Canada:
“Overall, it is estimated that capturing, transporting and storing the CO2 from a new gas- or coal-fired power plant would increase the cost of electricity generated by that plant by between 37% and 91%. This translates into a CO2 mitigation cost of US$30-91/tonne, making CCS a comparatively high-cost method for mitigating carbon emissions, at least for the time being. The IPCC report warns that because there is “relatively little commercial experience with configuring all of these components into fully integrated CCS systems at the kinds of scales which would likely characterize their future deployment,” these cost estimates are highly uncertain.
(Frédéric Beauregard-Tellier,Economics Division,13 March 2006)
Canada is very interested in carbon capture for use in Alberta Tar sands. I’m not sure how dirty the enery from the tar sands are compared to coal but I know its giving Canada a bad reputation on the global energy market. Once again though, while a nice thought, carbon capture merely adds to the already expensive process of getting fuel from this resource. I don’t have the exact figures at hand but the current cost to produce a litre of fuel from tar sand is roughly insane give or take a few idiots. I can’t imagine proposing anything that would add to the cost…that would be crazy!
Even if all the carbon was captured, the millions of hectares of nature consumed by stripping the earth will never be returned in our lifetime. The air will still contain other contaminants that escape the process and contribute to health problems. Finally and unfortunately, I think the effort is being promoted for the wrong reasons while mascarading for the right ones, therefore it is designed to deliver a facade of benefits while changing very little for the better.
People will likely label me pessimistic but revisit what I have said in 5 years from now and you will see what I mean without me having to write a text book about it.
Link to reading from the Alternative Power Blog: Carbon capture and storage “being oversold as a panacea”
Its not as if this is really anything new for me. The nature of my work has made cyclical lay-offs a fact of life and this time of year has often found me between contracts. This year is harder though since my winter contract got totally cut. Its not great comfort, but at least I can say that I’m not alone. If you are one of the thousands of people who has lost your job recently; my heart goes out to you and your families in these difficult circumstances.
In the best of times, this time of year brings with it added pressures and stresses for even the most resourceful and resource rich individuals. Personal and family commitments can throw us into conflict with those who we would otherwise avoid. For separated families with children there’s the jockeying for holiday visitation and the competition between parents for scoring “gift points” with their kids. Will people like my gifts and can I afford the post holiday credit card bills are popular concerns? There is pressure to put on a good show and make the holiday special. And then there are the prolific ad campaigns by charities begging for toys, food and money to brighten the Christmas of a needy family; no pressure there.
When household income stops flowing in just a bit before Christmas many are likely asking themselves questions like, “How will I make my mortgage payment?” or “How will I ever find a job in these hard times?” , among many other hard, cold questions that leave the asker with few warm or easy answers. Add to these all the stresses already mentioned and you may wonder if the words happy and holidays belong on the same page let alone together as a phrase.
So if I’m speaking directly to your situation, I’m not going to hand you all the clever cliches that people handed me over the years when I lost a job (these cliches usually came from people in higher places, one of whom shanghied $50 of mine and didn’t return it to me after I was laid off!). I was never sure if these witty little quips were suppoed to make you or the speaker feel better. My favourite to this day is, ”When one door closes another one opens”. I’ve heard it several times and I can’t help but wonder if these people ever watched the Price is Right, “Tell ‘em whats behind door number two Johnny…”
”Well Bob, its a box of Eskimo Pies and a Yak!” …wah, wah, wah, waaaaaahhh!
The fact is we don’t know what lies ahead. We don’t always chose which doors open or close…or even if another door will open. My only advice is to be open and honest with yourself, and your loved ones. It might be hard for some time so your going to have to build your team and if you’ve been neglecting your team-mates, well now is the time to make amends. You will need the support of friends and family. This can be a time of renewed closeness with loved ones, so pay close attention to the people around you and you may be rewarded with richess of other sorts.
If you are like me you will need a creative outlet…I like to blog, write songs and play guitar. If you are like me you will also need a physical outlet…I like to run and cross country-ski. If you are like me you will also need to feel that you can share your gifts with other people. Blogging helps me in some way do this but so does volunteering or even helping my wife with things. Finally, if you are like me, feeling that your skills and character are valued is very important. I am energetic, creative and passionate and when it seems like no one needs that anymore it is hard. If it is a lengthy period or you don’t find suitalbe work, it can be devastating to your self-worth. I understand very well that the loss of my job is not about me personally, but it affects me personally. My boss didn’t have to say I wasn’t valuable anymore…but someone up the line did…or society did…or I’d still be here. So don’t agonize about that, the conclusion is the same.
Here is what you can tell yourself:
I am a good person and I will share what good I am with those around me.
I will never give up. I owe it to my kids, my wife and myself to use this one chance in life that I have to do something with it.
I will nurture myself. Now is the time to put an old resolution into action…quit smoking, exercise, change your diet, perhaps become a vegetarian.
I will have faith in my tomorrow. If a door won’t open, You may have to keep knocking or knock on another. Eventually I may have to cut a hole in the wall and put in my own freekin door! but I will create a future – I will.
I will be patient and I won’t expect miracles, but I won’t expect crap either (so don’t take any!)
I will stand up for myself. My esteem may be low because I have lost a lot; and it feels like the people around me can’t count on me the way they used to, but I am the same as anyone else, and I am the same person that I used to be even if some days I feel a little less.
I can accept help and ask for it if I need it. I can graciously accept a gift with a smile and warm handshake. I don’t have to feel indebted or try to repay it…these things trivialize the sentiment of the gift giver.
Love. I will love and appreciate the people who I hold dear. I will let them know it through my words and actions. They are my greatest resources and whatever else fails I will have loved and been loved.
And finally, I thought I’d leave you with a smile
While waiting in a check out the other day I was behind an old man buying lottery tickets and I couldn’t help thinking, “Now there’s a good gig!”. The lottery business that is; thats when it hit me! Why couldn’t I make a lottery?…look at all the other ones…mine would just be one more! Here’s my idea. I would make my tickets really shiny and colourful and market them to the elderly and down and out! Then after expenses, I would take some of the money I made and pay it out to the winners, give some to charity and pay myself a couple hundred thousand a year to run it! What a good deal. I say. Jolly good.
Oi. If you scroll down through my posts, you’ll see a picture of Prime Minister Harper’s head pasted onto a body of a cooked chicken. That was to symbolize his cowardice when he took a desperate stand against the Green Party’s participation in a televised pre election debate. He came off then as a man afraid of being exposed for what he is…and now as he is about to lose his ruling government to a coalition…he is showing it again. If you watch him in parlaiment as he lashes out at the opposition, you can see him spewing his fear as he tries to put it into everyone else in earshot. I suppose George W. Bush taught him a thing or two about wielding the sword of fear at the masses. Like the insecure bully who wants to hide his own fear and weakness so does Harper govern by using fear to intimidate the Canadain public into keeping his party in power. Its a pathetic thing to watch. The coalition that was just formed to overthrow the Conservatives does have weeknesses, but it is transparent in its existence. It was not born out of fear, but of non-confidence in a government that arrogantly pushes people around when it can’t scare them into submission. Master Yoda could certainly see through Prime Minister Harper, perhaps the PM should watch Star Wars again (or even for the first time?). Maybe he would see that his dark side and weaknesses are more visible to more Canadians than he thinks; and perhaps to the people who are watching from around the World.
My advice to Stephen Harper and his Conservatives would be to admit your msitakes. You look childish in your attempt to conceal what is obvious. Don’t try to deny that you are going down, you’ll only do more damage and pull people in with you as you struggle while your getting deepeer into believing your own crap. And one more thing. Try working with people…collaboration is key in these troubled times and in any time for that matter. In your arrogance, you may fool some people some of the time, but now you are only fooling yourself. Let it go…if anything, its your grappling for power that makes Canada look politically unstable to international eyes.
I feel sorry for every baby who never experienced or never will experience the warmth and satisfaction of a mother’s breast and the gift of human nourishment that mothers have been endowed with since mammals began to walk the earth nearly 200 million years ago (yes, during the age of the dinosaur). It strikes me as a little crazy that we could practically abondon it and think so little of it. The breast is not just a nutrient dispenser for the baby…it will shape the pattern of the bonding between mother and child. The act of breastfeeding is a repetitive behaviour that begins from the early minutes of a newborns life and lasts for several years in most cases, under natural circumstances.
If established as it should be, breastfeeding is a pleasurable and rewarding experience for the mother and the baby…imagine the relationship that forms between the mother and breastfed baby…life beginning as a series of pleasurable and rewarding experiences! The baby learns about human touch, trust, warmth and nurturing…the mother is empowered by her body’s ability and gains confidence as a woman and mother. These are the early stones in the foundation that will build a child, a human being a family and a community. It should be our societal goal to reestablish this birthright of babies. Our focus should be to build support for this innately human activity for the sake of children, mothers and our human species. We are selling out our own humanity to do any less.
As World Breastfeeding Week approaches, we are reminded by INFACT Canada about this year’s theme “Mother Support: Reclaiming our Breastfeeding Culture.”, and that ensuring a culture of support for breastfeeding is everyone’s responsibility. World Breastfeeding Week in Canada runs from October 1-7 this year.
Lets think about that “culture of support”. If we think about what that really means it is a very tall order. A true culture of support would not be letting babies and mothers down. Workplaces would encourage it and mothers would be given extended parental leaves to accommodate it…fathers would be advocates for their children and their wives. Breastfeeding would be the logical option and would be the dominant way to feed newborns…exclusively for their first few months! ”Formula” would become just a memory or history book name that connected it to the “dark ages” of infant care.
GONE INSANE
Finally…I might as well say it. Its pretty obvious to me that people have gone insane…as a society for sure and even as individuals. We have lost the ability to see and act on the totally obvious. We have lost the ability to distinguish what is truly important for our own species…some may claim to but then fail to demand it for themselves or their loved ones. We are ignorant of our gifts, wasting them while denying our offspring what has been essential to our success and development as human beings. We are fixated on bullshit most of the time… and like a village idiots we waste our time on earth. New cars, vacations to exotic places, 40 pairs of shoes, cell phones, our use and consumption of most electronic media are diversions to pursuing our own fulfilment. OK sometimes I like to rant. But think about it. Why would a mother, driven by millions of years of biological programming, forfeit her own breasts and motherly instincts to feed her child for use of some smelly, cheesy, factory made mystery goop with a scary reputation? When someone has a better answer let me know.
If you want answers about breatfeeding though, you can find support and answers…just don’t make your local medical practioner, nurse, or health unit experts your primary sources of information…to a large extent these are the people responsible for perpetuating the formula feeding culture we now live in. If you care about babies, women, family or humanity you owe it to yourself to champion the cause of breastfeeding. Here are some places to start:
La Leche League International: http://www.llli.org/ to find support networks in your community
The Infant Feeding Action Coalition, Canada www.infactcanada.ca/
Breastfeeding.com, http://www.breastfeeding.com/ a collection of everything related to breastfeeding but most importantly a live Q and A line with IBCLC lactation consultants. IBCLC or International Board-Certified Lactation Consultants can also be found at the International Lactation Consultant Association site http://www.ilca.org/ .
First Chicken then Feeling the Heat!
Canadian voters can be sure of a very colourful campaign this fall! Harper embraces Green in the television leaders debate…but not until his “blue” party showed thier ”yellow” side. I think he realized how it made him look…afraid! The Green Party is a party that embodies a new global consciousness and conscience about our planet. To have Elizabeth May in the televised election debate will be as irritating for Harper as ants in his pajamas! All the candidates will have to sharpen their skills and shift toward the greens platform or experience the full force of the Greens. All candidates probably know that the polls after the debate will deliver sobering news to them about the Greens boost in popularty. For the other candidates, it would have been good to keep the Greens down…but then they realized that looking like cowards was worse!
I could wax on about my own journey into the 
vegetarian lifestyle but…OK, maybe I’ll wax on a little, since you asked so nicely. Before I do though, might I just say it is the best and easiest decision I have ever made!
In 1996, my family lived next door to a tri-athlete who was a family man in his mid 30’s. Our families became friends. We soon discovered that he was also a vegetarian. My wife and I had always been interested in becoming vegetarian but we were unsure about what to do…surely it couldn’t be as easy as cutting meat out of our diet! Well, Clive, our neighbour seized the opportunity to feed our curious nature and lent us a book called Diet for a New America, by John Robbins. It changed our life.
Was becoming vegetarian as easy as eliminating meat from our diet? My answer is yes. That is precisely what we did. A bit at a time we started to eliminate meat. One of the first things we discovered from our friend and from reading was that our society eats way too much protein and that by eating some grains, vegetables and beans in place of meat, you still have ample protein in your diet. For the first 3 or 4 months we ate meat once or twice a week. As we learned more ways to cook with beans, rice, and other alternatives we eventually eliminated meat…after a couple more months. We did not however, eliminate milk and eggs; we did cut back though.
Another book that helped us on our way was Becoming Vegetarian which I have posted on my vegetarian website; it gave us dietary confidence and reassurance that our choice was healthy for us and the planet. You will also find the “Diet for a New America” , on my Becoming Vegetarian website.
There are a lot of things one could do for the planet. Becoming vegetarian trumps almost any other single decision you might make to reduce your negative impact on the planet. It is also perhaps the healthiest single decision you can make for your own life, effectively reducing your risk of dozens of cancers and other ailments. What are you waiting for…just go ahead and make the best and easiest decision in your entire life. And you can learn as you go, like my family and I did!
To see my other site and find my best book picks on becoming a vegetarion click here… LETS GO
I’ve always thought of Canada as a world leader. Our innovation sets us apart from many other nations, especially when you consider our low population. Historically, zippers and national health care and in more modern times the Canada Arm on the space shuttle. In terms of humanitarian effort we do pretty well; our legacy of peacekeeping for instance, and foreign aid to countries in need. I’m sure we are a leader in education in some respect and in helping to feed a hungry planet; but the challenge that lies ahead for our planet will require us to blend innovation on both of those fronts. For various reasons (lets not get into all of them here), crops have failed and are failing in many crop growing regions of the world, a few multinational corporations are producing and controlling larger and larger proportions of the worlds food supply and the human population of the earth is increasing. If recent food prices and forecasts for astronomical food prices aren’t putting some fear into you then you should give yourself a pinch. I don’t want to dwell on the images of a future where we have failed to act, my time and yours is better spent on taking action and getting others to take action. My answer is to grow food.
Growing food for yourself (and others) reduces some of the demand on the worlds food supply. Schools can take a lead role in this by reviving a spirit of self sufficiency in their school community and setting up a program to grow food. It doesn’t have to be a lot, just some; enough to “feel” significant for the students. Enough for students to feel like they can make the world a better, healthier place. Enough to spark students’ imaginations, to plant the seeds of innovation that they, and we, may need to realize a healthy and secure supply of food for our planet’s population.
Administrators and teachers are always looking for ways to make students recognize the consequences of their actions and to take responsibility for them…well…growing food is a great place to start! I don’t want to sound too much like a teacher, but think of the cross curricular learning potential! Science…too much to cover here; Social Studies…study a country or culture and try growing a representative food; Art…sketch it, paint it; Language Arts…journal it, record it, read about it, talk about it! The possibilities are almost endless. And then there is the impact of…Growing a living thing. Just saying it or reading those words carries weight…do it and you are forever changed. You become nurturer, parent, aware. Your plant responds to you and the world around you. You make an investment in, and become connected to life; your labour; your plant, your food. Suddenly you are connected to the plants and foods of the planet. If you are an educator, then you know I am right about this. There are published examples of the impact of gardens and plants grown by kids and adults in schools and communities and time after time it brings about poitive change to those people and their communities (Good link here is Evergreen Foundation).
The only question here is “why”. Why are we not doing something now? It would have been better to do it 30 years ago, but now is what we’ve got. And I would suggest that tomorow…no…today, we need to start growing with our children to enculture a future with citizens capable of not just surviving, but thriving. A future where Canadian innovation in *self sufficiency in food production is a model for the world, and a future where global food shortages is not going to threaten them or their children.
*self sufficiency…just a note: genuine self sufficiency is a sustainable activity. If my “self sufficiency” depletes or poisons the earths resources over time then its only a facade. I could grow enough to feed my village if I intensified my use of pesticises and fertillizers, but now I’m increasingly dependent on other resources not to mention the fact that I’m destroying the system that allows things to live in the first place. The same holds true for Genetically Altered Crops, except for them we are placing a high wager on the success of a vary narrow gene pool…a pool of one set of genes in fact!
Below are the titles of some literature that would make excellent reading for those interested in learning more about this topic. But don’t read them before you start growing…JUST DO IT! I’ll put some links in later so come back!
The Hundred Mile Diet
Monocultures of the Mind
Diet for a New America
Tragedy of the Commons Garret Hardin (an essay)
Its a repugnent but undenialbe truth about the products that we use everyday…they come with a serious environmental price tag that we are barely paying the interest on! Any number of toys or electronic devices that have rechargeable batteries pose a serious risk to the ecosystem and of course our health when they are improperly disposed of. The stuff in those batteries is Hazardous Waste. Heavy metals in these batteries can leach from landfill sites where they enter and remain in the food chain, contaminating the bodies of everything they enter, causing cancers, birth defects, and a number of other serious health and environmental problems.
Now consider this fact: In a Statistics Canada report form 2005-06, an estimated 450 million batteries were sold in Canada in 2004, of which 348 million were thrown out with regular household waste. (The above statistic was cited in the March 29, 2008, Windsor Star, in an article by Sharon Hill. Sharon’s article also reports on the problem of prescription drug disposal and the problem of these drugs showing up in our drinking water).
Another Fact:
The current system for helping these products find their way to Hazardous Waste facilities is so impractical that it doesn’t feel accessible for even the “Green Oriented” Folks in our society. Take my community for example, the household hazardous waste collection depot is a 30 minute drive from my home in a remote location, and it only accepts waste on sporadic occasions (to be fair they have a callendar, but the days and times are few and far between). So, I’ve got my batteries in a bag hanging in my laundry room. They have been accumulating since I moved here 9 years ago! While it may be true that if I really made the effort I could have taken them their already, but why would I? True, I have had other Hazardous Wastes that I was saving for propper disposal but the stores where they were sold offered to take these back (paint, tires and motor oil in these cases), and my local landfill site took my old refrigerator ( they have a contract with a service that pumps out the refrigerant).
Some Questions:
Why don’t businesses take back the waste from products like batteries and small electronic devices for proper disposal? I realize that some do, but more don’t. If companies don’t have a foolproof plan take care of this aspect of the stuff they sell, then should they sell it?
Some of My Answers to This Problem:
Industry’s Answer:
I think Industry is on the right track with the Rechargeabe Battery Recycling Corporation and its Charge Up to Recycle Program. Its a licensing program that allows businesses that comply with the program to carry the “Charge Up to Recycle” logo. In a market driven economy they have realized that it makes good sense to be green and tell people about it. To be fair their are and have always been industry people who have been concerned with the environmnetal impacts of their activities just because they are good citizens. To read about the Charge up to Recylce Program and its success click here: Rechargeabe Battery Recycling Corporation press release . http://www.rbrc.org/call2recycle/releases/archived/11.3.98.html .
Better yet, to find a “Charge up to Recycle” centre call: 1-800-8-BATTERY or by go on-line at www.rbrc.org.
A Final Note
I’m not sure about the effectiveness of the above program in practice and I’m not clear about how they gaurantee that participants comply with the program. Nor do I know about other quality control measures in place to ensure that recycling of returned batteries actually gets done. Is it empty green marketing or the real deal? And who pays for it? I would feel better if I could tell people the answers to those questions. There are other programs out there and we should be aware of them and there should be accountability that addresses the questions above…and I’m sure my list of questions is far from comprehensive but its a start.
Consumers have power! We all have a lot at stake. Our children, our health, the quality of the food, water and air that we put into our bodies and of course there’s the planet. Lets do something to make a difference.
If you know of an innovative program, other readers might like to know!
Tonight my son reminded me of an idea that I thought would be fading fast in a world where people are starving and whatnot. The idea; Building a “Moon Station”. I don’t even want to know how many billion dollars it would cost, but someone should let the children at NASA or the Nations that support this kind of bologna that people should get thier crap together on earth first and use the $ to take care of each other. What’s your opinion?
