The Environment

• Some Perspective on the Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill

  Panic time, folks. News stories about impending environmental disasters. A couple of senators calling for hearings. The media calling it "Obama's Katrina". Time for that rarest of things, perspective. 1. Chance that a US operated Gulf of Mexico rig sinks and spills?  A. 0.025% or 1 in 4000. 2. How much oil will this spill (worst case scenario)?  A. 150,000 barrels. 3. How much is it leaking now?  A. 5,000 barrels per day, although it sounds so much bigger when you multiply by 42 and put it into gallons. 4. How much natural oil seepage is there in the Gulf of Mexico?  A.  5,000…

• Gulf Oil Spill Rapidly Expanding Through Region (Picture)

  The NOAA picture below predicts the potential path the Gulf Oil Spill could take. This is where it could have spread to by the end of the day. At present the spill is largely Louisiana state waters at the mouth of the Mississippi River to waters off Florida’s Pensacola Bay.

• The Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill - No Easy Economic or Environmental Solutions

  We have all been reading about the blowout that led to huge fire and sinking of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Now there is news that there is a huge oil spill coming from the underground pipe where this occurred, and there is a possibility that it will be months before it can be stopped. What does this all mean? How could this happen? Below the fold, I will tell you the story as I understand it. It seems to me that the great depth and attendant pressures, and the learning curve that goes working…

• Carbon Sequestration - Is burying Carbon Dioxide underground a realistic option?

  Climate Change is having a great impact on global perspectives, which is leading Governments and Businesses to take a serious look at Carbon Sequestration (CCS.) This means that instead of drilling gases out of the bottom of the planet, there is now a push to capture carbon dioxide (CO2) from the gases discarded by industry and transporting and injecting it into underground geological formations. On November 4, 2009, European Union Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs and US Secretary for Energy Steven Chu launched a new EU-US Energy Council in Washington, DC to “continue and deepen” cooperation in energy and environmental subjects…

• Climate Change: Clean Coal, Nuclear Energy or Simply Energy Savings?

  On November 6, 2009 The World Coal Institute released its new report "Securing the Future - Financing CCS in a Post-2012 World." One revealing sentence on the website says “significant investments are needed in Carbon Capture and Geological Storage (CCS) to allow the technology to play its critical role in global efforts to address climate change” further stressing that governments have a central role to play, notably to finance this new technology that cannot be borne alone by the private sector. The report comes out at a time where the “clean coal” concept is the latest trend, like saving the…

• Speakable and Unspeakable About The Copenhagen Climate Meeting

  An informative essay by Ferdinand E. Banks on the Copenhagen Climate meeting, Energy Economics, the Nuclear revival and why Global Warming should be uniting us / not dividing as a new energy economy needs to be put into place- and fast! Several years ago I gave a number of energy economics lectures which included an insistence that the Kyoto conference on the environment was badly flawed. My reasoning turned on the neglect of nuclear energy, as well as the decision taken at that meeting to promote cap-and-trade (or emissions trading) as the main device for offsetting a too rapid accumulation…

• The economic impact of global warming

  The costs of Global Warming are tremendous, estimates of course vary but most figures put out are in the trillions. So what does this mean for you and how are you directly affected by these costs? It’s difficult to answer that question, because the first large-scale study of the economic impact of global warming wasn’t released until recently. But let’s look at some of the data we do have. In 2007, scientists at the Carnegie Institution measured, over the past 20 years, the annual yields of the world’s six largest crops (which account for 55% of non-meat calories consumed by…

• Oil and the Environment - What are Oil Companies Doing to Clean up Their Act

  The world continues to thirst for oil with in an ever increasing fervor, yet simultaneously struggles to fully grasp and appreciate the obstacles encountered by those who bring that oil to their local pumps. There has always been a necessary trade-off when it comes to technology and industrial advancement, as in order to experience the many benefits modern society offers us, we have to agree to give up some portion of nature and accept a certain amount of environmental damage. Logic dictates that “we can’t have our cake and eat it to,” but recently the oil industry has been seeking…

• Global Warming - Are We Being Lied To?

  Am I the only person concerned about the glaringly obvious inconsistencies regarding the information we are being fed on global temperature changes? Why am I hearing more and more respected climatologists warning us of a potential “Mini-Ice Age” approaching if the cooling trends of the earth’s atmosphere don’t reverse? Yet at the exact same time, governments continue to push more and more “draconian” edicts supposedly intended to protect us from our own self inflicted, impending demise brought about by Global Warming? Did you know that according to many scientists, temperatures around the planet have actually been on a steady decline…

• Oil Spills: The Science Behind Cleanups!

  As long as we continue to enjoy the vast benefits brought to our lives by our consistent utilization of oil, we will constantly be at periodic risk of experiencing the occasional, accidental oil spill. All oil spills are bad, but logically those occurring near the coastline are potentially far more devastating, simply because of the vast animal and plant life placed in eminent danger! Coastal areas are home to far more concentrated and diversified populations of marine and land life than is found in the greater depths of the sea. However, if not properly dealt with immediately, even spills out…