July Was Warmest Month On Record NOAA Reports, Lists All "Signifiicant Climate Anomalies And Events"
Showing posts with label Climate Change. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Climate Change. Show all posts
Friday, August 21, 2015
Monday, February 04, 2013
Powered by LIthium: Tesla Model S Performance vs Dodge Viper SRT10 Drag Racing 1/4 Mile
The Future is here. Electric Cars are not toys any more. Tesla Model S clearly demonstrates what can be achieved with the new groundbreaking developments in Lithium Batteries and Electric Power-trains. You can slip into the post carbon world without any compromise in style or performance now.
Lithium Charge: The new Tesla Model S is a torque beast: Tesla Model S vs BMW M5
There is no place for the Internal Combustion Engine in this one for sure. 19th century technology based on controlled explosions of the Dinosaurs Poop under your boot is living the last days...
Powered by LIthium: Tesla Motors - Why Is It So Hard? Because "It Is Impossible."
"It is not the newest Video from Tesla, but it is the one with one of the best Energies we have seen so far - This is The Future and it is already here."
Chris Martenson: Peak Oil - The Really, Really Big Picture
2012: The Year Climate Change Got Real
GreenCarReports:
Tesla Model S Performance: Fastest Electric Car
"The Tesla Model S Performance looks great on paper.
Not only does the 85 kWh Model S have an impressive 265-mile EPA-rated range, but it'll do the benchmark 0-60 mph sprint in only 4.4 seconds.
That means the all-electric luxury sport sedan from Tesla Motors [NSDQ:TSLA] is at least as fast as V-8 German super sedans like the BMW M5.
But how do you quantify that sort of speed in the real world? If you're Drag Times, you put it on the strip, preferably head to head against an American legend like the Dodge Viper SRT10. And then you beat it.
Yup, the near-silent Tesla made a mockery of the shiny red sports car--posting a quarter-mile time of little over 12 seconds in the process.
A second video shows the Tesla's fastest pass, at 12.371 seconds and 110.84 mph. There aren't a great many production cars which would do better--mostly vehicles well into the "supercar" or "hypercar" brackets, and at even higher cost than the Model S.
Some of the other statistics are outstanding too.
Drag Times recorded a 3.9-second 0-60 mph time on their VBOX timing gear. Given the Tesla's hefty weight at the curb of 4,690 lbs, it's even more impressive--weight is typically the enemy of speed.
Huge low-down torque helps, of course--the 416-hp Model S Performance develops 443 lbs-ft from zero to 5,100rpm, and power delivery is much smoother too.
While that driver in the Viper had to manage wheelspin and shift gears, the Tesla driver just has to sink the right pedal and keep it on the floor until he passes the 1/4-mile mark.
We'd love to see what other car giants the Model S is capable of killing.
With zero emissions and supercar-slaying acceleration, it seems you can really have your cake and eat it too."
Sunday, February 03, 2013
Powered by LIthium: Is 2013 the Year of the Electric Car?
Gallup makes a very good overview of the Plug-In Hybrids and pure Electric Cars available in 2013. And if we are talking about Electric Cars and have a picture of Slash in the video - his Anastasia will be The Good Energy here.
LIthium Game On. Obama Throws Down the Challenge on Climate Change
Powered by LIthium: Tesla Motors - Why Is It So Hard? Because "It Is Impossible."
Lithium M&A "Art of War": Talison Lithium backs $848,000,000 Chinese Takeover Bid TLH.to, ILC.v, LMR.v, RM.v
"If you have the Feeling that your children are losing something - you could be right this time. The last opportunity to Escape the Civil War, which will follow The Break Down of the Social fabric in the Western Society is fading by the hours now, not even years. "
Tuesday, January 22, 2013
LIthium Game On. Obama Throws Down the Challenge on Climate Change
2012: The Year Climate Change Got Real
We have the technology - Electric Cars are already here:
Powered by LIthium: Tesla Motors - Why Is It So Hard? Because "It Is Impossible."
Tuesday, January 08, 2013
2012: The Year Climate Change Got Real
For how long the hired guns will deny the obvious at our expense?
The Price of Oil: Exxon Hates Your Children. Satire with a serious message.
We have the Solution - Electric Cars are here already, but Will They Give You The Real Choice?
"If you have the Feeling that your children are losing something - you could be right this time. The last opportunity to Escape the Civil War, which will follow The Break Down of the Social fabric in the Western Society is fading by the hours now, not even years."
"2012 may be remembered as the year Climate Change got real for Americans.
James Hansen Interview by Climate One
Paul Douglas Weather Nation 2012 Review
NPR: The Year Climate Change Got Real
http://www.npr.org/2012/12/26/168091109/climate-change-gets-real-for-americans
Eric Rignot on Antarctic warming
http://climatecrocks.com/2012/12/24/eric-rignot-on-west-antarctica-warming/
Tom Karl interviewed on PBS News Hour
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/weather/july-dec12/weather_07-10.html
Climate Crocks playlist
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=029130BFDC78FA33
Join the conversation at http://www.climatecrocks.com"
Saturday, November 03, 2012
IMF Study: Peak Oil Could Do Serious Damage To The Global Economy
Lithium - Electric Cars Made in USA: On 2012 Tesla Model S Production: 1,000 Bodies
"Different people will look at the same picture and will see very different things. We see proud people making the Future - Electric Cars on the American soil - Made in USA, when you can be proud again. Now we have 1000 Best Messages about the Alternative ready to go on the streets in the nearest future. Every Tesla Model S on the street will be telling the story that the life as we know it can be different: No Pollution, No Big Oil and their puppets, No Dangerous Fracking releasing cancerous chemicals in the underground water water. Now we have the Technology - Electric Cars - which allow you really to have a choice and not just participate in theSilly Season of Election Circus, but to vote with your wallet. By buying Electric Cars we refuse to finance further wars and terrorism with our money - our Taxes are already spent there. Now we just need to make many more Electric Cars, reduce prices of the Lithium Batteries with Volume and make the Generation III - Tesla Electric Car for the mass market."
Powered by Lithium: Electric Cars Made in USA - 2012 Tesla Model S - Jay Leno's Garage
"Our hat goes off to Jay Leno! You can hardly call him a "Tree Hugger" with his own garage full of Beautiful Beasts, which are not just consuming Gas, but literally Guzzle it by gallons. Everything is solid about this man, his career, his relaxed "down to earth" approach, his reluctance to take any sides. He knows everything about cars and how to enjoy those ones, which are Really Good. Tesla Model S is the first Electric Car, which was not trucked to his Garage and you can Burn Some Tires as well!
"The problem with Electric Car is Solved! It is made right here in America by Americans and it is pretty cool! The Future of Burn Out is saved with Tesla model S." Jay Leno.
"Our prayers go to all Those affected by the Hurricane Sandy - should we talk about the reality of the Climate Change and Dangers of Fracking now?
"We are out of politics, we just Do Not Like Lies in all forms. We are running Rock Against BS here - our small contribution to the humanity. We have our Heroes and you know them as well:
Search for the truth is the noblest occupation of man; its publication is a duty.
We think that, actually, it is the best AD campaign for the Electric Cars so far in the Mass Media. For the first time a lot of people will realise that there is an Alternative to the Oil Needle, and this Threat is so strong now that very big resources are dedicated to kill this Energy Transition Technology Made In USA and throw the country back into the Oil Swamp.
We all will be driving Electric Cars in the end - question is now not even when, but whether They Will All be built in China and Only Sold back to us here.
The best approach will be just to dig it out for yourself and make your own opinion, as usual, we have some unproven theories below."
Meet his top energy adviser: billionaire oil tycoon Harold Hamm.
Why Other Countries Aren't Fracking - U.S. Gas Bonanza Slow To Spread Globally
The Washington Post:
IMF study: Peak oil could do serious damage to the global economy
Posted by Brad Plumer on October 27, 2012
The world isn’t going to run out of oil anytime soon. But there’s still concern among various geologists and analysts that our oil supply won’t grow as quickly or as easily as it used to. We’ll have to resort to harder-to-drill oil to satisfy our crude habits. More expensive oil. That would push prices up. And high oil prices could act as a drag on growth.
These spigots are getting mighty squeaky… (Associated Press)
This, at any rate, is the basic ideabehind “peak oil.” And there’s some reason for worry. Between 1981 and 2005, world oil production grew at a steady pace of about 1.8 percent per year. All was well. But starting around 2005, oil production appeared to plateau. And, since demand for oil kept rising, especially in countries like China and India, that caused prices to soar. Oil doesn’t get much cheaper than $100 per barrel these days. And that, some economists worry, has acted as a drag on growth around the world.
So how bad would it be if peak oil was really upon us? That’s a question that two IMF economists try to tackle in a new working paper, “Oil and the World Economy: Some Possible Futures.” (pdf) The authors, Michael Kumhof and Dirk Muir, don’t make any definitive predictions about how the oil supply will evolve. Rather, they try to model a number of different scenarios in which oil does become more scarce and the world tries to adapt.
The paper itself offers an interesting look at how the world might cope with higher oil prices, so let’s take a look at the various scenarios:
1) Oil production grows very slowly or plateaus. This is the baseline scenario that Kumhof and Muir use. They assume that oil grows by about 1 percentage point less each year than its historical average. So, let’s say, oil grows at a steady 0.8 percent per year rather than the 1.8 percent annual average between 1981 and 2005. This isn’t a temporary oil disruption like the one we saw in 2008. It’s a persistent, long-term supply shock.
What would happen? Oil prices, the IMF model suggests, would gradually double in 10 years and quadruple over 20 years. Regions that import oil on net, such as Europe and the United States, would see a small hit to growth—about 0.2 to 0.4 percentage points each year. Countries that export, like Saudi Arabia, would get a lot wealthier.
2) Oil production grows at a slower rate, but the world adapts fairly easily. In this scenario, oil production declines, but countries start switching to electric cars or fueling their vehicles with natural gas. Vehicles and manufacturers become more efficient. In economist terms, the “elasticity” of demand quickly increases.
Under this scenario, the United States and Europe take just a small hit to growth, about 0.1 to 0.2 percentage points per year. Japan and Asia actually get a boost to their economy, since they can adapt to higher oil prices and export more stuff to oil-producing countries in the Middle East. All told, this is a fairly happy outcome.
3) Oil production grows at a slower rate, but the world can’t find substitutes. As the IMF authors note, it’s not assured that the world can quickly adapt to steadily increasing oil prices. Oil is, after all, quite valuable and hard to replace. Electric cars may not catch on. It’s tough to build infrastructure for natural-gas vehicles. The chemical industry might struggle to find substitutes for oil as feedstock. The oil substitutes that result turn out to be lower-quality. In this scenario, wealthy regions like Europe, the United States, and Japan take an annual GDP hit of 0.4 percent to 0.6 percent. That starts to hurt.
4) Oil turns out to be far more important than most economists had assumed. The Energy Information Administration estimates that petroleum purchases make up just 3.5 percent of the U.S. economy. Looked at from that angle, expensive oil shouldn’t do too much damage. But, the IMF authors note, several books and articles have pointed out that this understates how crucial oil is to the functioning of a modern economy. Many key technologies contain materials or use fuels derived from crude.
If, in fact, oil is much more important than many economic modelers have assumed, then the blow to growth from even a modest plateau in oil could be quite large—lowering growth rates by up to 1.2 percentage points over the next two decades.
5) Oil production starts shrinking rapidly. This is the doomsday scenario. Some studies have suggested that global oil production is currently on a plateau and will soon start shrinking in by around 2 percent per year. Existing wells will dry up. The world will increasingly rely on oil from places that are more expensive to develop, such as Canada’s tar sands. What happens then?
Nothing good. According to the IMF’s modeling, prices could increase by 800 percent over two decades. Growth rates in Europe and the United States would be reduced by at least a full percentage point—and much more if oil turns out to be more important than we thought. “Relative price changes of this magnitude would be unprecedented,” the authors note, “and would almost certainly have nonlinear effects on GDP that the model is not able to capture adequately.” Yikes.
In any case, these scenarios aren’t easy to model—especially since nations might respond in unpredictable ways. (If crude output started shriveling, some oil producers could start restricting exports. Or fuel subsidies could affect demand elasticity. ) All told, however, the IMF authors say it’s quite possible that a decent-sized decline in oil production could have “dramatic” effects that could prove very, very difficult for the world to adjust to."
Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Why Other Countries Aren't Fracking - U.S. Gas Bonanza Slow To Spread Globally
Our prayers go to all Those affected by the Hurricane Sandy - should we talk about the reality of the Climate Change and Dangers of Fracking now?
"We are out of politics, we just Do Not Like Lies in all forms. We are running Rock Against BS here - our small contribution to the humanity. We have our Heroes and you know them as well:
Search for the truth is the noblest occupation of man; its publication is a duty.
We think that, actually, it is the best AD campaign for the Electric Cars so far in the Mass Media. For the first time a lot of people will realise that there is an Alternative to the Oil Needle, and this Threat is so strong now that very big resources are dedicated to kill this Energy Transition Technology Made In USA and throw the country back into the Oil Swamp.
We all will be driving Electric Cars in the end - question is now not even when, but whether They Will All be built in China and Only Sold back to us here.
The best approach will be just to dig it out for yourself and make your own opinion, as usual, we have some unproven theories below."
Meet his top energy adviser: billionaire oil tycoon Harold Hamm.
Los Angeles Times:
U.S. Gas Bonanza From Fracking Slow To Spread Globally
In less than a generation, the United States has soared to world leadership in extracting natural gas from shale formations by hydraulic fracturing. But as the world debates whether “fracking” is an economic boon or a budding environmental disaster, few foreign countries are following the U.S. lead.
Conditions unique to the United States have encouraged investment in the abundant source of low-carbon energy and boosted prospects for reducing dependence on costly and unpredictable supplies of foreign oil. Of the natural gas consumed in the United States last year, 94% came from domestic production, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
“The availability of large quantities of shale gas should enable the United States to consume a predominantly domestic supply of gas for many years and produce more natural gas than it consumes,” the agency reports, predicting a 29% increase in output by 2035, almost all of it from shale fracking.
The rapid advance toward self-sufficiency has made the U.S. industry both a model and a cautionary tale for other countries pondering all-in development of their shale-gas reserves.
Significant deposits of natural gas trapped in coal and shale seams have been identified in Eastern and Western Europe, Canada, Australia, China, South Africa and the cone of South America. Global energy giants like Shell and Chevron are bankrolling billions in exploration, sizing up the cost-effectiveness of replicating the U.S. boom in more remote locales with little infrastructure.
Technological advances in horizontal drilling have made it feasible to tap small pockets of gas trapped in shale layers a mile or more below the surface. Contractors bore thousands of feet down through soil, rock and water layers, then drill laterally through the shale to create a horizontal well. When sand, water and chemicals are blasted into the bore holes, the force fractures the shale, releasing gas from fissures within the sedimentary rock. The gas is captured and ferried by pipeline to distribution grids or to port facilities where it can be converted to liquefied natural gas for overseas shipment.
But the process leaves behind tons of chemical-contaminated mud. There are also reports of drinking water pollution from the chemicals and methane gas that escapes into underground reservoirs. A study last year published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences documented “systematic evidence for methane contamination of drinking water associated with shale gas extraction” in the aquifers above the Marcellus and Utica shale formations in the U.S. Northeast. This spring, the U.S. Geological Survey reported “a remarkable increase” in the occurrence of earthquakes of magnitude 3 or larger that it tied to fracking operations.
This month, the U.S. Government Accountability Office acknowledged that the Environmental Protection Agency was finding it “challenging” to inspect and enforce clean air and clean water regulations in the fast-moving fracking industry. For example, the GAO report noted, the EPA is often unable to evaluate alleged water contamination because investigators lack information about the water quality before the fracking occurred.
In Europe, Asia, Africa and South America, mineral rights belong to the governments of most countries, not private property owners as in the United States. That creates little incentive for landowners to put up with the noise and disruption of drilling -– or the feared byproducts of air, soil and water pollution. Except in countries like Australia, where the government has the power to pressure landowners to grant access, fracking skeptics can often thwart the projects by barring the drillers from their land.
Fracking has been temporarily suspended in Britain after a series of small earthquakes in the area where exploratory drilling had been underway. France, estimated to have the largest shale gas reserves on the continent, has banned fracking out of concern for its reported environmental consequences. Bulgaria and Romania have shelved plans to sell exploration tracts, partly to appease citizens fearful of again exposing their territories to the environmental ravages that occurred during the communist era. The Czech Republic has imposed a two-year moratorium on exploration contracts, pending more thorough investigation of reported downsides. Poland and Ukraine have been more welcoming of foreign investment in shale gas, but industry analysts say they lack the infrastructure and transparency needed to convince energy giants that they could turn a profit.
Few countries enjoy the elaborate network of pipelines that exist in the United States and are a ready means of getting gas from wells to consumer markets, noted Keith Crane, senior economist and environmental policy analyst at Rand Corp. Even when encouraging quantities of shale gas are located in other countries, they face considerable infrastructure build-up costs to exploit it.
U.S. fracking operations are regulated by the individual states, not the federal government, and the geological differences across the country have led to inconsistent regulation.
Increasingly, Crane said, the prospect of litigation over pollution claims is driving a consolidation of the shale drilling industry into the hands of more established companies that have the experience and equipment to conduct pre-extraction environmental testing for their own protection.
What has allowed fracking to flourish in the United States isn’t a lack of regulation, Crane argued, rather it is the advantage U.S. landowners have over most foreigners in owning the mineral rights below their property. That allows those living over the biggest shale formations to profit according to the quantity of gas extracted, not just the one-time access fees that are landowners’ only means of cashing in elsewhere in the world.
Mounting evidence of fracking's polluting side effects is adding to many foreigners' wariness of the process. Environmentalists staged a “Global Frackdown” on Sept. 22, when demonstrators from Canada to South Africa demanded that energy companies “stop fracking with our water.”
Although the European Union has no collective policy on fracking, the 27-member alliance and its parliament do regulate chemical use on the continent. That has served to throttle development of the extraction process, said Matthias Altmann, a physicist with the German energy consulting firm Ludwig Boelkow Systemtechnik that has researched fracking for the European Parliament’s environment committee.
European energy analysts have looked to the United States for direction but find “science is lagging a few years behind the commercial progress,” Altmann said.
Little comprehensive or dispassionate study has been conducted on the nascent industry. “Gasland,” a 2010 documentary film examining groundwater pollution and other hazards attributed to fracking in rural U.S. communities, has had more impact on European attitudes than piecemeal industry research in hardening European public resistance, Altmann said.
Poland is something of an outlier with its eagerness to tap its estimated 768 billion cubic meters of natural gas, enough to supply the country’s energy needs for 50 years. The former communist state still depends heavily on Russia for natural gas supplies, a fact that still chafes at the national psyche more than 20 years after Poland broke from the Soviet yoke.
But return-on-investment issues are stifling development even there. Polish shale-gas projects would have to return five times the profit of U.S. projects because of the high cost of well drilling and building pipelines to transport the gas, geologist Pawel Poprawa of the Polish Geological Institute told colleagues at an energy conference in Amsterdam in April.
Energy demand has been highest in Asia, mainly because of China’s rapid industrial growth and consumers’ rising incomes. Japan, which is phasing out nuclear power after the Fukushima disaster in 2011, has boosted LNG purchases by more than 30% this year and is likely to turn to gas imports to replace the third of energy needs previously supplied by nuclear reactors. South Korea and Taiwan are also big LNG importers expected to drive regional demand in the next two decades, energy analysts forecast.
That promise of a nearly insatiable market is behind a major push in Australia to extract the bounty of coal seam gas in the Bowen and Surat basins spanning Queensland and New South Wales, and to build a massive LNG export facility in Gladstone Harbor to deliver the fuel to hungry northern neighbors.
Friday: Case Study Australia
Follow Carol J. Williams at www.twitter.com/cjwilliamslat
Map: Shale gas resource estimates assessed last year by the U.S. Energy Information Administration are depicted in red in this graphic of potential deposits in 32 countries. Credit: U.S. Energy Information Administration"
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