Praise Geo.

Praise Geo.

Subject:Re: April 26 Briefing - Renewable Gas, Hydropower, and Geothermal:
What is the role of these often overlooked renewable resources?
Date:Tue, 24 Apr 2012 19:39:36 -0400
From:Vane Lashua
To:ccooper@eesi.org

Ms. Cooper,
Your announcement arrived on the 18th, and I overlooked it. I could not have a ended the briefing anyway. I am a ending a conference (http://www.energy21symposium.org/ ) in Syracuse, NY, the evening of the 26th and all day the 27th.

Will the EESI program be streamed or recorded? I would very much appreciate a link.

Meanwhile ...

Often, as in the conference I am attending and below, the generic "renewables" is supposed to include bio-fuels, solar, wind, Geo and hydro! "Renewable" only works with library books.

What I'm most concerned about is that Geothermal power generation (Geo) is seldom recognized as the most cost-effective, least polluting, least resource-intensive AND most endurable alternative to nuclear, coal, gas, petroleum, wind and solar for base/regional power generation. Except for the negative environmental impacts of artificial reservoirs and its dependence on a continuous water resource, hydro is the only competitor to Geothermal.

That probably sounds like a baseless proposition if one were to base judgment on the truly baseless and dismissive assertion, "... the hot temperatures required for power generation are found primarily in the West", contained in your description of it and in most other summary assessments. Please don't take offense. The President, the Administration, Congress and most of the rest of us ignore or are innocently ignoring. Absurd coal, gas and oil commercials don't help: "America's Fuel: Clean Coal" or "Clean Gas" or "fulfilling the promise of energy independence" or "energy for the next 80 years".

Unfortunately there are no commercials for "unlimited power less than ten miles from everywhere on Earth" or "no GHGs, particulate free!" or "energy for the next billion years".

Once a Geo plant is established, everything except the wires are on-site. All generating equipment and processes are conventional and virtually identical with any other plant that boils water and turns a turbine.

"Fuel" is underfoot. Ownership can be private or public, self-supported authorities -- like water and sewage plants, toll roads, bridges or the Hoover Dam. Production of Geo is not based on direct or services-oriented income and profits from mining, drilling, refining, storage, transportation, re-storage, processing, burning, and trading commodities simply to boil water. The cost of the electricity produced through Geo is not based on markets.

Energy Independence? Every airport and every domestic military base could produce its own power and power its neighbors. Plants situated on public lands (even Interstate rights-of-way) could provide most of our needs. And don't let Halliburton, Exxon, BP or any of the others to tell you, "It's too deep" ... they drill to the required depths regularly. Can't the drilling cause earthquakes? Think about highway and subway tunnels, aqueducts and ... oil and gas wells all over the world.

There is no, one alternative for our energy needs, but for regional/base electrical power supply, there is none better than Geo.

Please pass along my comments, if you would, and see http://thnktnk.net/drill.html (for references) and/or http://thnktnk.net/RachelMaddow.html (policy).

Praise Geo,

50 Years Ago

Reflecting on my 50- & 49-year-ago rides, 1968 graduation and those gathered yesterday to watch this year's Little 500 bike race (:-(postponed), I was the oldest person in the bar. The second oldest graduated in 1978. Everyone else was from 2005 or later.

Then I tried to think what "50 years ago" meant to me when I rode in that race ... 50 years ago was 1915! Pre-WW ONE! OMG! THAT, then (and now!) was really OLD! It's humbling to imagine what the 2014 grad thought of 1965!

An aspect of "perception of age" I hadn't considered much -- that continually changes it dramatically -- is the spectacular increase in communications tools. How has perception of history -- and age -- changed because of electricity (widespread use, of course), cameras = photographs, movies, airplanes, transportation (cars, manufacturing tech., diesel, trucks, paved highways, interstates ...), tertiary education, records, radio, printing technology (magazines, newspapers with pictures), television, computers, copiers, satellite communications, magnetic tape, email, internet, cable, gps .... ?

DCCC: Outraged yet?

I'm outraged that the DCCC would consider this as a marketing ploy. The pay of professional athletes is ENTIRELY marketing-related. The Yankees pay based on the draw an athlete creates. Period. The women's soccer team was extraordinary ... so were the performances of our Olympic athletes. Meanwhile, world soccer is very much like baseball in the US. Players get paid for their ability to draw an audience, the corporation to receive the benefit and to write a paycheck. Nothing to do with equal pay for equal effort.

Democrats 2016 wrote on 7/10/2015 11:06 AM:
> Politico: Women's World Cup team paid nearly 40 times less than men
>
> Outraged yet?
>
> If you believe women across America should get equal pay for equal work, sign your name to demand Congress close the pay gap.
>
> NAME: Carl Lashua
> Petition Signature: SIGN ON >>
>

Post Millenial Dictionary

caught pron. caw as in "fish caw along the river"
didn't pron did'ent' as in "he did'ent' see me"
that pron tha' as in "tha' he caw... "

Note to nrg

In the long run .. where you imply nrg is interested ... I hope you have investigated and invest in geothermal electricity production. Geothermal electricity production is the most reliable, has the least environmental impact and produces the least CO2 and methane compared to any fossil fuel production system and the so-called "alternatives" -- including solar electric. Over its production lifetime, it is also the least costly (!). see http://thnktnk.net/drill.html references.

Commodities trading and using production facilities in place -- regardless of their environmental impact -- is much more profitable today than investing in environmentally "friendly" electricity facilities. As long as there is no fair cost penalty for polluting the atmosphere, using commodities makes economic sense. So did slavery.

What's missing? Research. Yeah, you can find heat enough along the earth's faults and its volcanic resources. But, the missing link is investment in research into deep drilling and generation. "There is unlimited energy less than 10 miles from everywhere on earth." Now, go get it. You want a 30-year investment with millennial returns? Figure out how to put the generation where the heat is and pump electrons to the grid ... free for life. I do go on.
vlashua@thinktnk.ne

When are we going to get it?

It infuriates me to see 60 minutes making every other nation's space efforts, including satellite and rendezvous launches to create an atmosphere of threat. Why are our space telecommunications and gps systems run by the military rather than NASA? We're creating as much a threat as any other nation.

Why can't we or won't we create a cooperative agreement on the use of space? We had one in 1967 ... sort of and supposedly. Just like all our other international agreements. OMG, it's THEM ... THEY'RE the problem! We continue to be our own worst enemy ... and an excuse to create more havoc so we can "fight" it.

When are we going to get it? The Earth is a limited resource. And human activity is its worst enemy. We CAN do something -- together. Let's get started instead of "protecting ourselves" against THEM. THEY are US.

A Neglected Piece of the Answer

As many environmental leaders have said, there is no silver bullet to eliminate human civilization-sourced carbon emission -- but there are silver buckshot. Besides saving birds and environmentalism, solar rooftops and ugly windmills, one overlooked, underplayed and misunderstood silver buckshot is the heat of the earth itself.

Electricity, by its nature, is "non-polluting". Electricity can power practically all civilization's power-needy tasks for food production and preparation, manufacturing, heating, cooling, light, transport and transportation -- at virtually any scale.

Creating steam and spinning a turbine generator is how we produce most electricity. Fossil- and nuclear-fueled regional power plants as well as deep geothermal ones use the same conceptual plant design. Unlike the others, however, geothermal depends on a non-polluting & unlimited "commodity" -- constant & uninterruptible heat -- that lies within 10 miles of everywhere on Earth.

After it's built, a geothermal plant sits directly above its source of power (and in some design models, at its depth). Geothermal electricity production requires no negative externalities -- commodity mining, refining, storage, transport, carbon pollution and waste and the infrastructure to support them. None! Geothermal already works beautifully where the heat's close to the surface.

The biggest barrier to developing geothermal in a market economy, of course, is blind acceptance of pricing, trading and using commodities without consideration for their negative impacts on the climate. Returns from fair pricing and elimination of subsidies to the commodities industries themselves could easily finance required research & engineering. Over the next 30 years, sourcing and applying geothermal -- would eliminate dramatically more carbon than most other silver buckshot.