aktbird57 - You and your 300 friends have supported 2,797,506.0 square feet!
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1 Aktbird57 .. 1915 64.222 acres
Hi all, I tired...... I've been upstairs working in the last room of our home to be finished...... I tired - I go bed now.
AW Clicked for the I 'n MA.
Danon, I hope you have had a good rest.
Maybe not really a sashay- 80 days is a short time for such a journey.
ul, that was a great movie - - - thanks for the memories
Clicked - and, MA too.....
Back from the fair and clicked ...
aktbird57 - You and your 300 friends have supported 2,797,974.2 square feet!
~~~
Set's watching a Lord of the Rings Two Towers DVD we got there, and I'm listening to Luc Ducette singing Long Haul Driver.
~~~
1 Aktbird57 .. 1916 64.232 acres
Supposed to be cooler weather beginning tomorrow = 100 degrees.
Busy day - migrating bird feeders replenished, clean water and pellets for the deer herd, plus feeding plants and lawns. All completed at daybreak! Fans and cooler at the ready!
tonight sitting on the porch with iced coffee and sleepy kittens.
God is good
Dry cold front coming through today. High only in 80's this weekend. We had only one day in August that didn't go over 90.
Garden almost done and it is nekkid. Need to go shopping and get some seeds going. Veggies are up and will replant in a week for continuous harvest.
Working with nice, inexpensive contractor to enclose front porch to over-winter plants in, buying from Habitat for Humanity ReStore, and items from craigslist.
Now all I really need is rain....
Clicked.
Beyond Wind and Solar, a New Generation of Clean Energy
By Juliet Eilperin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 1, 2007; A01
PORTLAND, Ore. -- Oregon Iron Works has the feel of a World War II-era shipyard, with sparks flying from welders' torches and massive hydraulic presses flattening large sheets of metal. But this factory floor represents the cutting edge of American renewable-energy technology.
The plant is assembling a test buoy for Finavera Renewables, a Canadian company that hopes to harness ocean waves off the coast of Oregon to produce electricity for U.S. consumers. And Finavera is not Iron Works' only alternative-energy client: So many companies have approached it with ideas that it has created a "renewable-energy projects manager" to oversee them.
"In the last year, it's just exploded with ideas out there," said Vice President Chandra Brown. "We like to build these creative new things."
As policymakers promote alternative energy sources to reduce the United States' emissions of greenhouse gases and its dependence on foreign oil, entrepreneurs are becoming increasingly inventive about finding novel ways to power the economy.
Beyond solar power and wind, which is America's most developed renewable-energy sector, a host of companies are exploring a variety of more obscure technologies. Researchers are trying to come up with ways to turn algae into diesel fuel. In landfills, startups are attempting to wring energy out of waste such as leaves, tires and "car fluff" from junked automobiles.
This push for lesser-known renewables -- which also includes geothermal, solar thermal and tidal energy -- may someday help ease the country's transition to a society less reliant on carbon-based fuels. But many of these technologies are in their infancy, and it remains to be seen whether they can move to the marketplace and come close to meeting the country's total energy needs.
Some technologies are more advanced, though still small in the nation's overall energy mix. Nevada boasts 15 geothermal plants, with the capacity to generate enough electricity for 73,000 homes. California utilities are looking at solar technology that would use mirrors to heat water and spin turbines in desert power plants.
Rep. Jay Inslee (D-Wash.), whose Bainbridge Island home overlooks Puget Sound, said that after being thrashed around by the ocean as he kayaked near his house, he became convinced that efforts such as Finavera's could succeed.
"There's just such an enormous power out there," Inslee said, noting that there is nearly 900 times as much energy in a cubic meter of moving water as in a cubic meter of air. "I was wondering how we could capture that."
Finavera's chief executive, Jason Bak, believes he knows how. The equipment his company designed, called AquaBuOY, aims to generate electricity from the vertical motion of waves. The buoy, anchored in an array two to three miles offshore, will convert the waves' motion into pressurized water using large, reinforced-rubber hose pumps. As the buoy goes up the peak of a wave and down into its trough, it forces a piston in the bottom of the buoy to stretch and contract the hose pumps, pushing water through. This drives a turbine that powers a generator producing electricity, which would be shipped to shore through an undersea transmission line.
"This is the new source of power," Bak said. "It's the highest-energy-density renewable out there. Wind is like light crude oil, and water is like gasoline."
In many cases, Americans are working with overseas experts who have more experience developing renewable energy. This month, Iceland America Energy -- a partnership between Icelandic and U.S. entrepreneurs -- will start drilling just west of California's Salton Sea to build a geothermal power plant to supply Pacific Gas and Electric with 49 megawatts of electricity by 2010.
Magn?s J?hannesson, Iceland America's chief executive, said the facility will pump naturally heated water from underground, run it through turbines to generate electricity and re-inject it into the earth, "making it a renewable, giant battery that can run for 20, 30, 50 years."
Iceland America has several other U.S. geothermal projects in the works, including a potential second Salton Sea plant that would serve Los Angeles and a home-heating plant for the ski resort town of Mammoth Lakes, Calif.
"There's huge potential for geothermal energy in this country, especially on the West Coast," J?hannesson said.
It is hard to predict what portion of the country's needs could be met by these emerging technologies. The United States is already the world's largest producer of geothermal electricity, with 212 plants generating 3,119 megawatts. A panel convened by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology concluded in a recent report that by 2050, geothermal plants could produce 100 gigawatts, which would be equivalent to 10 percent of current U.S. electricity capacity.
"That level would make it comparable to the current capacity of all our nuclear power plants or all our hydroelectric plants," wrote the panel's chair, MIT chemical engineering professor Jefferson W. Tester, in an e-mail.
A 2005 report by the Electric Power Research Institute, an industry consortium, said there is "significant" wave energy potential along America's coasts, predicting that it, too, could eventually generate as much electricity as the entire hydropower sector.
Both the Bush administration and Congress are promoting renewable energy through a mix of federal largesse and mandates.
Last month the House passed, as part of its energy bill, a requirement that by 2020, renewable energy must account for at least 15 percent of private utilities' energy supply, and authorized $50 million for marine energy research over the next five years.
Over the next two years, the Energy Department will offer up to $13 billion in loan guarantees for energy ventures that "avoid, reduce or sequester air pollutants and greenhouse gases," said department spokeswoman Julie Ruggiero, "to make new and emerging clean-energy technologies cost-competitive with traditional sources of energy."
Still, it will be years before many of these projects will come on line. Oregon Iron Works is nearly done constructing the AquaBuOY prototype, which will be 72 feet tall and 12 feet in diameter, and Finavera hopes to install it off the Oregon coast as early as next week. After testing the technology and applying for the necessary federal permits, Finavera officials hope that by 2010 or 2011 they can operate two wave parks -- one off Bandon, Ore., and another off Trinidad, Calif. -- that would each span two to three square miles and produce 100 megawatts, enough for 35,000 homes. They plan to start up another wave-power operation in British Columbia around the same time.
Operating equipment in the hostile environment of the ocean poses challenges, however. Josh Pruzek, who oversees government contracts as military marine manager at Oregon Iron Works, said the company uses high-grade steel that is less vulnerable to corrosion, and designs parts to be easily maintained.
The power of moving water can also overwhelm high-tech equipment. In December, Verdant Power placed turbines off New York City's Roosevelt Island amid much fanfare, promising to harness the tides of the East River and convert that energy into electricity. By last month, all six of the turbines, battered by the current's strength, had been shut down. The company is repairing and redesigning its equipment.
Still, such projects are popular with politicians across the nation, from New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (I) to Oregon Gov. Ted Kulongoski (D), who is hoping to make his state a breeding ground for renewable-energy projects. David Van't Hof, Kulongoski's sustainability policy adviser, said government officials are exploring ideas, from solar projects on the eastern side of the state to biomass energy culled from Oregon's forests, in an effort to generate 25 percent of the state's energy from renewable sources by 2025.
"Wind's going to continue to be the king, both in Oregon and the nation, for the next five years," Van't Hof said, but that will last only for so long. "People are already asking, 'What's next after wind?' "
U.N. Climate Talks End in Cloud of Discord
Industrialized, Developing Nations Still at Odds Over How and When to Cut Emissions
By John Ward Anderson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, September 1, 2007; A20
PARIS, Aug. 31 -- A five-day U.N. conference on climate change ended in Vienna on Friday with significant disagreements remaining about how countries should reduce greenhouse gas emissions and daunting estimates about the price tag for combating global warming.
Some industrialized countries balked at adopting language in the conference's final statement that would have set a goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. They agreed in the end that this target would be a nonbinding starting point for future discussion.
Many industrialized countries, including the United States, are wary of strict and mandatory reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, fearing that such curbs could strike at core sectors of their economies.
Illustrating the range of opinion, the Group of 77 -- a bloc of developing nations -- said that industrialized countries should target an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse gases by 2020, while German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in Japan on Friday that an equitable solution would base cuts on emissions per person and bring industrialized countries into line with developing ones.
A U.N. study found that it would cost at least $200 billion a year in additional funding to reduce the expected growth in emissions of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere and to return them to their current levels in 2030. By contrast, the U.S. government currently devotes about $6 billion a year to climate change programs.
The Vienna Climate Change Talks were attended by about 1,000 diplomats, scientists, business leaders and environmental activists from 158 countries. The conference was part of a series of meetings planned for the next several years to stimulate debate and negotiation on a global environmental accord to supplant the 1997 Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012.
The United States, the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, is not a party to the Kyoto agreement. But spurred by growing domestic pressure to deal with global warming, President Bush in May pledged to "convene a series of meetings of nations that produce most greenhouse gas emissions" and by the end of 2008 to "set a long-term global goal for reducing greenhouse gases."
The first of those meetings is planned for Sept. 27-28 in Washington, when 15 countries, the European Union and the United Nations will meet to formulate a process for achieving Bush's goal. The invited countries -- which include Russia, China, India, Mexico, Indonesia and Brazil -- have 64 percent of the world's population, produce 90 percent of the world's greenhouse gases, consume 76 percent of the world's annual primary energy supply, and account for 82 percent of the global economy, according to U.S. statistics.
Many of the countries, particularly the developing ones, are reluctant to cut emissions if it means sacrificing economic growth. China, for instance, is opening two coal-fired power plants a week to meet the demands of its booming economy.
Bush's plan foresees nonbinding commitments -- White House advisers call them "aspirational goals" -- for reducing emissions, while many other countries favor mandatory caps. The E.U., for instance, has pledged to reduce emissions by 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2020 and by an additional 10 percent if the world's other developed countries match those cuts. The E.U.'s longer-term goal is to slash emissions to half of 1990 levels by 2050.
Harlan L. Watson, the State Department's senior climate negotiator and the top U.S. official at the Vienna talks, said that the United States would "look at" the E.U.'s goal of a 50 percent reduction during the Washington meeting but that it would "be a very tough target to meet." Targets are "useful if they're reasonably ambitious and attainable, but we don't believe that just making up numbers is a particularly useful exercise," he said.
Some environmental activists in Vienna questioned the motives and sincerity of Bush's initiative, saying they feared that it could evolve into an alternative to the U.N. and post-Kyoto process that would let big polluting countries evade the more stringent and obligatory gas reductions likely to be mandated by the world body.
"The question is, will the Washington meeting affirm that these major emitters are committed to keeping the climate safe, and agree to take on the kind of targets in reducing greenhouse gases that are necessary," said Hans Verolme, head of the World Wildlife Fund's Global Climate Change Program. "If the intention is to set up a competing track of talks, I would not like to see that."
Watson said the Washington meeting was meant to "complement" the U.N. process, because the countries attending will be the biggest economies and the biggest polluters, "and if they can't agree, there's little hope of reaching an agreement" in the U.N. talks.
Thanks for the info, sumac - - - I like the things the Canadian Co. is doing.
All clicked.......
You and your 300 friends have supported 2,798,348.8 square feet!
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1 Aktbird57 .. 1917 64.237 acres
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I'll be alone each and every night
While you're away, don't forget to write
Bye-bye, so long, farewell
Bye-bye, so long
See you in September
See you when the summer's through
Here we are (bye, baby, goodbye)
Saying goodbye at the station (bye, baby, goodbye)
Summer vacation (bye, baby bye, baby)
Is taking you away (bye, baby, goodbye)
Have a good time but remember
There is danger in the summer moon above
Will I see you in September
Or lose you to a summer love
(counting the days 'til I'll be with you)
(counting the hours and the minutes, too)
Bye, baby, goodbye
Bye, baby, goodbye
Bye, baby, goodbye (bye-bye, so long, farewell)
Bye, baby, goodbye (bye-bye, so long)
Have a good time but remember
There is danger in the summer moon above
Will I see you in September
Or lose you to a summer love
(I'll be alone each and every night)
(While you're away, don't forget to write)
See you (bye-bye, so long, farewell)
In September (bye-bye, so long, farewell)
I'm hopin' I'll
See you (bye-bye, so long, farewell)
In September (bye-bye, so long, farewell)
Well, maybe I'll
See you (bye-bye, so long, farewell)
In September (bye-bye, so long, farewell)
Hope everyone is having a great holiday -
Early clicketed this Sun.
Have a wonderful Holiday weekend!
Kid is cooling his heels in the Pacific in British Columbia, husband is on his way to Brazil and I have to transform from natural night owl to early bird again. 6:30 am is really not my best time.
Have you met Linux?
![[URL=http://imageshack.us][img]http://img504.imageshack.us/img504/8844/linuxyw4.jpg]([URL=http://imageshack.us][img]http://img504.imageshack.us/img504/8844/linuxyw4.jpg)
[/URL][/IMG]
Must be planetary, ul.
Tomorrow my work day begins at 3:00 A.M.
Linux = What a cutie!
This is what a long weekend should be.
Set and I went to the fair on Friday night. Saturday morning I took the dogs to the beach for about 4 hours, then did my errands. This morning, Set and I and brendalee took the dogs to the beach, then I drove around, checking out the holiday weekend deals, and then lazed on the porch for a bunch of hours with the boy dog.
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aktbird57 - You and your 300 friends have supported 2,798,700.1 square feet!
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Back to the beach in the morning.
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1 Aktbird57 .. 1918 64.246 acres
Stradee, 3 AM?? I admire you!
ehBeth, wonderful description- perfect weekend.
Enjoy today, too.
First day of school today. All are back healthy and happy. Lots of fun today.
You and your 300 friends have supported 2,798,981.0 square feet!
~~~
It was another beautiful day at the beach. Lots of off-leash running and dipping into the lake for the dogs (and my toes as well).
Set and the SeniorPuppies are napping now.
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1 1498 64.251 acres
Just think, ehBEth, it won't be long until your area is considered the "Miami" - - - and "Miami" will be the "Rio" area.......
We are Quicked.
