The land of the free and equal

A question to the "Etiquette at Work" column, published in today's Boston Globe, asks:

My husband just came home from a business dinner attended by approximately 20 people. The occasion involved people from two companies dining with a speaker who'll be addressing both companies tomorrow. Here's the issue: Does a suit jacket always stay on, or can it come off during dinner? My husband had never seen this done before, but the principal owners in his company took off their jackets during the meal and others followed suit. Is this a new custom?

And an article in the New York Times about Costco as the anti-Walmart (by paying a decent wage and providing decent health insurance) quoted Deutsche Bank analyst Bill Dreher: "It's better to be an employee or a customer than a shareholder."

These people seem to have forgotten something basic here: We, the people. We are not here to serve business or government -- they exist to serve us. What kind of society is being created when an individual is nervous about leaving his jacket on through dinner when his boss takes off his? What kind of society is possible when profits to shareholders are more valued than providing a respectable livelihood for one's employees, sharing with them some of the fruit of their own labors?

The great are great only because we are on our knees. -- Max Stirner

categories:  anarchism

Coal lobby supports wind power

It is often assumed that industrial wind power is a threat to the coal and nuclear industries and that any criticism of giant wind turbines effectively supports coal and nuclear power. Criticism is often dismissed with accusations that they are paid for by coal and nuclear lobbies. But how could an industry that even its most ardent advocates project could produce only 5% of the U.S.'s electricity be a threat to the industries that will still provide as much as ever?

In fact, the nuclear lobby is riding high on the obsessive focus on carbon emissions, presenting itself as carbon free while ignoring its many other problems that remain. And the coal lobby couldn't be happier that so many people believe wind energy will clean up the air by replacing coal-generated energy. They know that wind power won't replace anything, but as long as people keep thinking it will, the focus is not on actually cleaning up the power sources we use, such as coal.

A key lobbying firm for coal plants fighting emission controls has been Bracewell & Giuliani. Their man Frank Maisano ("Director of Strategic Communications") has recently been active in Highland County, Va., on behalf of a proposed project of up to 22 2-MW turbines (each of them 400 feet tall) on the Allegheny Ridge on the border with West Virginia. He issued a press release Thursday praising its approval by the county board of supervisors.

It seems it is the wind industry and its supporters, not those who oppose industrializing wild and rural places, who are in bed with coal.

categories:  wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines, environment, environmentalism

A Word In Your Ear

A Word In Your Ear: How & Why To Read James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, by Eric Rosenbloom, is now available in print from BookSurge Publishing for $12.99.

Here is the back cover copy:

Whether you are new to the Wake or a long familiar friend, this humane essay will guide, refresh, and delight. It has been described as "smart and readable," "an excellent Wake Primer," "everything such an introduction should be," "the best intro to the Wake I've seen," "a stunning performance and of exemplary clarity," "intelligent, courteous and serene." [See www.kirbymountain.com/WIE/reviews.html.]

Part I introduces the unique language techniques that Joyce used to create Finnegans Wake and describes some of the major themes and characters. The influence and presence of Giordano Bruno, Giambattista Vico, and Egyptian mythology are described, and the importance of Dublin and Irish geography and history is emphasized with a concise overview of each.

Part II examines several short excerpts in depth and provides general descriptions and some insights to several others. The selection gives the reader a broad sampling of essential passages from throughout the book and different examples of how to read and interpret them.

Included as appendices are a whimsically short version of Finnegans Wake, thoughts about the narrator, structural insights from the order in which Joyce wrote the book, and an essay on the presence of Irish saint and goddess Brighid as elucidated by the late Clarence Sterling.

"Cut global warming by becoming vegetarian"

From a referral by Jorn Borger's Robot Wisdom (the original "weblog"), here is a summary of an article in this month's Physics World:

Global warming could be controlled if we all became vegetarians and stopped eating meat. That's the view of British physicist Alan Calvert, who thinks that giving up pork chops, lamb cutlets and chicken burgers would do more for the environment than burning less oil and gas.

Writing in this month's Physics World, Calvert calculates that the animals we eat emit 21% of all the carbon dioxide that can be attributed to human activity. We could therefore slash man-made emissions of carbon dioxide simply by abolishing all livestock.

Moreover, there would be no adverse effects to health and it would be an experiment that we could abandon at any stage. "Worldwide reduction of meat production in the pursuit of the targets set in the Kyoto treaty seems to carry fewer political unknowns than cutting our consumption of fossil fuels," he says.

This summary leaves a lot of questions, of course, but without a subscription they will have to go unanswered for now. For example, I think carbon is meant, not carbon dioxide, because the significant greenhouse gas that "livestock" emit is methane, CH₄, which in fact is much more effective in contributing to the greenhouse effect than CO₂ is.

The summary also mentions only the animals themselves. But there is also a tremendous amount of carbon emissions from the energy used to grow and harvest food for them. It requires 40 times more energy to produce a calorie of beef than a calorie of soy. Only 10% of the plant protein they eat is in the animals' flesh when it is eaten by humans, so it is a rather wasteful expenditure of energy.

Another issue is the destruction of rain forest (an area about the size of Connecticut every year) to create grazing land for beef. Trees, of course, are a crucial carbon sink. After deforesting much of the northern hemisphere, we should be restoring forests, not ravaging the southern hemisphere as well.

The environmental impact doesn't stop at carbon emissions. It takes 200 times more water to produce a pound of beef than a pound of wheat. Feedlots and slaughterhouses are responsible for more water pollution than all other industrial and household sources combined. Eighty percent of the corn and 95% of the oats grown in the U.S. go to feeding animals that will be slaughtered for food. Eighty-seven percent of U.S. agricultural land is devoted to the animal-flesh industry.

categories:  environment, environmentalism, animal rights, vegetarianism

Experience a lie

The western Massachusetts "Center for Ecological Technology" is organizing tours of the Searsburg wind facility (11 small 550-KW turbines, each about three-fifths the size of today's 1.5-MW turbines). The tour appears to be ultimately sponsored by the aggressively pro-industry Massachusetts Technology Collaborative.

THe reason for comment is the advertisement to "Experience a wind farm that produces 14 million kilowatt-hours [14,000 MW-h] of renewable energy annually."

There was one 12-month period when Searsburg produced that much energy, but it was from July 1998 to June 1999 (14,256 MW-h). There has never been a January-December year that saw that much.

According to owner Green Mountain Power's annual reports the output was 13,605 in 1999, 12,246 in 2000, 12,135 in 2001, 11,458 in 2002, 10,828 in 2003, and 11,023 in 2004.

The average annual output of the last three years was 11,103 MW-h, representing less than 21% of capacity. The tour hype overstates the amount by more than a quarter.

In fact, 14,000 MW-h works out to what the industry always claims to be the output of a wind facility: one-third of capacity. It's pure shamelessness that they continue to sell Searsburg's theoretical output even after seven years of operation have shown it to be so much less. ANd Searsburg's low output is not unusual. Self-reports (meaning the true figures are undoubtedly lower) to the U.S. Energy Information Agency show an average output of less than 27% capacity.

categories:  wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines

Wind farm production is trade secret

Over at the Cape Cod Times, Clean Power Now's Charles Kleekamp says that one of the owners of Denmark's Nysted offshore wind power facility, Energi E2, told him that the plant had a 12-month capacity factor of 46.5%, though he doesn't say which 12 months (one assumes they're consecutive!). That is an astonishing figure (Denmark's average is below 20% of capacity), so reader Neil Good of Mashpee wrote Energi E2 to confirm the data. Erik Kjaer Soerensen, the Project Development General Manager for E2 Wind Energy, replied,

"I am afraid the requested information is of a commercial nature and therefore confidential."

Not exactly an inspiring response. Controlling information, of course, is another way of lying.

categories:  wind power, wind energy, wind farms

Park Slope Food Co-op falls for wind spiel

Down in Brooklyn, a correspondent tells me that the Park Slope Food Co-op has decided to pay an additional charge on their electricity bill so they can say they are wind powered. Here is an article in response.

((((( )))))
Community Energy is a for-profit company. As pointed out in a recent Bar Association seminar, two-thirds of the value of a wind power facility is covered by federal tax breaks and subsidies (primarily a production tax credit and accelerated depreciation). Another 10% may be covered by state subsidies (such as property tax exemptions). Further, where renewable portfolio standards exist, they have a captive market for their unpredictable and variable output. Where a market for renewable obligation certificates, or green credits, exists, they can sell the output twice. The credits are much more lucrative than selling the actual power.

In addition to these highly profitable schemes, the companies then ask consumers to pay more for the conscientious choice of using wind power. In fact, it's the same electricity as before, the same electricity their less conscientious neighbor is getting. It is just one more subsidy for an industry already riding high on handouts.

Well, more profit is more incentive to build more wind turbines, which are clean and green, right? And though they are large, it's obviously worth it, isn't it?

Actually, the opposite is more obvious. Wind turbines don't produce significant electricity unless the wind is blowing steadily above 25 mph or so. The average output in the U.S. is less than 27% of their nominal capacity. And because production falls off sharply as the wind slows, two-thirds of the time their production is well below their average. The fact that a facility's output can surge to full capacity or drop to zero at the whim of the wind makes it practically useless to the grid, which must dispatch generation by the second to match fluctuating demand. That means that if they are forced to accommodate wind power, the grid needs equal back-up sources that can respond quickly to the fluctuating wind-generated input. These would typically be fossil-fuel powered, and the frequent ramping up and down is very inefficient, thus increasing emissions and costs.

The bottom line is that large-scale wind power does not move us away from fossil fuels. It does not reduce acid rain, improve air quality, or slow global warming. Denmark, which claims 20% of their electricity is generated by the wind, still reports rising greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, almost all of their wind energy has to be exported because it is generated when it is not needed.

And the negative impact of large-scale wind power is large. The effect of the moving blades and the noises and vibrations they create is a serious problem for people and wildlife. The industry says that the blades move slowly. In rpm terms that is true, but they are so long (spanning more than the wings of a jumbo jet, as GE boasts, cutting through over an acre of air) that they are moving at around 170 mph at the tips. Studies of bird and bat casualties at existing sites are rare and unreliable because the companies control access as well as the release of the data.

The turbines can not be close to each other (because they slow the wind up to 3 miles away), so the typical wind power facility requires around 50 acres of clear space for every megawatt of installed capacity. With actual generation only a fourth of capacity, that's 200 acres for every megawatt of average output. Each turbine requires a large cement and steel foundation. The roads to access the site must be wide and straight and strong. Each facility needs at least one transmission substation and, of course, new high voltage lines to the grid. The effect of such industrial installations on forested mountain ridges, where each turbine represents the loss of around 8 acres of interior forest habitat, is obviously very destructive.

On the Scottish island of Lewis, some 340 giant turbines will disturb ancient peat beds, releasing more carbon than the developers claim they will save over 25 years, and completely surround protected bird sanctuaries. But considering the money to be made in green credits, the Council for the Western Isles easily overcame such arguments as well as overwhelming local opposition and approved the projects.

The destruction of wild places, the massive industrialization of rural landscapes, and the exploitation of economically desperate communities -- for no real benefit to anybody except the developers, manufacturers, and a few recipients of trickle-down pay-offs -- is what support of wind power is really helping to achieve.

The modern wind industry in the U.S. was created by Enron, whose innovative schemes for milking profits out of a deregulated electricity system are legendary (and often criminal). Today's brokers, such as Community Energy (or NewWind Energy, as they also present themselves), are Enron's heirs in every way.

See www.aweo.org for more information.

categories:  wind power, wind energy, wind farms, wind turbines

categories:  environment, environmentalism