Month: October 2011

Major Geothermal Opportunities in U.S.

Posted in ScienceTagged , , , , , 3 Comments

GoogleSMU

According to a news report that just came out from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, a study was completed in conjunction with Google that has measured a massive amount of geothermal energy available in the United States. So much so that ten times the amount of energy is available from geothermal than is currently produced by coal burning plants.

If you want to see what tapping geothermal on a large scale can do for a country, take a look at Iceland. Alcan, Century Aluminum, and Alcoa have actually built huge aluminum plants in Iceland simply because of the cheap energy and shipping capability.

The U.S. could benefit greatly by embracing this opportunity and becoming a leader in the world for geothermal. Plus, how could you possibly have a problem with reducing sulfur and mercury emissions?

More from the report:
Sophisticated mapping produced from the research, viewable via Google Earth at www.google.org/egs, demonstrates that vast reserves of this green, renewable source of power generated from the Earth’s heat are realistically accessible using current technology.
The results of the new research, from SMU Hamilton Professor of Geophysics David Blackwell and Geothermal Lab Coordinator Maria Richards, confirm and refine locations for resources capable of supporting large-scale commercial geothermal energy production under a wide range of geologic conditions, including significant areas in the eastern two-thirds of the United States. The estimated amounts and locations of heat stored in the Earth’s crust included in this study are based on nearly 35,000 data sites – approximately twice the number used for Blackwell and Richards’ 2004 Geothermal Map of North America, leading to improved detail and contouring at a regional level.

Global Warming!

Posted in Media, ScienceTagged , , , , 1 Comment

Shutterstock_Globe

“Where Did Global Warming Go?” was the headline yesterday in the New York Times Sunday Review section I received in my driveway. The writer, Elisabeth Rosenthal, and her editors berate the people of the United States for letting this topic fade from top-level urgency as they think it should receive. The old line about other countries taking action and the U.S. not leading was thrown around. The writer claims that since President Obama took office, who promised strong action and leadership on this issue, evidence for climate change has solidified.

So why is the USA not doing more?

The writer is correct in that climate change has strong evidence that it is occurring and has occurred. The implication that humans are responsible and that the evidence that humans are the cause has absolutely not solidified since the 2008 presidential race.

I have written articles letting my readers know that CERN in Europe has shown that cosmic rays are likely responsible for 50-100% of warming in the past century, that the weather on the sun can cause large movements of the temperature on Earth, and that I suspect the large chemical polluters of using this anthropogenic warming issue as a red herring to move the focus away from the pollution that poisons us and our environment.

This bizarre siren call that keeps coming from the majority of the press baffles me. They want to use science as their claim but they ignore that computer models are simply educated guesses. Yet they ignore very strong scientific evidence, like the study at CERN, and choose to continue saying that people are bad.

Why do they insist that people are bad? Do they believe in eugenics? Do they want us to live in the dark ages? Or is it that they have a vested interest in companies that stand to benefit from “green” energy? The correct answer is to follow the money, it can be the only explanation for the lack of concern regarding pollution.