Good News, Bad News

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Tuesday September 09, 2014 · 8:37 AM PDT

2014/09/09 · 08:37

The U.S. Department of Energy made what seemed like a good announcement today. It's the Petra Nova project:

A coal-fired power plant in Texas is on its way to capturing 1.4 million tons of CO2 that previously would have been released into the air.
Rather than building an entirely new facility, the Petra Nova project will apply carbon capture technology to an existing coal-fired power plant -- helping to advance the technologies that enable cleaner, safer and more sustainable energy production from our abundant fossil energy resources.

When I first read this I was pretty excited and it only got better. The DOE originally gave the company $167 million for the project, but

Project sponsors NRG Energy Inc. and JX Nippon (a Japanese oil refiner) decided they could do better than that. They quadrupled the size of the project -- expanding the design to capture the emissions from 240 megawatts of generation -- with no additional federal funding.

This is the equivalent of taking 250,000 cars off the road, as far as CO2 emissions are concerned. Not only is this going down in Texas, the companies involved quadrupled the size of the project out of their own pockets. Maybe libertarianism isn't all just smoke and mirrors...and then reality came knocking.

The captured carbon dioxide will then be compressed, dried and transported to an oil field where it will be used to recover previously unreachable oil -- a process known as Enhanced Oil Recovery or EOR -- and will end up stored permanently underground.

Suddenly it was making more sense to me. While all EOR is not fracking, one thing is clear, we don't understand even short term consequences of using these types of techniques. Also, why are we continuing to support what is a dead end (pun intended)? There are other renewable resources we should be focusing on and investing in.

Here's something else that could be done with all that CO2 and as Richard Masel, a researcher from Dioxide Materials, said:

My view is that burying the CO2 and leaving it for future generations is not a solution to the problem. Instead we need to find ways to recycle CO2 into something useful...

White sh*t

apoliticism

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Monday August 18, 2014 · 3:18 PM PDT

2014/08/18 · 15:18

With everything going on in Ferguson, MO my wife and I have been having some good conversations for the most part. We're both well educated and consider ourselves moderate-liberals. Her boss is also well educated and from the little I've talked with her boss, seems like a reasonable person.

My wife just told me, after talking about it with her boss, "Well, with all the shots being in the front, he wasn't running away. And there needs to be some give and take, or fair treatment on both sides."

"Okay," I said, "what do you mean?"

"Well, what about the white man in detroit that hit a kid and when he got out of his truck, was beat by a bunch of black teenagers..."

"I'm sorry, you're comparing someone being beaten up to losing a life?!"

I was beyond flabbergasted and disgusted by this way of thinking. I am just so fed up with the "well, what about the black people picking on whites?" Someone lost their life and those responsible for serving justice and ensuring the peace are doing exactly the opposite, trying to cover up a murder and beat those dissidents into submission. Everyone should be treated equal and the fact of the matter is that they are not.

I don't even know what to say...

I am ashamed

apoliticism

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Sunday April 06, 2014 · 5:39 AM PDT

2014/04/06 · 05:39

I am sincerely ashamed to be a christian right now. No, I'm not ashamed because I'm afraid others will mock or make fun of me, they do that regardless. I've found that people that are atheist or agnostic are some of the best I've ever met and am great friends with some of them and they usually don't care that I'm christian, just as I don't care what their beliefs are; they're people and that's what matters to me. Rather, I'm ashamed because of the nonsense that others calling themselves christians (they usually say Christians) are saying and doing. I grew up in an extremely conservative society and held many of those views until I was in my early 20s when I started to gain exposure to a world larger than the narrow corridor in which many people I grew up with still find themselves, unfortunately. Some call it luck, coincidence, or the grace of god. I like to think it was a combination of all three. But that's a story for another time. Right now there is a more pressing matter. I'll explain below the fold.

apoliticism

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Saturday March 15, 2014 · 10:08 PM PDT

2014/03/15 · 22:08

Unlike the other diarist that has some respect for you, I don't. The only thing I have to say to you is, go fuck yourself. You think you're so awesome and independent and wonderful. Maybe in the small pool in which you run you are a big fish, but with the rest of the world taken into account, you're nothing but a hack and a half-wit that hasn't accomplished shit. If you're so inclined, I'll elaborate below the fold and hopefully explain the point I'm trying to make (or just skip to the fifth to last paragraph, where I finally start to make my point).

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Good News, Bad News

White sh*t

I am ashamed

(Another) Open Letter to that 53% Guy