California Wildfires: And We Thought California was 'Going Green'

As I look up on such a lovely summer night, I am greeted with an almost mystical array of red and orange clouds. At first thought, I had a bit of fear toward the nearing apocalypse in my mind, but a whiff of burning wood brought my head back out of the clouds. Another set of wildfires, nearly 100, are smoldering their way through California once again, demanding more of our precious forests as sustenance. Even though I live nowhere near these fires, I still can almost feel their presence right over the next mountain because of all of the smoke in the air. This smoke had me wondering, if I can see it a hundred miles away, what exactly is it doing to our environment? Have all our green efforts gone to the dumps?

Its a well known fact that California has very strict emissions standards. Our air is supposedly incredibly clean in comparison to many other states in the U.S. Californians truly take pride in our green state. Both Santa Cruz and San Fransisco our world renowned for their environmental awareness among other things, and the culture of those places truly reflects that. Green buses, cars, some people not even using gasoline. Many people in these areas make great efforts to have as little impact on the environment as possible. Unfortunately, these areas are now under siege by fire, which in my opinion, just blew years of green work.

These fires are huge footprints over these areas, throwing carbon right back up where people have attempted to remove it. All those green cars are now put to waste as these easily preventable fires have simply replaced the would-be emissions. All of those nasty greenhouse gases we continuously mull over explode all over California, and slowly spread globally. Its amazing fires aren't banned in California, they seem to be more negative environmentally than anything we Californians are doing to our state.



















The point is something must be done about these wildfires before we worry about furthering green energy. Without these flames extinguished, anything we do would be put to was anyways. It's the responsibility of Californians and tourists here to keep our forests safe, and not spark up any new fires, for it is essential if this nation wants to 'go green'.

Also, I'd like to thank all of the brave firefighters who are risking their lives right now to attempt to put out all of the fires and end the chaos in the golden state.

Some things make no sense...

Chemical companies like Celanese, Dow, BASF, Eastman, oil companies like BP and Shell, and numerous other companies around the world produce butanol. They have big research budgets, and they would love to find an economical direct gasification route to butanol. These companies have looked at probably thousands of catalysts, and people have spent their careers working on this problem. The challenge is that syngas (produced from gasification) doesn’t like to form butanol. You can form a little bit directly, but CO (carbon monoxide) likes to do lots of things besides form a C4 alcohol like butanol. Scientific, I know, but Wikipedia could probably explain this process better than I could here.

Anyways, Methanol is not a problem. You can also produce ethanol, which is what Range Fuels is planning on doing (although you almost always have methanol to deal with as well). But the selectivity falls off sharply as you go to higher alcohols. By the time you get to butanol, you are lucky if 5% of the product is butanol.

So why does any of this amaze me? This is all known technology. It has been looked at for 50 years by multiple big companies spending untold millions of dollars. The economics simply don’t work, because of the very low yields. But a small company in Oregon still got someone to give them money to work on it:

"The only way Diesel Brewing could get its start was through Oregon’s business energy tax credit program — one of the most robust in the nation. The tax credit is worth 50 percent of their $1.4 million in capital costs," Stapleton said.

And then they also suggest that they will be profitable:

“Raines doesn’t expect to make a profit until the 100-ton-per-day plant is running.”

Don’t get me wrong, butanol is a fine fuel, and I have a special fondness for it (It burns quite well as a camping fuel). I would like to see it work out. But my observation is that people are seriously underestimating the difficulty of economically producing butanol from biomass.

Fine Swine and Wine

Everyone and their mother has heard about the new variant of the swine flu epidemic, but it seems as if not one person actually knows how to deal with it. The Center for Disease Control seems as if it is merely probing at how to stop it, and the World Health Organization is just creating an uproar using its colored system of danger. And yet, it is becoming quite apparent that no one knows exactly what to do.

Based on what the media is showing them, families all over the world are concocting pitiful attempts at 'swine flu care kits', collecting things such as surgical masks and TheraFlu. Is this really necessary? A mask is not going to protect someone from contracting a rogue strain of viral proteins. What the populous should be concocting are letters to the CDC and WHO, telling them to spend less time causing a riot and more time distributing anti-virals, such as Tamiflu. As of late, WHO is only sending anti-virals to third world countries, with full knowledge that the
epidemic has spread far beyond those bounds.

There are 109 confirmed cases of swine flu in the United States alone, 257 others in 11 countries. Every country that has confirmed cases just happens not to be a third world country. I find it a tad bit strange that our global resources are heading into countries that haven't even seen evidence of any swine flu symptoms. Why should anti-virals be going to Africa if the true pandemic is in the U.S. and Europe? Both WHO and the CDC have to get their acts straight, and distribute resources to the communities who actually need protection from this epidemic. The rest of the populous, however, doesn't get off clean either. People in these malaise-ridden areas should be less concerned about how much Gatorade and cough syrup they have stocked up, and more about how to actually prevent the virus from infecting them in the first place.

World, please step up to the plate and actually do something useful for society...

Just Tivo it...

I love my DVR. I couldn’t imagine life without it. I haven’t watched a commercial in so long that I kind of enjoy the occasional advertisement when we get side-tracked and forget to fast-forward. I love how I don’t have to stay up until 12:00 to watch House.

My sister also absolutely loves it. But, she doesn’t realize it’s the DVR she loves, she thinks it’s the normal TV. She thinks she can request any random show and that we will be able to turn it on. She doesn’t understand the sentence, “It’s not on right now.” She gets ultra impatient and demands we turn on whatever show she’s requesting. Luckily she has around 10 of her favorite, Wow Wow Wubbzy, recorded.

I think the DVR and other related technologies, like the internet and cell phones, are turning America into a country of 2 year-olds. I am not saying the technologies are bad; they’re amazing and good. What I am saying is that people cannot carry the on-demand DVR mindset over to other areas of their lives.

As we have so clearly seen in the past few years, the general public has demanded more and more under the spell of immediacy. They demand a bigger house than they can afford. They demand higher pay at a job that they don’t deserve. They demand luxuries that took their parents a lifetime of work to acquire. And when the negative consequences of the above actions reveal themselves, they demand the government provide these things. The consequence is a lack of personal responsibility and a never-ending increase in government spending and taxes.

Thinking about it, the current 25-50 year-old population did not grow up with on-demand technologies, for the most part. I can’t imagine what it’s going to be like in 25 years when generation X has grown up and the demand mindset is fully ingrained in everything they do.

Just a rant..

Is peanut butter more important than cars?

The current outbreak of salmonella poisoning in the peanut and peanut butter industry is an example of lax government oversight that will only get worse. Remember the milk crisis in China? The tainted jalapeno pepper/salsa problem last year? Bad farmed salmon from South America? Mad cow disease in American cattle?

The NY Times wrote an excellent piece on the Peter Pan peanut butter salmonella mess, which started with a family-owned processing plant in Blakely, GA. Workers weren’t paid good wages, temps were used, roofs leaked, rodent schmoo on the floor and government safety inspectors who were over-stretched. A recipe for disaster.

Sounds pretty appealing, doesn't it?

This type of thing, though not common in the least, is happening all over. As company profits dry up and workers let go, and as the government eases up supervision due to lack of funds – food safety problems will multiply.

And can’t you just see a bunch of marketers stepping up to the plate, injecting the market with "premium" foods that sport higher levels of quality control under the facade of “pure-natural,” or “healthiest choice” or others of the sort... this simply positions the lower cost items for those who simply can't afford the premiums. Whole Foods, for example, is already catering to these up-market consumers.

The government needs to step up here and pump some serious stimulus money into cleaning up
the food industry. Let’s put the search for the car czar on hold and clean up a food plant or two first. Food safety before car bail-out.

A double-edged sword

Over the past few weeks, I have been following the Gaza-Israeli conflict after seeing some tragic pictures a fellow student posted on Facebook. If you are not up to speed on what is happening there, here is a short video reporting on the issue:



This conflict has fueled a fire inside of me, for it reminds me of the sheer brutality mankind can wreak on one another. Pictures of the destruction in both Gaza and Israel litter the internet, showing the hidden truth behind what seems to be a justified fight as seen in the Youtube video above. There are no justification to such brutal tactics used by both sides, such as using white phosphorus, a lethal chemical, to hide troop movements, or launching rockets into civilian-populated areas. Sure, Israel is trying to clear out a terrorist organization from Gaza, good for them... but bombing areas populated with hundreds of innocent civilians? Absolutely uncalled for; if 400+ lives is the price to pay to defeat Hamas, something radical must be done. Israel seems to think it's justified because Hamas is launching missles into its land, but killing men, women, and children is not the way to show them who's boss. It truly pains me to see that man cannot even have formal conversation with one another, but rather resort to mass destruction.

I can not tell who are the 'good guys' in this conflict. Neither side seems to be attempting to help the other resolve issues peacefully. Israel, which is primarily portrayed as the 'good guy' in much of America's news seems to be causing more evil than Hamas has done to Israel. Gaza didn't deserve such a horrible takeover. At the same time, Israel does get some respect for trying to defeat terror. In my opinion, this matter is a double edged sword, one which seems to be hacking away at valuable life without a certain end. I truly do hope something is resolved soon, because noone deserves to go through a conflict as this.