Soon China Will Exceed the U.S. in Emissions—But There Is a More Important and More Interesting Story Here
Here’s a fairly decent conversation about the world’s largest polluters, who’s emitting what, and how this is all changing as Asia continues to grow in terms of energy use per capita, and in terms of its overall contribution to the world manufacturing scene.
In the article, somewhere along the discussion of who’s taking over 4th place, etc., etc., someone makes a good point: “All countries now have responsibility. It’s not just a story about China — it’s a story about the whole world,” said Ottmar Edenhofer of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and co-chair of a U.N. climate report last year.”
Given how obvious this is, I have to believe Dr. Edenhofer had a great deal more to say on the subject and that this snippet misses his basic meaning.
The 200+ sovereign nations on this planet exist on continua from small to huge in terms of population, in terms of climate emissions per capita, in terms of renewable resources—and capital resources to throw against the energy problem.
At the end of the day, we are faced with a problem and a solution that few people want to confront: the developed countries must lead the way to a clean energy future—especially those with huge energy consumption profiles per capita. Take the U.S. as an example, which is easy for me, as I happen to live here. If everyone in the world ate like Americans there would be food resources for about 2 billion people; if everyone ate like the Asians, those same resources could feed over 15 billion people; is this largely a function of the amount of meat in the Western diet; we consume on average, 300 pounds of meat per person per year, almost four times the world average.
Overall, the following chart tells the full story about energy consumption per capita.
Now, the question could be asked, can’t Americans cut back on their fatburgers (and their air conditioning, their gas guzzlers, etc.)? A related question: Can’t we as a people invest in the R&D and turn our policy decisions such that the entire world might make a wholesale change in the energy industry and replace fossil fuels with renewables?
We’re actually incredibly close. In parts of the country, the cost of generating wind energy per kWh is far less than that from coal—and those regions are getting incrementally bigger every day. We could do this if we felt like it. Of course, it would be telling the oil companies, by far the most powerful industry in the history of humankind, to take a hike, but we could do it.
Will we? That’s another story.
Craig,
China overtook the U.S. in terms of climate change emissions several years ago.
Otherwise, we agree.
One thing that I would point out is that much of China’s emissions profile is simply outsourced from the U.S. They are mining metals, smelting ores, synthesizing plastics and rubbers, machining or forming components (all using an unfortunate amount of inefficient coal without sufficient smokestack exhaust controls), and assembling products, then selling those products to us…
The emissions for those products rightfully should be attributable to us, or Europe, Japan, South Korea, etc… but they just have been outsourced to China.
As we’ve discussed before, I think China is literally doing everything it can (I really don’t know how they’ll hold to the agreement that Xi and Obama shook on last year). I’m far more worried about India. They’ll be the biggest problem for most of the next century, and they have no path forward. No wind resources, few good hydropower sources, only mediocre solar potential due to the rains… For India it will have to be all nuclear power to offset imported coal, but that has a limited timeframe before it gets too pricey.
You offer a great point about the outsourcing. Following this lead and the article above couldn’t we then also say that our using so many resources and so much energy has a foundation in our philosophy rather than our needs? Asians eat far less meat than Americans. For many people of the world meat is a special food item, not an essential part of every meal. It may be part of the delusion that we have “made it” rather than an foundation for our diet. Our society has changed from being investment conscious to consumer conscious. Investment is mostly only considered in finances now rather than in use of time. Even our relations with others leans toward “consuming” rather than “investing.” Naturally this is reflected in our energy consumption and pollution levels.
Climate affecting emissions come from various sources like vehicles,power plants, industries including cement industry,boilers and so on. Unless UN and governments take action it will continue.
The low carbon emissions technology I’ve developed would work well in any country on earth. In India for example they may not have nearly enough wind or solar but they have biomass in abundance in the rural sectors and they have trash in abundance in the urban sector and the AAEC fuels conversion system is fuel flexible enough to use either of those resources as well as others they have available. The problem is almost no one knows enough about it and the few that do are unable to understand and relate to the potential embodied in the combination of advantages it has over other approaches or see themselves as benefitting by the status quo and therefore don’t support change.
Here is a notice I’ve posted on Facebook and elsewhere.
STRATEGIC ALLIANCE OR INVESTMENT NEEDED FOR NOVEL NEW CONCEPT REPOWERING TECH ONLY SIX MONTHS TO ONE YEAR FROM MARKET ENTRY.
Advanced Alternative Energy Corp. (AAEC) has developed technology designed to allow home and business owners, towns, cities and even counties to convert nearly completely to cleaner renewable energy. AAEC is for those who understand that distributed alternative/renewable energy derived from coal, solar, wind, biomass and waste is a viable pathway to stall global warming and produce a better future for our descendants, and for our communities and for humanity. AAEC offers a viable way to move beyond talking about climate change to controlling it. Fossil Fuel firms and utilities oppose what AAEC offers and want to maintain their monopoly positions as sole energy providers and pass unlimited costs in cleaning up their operations on to their customers, even if better options are available.
AAEC has invented, patented, tested and further developed a new concept low-carbon energy technology we’ve designed for serving as the core technology for far cleaner renewable energy production systems and energy efficiency improvements across the North American landscape and around the world. AAEC’s novel new concept technology consists of a biomass, fossil fuel, and municipal waste combustion, gasification and pyrolysis conversion technology that can provide scalable heat and power requirements as well as both biofuel and biochar production for stand-alone use or as backup for alternative energy systems that depend on solar, wind or other intermittent sources of energy, and in this way it will help enable a doubling of the deployment of alternative energy projects around the world in coming decades.
AAEC management believes we will do better and be safer in the long run if we can deploy a practical way to power all societies on extraction of greenhouse gases that have already been emitted into earth’s atmosphere while also reducing ongoing greenhouse emissions and begin protecting our communities and electric power grids. We are claiming to be the inventor of one of the “tools” needed to enable humanity to overhaul the power delivery system, in the USA and elsewhere, and help get us out of the box fossil fuels and governmental inaction have humanity boxed up in. We propose to do this through deployment of advanced alternative energy projects at the village, community and county scale, and because good paying infrastructure jobs are also needed. Thus AAEC is seeking support from all that may care to support this project.
AAEC’s product lines can be manufactured in the US and in most any locality on any continent for the local and regional market. This we believe will create licensing opportunities and many thousands of good paying jobs, and these are among the things we are offering to an alternative energy hungry world. For further details please contact:
Les Blevins, President Advanced Alternative Energy
1207 N 1800 Rd., Lawrence, KS 66049
Phone 785-842-1943 – Email LBlevins@aaecorp.com
For more info see
http://aaecorp.com/ceo.html
http://advancedalternativeenergycorp.com
https://www.linkedin.com/profile/view?id=45587557&trk=nav_responsive_tab_profile
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Advanced-Alternative-Energy/277213435730720
http://buildings.ideascale.com/a/dtd/SCALABLE-MIXED-WASTE-TO-ENERGY-CONVERSION-TECHNOLOGY/84117-33602
If the more Important story is that the U.S. and other countries are transferring much of their emissions to China this means we here have more responsibility to demonstrate novel new means of repowering with low carbon energy that are applicable all around the world. This is exactly what my company is offering the world.
The low carbon emissions technology I’ve developed would work well in any country on earth. In India for example they may not have nearly enough wind or solar to meet their needs for renewable energy but they have biomass in abundance in the rural sectors and they have trash in abundance in the urban sector and these dispatchable resources could serve to augment the intermittent sources like wind and solar.
Bloggers here can E-mail me at LBlevins@aaecorp.com for my 6 page position statement entitled “Combined biomass, coal, solar and wind power proposed”
Craig, to replace coal we do not have to also displace oil. it is a common misunderstanding to equate oil companies with our general energy needs. 70% of refined oil products are used in transportation. 20% for heating and 10% for other petrochemicals like fertilizer and pesticides (approx.) So while it may be true that the world “runs” on oil. It gets work done on electricity. 40% of carbon emissions come from making electricity. Although the electrical energy mix varies a great deal, overall less than 1% comes from oil.
That war is being fought in the transportation sector (30% of carbon emissions) not in the electrical energy field. Electric transportation is a separate issue but with a major advantage that it leverages the benefits of a cleaner grid energy mix. If we switched transportation from oil to electricity we may have to expand our electrical production by no more than 30%. (night time charging and less refining would reduce this amount) Air conditioning presently accounts for about 15% of electrical usage. Conservation in electrical usage (including the “smart grid”) could lower our usage by at least 30%. Although “carbon” is not all “pollution” it does give some idea of the source of emissions.
You’re correct in what you say about oil and coal–in the absence of electric transportation. In this arena, however, it’s a big deal, where the energy resources we use to generate electricity are a direct replacement for oil.
The distinction also illustrates how important electric transportation can be as an overall solution to pollution. Similarly your article makes it clear that people in other countries eat less meat. When you have a meal in one of those countries you will likely find any meat mixed in with a lot of vegetables. It is an ingredient not a separate course. Meat is energy intensive and it is not surprising that countries with less energy to spare are eating less meat.
A common inference is that when they have more energy they will consume more meat. Perhaps to some extent, but I don’t think the Chinese population in the US have suddenly stopped eating Chinese food because they now have more money spend and energy to consume. It would be an interesting study to compare a US population to the ones who remain overseas in their energy consumption/diet…
Please note that anthropogenic warming is a direct function of population and its needs for energy conversions. Thermal emissions will continue into atmospheric air, and its temperature moderated by increased water evaporation and increased precipitation.. the regions may be different than what we know today… these are fuel and carbon independent and are caused by secondary and tertiary conversions into electricity which ends of as wasted heat. It is unwise to dictate that rest of the world cannot have luxuries like we have; after all many faiths prescribe population increase.. Let us instead develop adaptation technologies..
Neale Neelameggham, [neelameggham@gmail.com]
The US is using fracking on a large scale to boost its production of both natural gas and oil. Only a small fraction of the gas that is released from the rock is actually recovered via the wells. The remainder has been (or will be) freed from its rock prison and exists as an ever growing cloud of gas that is mostly methane which has a very high GWP (86, vs. the absurdly low value of 25 used by the EPA), much of which will eventually migrate to the surface. Unlike conventional sources of natural gas that are trapped by layers of impermeable material the fracked gas is not contained and as the amount of gas in the cloud increases the amount that reaches the surface will also increase over time. There is no known way to stop it.
Add to that a lot of gas is simply burnt with no attempt to collect it. The slurry that they keep secret that they pump into the ground and the serious increase of earthquake events
In my estimation, the resolution of our deepening predicament boils down to a few contests already long waged across humanity – truth vs. propaganda – wisdom vs. greed – courage vs. apathy – evolution vs. inertia.
In short, enough of us must know the truth, and have the wisdom and the courage, to evolve together and to firmly and permanently alter the direction of our species.
We must move from our present collective behavior, which in many respects has been little better than bacteria overrunning a Petri dish, to that of intelligent and sustainably active beings living in enduring harmony with our biosphere. This is within our powers, but it requires significant shifts in values, culture, and our dominant technology and infrastructure.
In my observation, the barriers before us are neither technological nor resource based, nor even fiscal, but rather political and moral, psychological and informational. Those of us who see the necessity of change – and the required course – must organize and work together to win out over the domination of those whose opulence depends on the status quo.
Truth — Non-Violence — Cooperation — Direct Action – Perseverance
Anyone with a Platonistic perspective on the world is going to see what you are saying and tend to agree with you. Everything flows nicely from the abstract ideals to the concrete. Now what should we do with all those who favor an Aristotelian view of the world? This probably includes most scientists and “practical” minded people. Especially since they seem to be in the majority?
Aristotle, like many great thinkers, also had an ethereal side, but it does seem that he more often exercised his mind in rather concrete and practical terms.
Examples of the more abstract might include the following observations. “Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” …and… “No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.”
The more grounded may be found in these… “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” …and… “Those who know, do. Those that understand, teach.” …and even… “Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.”
No stranger to philosophy, Craig Shields has wisely observed that two worldviews are the predominant drivers of political ideology…
The first mindset – which I see increasingly reinforced by elements across the corporate media – is that each of us is only responsible for our own self (and our own children while they are still young).
The second approach is quite ancient and spans oceans – that each person bears shared responsibility for their own well-being, as well as that of their family and community, and the biosphere.
When I consider these two, that first attitude puts me in mind of bacteria in a Petri dish – each organism gobbling up (or hoarding) resources, and pursuing short-term gain, without any deep abiding regard for the well-being of others, either now or in the future, until universally lethal conditions result. Are we humans no better than that?
No my friends, this is not a laughing matter – not if you care about other people, and life on Earth, and, ultimately, about yourself.
We can’t and shouldn’t hope for any carefree utopia, and I’ll always firmly support people making a fair profit manufacturing conveniences, trading in recreational services, and generally exchanging their labor and talent justly for a decent living.
But the rising control of our government by wealthy interests has created a dystopia that’s grossly unjust, blindly self-focused, and lethally materialistic. This threatens the social progress we’ve made over the centuries, and the natural world we’ll always need to survive.
Apathy is not an option.
As is so often the case in life, a look back is needed here before taking a step forward…
As a species, we emerged from the fragile condition of nomadic hunter-gatherers into the relatively stable prosperity of agrarian societies. We did this by sharing and cooperating for mutual benefit.
In contrast, today’s self-interest and deregulation signal a return to “the law of the jungle” from which the durable human tradition of common good had escaped.
Like most “higher” creatures, we thrive best by combining our talents and resources together to achieve what self-serving motives can’t and won’t ever achieve. In the “animal” kingdom this is observed from bees to wolves, to dolphins.
Regulations are necessary because some people can’t restrain their passions. Greed is among the most potent of passions, and it inspires vicious and dishonest tactics. “Primitive” traditions across the planet have long recognized that the desire to hoard far more than one needs is a symptom of psychological and spiritual disease. Far too many of us today have lost sight of that wisdom.
The fruits of our common effort are immeasurable, the most well-known being our major dams and reservoirs, our municipal water distribution and sewage systems, our national highway system, and our national parks. There are many more that aren’t recognized in the everyday triumphs that most people now take for granted.
History has taught that private schools won’t educate the public; private armies don’t defend the nation, private firemen don’t protect the whole city, and private hospitals don’t work to heal the masses.
Indeed, in private hands, pharmaceutical research now favors more profitable pill-a-day palliatives that “manage” disease rather than permanently curing it.
Private firemen once watched “unprotected” buildings burn, until the burning became a danger to a “subscriber’s” building. That lesson was glaringly easy.
Private armies defended only the interests of their paymasters (and their own interests).
Private schools exclude all but the well-off, and eject children who prove challenging to teach.
History also shows that defense of the public commons demands constant vigilance and courage against moneyed power. Our founders knew well that corporate charters are potent tools for theft and predation by the wealthy.
They strictly held each corporation to creating a tangible public benefit, and limited its lifespan to twenty years. Corporations also couldn’t change their charters, or buy up other corporations. Perhaps most notably, corporations were firmly barred from exercising political influence.
But as our nation grew, the robber barons soon found ways to erode these limits.
After the misery and starvation of the Great Depression, essential limits were yet again placed on private interests – with legal barriers between insurance companies, and the savings and loan banks, and the gambling investment houses. “Too big to fail” was no longer allowed in the world of finance.
Yet again, over the years, these protective barriers have been broken down again by wealthy private interests, using sock-puppet politicians – red and blue – who masquerade as public servants. Our present economy and government are the predictable outcomes.
Slavery was the old legal fiction by which people were made into property. “Corporate personhood” is the legal fiction claiming that property is a person. It’s the same lie, from the opposite direction.
It’s another perilous fiction that the use of money for the bribery we know as “campaign contributions” and “lobbying” should be regarded as Freedom of Speech. This allows the wealthy to scream into their media bullhorns, and select and pocket our leaders, while the rest of us whisper and plead for justice.
Want improvement? Ban bribery in all its forms. That’s the most important and central issue that controls all others. As long as cash reigns as king, we’ll be slaves to greed and cowardice.
Excellent, Cameron. Thanks. I love that first quote from Aristotle.
Well said Cameron. I can agree with all you’ve said and most of what the others have said. I’m offering a tech based approach that can serve as the catalyst for the change most of us are calling for. And by the way the technology based approach is the non-partisan approach humanity is in dire need of.
“It is in our vital interest to diversify America’s energy supply — and the way forward is through technology.”
– President George W. Bush, 2007 State of the Union Address
“Basically, the technology for disposing of waste hasn’t caught up with the technology of producing it.”
~ Senator Al Gore 1992 ‘Earth In The Balance’ pg. 148
“A fundamental rule in technology says that whatever can be done
will be done”
~ Andy Grove, Co-founder of Intel
Production of food causes more pollution than all forms of transportation and shortage of water depending on what is grown.
http://hpjmh.com/2014/03/27/food-math-101-saving-our-civilization-made-simple/
It’s interesting that, ever since the 1960’s, our presidents, without exception, have spoken about the crucial need to address our national energy consumption issues, whether through increasing efficiency, or by diversifying our energy sources, or getting off foreign oil, or moving from toxic prehistoric sunlight onto the clean safe modern stuff. Though all these are important, the latter is now the only truly viable final solution.
Leo,
The distributed energy innovation I offer can be a key component of dramatically reducing the amount of water required to produce each ton of produce, and reduce the pollution emitted in food production and delivery by enabling much of our food production to be moved to nearer population centers.
Cameron,
The distributed energy innovation I offer can play a key role in addressing and achieving that entire list of issues you point out through increasing efficiency, and by diversifying our energy sources, and by getting us off importing foreign oil by moving the world population from toxic fossil fuels onto cleaner and safer energy sources including biomass, wastes, wind and solar.
The question I have is will anyone join me and push for action to replace endless inaction? I haven’t seen any indication of that yet as there is always some so called expert with doubts.
Another question I have is why do these so called experts prefer to hide behind the curtain while they pull the levers of derailment like the so called Wizard in the famous movie about the girl who was temporarily blown away from her rural farm home here in my home state.
Another question I have is;
“Who will help me plant my corn?”
One day upon wandering out of Brownback’s barnyard the Little Red Hen found some corn lying along the road.
“Who will help me plant my corn?” said the little red hen.
“Not I,” said Exxon the fat cow.
“Not I,” said BP the black duck.
“Not us,” said the smelly Koch brother pigs.
“Not I,” said Chevron the plump goose.
“Then I will do it myself,” said the little red hen, and so she did. She planted her corn, and it grew very tall and ripened into golden yellow grain.
“Who will help me reap my corn?” asked the little red hen.
“Not I,” said the black BP duck..
“Out of my classification,” said the smelly pigs.
“I’d lose my seniority,” said Exxon the fat cow.
“I’d lose my tax refunds,” said Chevron the plump goose.
“Then I will do it myself,” said the little red hen, and so she did.
At last it came time to bake some cornbread.
“Who will help me bake cornbread?” asked the little red hen.
“That would be overtime for me,” said Exxon the fat cow.
“I’d lose my tax exemptions,” said BP the black duck.
“We are dropouts and never learned to work,” said the smelly pigs.
“If I’m to be the only helper, that’s discrimination,” said Chevron the plump goose.
“Then I will do it by myself,” said the little red hen.
So she baked five corn loaves and held them up for all of her fat and smelly neighbors to see. Of course they wanted some. But the little red hen said, “No, I’ll eat all of them myself.”
“Excess profits!” cried the fat Exxon the fat cow.
“Capitalist leech!” screamed BP the black duck.
“I demand equal shares!” yelled Chevron the plump goose.
The smelly pigs just grunted in unison.
But they all yelled ‘Unfair’ to Congress and painted picket signs and marched around and around, shouting it wasn’t fair to them.
Soon many irate Republican farmers got the news and came to the barnyard and said to the little red hen, “You should not be so greedy.”
“But I grew the corn and baked the cornbread,” said the little red hen.
“Yes” said the farmers. “That is what makes our free enterprise system so wonderful. Under our taxation regulations, the productive workers must share the fruits of their labor with those who are rich by simply granting them the right to avoid paying their share of barnyard taxes.”
And they all lived happily ever after, including the little red hen, who smiled and clucked, “I am grateful, for I now understand why the fat, smelly and lazy ones out in the barnyard didn’t want to help me plant and grow my own corn and become independent.”
But she never again baked corn bread because she joined the Republicans “don’t tax me party” and they showed her how she too could live off of the efforts of others. And they all smiled and said; ‘Fairness’ had won out again.
Individual initiative soon died out, but nobody noticed; and perhaps no one really cared…so long as abundance for the rich’ was the rule of the barnyard, and the fat were never required to pay up on those bad barnyard taxes and everyone looked to a bright and prosperous future with no thought to the possibility the nation might not fare as well in the future as it always had.
IS THIS A GREAT BARNYARD OR WHAT?
The moral if this story is; let’s not worry that Big Oil is profiting off the little people to the tune of billions and influencing Congress, let’s make their predatory Ponzi scheme obsolete.
But suddenly, the pin-striped politician – pockets stuffed with oily money, and with ExxonMobil, BP, and Chevron grinning (or bearing their teeth) just behind, and with the big bad military/police/court/prison wolf tautly leashed but at the ready knee – said to the Little Red Hen, “You plant that corn, and you’ll never see the sun again. These fine persons here behind me own the corn, and the soil, and the water, and today the sun is at auction. Get back to the barnyard and eat your ration of corn meal, and get your butt back to laying eggs for us, or your carcass will feed my wolf.”
Yeah, government’s the problem, alright – it’s the last thing standing between us and the claws of the fat cats that are buying it.
Americans collectively funded the wondrous and globally unprecedented level of infrastructure built across our country in the 50’s and 60’s. This infrastructure facilitated – even created – the many opportunities and the abilities that allowed American businesses to grow to multinational proportions.
Now most of domestic manufacturing is gone across the sea, and the so many mom and pop shops that kept money local have surrendered to national big box chains (how accurate that term is – chains). As a result of their foreign presence, foreign workforce, and political clout, many of these new multinationals have decided – almost publicly – that they no longer much need an American Middle Class. In fact, they no longer much need America. It’s should come as no surprise that they no longer feel they need American infrastructure as much as they once did.
Once upon a time, many businesses large and small regarded paying the taxes that enforce investment in our nation as part of a wise long-term business strategy – a strategy that contributes to the general health and prosperity of our whole nation and her people. It seems that, instead, they have now come to regard that vital investment in our nation as more of an undeserved burden.
There’s a name for people who saw this coming… a name for people who have long been against skewed trade agreements and sweetheart tax breaks that encourage the offshoring of American manufacturing… a name for people who wanted American policy to be structured for the benefit of the whole of America… a name for people who wanted the workers across the world to enjoy the same workplace safety and environmental protections, and the same pay and benefits, in their own countries, as we once did in America.
The name is “protectionist” and it’s wielded with derision.
Oh Yes! Let’s talk for a minute about the tax code – another massive fiscal benefit our ever more deeply pocketed government provides to corporations. Why in the world would I say that? These two reasons top the list:
First:
When contemplating taxation, it is useful to keep this in mind: working men and women pay their taxes based on almost their entire revenue, while corporations are taxed only based on their profit! …Let that fact sink in…
Just imagine if you could pay tax only on your “profit” – that is, what you didn’t spend to survive: on food, on shelter, clothing, insurance, medical expenses, childcare, etc. …Economists have a term for that little bit we have left over – they like to call it “disposable income”… Now, imagine if you paid tax only on your “disposable income” – like a corporation.
In the 1950’s, well into the beginnings of an era of widespread prosperity, our nation’s corporations paid 76 cents for every dollar paid in federal taxes by private individuals. Yet, in the 1990’s (a decade of record U. S. company stock gains and profits), our nation’s corporations paid only 21 cents for every dollar paid in federal taxes by private individuals. In 1995, only a mere 11.6% of federal revenues came from corporations.
Second:
This sort of thing isn’t a bygone phenomenon – it’s getting more severe…
Between 2008 and 2010, thirty major US corporations collectively earned tens of billions in profits, but paid no taxes at all on those profits during that three-year period – NONE! In fact, all but one of these thirty received rebates beyond having paid nothing.
Here’s just a handful:
• Despite making $10.5 billion in U.S. profits over the three years, GE paid no federal taxes, and got $4.7 billion back in rebates.
• Verizon made $32 billion, paid no federal taxes, and got $950 million back in rebates.
• Wells Fargo made $49 billion in profits from 2008 and 2010, paid no federal taxes, and padded that with another $680 million in tax rebates.
• Corning Inc., a company that makes industrial glass and ceramics, made almost $2 billion in profits over three years and “paid” an effective negative tax rate of 4 percent – that amounts to a subsidy of $696 million.
For the full list of the dirty thirsty thirty, look here:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/galleries/2012/02/23/the-top-ten-corporate-tax-dodgers.html#slide_8
Incidentally, in the same three years studied by Citizens for Tax Justice, those thirty firms spent nearly half a billion dollars in “lobbying” to Congress – now that’s an investment that paid dividends!
There are those who are in favor of applying the Law of the Jungle to human society, forgetting that such savagery is exactly what we long ago left behind in favor of cooperation and sharing (otherwise known as civilization).
In response to Mr. Atwoods postings I’d just like to say what my firm offers is a viable way for Americans to take back America, but that too will likely go over everyone’s head who prefers to lament the status quo rather than take action to build a new model to right the sad situation we find ourselves in. The visionary Buckmister Fuller put into words as below;
“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”
– R. Buckmister Fuller
Machiavelli also put it into words his own way and I’d say he hit the nail right on the head.
“There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things for the reformer has enemies in all who profit from the old order.”
–Niccolo Machiavelli, 1513
I wish you good fortune, Les, and wish it was in my power to assist you – apart from suggesting again that you create a post here of your own, to detail your firm’s ideas as Craig has offered.
I look forward to seeing you post a straightforward explanation of your firm’s techniques and strategy, so everyone can gain a greater understanding of exactly what your firm is trying to do.
Craig, your point is well taken when you observe, “If everyone in the world ate like Americans there would be food resources for about 2 billion people; if everyone ate like the Asians, those same resources could feed over 15 billion people; is this largely a function of the amount of meat in the Western diet; we consume on average, 300 pounds of meat per person per year, almost four times the world average.”
This is especially crucial in combination with our increased use of “the last hours of ancient sunlight” on a massive scale (and a widening BTU to calorie ratio) to mechanize and industrialize farming, and create huge quantities of fertilizers and pesticides, and transport food hundreds or even thousands of miles for consumption.
I understand for example that fisherman in Scotland send fish to China to be cleaned and then shipped to US markets – because it’s cheaper. I’m guessing significant costs are externalized in that process.
I’m not especially fond of a great number of strategies Cuba has pursued in the last half century, but the oil embargo they’ve endure has given rise to a whole range of agricultural techniques we’d do well to consider here.
A Long Term Development Project in Waiting
Les Blevins was born in Kansas in the late 1930s. His background has been in the mechanical trades as a machinist, mechanic, welder and maintenance technician, which comprised his primary employment from 1957 to 2001. Since 1980 he has been developing an innovative fuel conversion concept to address multiple energy and environmental problems with strong emphasis on simplicity, practicality and economy. His first patent was granted in 1983 his most recent in 1993.
Blevins believes humans and the environment have long been on a collision course, and that fossil fuel burning is inflicting damage on the global environment and on our critical resources. Many of humanity’s current practices put at serious risk the future we all wish for human society. The advent of human induced rapid global warming, increasingly evident since 1980, and the impact this is having on the world’s weather patterns and oceans are the result of our unwise reliance on fossil fuels rather than relying on our abundant renewable energy resources.
Blevins believes fundamental changes are urgent this decade if we are to avoid the collision our present course will bring about. Our bad practices are now so rapidly altering the world that it will very likely be unable to sustain life in the manner we now know ever again.
Blevins believes advancements in energy efficiency, energy generation and energy conservation can play a major role in solving the problem. And he favors developing improved fuels conversion methods, and in implementing these new concept systems in distributed and On-site installations as the very best means to utilize diverse biomass resources, better manage diverse wastes, and produce from these new sources of heat, power, chemicals and liquid fuels like ethanol, alcohol, biodiesel, and methane and hydrogen gas.
In the 1970’s he noticed a lack of suitable biomass fuels conversion systems designed for fuels that seemingly existed in great abundance, such as diverse low-value agricultural biomass and various routinely wasted biomass materials.
Blevins decided to research and develop new fuels conversion systems. He designed a furnace to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels, by instead utilizing a diverse range of low value and widely available biomass and wastes as fuel.
This led to the development of an air or water heating furnace in 1979 that Les installed next to and connected to his rural home near Lawrence, Kansas. He used, tested and refined the new concept furnace over the next 12 years (1980 to 1992) to enable combustion, gasification and pyrolysis processes.
Les did more preliminary testing of the furnace system using direct combustion, pyrolysis and gasification processes. The outcome of these tests looked very promising so Les designed an automatic fuel feeding system for his furnace and obtained a basic utility patent on the automatic fuel feeding system in 1993.
A Long Term Development Project
Les Blevins was born in Kansas in the late 1930s. His background has been in the mechanical trades as a machinist, mechanic, welder and maintenance technician, which comprised his primary employment from 1957 to 2001. Since 1980 he has been developing an innovative fuel conversion concept to address multiple energy and environmental problems with strong emphasis on simplicity, practicality and economy. His first patent was granted in 1983 his most recent in 1993.
Blevins believes humans and the environment have long been on a collision course, and that fossil fuel burning is inflicting damage on the global environment and on our critical resources. Many of humanity’s current practices put at serious risk the future we all wish for human society. The advent of human induced rapid global warming, increasingly evident since 1980, and the impact this is having on the world’s weather patterns and oceans are the result of our unwise reliance on fossil fuels rather than relying on our abundant renewable energy resources.
Blevins believes fundamental changes are urgent this decade if we are to avoid the collision our present course will bring about. Our bad practices are now so rapidly altering the world that it will very likely be unable to sustain life in the manner we now know ever again.
Blevins believes advancements in energy efficiency, energy generation and energy conservation can play a major role in solving the problem. And he favors developing improved fuels conversion methods, and in implementing these new concept systems in distributed and On-site installations as the very best means to utilize diverse biomass resources, better manage diverse wastes, and produce from these new sources of heat, power, chemicals and liquid fuels like ethanol, alcohol, biodiesel, and methane and hydrogen gas.
In the 1970’s he noticed a lack of suitable biomass fuels conversion systems designed for fuels that seemingly existed in great abundance, such as diverse low-value agricultural biomass and various routinely wasted biomass materials.
Blevins decided to research and develop new fuels conversion systems. He designed a furnace to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels, by instead utilizing a diverse range of low value and widely available biomass and wastes as fuel.
This led to the development of an air or water heating furnace in 1979 that Les installed next to and connected to his rural home near Lawrence, Kansas. He used, tested and refined the new concept furnace over the next 12 years (1980 to 1992) to enable combustion, gasification and pyrolysis processes.
Les did more preliminary testing of the furnace system using direct combustion, pyrolysis and gasification processes. The outcome of these tests looked very promising so Les designed an automatic fuel feeding system for his furnace and obtained a basic utility patent on the automatic fuel feeding system in 1993.
The novel AAEC fuels combustion, gasification and pyrolysis system is deemed to have the following unique set of qualities
Ability to utilize household or raw MSW as well as many other diverse biomass and waste based fuels in particle sizes from sawdust, wood shavings, corn cobs and fuel pellets, to briquettes, cubes and small square to large round or industrial size bales, which can either be manually or automatically fed into the combustion furnace or gasification reactor.
Lower fabrication and installed cost when compared to other conversion units with fewer features
Lower operating and maintenance cost
Simpler, more effective, and lower cost pollution control
Ability to pre-dry incoming fuels, as needed, using recovered heat from the hot flue gas stream
Ability to utilize high moisture straws, manures and sludges as fuel to produce heat, syngas, methane and/or hydrogen when properly equipped
Ability to commercially produce higher value products such as heat, power, synthetic gases, methane, hydrogen, char-fuels, ethanol, alcohol, and diesel fuel.
Ability to be modular in design for easier fabrication, transport and installation
Ability to be portable and be used in temporary applications for remote forest thinning uses or other short period uses such as landfill mining and reclamation operations, spill-site cleanup and/or temporary or long term military applications
Expandable without limit by closely arranging multiple units to achieve the total throughput capacity required
Can be operated as simple distributed generation (DE) or combined heat and power (CHP) or as an integrated combined cycle generation (ICCG) system
Can be locally built, installed and operated in any locality where approval is available and where suitable financing and economics exist
Does not require pre-sorting, pre-shredding or size reduction by chipping of logs, scrap tires, scrap pallets etc. to the extent that other technologies require.
Will accept and process difficult fuels such as used carpets, old furniture, demolition debris, storm debris, shingles, scrap tires etc.
Is highly tolerant of non-combustibles; such as bricks, glass, metal, stones, dirt, electronic devices, metal containing appliances etc.
Can be operated in direct combustion, pyrolysis or gasification mode at the will of operators and can be switched from one mode to another during operation.
Installations are scalable from throughput capacity of under 10 pounds per day upwards with no limit (example 1,000 or 2,000 or 3,000 tons per day or more)
Can combust, gasify or pyrolyse liquids, sludges and solids and can divide the process into multiple “stages” and can automatically manage each stage for optimum results and can be programmed to “engineer” the gases produced and do so in one or more automatically and continuously recharged conversion chambers where selected conversion processes can be automatically optimized for each of the feedstocks being processed. Les Blevins has visualized various modifications to the AAEC fuels processor to enhance its usefulness including updraft and downdraft configurations and the inclusion of advanced plasma arc and microwave processing processes among others.
1. GENERAL DESCRIPTION
The Sequential Grates ™ combustion system consists of a tall, free standing, self-contained, firebrick or ceramic lined combustor, furnace, gasifier, pyrolyser or boiler. Contained within the unit is an automatic solid fuels stoking system consisting of several pivoting grates. Air pollution abatement (via secondary combustion) is combined within the design. Fully automatic fuel input, heat or power output and ash removal are readily available design features.
2. TECHNOLOGY EMPLOYED
Combustion and gasification of various biomass and wastes are proven technologies, employed in both small and large scale applications. The ability to co fire difficult combinations of wastes, biomass and conventional fossil fuels is combined in the new furnace. Solid fuels are introduced into the unit through an opening, from a conveyor, and are then dropped downward “sequentially”, from grate to grate. The grate design and action is such that solid fuels are classified by size, and dropped to reposition them periodically and to separate accumulated ashes automatically while conversion commences.
The Sequential Grates ™ stoking action starts at the bottom grate and moves (from grate to grate) -sequentially- upwards, so as not to drop fuels onto grates already containing fuel. Pollution abatement can be incorporated, within the system by the addition of a proprietary smoke re-circulation system and/or by the addition of gas burners to re-ignite and achieve secondary combustion of the remaining volatile organic gases and particulates. Other off-the-shelf abatement technologies may also be employed.
3. ADVANTAGES
Advantages of the Sequential Grate system are the ability to utilize the various renewable biomass and waste fuels available in a given area at any time and allows co-firing these with conventional fuels when desirable. Co firing has economic and environmental advantages as it provides plant operators the ability to select the most economical and environmentally friendly fuel combinations at any time or place. In the AAEC Sequential Grates ™ combustion system this flexibility is further combined with a multi-stage combustion process, to maximize benefits the fuels flexibility provides. It further combines this over all fuel flexibility with an inherent, effective and economical air emissions control system. These advantages are useful in both area and district heating, co-generation, distributed generation, independent power production and could be used effectively for base load power generation.
Combustion of MSW is currently accomplished using mass burn, refuse derived fuel or gasification processes. In the Sequential Grates ™ system each choice is available. The system can be utilized for any of these processes or as a “combined process” combustor, furnace, Pyrolysis, Torrefaction or “controlled air” combustion unit, or retort for making either charcoal, charfuels or agri-char.
Additionally units of the Sequential Grates ™ concept/technology can be sized appropriately, or arranged in close proximity with other units, to achieve any desired total input and output. When units are closely arranged it becomes possible to shut down part of the system, without shutting down the entire system. This is very helpful for adjustment of the load carried and for periodic maintenance of the system that allows 24/7/365 operations to continue.
Additionally this new system has a small “footprint”. That is to say that as it is a vertical system and the ground area required is much smaller, it allows for installations in confined spaces such as beside or between existing buildings or other facilities such as at power plants or landfills.
For more information contact;
Les Blevins, Advanced Alternative Energy
1207 N 1800 Rd., Lawrence, KS 66049
Phone; 785-842-1943 Fax line 785-842-0909
Email LBlevins@aaecorp.com
Website http://www.aaecorp.com
Readers should feel free to email me for more information or for an answer to any questions.