As I'm sure you are aware, most of our roads, fuel, energy and plastics come from crude oil sources. You have probably also heard that there is a finite amount of oil on the planet and other groups claiming that new oil is forming naturally as well. Lets take a minute to get it straight. If part 2 of that statement is true, then part one is false. However, we need to consider the types of oil. The crude oil we are talking about in part one took millions of years to form. Part 2 of the statement is true except that it will take millions of years before that oil is ready for consumption and at the current rate, we have not seeded enough to get us through one day of our current use.

With this in mind, we will discount part two and say with some certainty, there is a finite amount of crude oil on the planet. Knowing this allows us to understand peak oil. Peak oil is theoretically the moment we have used exactly half of all the oil available on the planet. Because the amount can not be calculated with accuracy down to a moment, it is estimated by taking in to account all that we know about our oil sources and allowing a margin for error. Even with a margin for error, it is entirely possible that we have passed the "peak" moment sometime in 2008.

This means several things, first that energy from fossil fuels will go up in price, second the energy source is running out and third we need to focus on renewable energy now. Fossil fuels hurt the environment because we use them in such high concentration compared to the millions of years it took for them to form. With renewables, we benefit from a cleaner healthier environment and eventually, cheaper fuel sources than we currently have.

Dr. Michael Lardelli from the University of Adelaide looks at how the bulk of the world's oil production comes from a relatively small number of very large fields discovered decades ago. The rate of world oil production has been maintained at current levels only by finding and bringing on line an increasing number of smaller fields, but the financial cost and the energy required to find and develop these new fields is constantly increasing. According to Dr. Lardelli the so-called peak of oil production was actually in 2008.

Read more of Dr. Lardelli's work by following the related link below.

Interesting: Burning one liter of oil releases energy equivalent to 20 days of hard human labor. A fully-tanked jumbo jet contains an energy equivalent to around 13,000 years of human labor.

As you may know, wind energy is something I am passionate about. If you are reading this, you may already know that the address of this blog is a subset of my website on wind power. With that in mind, you can see why I am excited for a reason to post an article like this.

It appears that the utilities have had some troubles with wind energy upsetting profit margins. To make things worse for the utilities, remember this article "40x Global Energy Needs Are Blowing In the Wind".

With a potential like 40x our global needs, and awareness growing daily, how does a power company compete or at least manage this type of competition? Bloomberg has an article on the subject that is quite revealing, even if you have to read it twice to really get the message.

What this all amounts to is this: After years of getting government incentives to install windmills, operators in Europe may have become their own worst enemy, reducing the total price paid for electricity in Germany, Europe's biggest power market, by as much as 5 billion euros some years, according to a study this week by Poeyry, a Helsinki-based industry consultant.

This tidbit of information, which will hopefully begin to contradict the usual lies about the need for hefty subsidies for the wind sector, has been publicised by EWEA, the European Wind Energy Association in a report on the merit order effect (PDF). This is the name for what happens when you inject a lot of capital-intensive, low-marginal-cost supply into a marginalist price-setting market mechanism with low short term demand elasticity.

You might simplify the above by saying; To produce power from fossil fuels, you need to collect and use the fuel source which costs money. Once a wind turbine in fully installed, if you need power, all you need is wind. This means when there is wind, there is no cost of fuel to make power. If the turbines are installed in an area abundant with wind, the production of power has almost no cost. The only real cost is the upfront equipment cost. If the utilities have huge incentives, as was the case in Germany, this means the upfront cost was largely paid by a third party. If the utility didn't have to pay for the equipment and the fuel - wind - is free, then the cost to supply power is nearly 0. Having a low cost production like this is what upset the utilities earnings. Supply was high compared to demand and there was no equipment cost to factor in because of the subsidy.

The way I see it, we need the utility, but we need it for stability. I want to see wind turbines in every back yard that gets regular or steady winds. Spreading the load to the residential level like this would mean our existing infrastructure could handle the new source. This keeps the impact to the environment down as well as the cost of the system.

Keep your eye on wind power. Follow the related link for some more study information on wind power.

Many water purification methods introduced into the developing world are quickly abandoned as people don't know how to use and maintain them, says Norma Alcantar at the University of South Florida in Tampa. So she and her colleagues decided to investigate the prickly pear cactus, Opuntia ficus-indica, which 19th-century Mexican communities used as a water purifier. The cactus is found around the world.

The team extracted the cactus's mucilage - the thick gum the plant uses to store water. They then mixed this with water to which they had added high levels of either sediment or the bacterium Bacillus cereus.

Alcantar found that the mucilage acted as a flocculant, causing the sediment particles to join together and settle to the bottom of the water samples.

The scientists see communities in developing countries using the cactus on daily basis. They could boil a slice of it to release the gum and then add it to water just like the scientists did. But there are hurdles to overcome. What resources would be necessary for widespread growth of the cactus for this purpose and how can people ensure the "treated" water is truly bacteria free? If these problems can be solved, cheap, clean water could be accessible for millions of people that currently don't have any.

I am seeing headlines that indicate certain areas around the San Francisco Bay are no longer in drought conditions. This is not a state wide condition. This is also not the condition around the whole San Francisco Bay Area.

The city of San Francisco and County of Marin are not in a drought, their reservoirs are at or above normal levels.

Today I read that EBMUD is ending their voluntary rationing program. They are not saying we should waste water, just that there is now enough and if it is needed, go ahead and use it. Being frugal with water is always recommended. Get the most from every drop.

If we continue to conserve, we will help protect against future droughts. However, as our populations grow, our need for water is growing. It is unlikely that we can completely avoid the drought cycle, but conservation and awareness go a long way toward shortening the dry spells.

The California water system is still below normal in the largest reservoirs and therefore water districts that rely on the state water supply are still being asked to cut back.

Both Lake Oroville and the state's largest reservoir - Shasta Lake, (which can hold 4.5 million acre-feet and is part of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's Central Valley Project), have not reached normal levels according to anything I have read at this time and supports the state water systems continued rationing.

The following is a snippet from a radio show:

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"If we continue to cut back on smoke pouring forth from industrial smokestacks, the increase in global warming could be profound," Kintisch writes in an opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times. Kintisch isn't talking about greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide; he's talking about another kind of pollutant we put in the sky -- "like aerosols from a spray can," he tells NPR's Guy Raz.

"It turns out that those particles have a profound effect on maintaining the planet's temperature." Greenhouse gases and aerosol pollutants work in opposing ways on the Earth's climate, Kintisch explains. "The greenhouse gases warm the planet when they're emitted, because they absorb heat reflected up from the ground -- the greenhouse effect. These aerosols, though, do the opposite. They block sunlight, they make clouds more reflective -- and by doing that, they actually cool the planet. "The problem is that we're cutting the cooling pollution as we make our air cleaner," he says.

Some scientists, he says, are confident that this is connected to global warming, but they don't know how large the effect is. "That's the frightening thing, because if it's a big cooling effect, it means that we've been actually warming the planet more than we know," Kintisch says. "As we take away that unexpectedly helpful cooling mask, we're going to be facing more global warming than we expected.
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I think the trick here is to think logically about what is involved. Switching hair spray and cleaning products from aerosol to a trigger pump is quick and easy compared to cutting back our driving or improving our fossil fuel efficiencies dramatically. As we make decisions to improve our quality of life, reducing airborne pollutants as one example, all of the effects are not necessarily positive. We improve our health and well being as well as general health of the other life on our planet.

As we are generally reactionary, what this tells me is it is time to react. Wow, the aerosols had more effects than killing Ozone and opening higher possibilities for skin cancer? Yes. Apparently along with killing Ozone, they reflected heat away in the upper atmosphere. We had to make this change. Now we need to move faster toward the other changes on our list. Reducing fossil fuel use.

I'm sure we will find draw backs to renewable energies too, but they are currently a lot better choice. Lets keep perspective and seek balance, reduce - reuse - recycle.

For your interest, I have placed the forcing chart from the IPCC on the related link for you to look at. The chart is a summary of primary contributors to Climate Change and the direction of their impact illustrated with margin for error.