Before the Flood - National Geographic Movie

British Columbias Extensive Geothermal Reserves

A closer look at the map indicates extensive geothermal reserve from which electric energy could be produced much of which is adjacent to large transmission lines.

Geothermal Resources Map of BC

Breakthrough in Lithium Extraction Using Geothermal Electric Plants

Energy Source has discovered a breakthrough in the extraction of lithium, manganese and zinc from geothermal brine at the Salton Sea using waste water from a geothermal electric plant. The following diagram shows the process.

This is a Diagram of the Intial Extraction Process before Energy Source's Breakthrough

What is exciting about this process is the energy need to run the extraction plant comes from the geothermal electric plant that supplies the waste water, so it is not using fossil fuels in its process. It is, in fact, a waste free, low energy, and low land impact process. In the past, we would have had to rely on open pit mines and fossil fuel processing plants to achieve what this company has achieved. They I think have discovered a 21st-century method of mining!

As it sits today there are 19 operating geothermal plants in the Imperial county. More are plant the largest being one proposed by an Australian company called Controlled Thermal Resources. This new plant will be called the Hell's Kitchen plant and it will be five times bigger than any of the other plants.

Geothermal Industry Wants Alberta's Abandoned Wells

In Alberta, the Geothermal industry would like to convert some of the 77,000 abandoned oil wells into Geothermal electric plants. Oil wells consider hot water, that contains gigajoules of energy a waste product and paying to have it trucked it away. In North Dakota, a micro geothermal generation plant that fits into two shipping containers is now producing 250kW of power from two wells. This could be a great plan for Alberta. Even after the water is used to produce electricity the still warm water could be used to heat greenhouses in the winter, heat homes, melt snow, and a myriad of other uses. One can only image the uses farmers and towns would make of these resources.

Illustration of a Dutch System used in Indonesia

Converting this resource to geothermal energy would not only put oil workers back to work as much of the technological training in the geothermal field is the same as the oil industry. In addition to that, it would create more permanent higher quality job opportunities than the oil industry produces.

Heat Map of Alberta Showing Key Hot Zones

Powerwall 2 & Solar Roof Launch

Tesla Motors and Solar City have worked together to create a better roof that collects solar, lasts longer, insulates and looks great. The roofing material is made from a glass that will withstand a blow that would shatter all non ashphalt roofing materials. The roofing looks exactly like either tile, slate or clay roofing with build in solar panels. The roofing is paired with Tesla's new power wall units that are typically placed on the walls of the garage next to the charging unit for the electric cars.

The solar tiles are integrated into the roof but are invisible from the street, yet are fully exposed to the sun from above.

The overall cost of the roofing will still be less than installing a regular roof and paying the electrical company for power from conventional sources. More important it converts you house to fossil fuel free existance, and when you buy that electric car it will power that as well.

Power Wall Two

The new powerwall introduced with this roofing is twice as powerful as powerwall one, and the speicifications are found in the following diagram.

Click here to go to Tesla site.

Climate Change Lawsuit

About the Lawsuit

Dr. James Hansen and his granddaughter explain the impending danger continued use of fossil fuels will have to world of his granddaughter.

In 2015, twenty-one youth from across the United States, age 8 to 19, filed a landmark constitutional climate change lawsuit against the federal government in the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon. Also acting as a Plaintiff is world-renowned climate scientist Dr. James E. Hansen, serving as guardian for future generations and his granddaughter. Their complaint asserts that, in causing climate change, the federal government has violated the youngest generation’s constitutional rights to life, liberty, property, as well as failed to protect essential public trust resources.  

A More Detail Explantion: Hell will Break Loose - Ice Melt, Sea Level Rise and Superstorms

Published on 17 Sep 2016

The main point that I want to make concerns the threat of irreparable harm, which I feel we have not communicated well enough to people who most need to know, the public and policymakers. I’m not sure how we can do that better, but I comment on it at the end of this transcript. 

In response to the study outlined here, NASA launched a new operation to assess ice melt, OMG (Ocean Melting Greenland). https://omg.jpl.nasa.gov

Sign up for Dr. James Hansen's email list to receive his latest communications: http://bit.ly/1UzeHI1http://bit.ly/1UzeHI1

Subscribe to Hansen's YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCn3Y...

Read the study:

Ice melt, sea level rise and superstorms: evidence from paleoclimate data, climate modeling, and modern observations that 2 °C global warming could be dangerous

http://www.atmos-chem-phys.net/16/376...

Read the full transcript here: http://csas.ei.columbia.edu/2016/03/2...http://csas.ei.columbia.edu/2016/03/2...

We are in the Anthoropocene Epoch

The following time line after the table is of earth's average temperature since the last ice age, to see the time line in full size click here.  The importance of this time line is two fold. First it clearly shows the past fluctations in climate temperature, against the fluctuations we are seeing today. Second it demonstrates that we have not only created and entered into a new "Epoch" but we are deep into this era call the Anthropocene period. This is a geological age create and governed by human activity, as the timeline demonstrates, scientist are now trying to pin point the date the Epoch began.

This Anthropocene Epoch speaks not just to the things we are experiencing such as air pollution or the warming climate, but to the more serious crisis of earth's systems changing to the point were it could become unihabitable for human beings and civilization as we know it.

A Timeline of Earth's Average Temperature

Anthropocene Working Group Reports to IGC

The following summary was released just before Dr. Colin Waters of the British Goelogical Survey began the AWG's report to the International Geological Congress on Monday, August 29th, 2016.

Majority current opinion on the group indicates the following:

• The Anthropocene concept, as articulated by Paul Crutzen and Eugene Stoermer in 2000, is geologically real.  The phenomenon is of sufficient scale to be considered as part of the International Chronostratigraphic Chart, more commonly known as the Geological Time Scale.

• Majority AWG opinion is for assignation as an Epoch/Series.  This option is preferred over either a lower rank (e.g. Age/Stage, i.e. as a subdivision of the Holocene) or a higher rank such as a Period or Era.  In such a step, and in common with all other geological time units, the Anthropocene would comprise both a 'pure time' unit (an Anthropocene Epoch) and an equivalent unit of strata (an Anthropocene Series).

• If the Anthropocene is adopted as an Epoch, this would mean that the Holocene has terminated, but that we remain within the Quaternary Period and Cenozoic Era.

• Human impact has left discernible traces on the stratigraphic record for thousands of years -- indeed, since before the beginning of the Holocene.  However, substantial and approximately globally synchronous changes to the Earth System most clearly intensified in the 'Great Acceleration of the mid-20th century.  The mid-20th century also coincides with the clearest and most distinctive array of signals imprinted upon recently deposited strata.

• Hence, the mid-20th century represents the optimal beginning of a potential Anthropocene Epoch (and, simultaneously, the base of the Anthropocene Series).

• Changes to the Earth System that characterize the potential Anthropocene Epoch include marked acceleration to rates of erosion and sedimentation, large-scale chemical perturbations to the cycles of carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus and other elements, the inception of significant change to global climate and sea level, and biotic changes such as unprecedented levels of species invasions across the Earth.   Many of these changes are geologically long-lasting, and some are effectively irreversible.

• These and related processes have left an array of signals in recent strata, including plastic, aluminium and concrete particles, artificial radionuclides, changes to carbon and nitrogen isotope patterns, fly ash particles, and a variety of fossilizable biological remains.  Many of these signals will leave a permanent record in the Earth's strata.

• The Anthropocene beginning might conceivably be defined by a Global Standard Stratigraphic Age (GSSA), i.e. a numerical age that can be expressed as a calendar date such as 1945.  Or more, conventionally it could be defined by a Global boundary Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP), which is more colloquially a 'golden spike', and is a physical reference point in strata at one carefully selected place.  Majority opinion on the AWG is to seek and choose a candidate GSSP, as this is the most familiar and widely accepted method of defining geological time units.

• The AWG has already begun the process of identification of potential GSSPs, by initial analysis of the general environments in which the best combinations of stratigraphic signals may be found (e.g. undisturbed lake or marine sediments, annually banded coral skeletons, polar snow/ice layers, speleothems and so on).

• This will lead to selection of sites for sampling and further analysis, to provide full descriptions of relevant signals in the strata, a process that we hope will lead to the identification of one or more suitable candidate sites for a GSSP.  We would hope to complete this process over the next 2-3 years.

• This would then form the basis for the preparation of a formal proposal, to our immediate parent body, the Subcommission on Quaternary Stratigraphy (SQS), on defining a formal Anthropocene unit.  If the SQS recommends this by supermajority vote, the proposal will go on to its parent body, the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) to be voted on, with any vote in favour still needing to be ratified by the Executive Committee of the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS).

• If all of these conditions can be fulfilled, then the Anthropocene would become a formal part of the Geological Time Scale.

Results of AWG Vote (35 members):

• Is the Anthropocene stratigraphically real?  For: 34, Against: 0, Abstain: 1

• Should the Anthropocene be formalised?  For:30, Against: 3, Abstain: 2

• Hierarchical level of the Anthropocene?  Era: 2, Period: 1.5, Epoch: 20.5, Sub-epoch: 1, Age: 2, Sub-age: 0, None: 1, Uncertain: 3, Abstain: 4

• Base/beginning of the Anthropocene ? ~7ka: 0, ~3ka: 1.3, 1610 Orbis: 0, ~1800: 0, ~1950: 28.3, ~1964: 1.3, Diachronous: 4, Uncertain: 0, Abstain: 0

• GSSA .v. GSSP?  GSSP: 25.5, GSSA: 1.5, Uncertain: 8

• What is the Primary Signal?  aluminium: 0,  plastic: 3, fuel ash particles: 2, carbon dioxide concentration: 3, methane concentration: 0, carbon isotope change: 2, oxygen isotope change: 0, radiocarbon bomb spike: 4, Plutonium fallout: 10, Nitrate concentration / nitrogen isotope change: 0, Biostratigraphic: extinction/ assemblage change: 0, Other (lead, persistent organic pollutants, technofossils): 3, Uncertain: 2, Abstain: 6.