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Energy-hungry desalination plants will turn all California residents into global warming sinners and destroyers of life

by Mike Adams

The irony is inescapable: In reaction to the historic drought that has transformed the California dream into California dust, the state is now embarking on the construction of a wave of desalination plants that will turn ocean water into fresh water. Tragically, these power-hungry desalination plants will be running primarily on fossil fuel-generated electricity, meaning that California residents will have to commit global warming crimes (i.e. producing carbon dioxide) every time they flush their toilets or take a shower.

Fresh water, in other words, is about to have a “fossil fuel consumption equivalent” across the state. Every gallon of water consumed will have a calculable CO2 emission profile and mercury pollution factor, meaning that a person will not be able to live in California without being a global warming sinner.

California, of course, is the state that prides itself on being progressive and environmentally conscious. Yes its non-sustainable lifestyle consumed the region’s limited fossil water supplies to the point of near-collapse. Now, it must become America’s worst carbon dioxide producer just to provide basic water supplies to its people. And where will all the natural gas and coal come from that powers these desalination plants?The very same energy-producing states that Californians typically condemn for producing fossil fuels.

Flush a toilet and you destroy the planet

Most eco-conscious Californians are unaware that the energy they use comes predominantly from fossil fuels. (See source.) Natural gas — which produces carbon dioxide when burned — generates almost half the state’s electricity. Coal generates another eight percent or so, meaning that fossil fuels provide the majority of California’s electricity. (Renewables only provide about 18 percent, and nuclear provides another nine percent or so.)

What this means is that as more and more desalination plants come online, they’ll be using primarily fossil fuels to process water — an energy-intensive operation.

“A $1 billion desalination plant to supply booming San Diego County is under construction here and due to open as early as November, providing a major test of whether California cities will be able to resort to the ocean to solve their water woes,” reports the New York Times. “Plans are far along for a large plant in Huntington Beach that would supply water to populous Orange County. A mothballed plant in Santa Barbara may soon be reactivated. And more than a dozen communities along the California coast are studying the issue.”

As each of these plants comes online, they will add an extremely high energy cost to the water consumed by California residents. Every act that consumes water — washing your hands, watering a garden, flushing a toilet — will carry a heightened ecological cost. When water simply falls out of the sky, consuming that water is ecologically sound. But when water has to be procured using extremely energy-intensive desalination systems, it can no longer be considered a “green” resource.

“[Desalination plants] will use a huge amount of electricity, increasing the carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming, which further strains water supplies,” writes the New York Times, reiterating what the liberal media calls “concluded science” which claims modern-day global warming is almost entirely caused by human activity. If that’s the case, however, then Californians who consume water produced by desalination plants must categorize themselves as global warming sinners who are destroying the planet every time they drink a cup of water.

As Food and Water Watch writes:

Enormous amounts of energy are needed to force ocean water through tiny membrane filters at a high pressure. Ocean water desalination can be greater than ten times more energy intensive than other supply sources. Ocean desalination proponents, such as private corporations Poseidon Resources and American Water, plan to locate plants alongside existing coastal power plants, thus potentially spurring their emission of global warming pollution.

To be consistent with their beliefs, then, California’s environmentalists must now either reject all water consumption or leave the region. The mere act of living in California and consuming any water at all — such as flushing a toilet — will soon be a direct violation of fundamental ecological principles.

Simultaneously, California itself will become a symbol of ecological destruction as it burns fossil fuels to generate water for cities that probably never should have been built in the desert in the first place.

Ironically, California’s heavy dependence on fossil fuels to produce water will worsen the drought, according to those who follow the global warming narrative. Even according to the New York Times as stated above, fossil fuel-powered desalination will cause California to accelerate its own demise as it contributes to a worsening of global warming. This, ecologically speaking, is a “spiral of death” that can only lead to California ultimately becoming all but uninhabitable by humans.

Desalination also destroys ocean life

Desalinating ocean water, by the way, has destructive ecological consequences far beyond the fossil fuels needed to power it.

“Both the intake of seawater and the disposal of excess salt into the ocean can harm sea life,” explains the New York Times. “Sucking in huge amounts of seawater, for instance, can kill fish eggs and larvae by the billions.”

It also dumps concentrated salt (brine) back into the ocean, where it contaminates the water due to unusually high salt concentration, functioning as a kind of localized poison that kills off nearby marine species. “The brine, or super salty wastewater created from the desalination process, also has the potential to upset our delicate coastal ecosystems,” writes Food and Water Watch.

This means the daily consumption of water in California is not just equated with carbon dioxide emissions… it also directly contributes to the death of life in the Pacific Ocean.

In the near future dominated by desalination, then, merely living in California makes you a bad person because you are killing ocean life and destroying the environment with every drop of water you consume or waste.

“Desalination of the sea is not the answer to our water problems. It is survival technology, a life support system, an admission of the extent of our failure.” — John Archer (Food and Water Watch Desalination Report – PDF)

Californians about to put evil corporations in charge of their water lifeline

There’s another surprising angle on all this: Shifting to water desalination puts “evil corporations” in charge of your water lifeline. As Food and Water Watch writes:

Ocean desalination provides a new opportunity for private corporations to own and sell water. Currently, there is little regulation of these facilities, creating the possibility that private corporations would rate-gouge thirsty populations — similar to what happened in the Enron energy scheme.

Corporate control of water supplies is a top concern among environmentalists and those focused on “environmental justice.” When corporations like Nestle seize control of water systems in third world countries, the company is (rightly) condemned by activists who point out that water should never be controlled by for-profit corporations that can price gouge the local population. Yet that’s exactly what California is now pursuing!

As we all learned from the Enron fiasco, when there’s money to be made, corporations consistently place profits as a higher priority than human compassion or human rights. To hand over a significant portion of the state’s water supply to for-profit corporations is to invite an inevitable humanitarian catastrophe as those corporations realize people can be forced to pay almost anything for water.

Population reduction is the “ultimate solution” to the water problem, say death-promoting extremist scientists

To save the state from a hydrological collapse, water must now be portrayed as evil. People who consume water must be tattled on, reported to authorities or publicly humiliated. Social pressures will now turn California into a state where un-showered people living in overpriced homes manicured with dead lawns and abandoned swimming pools will triple stack their toilet bowls before flushing in order to live within their own self-imposed boundaries of ecological guilt. They will drink their own recycled urine, condemn corporate-owned water bottling plants and vandalize golf courses as a form of ecological protest.

And yet, despite their best efforts, every breath they exhale will be their own personal reminder of how they are destroying the planet. It’s not just the CO2 they’re exhaling, of course: it’s also the water that’s lost with each breath. Replacing that water now requires contributing to global warming by burning fossil fuels, meaning the very act of human respiration is a crime against the planet if you live in California.

The solution to all this, according to an alarming number of technology billionaires, death-loving scientists and radical activists, is to forcibly reduce human population. If the mere act of breathing makes you a threat to the planet, then the world can be saved by literally stopping a few billion people breathing, they believe.

Remember Bill Gates’ famous population reduction equation? As I wrote in this Natural News article in 2010:

In a recent TED conference presentation, Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates, who has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to new vaccine efforts, speaks on the issue of CO2 emissions and its effects on climate change. He presents a formula for tracking CO2 emissions as follows: CO2 = P x S x E x C.

P = People
S = Services per person
E = Energy per service
C = CO2 per energy unit

Then he adds that in order to get CO2 to zero, “probably one of these numbers is going to have to get pretty close to zero.”

Following that, Bill Gates begins to describe how the first number — P (for People) — might be reduced. He says:

“The world today has 6.8 billion people… that’s headed up to about 9 billion. Now if we do a really great job on new vaccines, health care, reproductive health services, we could lower that by perhaps 10 or 15 percent.”

It’s no surprise, then, that vaccines given to young women in Kenya were recently found to be spiked with sterilization chemicals for population control. “We sent six samples from around Kenya to laboratories in South Africa. They tested positive for the HCG antigen,” Dr. Muhame Ngare of the Mercy Medical Centre in Nairobi told LifeSiteNews. “They were all laced with HCG.”

It’s also no surprise that many academics in the United States, such as Dr. Eric Pianka, openly talk about solving the population problem with weaponized viral pandemics. “Dr. Eric R. Pianka, a Texas ecologist and herpetologist … suggested during a meeting at the Texas Academy of Sciences that, were Ebola to become airborne, it would likely kill 90 percent of the human population and instantly solve what he called the ‘overpopulation problem.'” (Natural News)

Similarly, Dr. Charles Arntzen, head of The Biodesign Institute for Infectious Diseases and Vaccinology, publicly joked about using a genetically engineered virus to kill off 25 percent of the population: (SOURCE)

Has anybody seen “Contagion?” (laughter) That’s the answer! Go out and use genetic engineering to create a better virus. (laughter) Twenty-five percent of the population is supposed to go in “Contagion.”

Read more about vaccine-induced population reduction at:
http://www.naturalnews.com/047571_vaccines_s…

Watch the Bill Gates population reduction video at:
http://www.naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=A155D11345…

Renewables Beat Coal, Oil and Nukes by 35 Times in New Energy Capacity

Renewable energy may currently make up only a small percentage of U.S. energy generation capacity, but it’s one of the fastest growing sectors.

Renewable energy generation—primarily wind and solar power—provided more than 40 percent of the new energy capacity in the U.S. in the first three quarters of this year, according to the latest U.S. Federation Energy Regulation Commission (FERC) Energy Infrastructure Update. Oil, nuclear and especially coal provided little new capacity, with renewables outstripping them more than 35 times. Only natural gas, driven by the growth of fracking, showed more growth, and many industry observers think its growth potential is finite.

Renewables
Renewables are making up a larger and larger percentage of the new energy capacity in the U.S. Photo credit: Shutterstock

The new installed capacity of natural gas declined compared to the first three quarters of 2013, from 6,643 megawatt (MW) to 5,153. Wind was the big winner, upping its installed capacity from 965 MW to 1,614 in that period. In September, new wind capacity led the way with 367 MW, followed by natural gas with 114. Coal showed no increase in existing capacity so far this year. Overall, new capacity from all forms of energy declined from 11,452 in the first three quarters of last year to 8,860 this year.

Among FERC’s project updates is that Kern County, California’s Techachapi Wind Energy Storage project is now up and running. The South California Edison Project, FERC says, “consists of an 8 MW-four-hour (32 MWh) lithium-ion battery and a smart inverter system, [and] will help store energy from the existing 5,000 wind turbines and any future additions in the Techachapi Wind Resource Area. Housed inside a 6,300 square foot facility, it is the largest battery energy storage in North America.” Such projects bode well for the continued growth of wind power.

Natural gas still leads overall energy generation capacity in the U.S. by a long shot. It currently provides more than 42 percent of the total. But fracked natural gas and oil production is expected to fall off sharply, as extraction companies hit the most productive “sweet spots” first and then move on to areas with less accessible oil and gas that’s more expensive to reach.

Despite its precipitous decline, coal hangs onto the second place spot for now, generating more than 28 percent of U.S. installed capacity. Nuclear comes in next with 9.3 percent, followed by water at 8.4 percent and wind at 5.3 percent. All other forms of energy generation capacity are far behind. Solar currently provides less than one percent. But PV Magazine, which serves the photovoltaic industry, points out that FERC’s figures only include utility-scale solar, leaving out residential and business installations, which it says are among the fastest growing sources of renewable energy.

“The steady and rapid growth of renewable energy is unlikely to abate as prices continue to drop and the technologies continue to improve,” said Ken Bossong, executive director of  the nonprofit research group the SUN DAY Campaign. “The era of coal, oil and nuclear is drawing to a close; the age of renewable energy is now upon us.”

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Fracking = Wrong Way Forward for Climate

‘High hopes that natural gas will help reduce global warming because of technical superiority to coal turn out to be misguided,’ says study co-author

Switching from coal to natural gas is no panacea for climate change, researchers say. (Photo: Jakob Huber/Campact/flickr/cc)

A global energy approach that adopts the kind of natural gas boom currently underway in the U.S. is “misguided” and a path towards further climate change, new research shows.

The finding, based on projections from five research groups from Germany, the U.S., Austria, Italy and Australia, was published online Wednesday in the journal Nature.

Natural gas—booming in the United as a result of fracking technology—has been touted as a “bridge fuel” and embraced by the Obama administration as part of his “all of his all of the above energy strategy.” But the new analysis shows that it is not a viable path towards addressing climate change.

Though natural gas produces fewer CO2 emissions than coal, the researchers’ projected scenarios of 2050 based integrated energy–economy–climate systems models revealed that increased use of natural gas could actually lead to as much as ten percent higher CO2 emissions.

The problem, the researchers found, is that the boom would lead to lower costs, causing displacement not only of coal but also of renewable energy; further, the lower energy costs could lead to more overall energy use. Lastly, the methane—a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2—released from the production and distribution of natural gas would add to climate change.

“The high hopes that natural gas will help reduce global warming because of technical superiority to coal turn out to be misguided because market effects are dominating,” explained co-author Nico Bauer of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. “The main factor here is that an abundance of natural gas leads to a price drop and expansion of total primary energy supply.”

Rather than shifting towards increased natural gas production, what is needed are effective climate policies, they found.

“Global deployment of advanced natural gas production technology could double or triple the global natural gas production by 2050, but greenhouse gas emissions will continue to grow in the absence of climate policies that promote lower carbon energy sources,” stated lead author Haewon McJeon of the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

Previous studies have also pointed to climate change worsening from natural gas as a result of its methane emissions and its displacement of renewable energy investments, and critics have pointed to the “insanity” of trying to solve a fossil fuel-created crisis with more fossil fuels.

A Powerful Long-term Alliance Between China and Russia Is Unnerving Washington

A specter is haunting Washington, an unnerving vision of a Sino-Russian alliance wedded to an expansive symbiosis of trade and commerce across much of the Eurasian land mass — at the expense of the United States.

Photo Credit: ID1974 / Shutterstock.com

And no wonder Washington is anxious.  That alliance is already a done deal in a variety of ways: through the BRICS group of emerging powers Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa; at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Asian counterweight to NATO; inside the G20; and via the 120-member-nation Non-Aligned Movement NAM. Trade and commerce are just part of the future bargain.

Synergies in the development of new military technologies beckon as well. After Russia’s Star Wars-style, ultra-sophisticated S-500 air defense anti-missile system comes online in 2018, Beijing is sure to want a version of it. Meanwhile, Russia is about to sell dozens of state-of-the-art Sukhoi Su-35 jet fighters to the Chinese as Beijing and Moscow move to seal an aviation-industrial partnership.

This week should provide the first real fireworks in the celebration of a new Eurasian century-in-the-making when Russian President Vladimir Putin drops in on Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing.

You remember “ Pipelineistan,” all those crucial oil and gas pipelines crisscrossing Eurasia that make up the true circulatory system for the life of the region.  Now, it looks like the ultimate Pipelineistan deal, worth $1 trillion and 10 years in the making, will be inked as well.  In it, the giant, state-controlled Russian energy giant Gazprom will agree to supply the giant state-controlled China National Petroleum Corporation CNPC with 3.75 billion cubic feet of liquefied natural gas a day for no less than 30 years, starting in 2018.

That’s the equivalent of a quarter of Russia’s massive gas exports to all of Europe. China’s current daily gas demand is around 16 billion cubic feet a day, and imports account for 31.6% of total consumption.

Gazprom may still collect the bulk of its profits from Europe, but Asia could turn out to be its Everest. The company will use this mega-deal to boost investment in Eastern Siberia and the whole region will be reconfigured as a privileged gas hub for Japan and South Korea as well. If you want to know why no key country in Asia has been willing to “ isolate” Russia in the midst of the Ukrainian crisis — and in defiance of the Obama administration — look no further than Pipelineistan.

Exit the Petrodollar, Enter the Gas-o-Yuan

And then, talking about anxiety in Washington, there’s the fate of the petrodollar to consider, or rather the “thermonuclear” possibility that Moscow and Beijing will agree on payment for the Gazprom-CNPC deal not in petrodollars but in Chinese yuan. One can hardly imagine a more tectonic shift, with Pipelineistan intersecting with a growing Sino-Russian political-economic-energy partnership. Along with it goes the future possibility of a push, led again by China and Russia, toward a new international reserve currency — actually a basket of currencies — that would supersede the dollar (at least in the optimistic dreams of BRICS members).

Right after the potentially game-changing Sino-Russian summit comes a BRICS summit in Brazil in July. That’s when a $100 billion BRICS development bank, announced in 2012, will officially be born as a potential alternative to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank as a source of project financing for the developing world.

More BRICS cooperation meant to bypass the dollar is reflected in the “ Gas-o-yuan,” as in natural gas bought and paid for in Chinese currency. Gazprom is even considering marketing bonds in yuan as part of the financial planning for its expansion. Yuan-backed bonds are already trading in Hong Kong, Singapore, London, and most recently Frankfurt.

via Alternet.

Vladimir Putin’s order over troop withdrawal from Ukrainian border appears to be an attempt to defuse the Ukraine crisis. Photograph: Mikhail Klimentiev/RIA Novosti/EPA

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