Will Energy Costs Go Up?

If you listen to Repubs, it will.  They pick some obtuese figure to use and scare the public into submission.

Recently Gov. Barbour made this observation:

“Instead of a policy of more American energy, the proposed Obama policy is to establish a cap and trade tax, increase taxes on oil and gas companies by $81 billion and create a requirement that a certain percentage of electricity be generated with renewable fuels … a so called renewable portfolio standard,” Barbour said. “These policies have in common that they would all inevitably and substantially increase the cost of energy to the American families and American businesses, especially manufacturing.”

This should not effect manufacturing in the state….why?….they are given a free ride at every turn….so Barbour BS concerning industry is just so much crap.  Barbour is just repeating the playbook and daily talking pointys issued for Repubs to use in their count-offensive against “clean air”.

The Barbours have been champions of eliminating litter in Mississippi…good idea…but some how clean air means NOTHING to them.  Eliminating litter would involve getting free labor out of the the residents…..eliminating air pollution would require the govs donor base having to do the work…something we cannot have (that is sarcasm, in case you missed it).

Time To Make The Coast Presentable

Recently I read an article in my local paper about the “program” to Clean-up the Coast ahead of the National Governors Conference to be held on the Coast in the coming weeks.

It is all about appearance….we would not want the nation’s govs to get the wrong impression of Mississippi….and besides this will cost no or little cash…and that is what the governor and the politicians want.

If they think they will embarrass Bubba into playing ball and not littering…they are on CRACK!  Bubba cares less about what the Coast looks like as long as he can drink beer, riding around wasting gas in his boat and going to Hooters.

What these moronbic politicians should be worried about is the condition of the people in the state.,..that is a never ending embarrassment….low education…high amount of poor…high teen preggies…..crappy health care…these thing is what should be worked on and not how many years Toyota gets a free ride on taxes.

Mississippians are slobs and they will seldom change…but good luck with trying to bullshit the other governors.

How Green Is Mississippi?

Earth Day has come and gone.  Coastians have been picking up litter and planting trees this week in honor of Earth Day and the Great American Cleanup and in anticipation of summer visitors.

In Biloxi the cleanup ran all week and continues today. On Friday teams from local organizations and the casinos spread out to clean the downtown and neighborhoods. The Biloxi Bay Chamber of Commerce installed recycling bins for plastic bottles and aluminum cans at the Biloxi Town Green and plan to install more downtown and throughout the city.

Was all this truly to make the Coast greener or an attempt to make a good impression on the nation’s governors?

The nation’s governors, many of whom will get their first look at the Coast when they attend the National Governors’ Association annual meeting at the Mississippi Coast Coliseum and Convention Center, July 17 to 20.

This was a pretty good start, but more, much more needs to be done before the Coast is considered a green community.  But the efforts by Biloxi and other Coast cities is nothing more than an opportunity for Barbour to strut around and take all the credit for the recovery on the Coast.

If Mississippi truly wants to be a green state then the legislature has the power to make it so, but they WILL NOT!  To do so would be an insult to the corporations and business interests in the state.

Planting a tree and the placing of recycling bins is just ducky….but they are superficial attempts, NOTHING of substance.

Peace…out!

How About Coastal Wind Farms?

A new study issued by the Dept of the Interior calls for the installation of Coastal wind farms.

Wind farms placed off U.S. coastlines could contribute significantly to meeting the nation’s energy needs, says an Interior Department study.

The study is part of the Obama administration’s plan to chart a course for offshore energy development, the Chicago Tribune reported Friday.

Harnessing wind in relatively shallow waters, which is the most technically feasible for offshore turbines, could produce at least one-fifth of the power needed for most coastal states, said Interior Secretary Ken Salazar.

I recently wrote a post about how the state’s schools should form a collective to do research on all sorts of alt energy.  The Mississippi Gulf Coast has the shallow waters that is needed according to the study for the wind farms and we have a pretty substantial wind flow, so why not get some of the funds and get the engineering schools busy developing programs and such?

The Coast also has abundant sunshine and tidal flow other areas that need exploring.  But sad to say that the state will spend more of their time patting someone on the back, or naming a stretch of highway after someone or setting up more studies and all that research money will probably pass the state by.  About the only time that the state will take this type of thing seriously is if a company will  making obscene profits, seldomn will it be what is best for the people of the Coast.

Biofuel Comes To Mississippi

A Canadian company said Thursday it had selected a northeast Mississippi site for its first U.S. plant to turn solid waste, wood residues and other feedstock into biofuel.

A spokeswoman for Montreal-based Enerkem Inc. said the company had been in discussions with officials in Pontotoc since early last year. The plant is expected to create up to 450 jobs.

Enerkem has signed a letter of intent with the Three Rivers Regional Solid Waste Management Authority, which owns and operates a regional landfill for the counties of Calhoun, Itawamba, Lafayette, Lee, Monroe, Pontotoc, and Union.

Three Rivers has agreed to supply Enerkem with approximately 189,000 tons or 60 percent of its solid waste annually as feedstock for the plant.

Enerkem has operated a pilot plant in Sherbrooke, Quebec, since 2003. Its first commercial plant was in Westbury, Quebec, and the company will start construction on a third plant in Edmonton, Alberta. The Mississippi plant will be a $250 million project and is expected to produce 20 million gallons of ethanol a year

The project is expected to create 150 long-term direct and indirect jobs and 300 jobs during the construction and startup phase, officials said.

It will be fascinating to see what the governor and his cronies have offered this company as compensation for locating in Mississippi.

Government Plan For South MS

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is proposing to spend about $1.2 billion on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast to buy some 2,000 seaside properties, relocate a small town’s public buildings and restore hurricane-damaged wetlands and beaches.

A draft proposal released Tuesday follows in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when Bay St. Louis, Waveland and Biloxi were destroyed in 2005 by a storm surge 20 feet or higher over most of this coastline.

The draft of the corps’ 40-year plan will now undergo a series of reviews and face public scrutiny before being presented to Congress, possibly by November.

Unlike efforts in Louisiana, the corps’ plans for Mississippi do not envision enormous levees and flood barriers to protect against future hurricanes. But under the plan, the corps would use $400 million for voluntary buyouts of up to 2,000 parcels of land. The remaining funds would go to restoring fragile barrier islands, reviving eroded marshes and other measures.

Taylor, D-Bay St. Louis, said that the Mississippi Coastal Improvements Plan has some excellent aspects, such as restoration of the barrier islands. And even though the plan has shrunk somewhat in scope since its origin, it is “still a very, very ambitious project,” he added.

Taylor said he has told officials in the corps’ top echelon that any property buyouts must be voluntary on the part of the sellers, and any mandatory buyout by the government will not fly. “Given the sensitivities, there was a very high level of concern. They got the message,” he said.

When the corps brought its buyout proposal to public meetings in the past, some property owners and public officials feared from comments they heard that citizens may be forced to sell their land to the government. “At least one person at the corps misspoke,” Taylor said. “I want to make it abundantly clear. This is strictly voluntary.”

At this point, the MSCIP is not even funded. “The question mark is, where is the money going to come from?” Taylor said. For the plan to fly, it would need both enabling legislation and funding from Congress, he said.

As things now stand, the MSCIP is a long process.

To Pollute Or Not To Pollute?

That is the question.

Ask yourself these questions:  Would companies voluntarily stop polluting?  What would be the plan to get them to stop polluting?

First, companies will NOT voluntarily give up their polluting ways.  If they are gonna stop polluting it must be profitable for them.

The state is the midst of a very lean time, there is not enough money to fund needed programs.  The state is considering raising some taxes to cover the monetary shortfall.  The state has given away more money than it has collected, at least it seems so.  All in the name of good business practices.  So in the meantime, health, work, etc has suffered from a reduction in funds.

But one of my fav bills in consideration is HB349.  Which states and I quote:

AN ACT TO PROVIDE THAT CERTAIN POLLUTION CONTROL EQUIPMENT MANDATED BY FEDERAL OR STATE LAW OR REGULATION SHALL BE EXEMPT FROM AD VALOREM TAXATION, EXCEPT AD VALOREM TAXATION FOR SCHOOL DISTRICT PURPOSES, FOR A PERIOD OF TEN YEARS FROM THE DATE OF INSTALLATION OF THE EQUIPMENT; AND FOR RELATED PURPOSe.

Why would the state reward a company for doing what it is ordered to do and clean up the environment from any toxic crap that it is spewing into the air or water that the residents will be using?  Will the state compensate any insurance company that must foot the bill for the illnesses the companies cause?  Will the companies compensate the people if they are not forced to?

This is all so ridiculous and just reinforces my premise that the state is business friendly and cares little for the plight of its residents.

Why Cannot Mississippi Lead The Way?

Mississippi is the leader in so many things, like the fattest, the poorest, the least educated, on and on, but very few are positive in any way.  I feel it is beyond time for Mississippi to become a leader in some positive way.

This is a re-post from early last year on GSFP.

I have been thinking a lot about the energy problems we are having and will have in the future and I do not understand why Mississippi has not become a research center. we have Coast winds, tidal action and lots of damn sunshine, so why is Mississippi not doing more in research and production?

Jobs would be created, good jobs. The state has numerous universities and colleges and they should be in the forefront of the research and production.

Of course to be a leader in this field would take the cooperation of the Legislature and anyone that lives in Mississippi knows what a screaming bunch of do-nothings they are.

We Mississippians should be demanding that more be done, but we seem to worry about the next casino and not the problems that await just over the horizon.

Now with that said I found another idea that could and should be considered by the legislature and should be adopted and pushed by the schools as a project for the kids to get involved with.  Mississippi is notorious for its litter on highways and byways and its massive amounts of plastic bag usage.

This from the Denver area.

A group of high school students is lobbying for legislation that they hope will blow away the plastic shopping bags that litter Colorado’s landscape.

The Kent Denver School students have lined up Sen. Jennifer Veiga, D-Denver, to sponsor a bill that would eliminate the plastic tote sacks from supermarkets and other large stores in three years.

The proposal would apply only to businesses that are the largest sources of the bags — stores of 10,000 square feet or more and those that generate more than $1 million in annual revenues.

The bags would be eliminated from those stores after three years.

None of this would take that much in spending to implement and would go a long way to putting the state in the forefront of the new “green revolution”.

What would it hurt to try?

Will 2009 Be A Record Setting Year?

The average global temperature for 2009 is expected to be more than 0.4 degrees celsius above the long-term average, despite the continued cooling of huge areas of the Pacific Ocean, a phenomenon known as La Nina.

That would make it the warmest year since 2005, according to researchers at the Met Office, who say there is also a growing probability of record temperatures after next year.

Currently the warmest year on record is 1998, which saw average temperatures of 14.52 degrees celsius – well above the 1961-1990 long-term average of 14 degrees celsius.

Warm weather

that year was strongly influenced by El Nino, an abnormal warming of surface ocean waters in the eastern tropical Pacific.

Theories abound as to what triggers the mechanisms that cause an El Nino or La Nina event but scientists agree that they are playing an increasingly important role in global weather patterns.

The strength of the prevailing trade winds that blow from east to west across the equatorial Pacific is thought to be an important factor.

Clean Coal Plant?

First of all, there is no such thing as clean coal–the emissions can be cleaned up a bit–but as far as coal goes–it is not clean–none of it!  Clean coal is an oxymoron like military intelligence and jumbo shrimp.

Mississippi Power is moving forward with plans to build a clean-coal plant in Kemper County,

He said the company soon will file a request for certification to build the $2.2 billion facility with the Public Service Commission.

The plant would create energy from lignite coal and capture the carbon dioxide for other uses.

Topazi said the plant could be operational as early as November 2013. The company’s efforts will need regulatory approval before construction can begin.

Mississippi Power serves about 188,000 customers in 23 southeastern counties.