Green Skeptic Friday LinkFest - 08/13/10

(photo Erika Nortemann/TNC)

It's a special Friday the 13th edition of The Green Skeptic Friday LinkFest!

Some spooky news this week:

A quartet of earnings reports came out this week in cleantech: SunPower, Cree, and A123, LDK: Earnings
 
While there was some good news for Solazyme, which netted $52M for its algae fuel biz: Green with Algae

Not so scary is my old pal Sanjayan from TNC who is profiled in Outside Magazine. The guy is "Mr. Nature" on cable TV these days and looks pretty hot in a tee shirt (look out Anderson Cooper): Sanjayan
 
TechCrunch covered Philly-Based Incubator DreamIt Ventures as 14 Startups were graduated from the Summer 2010 program: DreamIt

Meanwhile, Philly VCs are keeping a close eye on Massachusetts. Technically Philly explains why: Philly VCs

Rapidly becoming one of my favorite greentech reporters Katie Fehrenbacher reported on the joint efforts of  Google and Vinod Khosla to save California's greentech market.
 
Razor sharp insights from Lucy Marcus on why companies need active, engaged, independent, and interested board members: Non-Exec Boards
 
My pal Andy Swan pointed me to this article that explains why cash is the ultimate vote. Do you have a list of people that will BUY what you are selling? 10 Buyers
 
And in case you missed it, here's a link to my appearance on FOX Business with Varney & Co this week, talking about $BP oil spill: Wheres the Oil in the Gulf?

Have a great weekend everybody!

(Disclosure: I hold long positions in $CREE and $AONE. This post is for informational purposes only and is neither intended to be investment advice nor an offer, or the solicitation of any offer, to buy or sell any securities.)

 

Where's the Oil in the Gulf? The Green Skeptic on FOX Business

I was on FOX Business with Varney & Co this morning talking about the BP Oil Spill.  While it is not the greatest environmental disaster in history, there are still many people whose lives and livelihoods are affected by this spill and we won't know the full extent of the damage for months, if not years to come.




Here is a link if your browser is not compatible with the video above: Where is the Oil in the Gulf?

Dark Ecosystems Nurtured by Oil (NYT)

"How much oil seeps up from the seabed, aside from oil spills? Quite a lot, and a fascinating group of sea creatures thrives on it," writes William Broad in the New York Times Green Blog about sea creatures that thrive on natural oil seeps in the deep, dark ocean: Dark Ecosystems Nurtured by Oil.

"In 2003, the National Research Council released a comprehensive study, 'Oil in the Sea III: Inputs, Fates and Effects.' The 265-page report paints a global portrait of the petrochemical flows, both natural and unnatural. It turns out that the largest contributors [of petrochemicals in the ocean] far and away are the natural seeps, like those across the bottom of the gulf that power the dark ecosystems."

Of course, as one commentator pointed out, the BP Deepwater Horizon spill has leaked "an amount equal to 75 percent of the annual natural seepage worldwide, except it has occurred in 2 months in one specific location."

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• COLD, DARK, and teeming with life. No, not my office refrigerator. "In 1984, scientists found that... (pajamasmedia.com)
• Natural oil seeps: Not proof oil spill worries are overblown (boingboing.net)
• Matt Idom: Idom's of Interest: Oil Spill Is Our Spill (huffingtonpost.com)
• Louisiana oil spill: toxic chemical fear over BP's clean-up efforts (guardian.co.uk)
• Letter to BP: Establish a Gulf Restoration Fund (firedoglake.com)
• Scientists Worry About Oil Plumes' Effects on Coral Reefs (nytimes.com)
• BP's Gulf Costs Accelerate as Cleanup Work Peaks: Chart of Day (businessweek.com)

Beyond Possible: Are the Plumes on Fire?

Live Stream from BP's Deep Water Horizon oil spill. Is that really fire under water?

Live Broadcast by Ustream.TV

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• NOAA Confirms Presence of Subsea Oil Plumes in Gulf of Mexico (shoppingblog.com)
• Salazar to be quizzed on offshore drilling (msnbc.msn.com)
• Do You Feel Lucky, Punk? Well do you? (eschatonblog.com)
• US Confirms Underwater Oil Plume (science.slashdot.org)
• The Different Appearances of Oil in New NASA Satellite Image (spacefellowship.com)
• BP shares tumble as US oil spill pressure prompts dividend fears (telegraph.co.uk)
• Huge Deep Water Oil Plumes Threaten Long-Term Environmental and Health Harm (insidesurgery.com)

Happy World Oceans of Plastic and Oil Day to You Too, Sucker

World Oceans Day seems like a joke in the face of the BP oil spill, the Pacific Garbage Gyre, and oceans that contain "more plastic than plankton," as Oceanographer Captain Charles Moore, founder of the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, puts it.

To have a day to "honor the world's ocean, celebrate the products the ocean provides, such as seafood, as well as marine life itself for aquariums, pets, and also a time to appreciate its own intrinsic value" is a travesty. We are soiling our own house and will have to live in it -- or not.

World Oceans Day is a day of mourning, not celebration. In many ways, it is Beyond Pathetic.

Here is Charles Moore's TED talk on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch:

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• What We Don't Know About the Ocean Can Kill Us (treehugger.com)
• Save the Oceans, Save Ourselves! Sylvia Earle's Top 3 Actions to Take on World Oceans Day (treehugger.com)
• Sarah Chasis: On World Oceans Day: Gulf oil disaster underscores need for a National Ocean Policy (huffingtonpost.com)
• Oil spill clouds World Oceans Day (msnbc.msn.com)
• Our lack of attention is killing the oceans (cnn.com)
• A 2nd garbage patch: plastic soup in Atlantic (seattletimes.nwsource.com)

BP: Latest Effort Captures 1,000 Barrels of Leaking Oil Per Day

According to a report in yesterday's Environmental Leader, BP successfully connected a mile-long tube into a broken pipe at the Deepwater Horizon well to start capturing some of the leaking oil, which is being siphoned to a ship at the surface.

BP said it is capturing about 1,000 barrels per day in the Gulf of Mexico, a drop in the bucket compared to the 5,000 barrels (210,000 gallons/795,000 liters) it estimates to be leaking daily.

Read the full article here: BP Roundup – Latest Effort Captures 1,000 Barrels of Leaking Oil Per Day

The question is, do those estimates underestimate the amount of oil gushing from the sea floor?

Some scientists believe that oil is gushing out at a rate of somewhere between 25,000 to 80,000 barrels a day. The New York Times reported over the weekend that huge plumes of oil -- some 10 miles long, 3 miles wide and 300 feet thick -- have been found underwater in the Gulf.

BP has resisted efforts to determine the size of the leak, preferring to focus on containment efforts. They hope to have the leak stopped by the end of the week.

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• BP stonewalls as massive plumes of oil discovered under Gulf (dailykos.com)
• BP: Tube inserted into oil well riser, but no end to leak in sight (trueslant.com)
• BP claims to be slowing flow of oil into Mexican Gulf (guardian.co.uk)
• Massive oil plumes under US Gulf (news.bbc.co.uk)
• BP boasts of skimming 1,000 barrels per day from leak (americablog.com)
• Scientists Discover Huge Plumes in Gulf Spill That Peril Fish, Plants (themoderatevoice.com)
• BP has first success in containing oil spill (nationalpost.com)
• BP Doubles Estimate for Oil Captured in Gulf Spill (Update1) (businessweek.com)

Two Coasts Tell Tale of Where We Are

What happened on two coasts in the US the past two weeks speaks to our energy reality. The two coasts tell us where we are.

Both events illustrate the conundrum in which we find ourselves early in the 21st Century and very early in the transition from one primary fuel source to the next.

First the good news: Consent was given by US Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar on Wednesday for Cape Wind, the long-stalled 468 MW wind farm project off the coast of Massachusetts. The project was held up by local interests concerned about the appearance of a line of 130 wind turbines located miles off the coast in the Horseshoe Shoal area of Nantucket Sound.

The second was the explosion, sinking, and subsequent leaking of a deep water oil facility last week, which by some estimates is now spewing 5,000 barrels (200,000 gallons) a day into the Gulf of Mexico from below the ocean floor. This spill is set to threaten the Gulf Coast, just five years after Hurricane Katrina devastated that region.

One of these events represents the future of our energy production: Cleaner, renewable, and with a free resource feed stock (the wind). The other represents a variation on the past: Dirty, dangerous, and dependent upon a dwindling feed stock (fossil fuels).

What people forget, however, whether celebrating the victory or decrying the disaster, is that we are not in a position to switch from the old to the new like a light switch in the kitchen.

We are very likely going to need the old to help foster the development of the new -- and our dependence upon the old isn't going away any time soon. Furthermore, because oil is running out, we are likely to see more risky and dangerous ventures to access what's left in the immediate future.

Extracting fossil fuels is a risky and dangerous business, as we've seen with this drilling disaster and last month's coal mine disaster in West Virginia. The sooner we can foster the transition off fossil fuels and to cleaner, renewable source the better off we will be.

But let's not forget where we are in that transition: we are just at the very beginning.