Abandoned Stuff by Saskboy

I listened to John Gormley for the first time in a few weeks, since I hadn’t been driving anywhere lately due to poor road and weather conditions. I want to tune in tomorrow because it’s the only day with “Hugs Day the Hour of Praise”, where the usual Thursday “Bugs Day the Hour of Rage” is replaced for the week leading up to Christmas.

Get on board the Bio-Bus fellow Canadians!

In the morning I heard about the 5% Ethanol content going into Canadian gasoline, and I had to think “that’s all?” I’ll acknowledge that it’s a good first step, but if Rona’s right about ~5% (2% in diesel) being biofuel is the equivalent pollution reduction of removing 1 Million cars, then we need much stronger action. As the CJME farm business analyst said, I don’t want to diminish this strategy by dumping on it - because it’s a good plan, although a little sluggish, mostly due to Liberals ignoring agriculture as a Canadian priority.

Consider that if a 5% reduction in petrol is REPLACED by 5% ethanol, we’re still burning fuel in a way that 100% produces CO, CO2, and other pollutants. We also will hopefully be planning to double biofuel production to 10% in the four years after 2010. 2010 is when the Conservatives envision our fuel to start being at 95% petrol + 5% ethanol. Apparently the Americans are far ahead of where Canada is in biofuel production, and Brazil is putting the boots to us with their sugarcane ethanol production. Conservatives love to mention switchgrass ethanol, so hopefully they aren’t just blowing smoke, and they get on the process of making it now.

Since 5% ethanol means equivalently 1,000,000 fewer cars belching burnt gas, imagine what 30% ethanol would do for Canada’s renewable fuel market, and energy independence? We’d remove the equivalent of 6,000,000 vehicles (although much less assuming average fuel mileage is always increasing; except fuel use could/will increase as well in that same time).

More importantly, imagine what improving average fuel mileage could do for Canada’s energy export, and technology/auto industries? We have the technology, and ability to produce attractive and functional cars that get 45 MPG or much better. The average mileage Canadian vehicles get is further down in the mid 20s somewhere, factoring in small/mid size work trucks, and large semi-trucks. If we could get people who don’t need a vehicle with 18 MPG wastefulness, using vehicles with 36 MPG efficient engines, the savings in gasoline is literally doubled.

Pretend there are 20,000,000 Canadian small cars on the road getting an average of 25 Miles per gallon of gasoline out of their combustion engine. If we improved the average to 50 Miles per gallon, by 2015, we’d be using half as much gasoline (for cars) in the country as we would through maintaining the fleet we have. Frankly we’d be nuts not to find a way to make this happen. And unfortunately the people in charge would rather cut gasoline consumption by 5% in four years, instead of a very attainable ~45% in nine years.

Most Canadians get a new vehicle about every 10 years right? To not make your next one more efficient in its energy consumption, should practically be a crime. Alternatively, you should get a rebate from the government for purchasing any vehicle more efficient, that makes staying with a gas guzzler always the wrong choice.

Foam Lake down the highway from me, has a bio-diesel production plant. The NDP is taking positive steps too, but just doesn’t seem to know when to support rural business plans. 1/3 of Saskatchewan’s energy will be renewable by the “third decade” of the century? It’s a shame we didn’t start a decade ago, but there’s no time like the present to get started. In the mean time, Sask Power sits as the number 3 CO2 polluter in Canada, while we are on a non-literal gold mine of uranium.

I’ll concur with politicsnpoetry, that the NDP’s plan of “1/3 by 2021″ isn’t ambitious enough, and they should be aiming higher, like at 50 - 75%. Do what you can today, but plan to improve things beyond what is possible now, so that self re-setting deadlines go into place automatically.

[Just three Blogging Tories are mentioning the news as their top story this evening.]

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I went to Spaceweather.com tonight and noticed that people were spotting the Shuttle and ISS together in space. Since this could be one of the last missions of this type (if things go wrong in landing) I thought to check Heavens-Above to get the time they pass overhead predicted. I logged in, and saw that they were set to pass over me … 3 minutes before I read the times! I ran outside, and the prediction was off just enough that I saw one light for about 30 seconds, and wink out of sight as it passed into the earth’s shadow 29 degrees above the horizon.

I tried snapping a picture, but I didn’t have time to grab or even set up my tripod or manual shutter settings to make it work. I have two chances tomorrow evening, so I hope it’s as clear as tonight was.

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This from James is what blogging is all about.

I wonder why the SaskHell service didn’t catch on? Dialing *666 seems so simple.

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The CFL TV rights have been sold to just TSN (which is owned by Bell Globemedia/CTV). If they don’t put the playoffs and Grey Cup on CTV so I can watch it at home if I want, I’ll quite possibly write the CFL an angry letter of protest like I did when I was a kid and they’d only show 2 Roughrider games a year on CBC “farmer-vision”, without blacking-out the other few they filmed in a season.