Is that a clone in your mouth?

Both sides of the debate over selling meat or milk from animals with clones in their bloodlines is are in a tizzy.

Seems the Food Standards Agency in Britain has confirmed meat from a bull that originated as an embryo of a cloned cow got into the food chain a year ago. That would be against the law because it should have been labeled a "novel food" to be sold legally, reports meatprocess.com
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and European Food Safety Authority have no problem with cloned meat.

Also, the FSA has traced an offspring from the same family line to a dairy but hasn't confirmed its milk is going into the food supply. Let's see, if the dairy is feeding and caring for this cow, where do you think the milk is likely going?

Do you care if that happens around here? How would you know?

I need a lawyer

It is truly the season of whiplash - sweat, freeze, green, brown. It makes you wonder if you need one of those tv personal injury attorneys to "get you what you deserve."

I know it happens every year, but that doesn't make it easy to cope with. The beds are ready to dig then they're covered with a white blanket. I'm ready to spread mulch, but the snow drift on the drive needs shoveling first.

The piles are starting to grow in the house. Between seed packets coming in and the stuff I'm hauling in from winter storage, like flats to plant in, it took me about five minutes this morning to make a stack that wouldn't avalanche in the corner of the living room.

Thank goodness I told the shippers to wait until April 19 before sending any plants this way. Then I scrape a few dried leaves away from the base of what is supposed to be a perennial, and, wow, here comes the green stuff.

Despite how it sounds, I am trying to be good and not trim plants back too soon. And I started some seeds Sunday in frustration in a kind of fancy holder for making sprouts. Maybe that will help when in a few days, in theory, we'll have sunflower, fenugreek and broccoli sprouts to make it taste like spring.

But could someone speak to whoever is responsible for scheduling and let them know these weekend storms are getting on my nerves and trashing my schedule.

Carbonated Conversations

Just back from a somewhat steamy Columbus, Ohio, and the McCormick Energy Solutions Conference.

It was a jam-packed three days on the future of energy with a constant background glow thanks to global warming. The panelists were by and large true believers and basically activists for the kill-carbon-before-it-kills-us point of view. Most were more temperate than Joe Romm of the Center for American Progress and blog author, but who isn't?

Anyway, it was thought provoking, even with a grain of salt or two. The shift in scientific thinking puts all the blame for excess carbon on human activity, and that makes more and more sense as the data comes in. But one word of caution from former astronaut, and role model for skyward-looking kids of a certain graying age, John Glenn. He said he still has scientist friends passing on the idea that the jury isn't totally out on whether global warming is part of nature's cycles. And that raises the questions of who or what's spewing the carbon dioxide many blame as the leader of the Greenhouse Gas Gang.

But then he came back with this: "If we screw it up, there's no going back...No matter what's happening in the cycles, we have to clean up the environment."

He described Earth's atmosphere as a "thin film" rather than the chunk of air in school textbooks, painting an image of something fragile and at risk.

What a guy. He and his wife since 1943 are still vital and involved and were then off to a national climate something or other.

I'll be writing here and in the Globe-News in a hopefully more coherent way about what's happening here on the High Plains in relation to the topics the experts discussed at the conference. The common thread was the quickest, easiest ways to reduce carbon are conservation and efficiency.

On that topic, a smarter grid is one way experts propose to burn less fuels that release carbon. I'm working on an update on efforts to make our stupid grid smarter here at home for my first story. The next one may be a look at how school districts are faring on the 2007 mandate to reduce energy consumption 5 percent per year.

By the way, the hospitality on the Ohio State University campus was fantastic, although I was dragging a bit from the pace by the time I got home at midnight last night. The organizers of the McCormick Energy Solutions Conference and especially the staff of the Kiplinger Program in Public Affairs Journalism and the John Glenn School of Public Affairs know their stuff.

And it was a little eerie looking out my hotel window on the Woody Hayes Boulevard towards the solid, gray memorial to his legacy, the holy stadium where he did his thing that is even lit at night.

Some utilities have all the fun

Well, sorry for my absence. I’ve been distracted by family issues with my father failing despite his hospice care and my mother-in-law trying to find her way after the July 4 death of her husband.

I’m going to do better

Here’ something happy about our region’s power supplier. It would be more happy if they were doing these experiments here, but it’s way happier than getting their bills.

Xcel Energy recently announced the first phase of its SmartGridCity in Boulder, Colo., is up and running. It’s a combination of infrastructure and software engineered to increase reliability, provide energy usage info to customers, allow remote reading of electricity meters and the installation of devices the utility or customer can control remotely to manage usage.

One immediate benefit was the system detected four transformers about to croak, allowing Xcel to replace them before customers were left in the dark for hours. It’s an experiment, but the utility says it’s looking good so far on the way to refining a truly smart grid for the future.

An Xcel partner, Spanish energy company Abengoa Solar, just announced another Colorado test, this time in Grand Junction. Abengoa will install a parabolic trough concentrating solar power plant at Xcel’s coal-powered Cameo plant.

That’s the confusing way of saying a trough of mirrors that move to follow the sun and they focus the light that hits them to heat synthetic oil in a pipe, according to Abengoa. The hot oil moves to the power plant and turns water into steam that spins or helps spin the turbines that generate electricity. That and makes plant run more efficiently, using less coal to make the same amount of electricity. More efficient, less carbon emitted. Don’t ask me the details. I’m still working on finding that out.

But why don’t they try that stuff around here? Not that any emissions stay around long with our gentle breezes – except Hereford’s, Borger’s and Pampa’s, I guess.

It's a beautiful world - kind of

Ziploc's evolved, presumably you can evolve, and it's all bright under the orange-slice sun in a new ad for Ziploc Evolve plastic bags.

The Ziploc bag in the ad is covered with a field of peas, broccoli trees and some wierd hybrid wind turbine/palm tree things under the aforementioned orange slice. On the Web site's slide show, there's even animal cracker elephants and rabbits and the clouds look a little like califlower in the frame for Evolve.

But when you need two astericks in an ad to clarify your statements, well, not a good sign. The ad bills the new bags as "made with wind energy & 25% less plastic." Then comes the fine print, but note, it is made up of very small letters in green ink making it a little hard to read. "Made with wind energy and traditional energy sources" and less plastic "when compared to regular Ziploc Brand storage and sandwich bags."

Of course you can still buy those not-so-good Ziploc bags, but now you can feel better about yourself and the planet with Evolve. How many plastic trees do you think have lost their lives to make all the Ziploc bags in the world?

Friendly skies?

The headline was somewhat troubling – Airlines unite in deal for alternative fuel.

Is that safe? Flying planes on algae or beef fat turned to fuel?

My concern was testing. I haven’t seen a lot about how aviation has access to all this great bio-fuel that works fine. You would think we would want to be careful about this thousands of feet in the air. It might work, but I don’t know about it.

Reading into the press release and my pulse went down a little. Seems Rentech was announcing it had signed an “unprecedented” agreement to supply eight airlines with up to 1.5 million gallons per year of renewable synthetic diesel - but wait - for “ground service equipment” at Los Angeles International Airport.

I was feeling much better. I hadn’t missed some breakthrough. I wasn’t flying on a fuel that was just hitting the market. And I don’t have plans to be at LAX anytime soon, so the trucks on the ground aren’t even a problem.

Much better. Besides, the plant that will make the fuel won’t even be online until late 2012. The low-carbon, clean-burning fuel will be made from “woody green urban waste” like grass clippings.

There goes the pulse again, flying on grass clippings.

This whole green thing will take some getting used to, and I want lots of testing. And that’s not to say this fuel will not be great. I’m just saying…

Dreams going up

It was pretty interesting to see several dreamers get their hands dirty to start Mariposa ecoVillage on Friday.

Linda Lloyd, the project manager, Larry Williamson and Gary Hames, of EarthCo Building Systems, and several volunteers were like a tribe with a mission. The sun and wind were typical Panhandle - strong. But the group got started laying columns of compressed earth like giant Lincoln logs to create the hospitality and marketing building for the development devoted to a different lifestyle.

It was messy work - sweat, dust, mud - and then it showered a couple of times just to goo things up. But everyone was smiling and joking, happy to be where they were.

Building the earthen structure is as primitive as any native hut of mud, but they cut the 18-inch-wide columns with electric chisels that work like jackhammers with blades. Then comes the mud, a slurry of water and dirt used to fill cracks, smooth seams and make one column stick to another.

Kind of a humble beginning for a big dream that could include live/work spaces, homes of compressed recycled plastic, car-free zones and people capturing rainwater and the sun's rays. Not far from the day's of half-dugouts in the Panhandle, but miles from today.

Your life in a box

It's like a land rush, but not.

An excited news release came my way recently, positively vibrating with the news that Facebookers can now be virtual farmers with virtual green thumbs making piles of virtual money and doing it all with their virtual friends.

“Zygna, the No. 1 social gaming companion the Web, is opening up millions of acres of virtual farmland with the launch of its new FarmVille,” the release reads.

First, a disclaimer, they said No. 1, not me.

Players can “run a profitable farm while also enjoying the social aspect of a rural community. They can select neighbors, exchange gifts and even chat amongst each other in real time,” the release continues.

Does anyone want to volunteer to go to the local coffee shop in Spearman or Dimmitt and poll the farmers on this? Players, with no idea where bread comes from, can build their bank accounts if they tend their farms diligently. And they can "share the social aspect of a rural community" from the safety of their bedroom in the suburbs.

And I can’t even go to "chat amongst themselves." It’s personal, but "amongst" and "atop" should never be seen outside Southern Living magazine.

And the best thing is, you can bank on this game being authentic because Zygna says it is building on its success with other games like Mafia War and Texas Hold'Em.

Okay, my assessment is at its heart unfair because I can’t even remember how to get on Facebook to be with all my fans and test FarmVille for myself. Guess I won’t get to earn my virtual green thumb.

I'll just go sweat in my dirty little garden.

Pests and Power

Two bits of info - a plague update and a different kind of Happy Meal.

I got a bit of advice in the form of a news release from Texas AgriLife Extension about those grasshoppers that have me hopping mad. Our bit of rainy weather put them into hiding, but the 100-degree temperatures arae back and so is the plague, so I was happy to see the release until about the third paragraph.

"'Can homeowners get rid of grasshoppers? During outbreak years like this one is shaping up to be in some parts of the state, I'd have to say no,' said Mark Muegge, AgriLife Extension entomologist at Fort Stockton."

"They are some of the most difficult insect pests to control in the urban landscape," he added.

Thanks for that. But there are some resources to pass on if you are tired of feeding your innocent plants to these things.

Extension recommends integrated pest management through removing any weedy borders where they lay eggs, using several different insecticides, and choosing plants that are less tasty. (Now you tell us.)

My goal is to save what I've got because replanting the beds doesn't excite me.

Here's a link to the details.

And now about the McCharger. The Charlotte News & Observer reported a couple of weeks ago about a curbside service at a Cary, N.C., McDonald's.

Just think, you're running a little low on energy, so you whip in for a fast-food favorite. Then you remember you forgot to plug in your Prius last night. Pick the right parking place and you can feed your car thanks to McDonald's two charging stations.

The Cary McDonald's is also under review to be LEED-certified by the U.S. Green Building Council. That would make it the third LEED McLocation after Savannah, Ga., and Chicago.

It ain’t easy being green

Not everybody is swooning over green.

Consider Ash Grove Cement. The Austin American-Statesman reports today that the company is suing the city of Plano because the city wants to give preference to cement companies using modern kilns that don’t pollute as much as older kilns.

“Plano adopted a cement purchasing resolution that is not only unconstitutional, but also highly prejudicial to Ash Grove,” the company said in a statement, according to the Statesman story.

We’re not talking the far more cutting-edge cement like I talked about a couple of days ago with rice hulls and what not in it. Just the same old stuff made with less mess.

The company is also suing Dallas and Fort Worth for the same reason.

Let’s see, invest in modern equipment or pay lawyers to make people buy stuff from you. What would be the smart thing to do? They’re the largest U.S.-owned cement company, so I guess they know what they’re doing.

Say what?

Just in time for the global warming debate to move from the House to the Senate, the Grist online magazine, which calls itself “a beacon in the smog,” has an interesting research project on its site.

Grist writers looked at the official Web sites of all U.S. senators to see how clearly they express their views on the environment. It didn’t matter what the views were. All that mattered was how well a visitor could understand the senator’s point of view.

Our Republican Texas senators had a mixed showing.

Out of a possible 25 maximum points, John Cornyn came in with 13 points, a solid C. Not a bad showing against people like New Mexico Democrat Jeff Bingaman at 8 and Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat, at 10.

Not that a Republican do better than some Democrats on being transparent on their environmental stance. In fact, the project showed no real pattern by party.

Then there’s Kay Bailey. Senator Hutchison earned an F with 4 points. Now she did beat out Democrat Tom Harkin of Iowa, with a 2, Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, who got a 0, and couple of other people. So I hope Rick "I-Never-Met-A-Can-Of-Hairspray-I-Didn’t-Like" Perry doesn’t use the poor showing against her. But maybe he uses a pump bottle instead of a spray.

There were several surprises, like Republicans Orrin Hatch, of Utah; Olympia Snowe, of Maine and James "Greenhouse-Warming-Is-A-Hoax" Inhofe, of Oklahoma, all trouncing Ted Kennedy.
The big winner with 24 out of 25 points? That would be Amy Klobuchar, D-Minnesota. Never heard of her. But I’m sure she’s very popular up north, and they can be proud she’s their senator.

By the way, the other Democratic Minnesota senator, Al Franken, didn’t have a Web site to survey at the time.

I'm a victim. Really

They've driven me to dream of mass murder.

I don't mind prying a tomato worm or two off my plants and stomping them into bug heaven. Okay, don't stomp because they're really juicy. But the grasshoppers are making me a little crazy.

Crazy enough to load up with Sevin dust and start sprinkling plants that haven't seen any herbicides or insecticides all season. You can walk across the lawn and stir up clouds of hoppers like puffs of dust. Walk near the wrong plant, and you can hear them fleeing, thumping off other plants or walls.

And speaking of dust, I had been hoping that if it was going to be in the 100s and dry, maybe it should stay that way long enough to drive them off to Kansas or somewhere. But no, it starts raining. That makes them happy to stay and washes off the Sevin.

I'm no organic zealot, but I try. I used insecticidal soap until my pump-pressing finger wanted to fall off.

And there's some plants that they find less than tasty, like salvia, coreopsis, Russian Sage, hyssop, rosemary and Mexican marigolds. But somebody has to save the pitiful zinnias, and one butterfly bush (another one is untouched in the same yard).

I would have chosen more hopper resistant plants, but these are not normal times.

The ultimate insult, or maybe payback, was the daddy grasshopper that landed on my glasses this weekend. It was massive and just grabbed hold of one lens like it was going to throw me to the ground or something.

Maybe this is all karma. I admit I bought compost this year instead of making it. And remember, my plants are sequestering carbon for the good of the globe. I'll turn my life around. Just free me from this plague.

Making manure green

Not by feeding too much alfalfa.

Dairy cows are big energy users, but a Texas AgriLife researcher will present a paper at the Texas Animal Manure Management Issues forum in Austin that shows they can pay their energy bills and more.

I’m not sure what will be more fun, barhopping on Sixth Street or the conference.

But I digress. Cady Engler, the researcher, looked at electrical, diesel, gasoline and natural gas usage on dairies for milking, waste management, feeding and watering. He didn’t include the energy to grow crops for feed or transporting the milk to market.

He found a wide variation in usage from one type of dairy to another, but the average was about 3.2 kilowatt hours per day per cow.

Turning manure into energy, either with bacteria to make methane or high heat to make hydrogen or both could make up to 25 kilowatt hours per day per cow.

The processes can not only make energy, in the form of heat or electricity, but also reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the manure. They also reduce the volume of “nutrients” left to be disposed of. In ag researcher talk that means there’s less poop to spread on farm fields - up to 80 percent less.

And in places where it rains (that leaves most of the Panhandle out) and there's hills (out again) that would mean less threat of said "nutrients" ending up in a creek, then a river, then a lake, then your house. But you already got that.

Wait a minute

Some guy from North Chili, N.Y., is trying to get everyone to lighten their load by putting stuff out on their curb on Oct. 24 to let other people pick through it.

Okay, first, what’s a New York town calling itself Chili for? Second, this is supposed to let you get rid of useable stuff you don’t really use. Sounds good. But what happens when you go digging through your neighbors stuff and go home with more stuff? You get nowhere or go backwards on the too-much-stuff treadmill.

I’m going to have to think about this one. I know reuse is right in there with recycle, but I’m not sure how this plan would play out in the real world.

Check out the Web site and see what you think. But like supporters of Curb Day say, “What’s rusting in your garage?”

Greenerrific

Packed with product

there's never too much green

Who'd of thunk Office Depot, seller of murdered trees by the ream, would be flexing its green muscles?

The company has redesigned its environmental Web site to better shout its credentials. It sports the Depot "global environmental vision" to "Buy Green, Be Green and Sell Green."

Greened out yet? Impossible.

How about the Green Book catalog with 2,200 of Office Depot's greenest products and tips? How about green rankings of its products from light green for refillable pens to dark green for 100 percent recycled content file folders? Well, how about the Greener Office Guide to going from "green starter" to "green leader?"

But check it out. The company's done a lot of work to communicate its position and make a little money to add to its $14.5 billion sales every year.

Slimy, green and good for you

The online newsletter RenewableEnergyWorld has a nice overview of efforts to turn that slimy green stuff that grows on the sides of your pool into transportation fuels for everything from trucks to jets.

It addresses the methods to grow algae, harvest its oil for refining and what to do with what's left, the ever confusing "co-products." I started hearing that term when interviewing people about ethanol. "Don't call it byproduct, it's a co-product," they all said. That seems a lot like the military insisting Iraq is in Southwest Asia, not the Middle East.

Regardless, the article says 30 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas production comes from people trying to get from one place to another so new fuels could help cut production.

It also says algae produce 100 times the oil soybeans, the current choice to make biodiesel, can. Also, growing algae only takes sun, water and carbon dioxide. That doesn't sound as fun as driving a big ol' tractor all day, but if it works...

Getting ready to plug and play

Now there's a plan, kind of, that puts dates to the completion of transmission lines for wind power in the Panhandle.

The Electric Reliability Council of Texas has submitted to the Public Utilities Commission proposed construction completion dates.

Here comes the alphabet soup.

ERCOT's plan is based on the PUC's goal of having all the lines to make the wind farms in Competitive Renewable Energy Zones (CREZ) hooked up and pumping power to Dallas and such by the end of 2013.

The first line in the Panhandle will come up from the south through Briscoe, Swisher and Castro counties to Randall County by Sept. 30, 2012. One problem, it won't get hooked to the grid until Dec. 31, 2012. Next comes the line through Childress to Donley, Gray and Carson counties, across the Palo Duro Canyon (that should be fun) in Armstrong County to Randall County. That is supposed to happen by March 31, 2013.

Those plans will give access to large wind farms planned by Shell (Briscoe County), E.ON (Carson and Gray) and Mesa (Gray and Roberts) and a too many smaller outfits to count. Besides, these wind companies are pretty secretive about their operations, with their landmen trying to sign up landowners to contracts that promise the signer's torture and perhaps more if they disclose any terms.

Then there's the newest entry. A Danish outfit and a Norwegian one are teaming with a Parmer County company to tempt more than 200 landowners to sign up about 204,000 acres for a wind farm that is bigger than any of the others. Right now they think they can do 3,000 megawatts, but the goal is 5,000 megawatts. That's enough for 1.75 million average homes.

Then there's the rubs. The developers will have to find a sugar daddy to pay for it all, and there's no transmission planned in the area. But Jim Swafford, CEO of Scandia Wind Southwest, the Parmer County company, says if they build it big enough, the transmission will follow.

Too much Huh?

Sometimes, this green stuff is clear as mud. Now I know that's of the Earth, but when something hits the Huh? button too hard, it makes my head hurt.

Sample No. 1 from a recent speech by John Podesta, president and CEO of Center for American Progress in which he proposes the concept of Carbon Cap Equivalents:
"This would entail adding up the full range of supplemental and complimentary proposals to each country’s carbon cap, and converting this into one comparable figure of what these emissions reductions would effectively amount to if they had been the result of a carbon cap alone. While the modeling will be complex, the hoped for Copenhagen treaty needs to create the mechanism through measureable, verifiable, and reportable carbon cap equivalents – representing the full range of their policy profile to reduce greenhouse gas emissions – above and beyond their formal cap."

Sounds simple, Huh?

Sample No. 2 from an e-mailed news release for a product that lets your horse leave lighter hoofprints on the Earth:
Alltech and California-based O.H. Kruse have launched Green Feed, "the animal health and nutrition industry’s first environmentally-friendly equine feed."
"From its bag to its formulation, Green Feed was designed to enable horses to perform at their peak naturally and with less impact on the land they call home:
The bag is made of recyclable materials and is printed with soy-based ink.
Green Feed includes a variety of proven, natural technologies to ensure digestive health, boost immune function, and provide optimal mineral balances.
The formula includes just the right amount of supplements to decrease the nutrient content wasted into the manure and thereby reduce the risk of ground water contamination.
It was also formulated keeping the local availability of ingredients in mind so the carbon footprint and energy waste of transportation is minimized. Grain products are kept to a minimum in the Green Feed to avoid affecting the supply for a hungry world."

Do you think that makes those horses feel a lot better about themselves?

But seriously, they aren't bad ideas. There's just a Huh? factor to reading these descriptions of them.

It's not unusual

Wow, smarmy-but-sexy Tom Jones (and Richard Burton and Anthony Hopkins for balance) and now this. The tiny nation of Wales will share some of its native riches at a conference this summer on getting rid of all carbon emissions.

This year’s Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington, D.C., will host experts discussing the buildings, food and energy use of the future at the Convergence on Zero event. It will be on June 25 and 26.

The Smithsonian is focusing on Welsh cultural traditions at the Folklife Festival, so it makes sense the country will be given a chance to show off a traditional roundhouse that is powered by the sun. Also, Welsh First Minister Rhodri Morgan will speak at the conference. He recently announced a plan to reduce fossil fuel use in his country by 90 percent.

The conference is supposed to host leading environmental thinkers and doers from the nation of Wales who will share their sustainability ideas and actions with the United States.

“This conference will build bridges between two countries, so different in scale yet both affected by the same challenges: climate security, energy security and economic security,” according to the Centre for Alternative Technology, which is coordinating the event.

It will be free and open to the public.

And check out the Folklife Festival site if you’re interested in all the other doings at the 2009 Wales Washington Cymru.

No Saudia Arabia of Solar

State Rep. David Swinford, R-Dumas, is fond of calling the Panhandle the Saudia Arabia of wind for its potential to pump out the power. However, his bills to promote solar energy died this legislative session as did a companion bill in the Senate.

It's not as big as not renewing transportation department (sure to be revisited), but the legislators never put the solar bills up for final votes.

Swinford proposed in one bill to create a fund for rebates to homeowners installing solar by charging electric customers a small fee. The other bill would have set mandates for developing "emerging renewable energy." That means anything other than utility-scale wind farms. The mandate called for adding 3,000 megawatts of renewable energy by 2020. That would have been enough to power about one million average homes.

His bills join the ban on trans fat in restaurants on the dead bill list. They just couldn't get the votes the successful bill to require training and certification of laser hair-removal technicians.