The Mississippi River is not known as "Old Muddy" for nothing. By the time it empties out into the Gulf of Mexico (GOMEX), it carries a vast load of sediment, organic material (plants, plant parts, bacteria, algae, fish, protozoa, sewage from animals and possibly humans) and even dissolved chemicals (hydrolyzed plant and animal material, dissolved minerals, and ammonia/nitrates, phosphates, sulfates, etc). It is what is called nutrient laden, and with sufficient oxygen, lots of things could grow in this medium. And did.

another recent interview with Matt Simmons can be found at http://www.financialsense.com/fsn/main.html (in the section of August 9 interview with the experts)

at 15'15" he talked about the plan to build the biggest offshore wind farm (on 90 to 95 platforms) in the gulf of Maine with the equivalent electric generation capacity of 5 nuclear power plants.

at 17'30" in response to the interviewer's comment of that's electricity but "we have a liquid fuel problem", Simmons: we'll have enough electricity to create liquid ammonia from ocean water through electrolysis.

This morning on the Today Show, Exhibit Z in Another Version of "Why this country is such a mess" was shown, in the form of a suburban family of consumers who were asked to "do with less" for a week. Pedicures, manicures, the lawn service, going out for meals, and even the expensive Starbucks beverages were zipped out for a week. They saved $660 versus "normal", and then came the "I had no idea" phrase got uttered by the Ms.

Remember several months back when we presented a plan for anhydrous ammonia production in northwest Iowa with an associated greenhouse operation to make use of the waste heat?

http://strandedwind.org/node/129

The ammonia price at the time was $700/ton and there weren't enough people to fill the positions the greenhouse would create so the plan was shelved ... until this week.

As fate would have it, the Buffalo, New York area is ripe for such a development - if you're creating jobs there you can get $0.0.2/kwh electricity and the ammonia price has almost doubled to $1,200/ton.

May 14 2008 10:19PM KXMCTV Minot

Spring planting across much of North Central North Dakota is on hold for a little while as farmers wait for the ground to dry down enough to head back out into the field.

About three-quarters of the crop is in the ground so far and farmers but it's all come at quite a cost. Fertilizer prices have doubled from last fall and are now at a record high for nitrogen.

(John Rensvold, Dakota Agronomy Partners) "It can't go high enough. It just won't quit going up. A lot of that because it's a commodity and it's driven by a free market system."

This is the initial announcement for the Fifth Annual Ammonia Fuel Conference -- AF V. This year's meeting will be held in Minneapolis on Monday-Tuesday, September 29 - 30, and there will be a lab tour of the University of Minnesota wind-to-ammonia synthesis lab on Wednesday morning October 1. As in the past, we will have an excellent technical agenda covering all areas of ammonia as a fuel.

Meeting Organizers --
John Holbrook, AmmPower, 509-396-2082, john.holbrook@charter.net
Norm Olson, Iowa Energy Center, 515-382-1774, nolson@iastate.edu

Note: While the Great Lakes and Great Plains are different, they are both "Great" in their own way. This is a tale about how some of the least expensive electricity in the USA is NOT put to work in a way that would create jobs and decrease our addiction to imported ammonia and imported gasoline, and make the world a better place. You decide, but the present course of (in)action may be leading to evil things...NYPA stands for the "New York Power Authority" (http://www.nypa.gov), in theory owned by the State of New York, and hence the "Peoples Power Company" of NY. In theory.....

NYTimes.com
Wednesday April 30, 12:35 pm ET
By KEITH BRADSHER and ANDREW MARTIN

XUAN CANH, Vietnam — Truong Thi Nha stands just four and a half feet tall. Her three grown children tower over her, just as many young people in this village outside Hanoi dwarf their parents.
The biggest reason the children are so robust: fertilizer.

Ms. Nha, her face weathered beyond its 51 years, said her growth was stunted by a childhood of hunger and malnutrition. Just a few decades ago, crop yields here were far lower and diets much worse.

I wrote this as a comment to Jerome a Paris recent posting with regards to oil prices - see http://www.eurotrib.com/?op=displaystory;sid=2008/3/30/19025/9522

Anyway, any comments?

Well now ... Senator Grassley and I were having a little chat after the Estherville Rotary meeting, Michael Tideman captured us together, and wrote a bit about what we do. A very nice bit of visibility, this ...