What happened in Vegas

The big news from the great state of California is that we the people used 100 million less gallons of gasoline in 2007 than we did in 2006. Great news on the surface but given our “official population” of some 36 million men woman and children we only saved about 3 gallons per person. Wes still used some 15.8 billion gallons of gasoline in the golden state http://www.news10.net/display_story.aspx?storyid=38234 This equals 438 gallons per person per year. Each gallon of gasoline has 115,000 BTU lower heating value and there are 3.96 BTU in a kilocalorie (a food Calorie) so if we multiply the energy content of the gasoline and convert this to a Calories per person we get very close to 40,000 Calories per day of gasoline used per person in California. This is the ultimate Mega-Meal diet of some 20 times the recommended food intake. This simple analysis shows why the ethanol lobby has lied to us that we can use this wonderful spirit for automotive fuel. The stock analysts have finally come round to what I have said for year that Ethanol as a fuel is a myth http://blogs.moneycentral.msn.com/topstocks/archive/2008/02/10/ethanol-myth-blasted-in-new-science-mag.aspx This stock analyst is very bearish on two stocks Pacific Ethanol PEIX which is well of its highs (it now has a hangover after the buzz) and Biofuel Energy BIOF a recent IPO that is now sleeping in the gutter in a drunken stupor. I have opined frequently that ethanol should be enjoyed in moderation as a drink. Talking of the lack of fluids on the planet, Lake Mead could dry up by 2021 http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,330591,00.html This is not good news for Vegas as they have the motto “What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas” I guess they never heard of evaporation?

I did promise to opine on Lithium the lightest of metals and perhaps the greatest hope for hybrid vehicles. A down and out stock called Valence Technologies VLNC that has been trying for more than 15 years to compete in lithium ion batteries for phones and PDAs has finally realized their technology using phosphate based cores for lithium ion batteries may have some hope in the auto arena. The big problem with standard lithium ion batteries is that the batteries can catch alight and the problem arises from the cobalt oxide core http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/robotics/2007-03-15-batteries_N.htm If Valence has indeed solved the safety problem as they claim, they could get a lift in their stock price. The value of lithium ion batteries to transportation is enormous as it is the only battery technology with a 99% efficient charge discharge efficiency. Most other battery systems such as lead acid, or nickel metal hydride have a charge discharge efficiency of less than 75%. Some researches are looking into making lithium ion batteries with cores of silicon nanowires and this too is a possible method to overcome the fire hazard of lithium batteries. http://www.nature.com/nnano/journal/v3/n1/full/nnano.2007.411.html;jsessionid=C58C405D0F0C274FEBE27CC09617CA96

Burning Play Stations are in the news again http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,329530,00.html a schoolboy in Detroit way hurt when his Play Station overheated in his pocket. No doubt this was a lithium battery problem.



The word of the day is amative or being disposed to love. Today is Valentines Day and best wishes to all readers of TT for a day in which you like those lithium batteries need to be fully charged but be careful not to get burned.

Word of the DayThursday February 14, 2008
Today's Word Yesterday's Word Previous Words Subscribe for Free Help
amative \AM-uh-tiv\, adjective:Pertaining to or disposed to love, especially sexual love; full of love; amorous.
Theoretically, any given left-kisser should meet more right-kissers and, over an amative lifetime, or even good year in junior high, be subtly pressured to shift to the right in order to land a wet one -- or just avoid a broken nose. No?-- Donald G. McNeil Jr., "Pucker Up, Sweetie, and Tilt Right", New York Times, February 13, 2003
In the spring a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of another nap even more often than it does to amative imaginings, Tennyson to the contrary notwithstanding.-- "Touch of Spring Fever Makes Whole World Kin", Science News, May 23, 1931
Well, poetry has been erotic, or amative, or something of that sort -- at least a vast deal of it has -- ever since it stopped being epic.-- Helen Deutsch, "Death, desire and translation: on the poetry of Propertius", TriQuarterly, March 22, 1993
Amative comes from Medieval Latin amativus, "capable of love," from the past participle of Latin amare, "to love."
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for

Green energy

Thermo Thursday Green Energy TGIT – Thank Guernsey It’s Thursday

Holy Cow what does Guernsey have to do with thermodynamics? Yes there is a connection and it comes to us from Sweden. Fox News as part of their Unfair and certainly Unbalanced section reports of a dairy in Southwestern Sweden deciding to route warm cows milk through the heating system an 18th Century Castle to help heat the castle and help chill the milk. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,327906,00.html

The diary has 1,100 cows and processes 7,900 gallons of milk a day. Remembering my previous Thermo Thursday about the 140 degree latte, I just had to calculate just how much energy can be recovered from 7,900 gallons a day of cows milk. First I had to establish the body temperature of a cow. It is 101.5 degrees F or about 3 degrees warmer than a human http://hypertextbook.com/facts/1998/PeiJunChen.shtml

Second I had to establish the specific gravity of cows milk and it is a smidgen more dense than water and has a specific gravity of 1.023 http://hypertextbook.com/facts/2002/AliciaNoelleJones.shtml

Third I had to establish the heat capacity of milk and it is a little lower than water at 0.9 btu/lb degree F http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/specific-heat-capacity-food-d_295.html

Knowing that a gallon of water has a mass of 8.34 pounds and assuming the cows milk will cool to a temperature of 65 degrees F in that castle, I calculated that the 7,900 gallons per day of milk can exchange some 2,214,135 BTUs per day into the air inside the castle. This equates to some 92,255 BTUs per hour. I did locate a web site that shows one how to determine the size of a furnace that is needed to heat a building. This web site shows that in order to heat an uninsulated building that is 100 feet long, 30 feet wide and 14 feet tall with an outside temperature of 10 degrees F, a furnace with a capacity of 183,750 BTUs per hour is needed http://yankeeserviceco.com/finder.htm

By all of these calculations the warm cow milk could heat a building that is 50 feet long by 30 feet wide by 14 feet tall. So it is quite likely that the Swedish Dairy Farmer will be able to heat his gym. There is no way on God’s Green Earth that he will heat the gym, the work shop and the 50 room accommodation center. To heat all of that he would have to capture the methane emissions form his herd of cows.

Not to be outdone by the engineering skills of the Swedes, the Dutch have introduced a robot to pump gasoline. This brilliant engineer from the low country upon seeing a robot that milks cows came up with the bright idea that he could develop a robot to pump gasoline. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,328907,00.html Well it turns out the robot will cost $100,000 and take a million years to payout compared with self serve. I guess we Americans are smart in having convinced the motorists that pumping your own gasoline is a simple as one two three. Someone should tell the Dutch how this is done.

Well the English who believe the Dutch and the Swedes are inferior have also wasted their time on a nonsensical invention. A bloke for Sussex has come up with a levitating chair that can support the mass of a 250 pound person suspended in a magnetic field. Folks with pacemakers need not apply and remember to remove your wallet as all your credit cards will be rendered inactive http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,328168,00.html

I am truly sorry that this week I have dealt with three village idiots from Europe who each in their own way are trying to be green and innovative. Next week I will do a Finance Friday about lithium a wonder chemical that treats mental disease as well as holds some promise for plug in vehicle batteries.

The word of the day is lubricous or having a smooth quality. This should not be mixed up with ludicrous which is how I would rate the three ideas from Europe that I discussed.

lubricious \loo-BRISH-us\, adjective:1. Lustful; lewd.2. Stimulating or appealing to sexual desire or imagination.3. Having a slippery or smooth quality.
The heroine, through some form of ESP, can hear, and be offended by, the lubricious speculations going on inside the heads of the men she meets.-- Philip French, "More about What Women Want", The Observer, February 4, 2001
And even if the public ate up every lubricious detail about their leaders, that same public grew offended that the news media would actually pander to their baser impulses.-- Jeff Greenfield, "Film at 11", New York Times, November 7, 1999
. . .urged women to give up their vanities, their cosmetics, and their high-heeled shoes, and to pile them on . . .bonfires next to lubricious works of art.-- Anthony Grafton, "The Varieties of Millennial Experience", The New Republic, November 1999
Here was a place where a kind of benign . . . anarchy seemed to rule, a lubricious, frictionless chaos into which one could simply disappear.-- Eugene Robinson, "On the Beach at Ipanema", Washington Post, August 1, 1999
Lubricious derives from Latin lubricus, "slippery, smooth."
Dictionary.com Entry and Pronunciation for lubricious

Hydrogen economy

Finance Friday TGIF Thank Gullibility It’s Friday

Today I will opine on the reason why hydrogen and fuel cell stocks are dogs. I had said they would be dogs back in the days when the Governator proposed his Hydrogen Highway. You can listen to my interview on the radio station at UC Berkeley back in 2004

10/20/2004-- Lindsay Leveen of SLS partners discussed the Hydrogen economy. (Listen MP3)
INTERVIEW DESCRIPTION: With the growing scarcity of fossil fuels, alternative energy sources are actively being investigated. Currently, hydrogen based fuel systems have been heralded in the press as being the solution. But beyond the hype, the hydrogen economy faces critical challenges.

The laws of thermo would have told a savvy investor that these hydrogen stocks were based on HYPE. The biggest hypochondriac is Ballard Power BLDP It now trades at $4.66 and has a market cap of $534 million. It is trading for half of the price when I did the interview and for 3% of its peak price in the dot com days. Ballard has cumulative losses approaching one billion dollars and yet it continues to hype its PEM fuel cell technology. Old Carnot knew that to gain efficiency a system has to operate at higher temperatures. This PEM nonsense of low temperature fuel cells just does not jive with Carnot. An even worse performer is Distributed Energy Systems DESC. They are the continuation of Proton Energy Systems and a hyper of PEM. DESC is trading at $0.57 and has a paltry market cap of $22 million. These jokers have lost a quarter billion dollars cumulatively over their decade of existence. Another PEM HYPE story is Plug Power PLUG. These guys are also plugged up. They trade at $2.85 and have a market cap of $250 million. They once traded at $150 a share. Their chief technology officer resigned a few weeks back. It is a misnomer to refer to the person as a CTO when the company simply has HYPE technology.

I suggest you listen to the radio interview and you will hear why the laws of thermodynamics always prevail in the long term. I wish I had a HOPE stock to give you all in the hydrogen space. I believe hydrogen does have a very useful purpose as a chemical feedstock to produce petroleum products and other petrochemicals. Air Products APD and Praxair PX are large industrial gas companies each with market caps approaching $20 billion. Long term these well run global companies will have larger hydrogen businesses that augment their oxygen and nitrogen sectors. They have been good performers in the past and I will therefore rate them as HOPE stocks in the hydrogen sector.

Wind Energy

TGIT Thermo Thursday Green Energy Explained Thank Gusts It's Thursday

yeah the wind is gusting to save us from being smothered in carbon dioxide cloud. I have opined on several occasions that wind farms to generate electricty are by far the best new technology for renewable energy. I am very glad to report that 2007 was a banner year for the wind energy business in the USA as well as worldwide. The department of entropy (USDOE) today reported that installation of wind turbines in the USA was up 45% in 2007 over 2006. The US now has 16,818 megawatts of installed wind turbines. Texas is always the bigger and better state and they lead the US by installing 1,618 megawatts of capacity during 2007. The entire US installed 5,244 megawatts of capacity over the same period. Texas, therefore, accounts for about 30% of the wind project in 2007. I say "go longhorns go".

The TECO Westinghouse Motor Company will develop a 10 megawatt turbine for offshore installation. This is quite amazing in size as it will peturb the wind flow for some 200 acres that surround the turbine as wind energy can be harvested at a rate of about 50 kilowatts per acre.

The single largest problem facing developers of wind farms is the problem of birds of prey and bats flying into the turbine blades. Bats can be diverted by sonar and birds should be warned by having LED lights embedded in the blades.

The word of the day is permeate or to pass through. We are all indeed fortunate that air can permeate through the turbine blades so we have wind energy.Permeate is from Latin permeare, "to go through, to pass through," from per-, "through" + meare, "to go, to pass."The Following was reported by the USDOE on 1/23/08

U.S. Wind Power Capacity Surged Up 45% in 2007
The U.S. wind energy industry installed 5,244 megawatts (MW) of wind power capacity in 2007, according to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA). The rapid growth shatters all previous records and boosts the total U.S. wind power capacity by 45% in only one year. The growth even exceeded AWEA's expectations for 4,000 MW of new capacity, a prediction made just two months ago. In fact, wind power provided 30% of the new generating capacity installed in the United States in 2007. The total U.S. wind power capacity is now at 16,818 MW, with wind projects located in 34 states. AWEA estimates that in 2008, U.S. wind power facilities will generate 48 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity, or about 1% of the nation's electricity needs. AWEA expects similar capacity growth in 2008, although factors such as the availability of new wind turbines could have an impact on growth. The trade association tallies 3,520 MW of new wind power capacity currently under construction.

Texas leads the states in terms of new wind power capacity installed in 2007, with 1,618 MW of new capacity, further cementing the state's lead in total installed wind power capacity. Among the largest projects built in 2007 are the 198-MW and 161.7-MW Twin Groves I and II wind plants in Illinois; the 264-MW Peetz Table and 300.5-MW Cedar Creek wind plants, both in Colorado; the 232.5-MW phase II of the Buffalo Gap wind plant in Texas; the 205.5-MW Fenton Wind Power Project in Minnesota; the 221.1-MW Klondike III wind plant in Oregon; and the 204.7-MW White Creek Wind Power Project in Washington. The Bluegrass Ridge wind farm is also noteworthy, as it's the first utility-scale wind facility in Missouri. AWEA also estimates that at least 14 new wind power manufacturing facilities either opened or were announced in 2007. See the AWEA press release and the accompanying market report (PDF 238 KB). Download Adobe Reader.

Wind turbines are also getting bigger, as the largest turbines employed in last year's wind projects was a 3-MW Vestas turbine, installed in California and Texas. Of the projects now under construction, one in California is employing a 4-MW Mitsubishi turbine. In October 2007, Clipper Windpower established the Centre of Excellence for Offshore Wind in the United Kingdom to develop a 7.5-MW offshore wind turbine, called the "Britannia Project." At about the same time, American Superconductor Corporation teamed up with TECO-Westinghouse Motor Company to develop a 10-MW generator for use in offshore wind turbines. See the press releases from Clipper Wind and American Superconductor.

Geothermal Stocks

Finance Friday TGIF - Thank Geothermal It’s Friday

Today we will discuss stocks that are in the area of geothermal energy. First we need a definition of geothermal energy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geothermal_power Geothermal comes form the Greek words for earth and heat. In essence there is the capability to take naturally occurring heat that is warmer than room temperature and use this to either heat homes and offices or even produce electricity from the heat (energy) source. Typically the temperature of the geothermal source is not very high like in a coal fired power plant but is still high enough to extract work out of the system to drive turbines to generate electricity. There are several companies that are listed in the US that are engaged in geothermal energy. Today we will discuss two. The first is Ormat Technologies Inc ORA on the NYSE. ORA is trading today at $43.17 and well off of its 52 week high of $57.93. The Price Earnings Ratio (PE) for ORA is still a very high 71.95 giving ORA a market capitalization of $1.79 billion. ORA has some very good underlying technology in its low boiling point fluid method of generating electricity form low temperature heat sources such as geothermal or concentrated solar. ORA is trading at just under 4 times its book value of $455 million and it is my contention that ORA will be a long term player in the alternative and green energy market because of the underlying technology it has in the low boiling point fluids. I put ORA in the HOPE column and I believe that they will be around in five years as an even bigger company than their present state. My belief is that all green stocks will see pricing pressure in the short term and ORA may still drop further over the next few months but long term this company will likely be one of the market leaders in geothermal and concentrated solar.

The second stock I will discuss falls into the HYPE column. This company is Raser Technologies Inc RZ on the NYSE. This is somewhat of a shell company that has recently made the move into leasing large tracts of land in the west that have geothermal potential. RZ is a development company and has announced they have lined up financing from the like of Merrill Lynch http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUKN1752875620080117?rpc=44

We all know that Merrill Lynch took a massive bath in sub-prime mortgages. With RZ they are likely to get into even more hot water and take a geothermal bath that will scald them. The location of RZs leases is in places where there is abundant coal, abundant gas, or abundant hydroelectric. This means the electricity that will be generated will have to compete with fairly low prices alternates. RZ has a puny balance sheet and is bleeding cash. With some 55 million shares outstanding and more dilution coming its way RZ is hardly worth the $13.82 it trades for. It had peaked at $18.44 a few weeks back. Long term RZ could end up in the trash heap and be a memory like some of the energy development companies like Calpine CPNLQ.PK or the dotcom companies that got on that band wagon. Actually Calipne which is now a pinksheet fallen star does operate some geothermal electric generation plants at the Geysers in Northern California. RZ also claims to have some super duper technology for improving electric motor efficiency and some technology for hybrid propulsion. I believe GE has great technology for electric motors and Toyota has great technology for hybrids propulsion and that RZ is pretty much hot air on these sectors. Therefore I put RZ into the HYPE column.

Be very careful with geothermal companies the water is hot and the stocks were recently hot, other than Ormat I believe you will get third degree burns in this sector.

Lindsay Leveen

Biodegradable Coffins

Green Thursday TGIT – Thank Graves It’s Thursday

First before we start the rather macabre discussion of burial, I want to wish you all a happy new year. Also my blog this year will alternate between Thursdays and Fridays. Thursdays will remain the traditional Green Thursday and Fridays will be Finance Fridays in which I will dissect energy related stocks to help you discern if their business is based on hope or hype.

CNN carried an article on a trend toward using biodegradable coffins for burial. http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/12/27/green.coffins.ap/index.html Below is a picture of a grieving relative of someone about to be buried in a coffin made from recycled newspaper. I hope they only used the obituary section not the sports section?

John in the carpool has asked me to opine on whether burial is more green than cremation. Well with the fattening up of the American population, the average adult now has enough fat content to self sustain their own cremation without the need of any fossil fuel.

Some nut in the UK has posted the average body composition on a web page http://www.rowett.ac.uk/edu_web/sec_pup/body_comp.pdf

I will use 20% fat content for the average American adult and an average mass of 175 pounds so we have 35 pounds of fat to contribute to our cremation. This is about 700,000 BTUs of available energy which is more than ample to “fire” the process. Burial in a cemetery that has its landscape maintained for the next 100 years will require mowing of the lawn around each gravesite. If the mowing is performed 25 times a year and the lawn around each gravesite is 100 square feet then the amount of lawn mowed over a 100 year period is 25 times 100 times 100 or 250,000 square feet or some six acre equivalent of mowing. To mow six acres of lawn requires at least 2 gallons of gasoline so I vote that even with the biodegradable recycled coffin, cremation is much more green than burial. Judaism has been green about burial for the past three thousand years as the rabbis require a very plan pine casket without any metal or adornment. In biblical times the body was buried in a pure white cotton shroud not a wood coffin so this was even more green http://www.deathonline.net/remembering/mourning/jewish.cfm

Enough about death and taxes!!

New York City rang in the new year with a brand new LED based ball. The new ball is twice as bright and uses half the electricity of the previous ball. NYC had been dropping the ball in time square for the past 100 years. The politicians in DC have always dropped the ball. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/12/31/tech/main3658180.shtml

Lastly taking about lighting up the world! A new 150 inch plasma display was unveiled at the consumer electronics show this week in Las Vegas. This display has a surface area in excess of 9,600 square inches and will need about 3.5 kilowatts of power. I found an interesting web site that compares the power requirements for various TV technologies http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-6475_7-6400401-2.html I hope that the governator has a 35 amp electrical service in his den. Yes Arne has ordered one of these so he can watch reruns of Twins. He wants to see his buddy Danny DeVito in normal size and to see himself as the jolly green giant. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22540733/

The word of the day is remonstrate or to plead or protest perhaps in this case one could start the word with a d and still be correct

remonstrate \rih-MAHN-strayt; REH-mun-strayt\, intransitive verb:1. To present and urge reasons in opposition to an act, measure, or any course of proceedings -- usually used with 'with'.
transitive verb:1. To say or plead in protest, opposition, or reproof.
If a hailstorm starts, surely instead of remonstrating with it, you try to take shelter.-- Victor Pelevin, A Werewolf Problem in Central Russia and Other Stories
When things went beyond the control of her forceful personality, inventiveness or charm, if the problem was something she could not alter or manipulate, she didn't pine or remonstrate, she merely buried what was threatening or damaging to her sense of worth.-- Colin Thubron, "Sophisticated Traveler", New York Times, October 10, 1999
Tories and Liberal Democrats remonstrated with each other.-- Matthew Parris, "Cockney market forces drive Ginger bananas", Times (London), May 16, 2001
Remonstrate comes from Medieval Latin remonstrare, "to show again, to point back to, as a fault," from re- + monstrare, "to show."

Mid-size coffee serving at Starbucks

Green Thursday TGIT – Thank Grande It’s Thursday


We are not talking about the Rio Grande but the mid-size coffee serving at Starbucks. Yes Starbucks has Short, Tall, Grande and Venti sizes for their coffee and lattes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starbucks

The Grande is a 16 oz size http://www.quicksilverweb.net/sbucks/sbcharts.htm

The quicksilver link helps you speak Starbuck Jargon. I was recently in the local Starbuck when I overheard the patron in front of me ask for a 140 degree latte. Being a thermo expert I of course had to ask the Barista what this meant. The barista replied that the milk in the 140 degree is warmed less than the normal 160 degrees. Of course my mind started doing mental arithmetic as to how much energy Starbucks could save if all patrons became green and asked for the 140 degree grande non fat latte with one splendla and no foam single cupped. Yes there are over 15,000 Starbucks stores and Starbucks has yearly revenues of nearly ten billion dollars. They must sell something like 3 billion grande equivalent drinks a year. Twenty degrees difference on a drink that weighs a pound using a specific heat of 1.0 means 60 billion BTUs could be saved. Each of the Starbuck espresso machines is power by electricity. There are 3412 BTUs in a kilowatt hour. The added warmth of the drinks therefore equals 19.096 million kilowatt hours. The average heat rate of a coal fired power plant, the most common form of power plant in the world is about 10,000 BTU per kilowatt hour. This means about 1.25 pounds of coal needs to be burned to generate a kilowatt hour, so the 19 million kilowatt hours required 23.870 million pounds of coal. Coal is about 50% carbon the rest is ash and moisture with a little hydrogen. Therefore 11,935,000 pounds of carbon are emitted each year to increase the temperature of the grande cups of Strabucks from 140 degrees to 160 degrees. This is almost 6,000 tons of carbon. Expressed as carbon dioxide we have to multiply the amount of carbon by 3.67 and we have that Strabucks is emitting and additional 21,881 tons a year of carbon dioxide simple because the average patron did not request the 140 degree grande non fat latte with one splendla and no foam single cupped option. This is about the same amount of carbon dioxide that 4,000 cars emit in a year. Of course just driving to starbucks to get the 140 degree grande non fat latte with one splendla and no foam single cupped drink causes an untold amount of carbon emissions

There is much debate about whether electricity can be generated from coal without the CO2 emissions. It is beginning to feel like Christmas and if you believe in Santa you will believe this nonsense of coal gasification and CO2 sequestration http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/12/19/future.coal.plant/index.html

Now that Vietnam is embracing a market economy and people have more money there to spend on Starbucks they are also buying lots of motorcycles and having lots of crashes. It was reported this week that Vietnam has instituted a Helmet Law for motorcyclists http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071215/lf_nm/vietnam_helmets_dc Amazingly the number of motorcycles in Vietnam has increased form 500,000 in 1990 to over 22 million currently. With this type of statistic perhaps we can all understand how the earth is headed toward a very warm perhaps 140 degree future in places like Death Valley.

Good news from Washington is that president Bush will sign into law the new higher efficiency standards http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/071218/congress_energy.html To celebrate this momentous event the eggnog will only be heated to 140 degrees.

This is the last TT for this year as I will be on vacation through January 7 sipping my morning soy latte from Starbucks which I must confess will be only heated to 140 degrees because soy milk actually “burns” if it is heated any higher. Wishing you all seasons greeting and a happy, healthy, and energy efficient 2008

The word of the day is tocsin or ringing the bell for the purpose of alarm. Well I have been a pretty ardent bell ringer that we are simply adding toxins to the environment. With this let’s all sing Jingle Bells and do better next year

Word of the DayThursday December 20, 2007
Today's Word Yesterday's Word Previous Words Subscribe for Free Help
tocsin \TOCK-sin\, noun:1. An alarm bell, or the ringing of a bell for the purpose of alarm.2. A warning.
Some of the allegations put round are so frenzied, however, that some caution should be exercised before the tocsin is rung too loudly.-- "New President of the NUS", Times (London), April 10, 1969
The first atomic bomb fell and its radioactive cloud became a tocsin for mankind.-- Herbert Mitgang, "The Bomb as Horror and Warning", New York Times, August 1, 1990
But Mr. Beckett is wise in choosing the form of the myth in which to sound his tocsin on the condition of human society.-- Brooks Atkinson, "Beckett's 'Endgame'", New York Times, January 29, 1958
Tocsin derives from Medieval French touquesain, from Old Provençal tocasenh, from tocar, "to touch, to strike, to ring a bell" + senh, "church bell," ultimately from Latin signum, "sign, signal."