Government plans to manage the energy market will create more bureaucracy and fraud.

We know from geological history that the globe goes through warming and cooling cycles. Even if only because of Hollywood, and not from our dumbed-down educational system, most people are familiar with the term “Ice Age.” And those massive temperature variations and earth changes took place for eons before man appeared on the scene to contribute to “greenhouse gases.”

Even some of those who believe in the increasingly discredited theories of man-made “global warming” recognize the problems wuth government solutions. Michelle Chan, Senior Policy Analyst at the San Francisco-based advocacy group Friends of the Earth wrote in Ten Ways to Game the Carbon Market:

Remember how Wall Street traders crashed the economy in 2008 with their gambling on complex mortgage securities, and with “dark market” derivatives? Well, the mortgage bubble may have burst, but the creation of carbon markets — one approach for reducing harmful greenhouse gas pollution
– could create a whole new Wall Street casino. The U.S. needs to dramatically
reduce pollution to solve the climate crisis, but are carbon markets really the best way?

Carbon trading systems are complex, and the more complex they
are, the easier they are to manipulate.

Massive levels of corporate lobbying on climate change have produced convoluted cap-and-trade proposals that are filled with giveaways and concessions to various industries. The larger and more complex the carbon trading system is, the more difficult it will be to regulate and the easier it will be to game….

Her paper goes on to suggest ten strategies for gaming the system. Unfortunately, her solution would probably be even more complex government regulation, leading to more taxes and more government employees. But her initial analysis is worth reading.

Ten Ways to Game the Carbon Market

Our writers here at American Daughter have been critical of Obama’s response to the oil disaster. Reader MaryAnne reasonably asks:

Could you please detail exactly what you think Obama should personally do about BP’s complete disregard for the safety of its workers and the destruction of Gulf Coast beaches? I have gone to the trouble of reading some of your past posts and have yet to see you offer one workable solution to any of the problems you address.

I haven’t done this until now, because it doesn’t make any difference what I would have done. The mission of our news magazine is to inform our readers of the capabilities and shortcomings of public figures, so they can make informed decisions about their political activism, financial support, and voting. But such a discussion may offer a useful baseline for comparison, and it certainly is something that I have given a lot of thought. Here’s what I would do if I were president:

1. If I were president, I would immediately assume personal executive responsibility for the response to one of the greatest environmental disasters to face our planet, that happened under United States jurisdiction. I would NEVER abdicate that authority to any profit-motivated corporation. I would use every legal means to force that corporation to finance the clean-up, but I would manage the clean-up myself, by delegating tasks to my government officials.
    
2. The assessment of “guilt, fault, and blame” is only useful if it prevents future mistakes based on “lessons learned.” And technological mistakes usually result from policy driven by wishful thinking rather than scientific data. In this respect, the Deepwater Horizon disaster is almost an exact reprise of the Challenger disaster, in which decision makers ignored the warnings of scientific personnel about the O-ring’s potential failure at freezing temperatures.

   If I were president, I would immediately make it perfectly clear and well understood by the public that the deepwater drilling was promoted during the Clinton administration (the Outer Continental Shelf Deepwater Royalty Relief Act of 1995) without due consideration of disaster contingencies. Our government gave British Petroleum a “categorical exclusion” for the well during the Obama administration. I would do this, not to indulge in partisan finger-pointing at Democrats, but to prevent the root administrative causes and lax safety standards of our own government agencies from being obscured by Democrat partisans throwing up smoke-screens about Dick Cheney’s relationships with the oil industry.
    

3. Within hours of the first phone call notifying the White House of the rig explosion, I would have assembled a crisis team, booked a hotel on the Gulf Coast, and taken the whole team there on location to assume personal positive control of the situation. Within the first twenty-four hours I would have convened an emergency meeting with the governors of the Gulf States. For the entire duration of the crisis, I would not have played one hour of golf, nor done anything else but be the country’s executive.

   To be president of the United States is an honor, and it is an executive position, a management position, and a good executive “rests in action.” A qualified executive does not need the personal recreation of sports or parties to “recharge his batteries.” He draws his strength and energy from his passion for the job, from the personal satisfaction of giving his hands and heart to the cause and knowing he has done his best.
    

4. Upon first being notified of the rig explosion, I would have placed an emergency call to Dr. Jane Lubchenco, Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. I would have decreed, under the executive powers, that she bypass the normal protocols for data calculation and delivery, assemble her best scientists immediately (waking them up if necessary) and get back to me within eighteen hours with her best estimate of the latitude/longitude coordinates of the point above the blown hole where the center of the oil “volcano” was most likely to first breach the ocean surface.

   I would have asked the Gulf State governors to mobilize their National Guards to protect the beaches and wetlands, and asked Congress for emergency funding for same. I would have tasked the Secretary of the Navy to identify some Naval assets in the Gulf for assisting oil containment operations. I would have instructed the Coast Guard to immediately mobilize a fleet of boats on standby, awaiting the NOAA calculations. As soon as the NOAA coordinates were received, I would have had the Coast Guard deploy five widely spaced concentric rings of oil booms around the NOAA-calculated surface point. The containment booms would have been in place within two days, tops. (Those measures would impede, but not prevent, the spread of oil. They would buy time for dredging and bioremediation.)
    

5. I would have ordered dredging to begin immediately to create sand reefs connecting the barrier islands offshore from sensitive wetlands and marshes, to protect the pelican rookeries and sea turtle hatching grounds from contamination. As executive, I would have taken the responsibility for my decision and not hidden behind the requirement for an Environmental Protection Agency impact study that could take months or years.
    
6. Under the authority of the Executive Powers, I would have forbidden British Petroleum or any other agency from using the toxic chemical dispersant Corexit 9500. I would have personally taken the responsibility for ordering the bioremediation of oil-eating microbes, stored in large enough quantities in Texas warehouses.
    
7. With respect to the potential for environmentally friendly solutions, I would have immediately tasked Cornell University’s Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering to recommend plant-based bioremediation. I would have used discretionary grant money for a crash program aimed at the specifics of the Gulf situation.

   I would also have used discretionary grant money to task Louisiana State University’s Department of Oceanography and Coastal Sciences to do a systems analysis of the oil spill response, and to quantify risk factors associated with various strategies — chemical dispersant, burn-off, booms, reefs, skimmers, bioremediation via plants or microbes. (I have no doubt that the combination of chemical dispersant and burn-off currently being implemented is the worst possible choice with respect to long-term environmental considerations. It has short-term cosmetic appeal, in that it masks the full dimensions of the disaster, but we will pay a long term price worse than that for DDT.)
    

8. Under the authority of the Executive Powers, I would have suspended the Jones Act, or Merchant Marine Act of 1920, and accepted help from the foreign governments that offered it on DAY ONE — Canada, Croatia, France, Germany, Ireland, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Romania, Republic of Korea, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

   The fact that Obama deferred his leadership role to British Petroleum is most egregious here:

   Four weeks after the nation’s worst environmental disaster, the Obama administration saw no need to accept offers of state-of-the-art skimmers, miles of boom or technical assistance from nations around the globe with experience fighting oil spills.

   “We’ll let BP decide on what expertise they do need,” State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid told reporters on May 19….

9. Under the authority of the Executive Powers, I would have relaxed the oil-to-water ratios required for returning processed ocean water to the Gulf, thereby permitting the immediate deployment of the South Korean-built, Taiwanese-owned, Liberian-flagged ship “A Whale” for oil-skimming in the Gulf. The Obama administration allowed it to languish tied up to the docks in Norfolk, Virginia for weeks.
    
10. If I were president, I would never have limited access to the oil spill damage by the press or by photographers, except to the extent required for their safety. I would have valued our mutual stewardship of our natural resources above any concerns for my political reputation. I do not believe that the American public is a mindless herd of sheep whose perceptions need to be manipulated. I do believe that they are a resourceful and creative force that should be kept FULLY INFORMED and engaged in the solution to this truly earth-changing disaster.
     
11. If I were president, I would never have used phrases like “boot on the neck” or “kick ass.” The empty rhetoric and political grandstanding characteristic of this administration does nothing to solve the problem, and it does nothing to reassure the public that a responsible leader with a thoughtfully reasoned plan is in charge. It is the language of a guttersnipe, not a statesman.
     
12. As for the other part of MaryAnne’s question, what “Obama should personally do about BP’s complete disregard for the safety of its workers,” the remedy, if any, is the province of the Occupational Safety & Health Administration. The president can make clear to Hilda Solis, Secretary of Labor, and to David Michaels, Assistant Secretary of Labor for Occupational Safety and Health, his deep personal concern about this matter, and ask them for a study and special report with recommendations. But that is “locking the barn door after the horse is stolen.” It would, however, have serious value with respect to the remaining nearly 4,000 active oil and gas platforms in the Gulf.

And that’s just the first couple of days….

References:

American Daughter — The Executive Orders

LENTA — How to remove oil spills in the Gulf of Mexico? (translated from the Russian)

American Daughter exclusive: Pictures from the Casa del Rio vineyard in Andalusia, Alabama. These fruits are used to create a selection of fine private label brandies.

Fig leaves

Grape leaves

Pear leaves

Plant leaves

The vineyard has flourished for years without any leaf damage. These plants are all mature and well-established, and have produced fine fruits year after year. Now we have had a lot of rain, and the air has a musty essence of what could best be described as Camel Dung. The polluted precipitation is burning the lush vegetation.

We are way north inland from the Gulf. Far to the south of us, the Florida Panhandle is littered with ugly oil blobs as well as an overall staining to the beaches.

Related:

WREG, Memphis — Mystery Crop Damage Threatens Hundreds Of Acres

The idea that renewable green energy produces no pollution or no environmental impact is laughable. The immutable laws of thermodynamics apply to renewable green energies too, which means energy cannot be created; it can only be converted from one form to another, causing pollution or loss depending on the energy source.

For example, to convert the energy in sunlight or the energy in wind to a useable form requires a system to harness the energy, and building the system is where the greatest amount of the pollution is generated.

A lot of energy is used and a lot of pollution is generated in the production of solar panels, which use polysilicon. The highly toxic silicon tetrachloride is a byproduct of polysilicon production. Silicon tetrachloride poses an environmental hazard; wherever it is dumped or buried the land becomes infertile. Recycling it requires vast amounts of energy and generates even more pollution.

The panels also use nitrogen triflouride (NF3) gas in their solar cells, which is 17,000 times more powerful than CO2 as a greenhouse gas. NASA reports that nitrogen triflouride levels in the atmosphere have quadrupled and are increasing at a rate of about 11 percent per year.

“Unfortunately, [people in general] don’t consider the effects of manufacturing when they see a wind turbine turning without a smoke stack, or a solar panel operating seemingly without environmental effect, or a hydrogen fuel cell converting electricity with water and steam appearing to be the only byproducts. This gives a false impression as to the true environmental cost of the technology.”—Chris J Kobus

To fully grasp the consequences of adopting wind and solar energy, it’s necessary to examine their footprints. For example, it would take a wind farm with at least 500 tall windmills spread over 30,000 acres to generate the same amount of electricity produced by a 1,000 MW gas-fired power plant. For solar power, it would take over 250 of Colorado’s most productive utility-scale 8.2 MW solar-power plants and 20,000 acres to replace just one 1,000 MW gas-fired power plant on less than 40 acres of land.

Until someone makes a major breakthrough in the storage of high-density electricity, a problem vexing scientists for more than a hundred years, promoting renewable green energy as a viable alternative to fossil fuels is more about wishful thinking than actual science.

For more information on the myths and realities of renewable green energy, see Renewable Energy: There Ain’t No Free Lunch by Chris J. Kobus and Energy Myths and Realities by Keith O. Rattie.

Almost everyone agrees that the BP oil spill (MC 252) is an event of unprecedented magnitude which threatens our southern border with death and destruction. This incident brings with it an economic component potentially capable of devastating a region, with rippling effect capable of disrupting our economic recovery as well as disrupting a large portion of our food supply.

So, who is to blame?

The immutable laws of our physical world are cold and uncaring. The world of 5,000 feet below the surface of the ocean is as alien a landscape as the surface of Mercury or of Jupiter. The pressure of nearly 170 atmospheres will instantly crush your body. The temperature is cold enough to change many of our common gasses into solid, crystalline “rocks.” This realm does not consider feelings or politics, only physics, mass, energy, thermodynamics, chemistry, and other factors completely devoid of emotion. It will kill you instantly and not know or care that your life ended. Its products, when released in an uncontrolled manner, will do the same with equal dispassion no matter where they travel.

My scientific training concludes that there has been too much rhetoric based on sound byte-driven political posturing and too little attention to facts and underlying principals. Resolution depends on identifying facts, stating priorities, justifying priorities based on principles, then taking decisive action based on factual analysis. Science is a dispassionate mistress and does not flinch at stating that my needs, wants, and desires are unrealistic and unobtainable.

Where does that leave us?

We need to identify what went wrong so that we can prevent it from happening again. The source of the disaster needs to be conclusively identified. This does not mean stating the names of the platform and of the well head. Rather, the tools and materials, the processes and procedures, the rules and regulations, as well as the human factors involved in implementation all need detached scrutiny.

Along these lines, did anyone realistically evaluate the risk of drilling at 5,000 feet a hundred miles offshore against the risk of drilling in 500 feet within five miles of shore? Put aside the politics for just a few minutes. Look at the results of this madness which was driven by appeasing special interest groups and conforming to politically-correct, group-mind-think. We ensured any incident would be isolated from resource. We failed to ask the most basic safety questions: Is this a good idea? And, what if we are wrong?

If this incident mandates a safety shutdown of all drilling, so be it. However, first prove that immediately stopping drilling operations does not create a greater danger to the functioning wellheads than continued steady-state or reduced capacity operations. Also, first prove that the economic consequences of this shutdown will not be a man-made disaster adversely impacting the humans already suffering.

We all agree that cleaning the MC 252 discharge will make little difference if the source is not stopped. What is the physical source but a response to the demand? Would the well head exist without a profit motive? Isn’t the true demand our energy consumption? Doesn’t this relationship between source and demand result from decades of industrialization and expansion without a realistic, achievable, and comprehensive long-term energy policy? Logic dictates that the source results from our energy consumption, aggravated by ineffective energy leadership as politicians placed corporate donations and indifference over public safety. This is what we need to address.

The root cause of drilling is our desire for inexpensive, mobile energy. We need safe, alternate energy sources. Our government’s policies have frustrated this expansion and development for decades. Solar, tidal, wind, geothermic, and other earth-friendly sources do not have the power density necessary to sustain our lifestyles. Worse, tapping these earth-friendly/earth-generated sources interferes with global climate and geologic stability — ultimately resulting in a greater ecologic disaster thousands of times worse than the MC 252 spill will create. But, you don’t see this well-understood fact published.

Because of the sheer magnitude and immediacy of demand, nuclear power is the only viable option until fusion reactors are technologically implementable, which is about as satisfying as having your mistress tell your wife she is having your love-child.

Yes, nuclear reactors have issues. But these are known issues. Nuclear was the promising technology decades ago when I ran nuclear reactors for the Navy. I studied the SL1 incident. I was present at NPTU (Nuclear Power Training Prototype) during Three Mile Island. I was also there when Adm. Rickover brought senior executives from several civilian facilities and demonstrated that highly trained individuals with impeccable personal integrity were the key to safe nuclear power plant operations. Everyone had the right and responsibility to demand or force a safety shutdown. I did this on several occasions. There were potential personal and professional consequences, but we all lived another day. Nobody died. There were no toxic radioactive discharges. We safely achieved our mission goals.

Ultimately, the MC 252 incident stems from the failure of each individual’s refusal to say “HALT.” As painful as it is to write, this was a human failure where each entity in the chain — workers, consumers, corporate staffers — placed their personal finances and comfort above all else. We all share the blame on this one.

What are you going to do about it? Will you cut your consumption? Will you study the generation and distribution chain to better understand what you are doing to Mother Earth? Will you write impassioned letters to Congress decrying everyone’s failings but your own? Or, will you accept the fact that eleven men died and an ecosystem is being poisoned because you were blissfully unaware and uneducated?

It is time to get educated and make informed and intelligent decisions.

Hurricanes happen. Oil spills are NOT so unavoidable. Cost-cutting in safety and prevention infrastructure, exacerbated by human negligence and poor protocols, are corporate choices, not “acts of God.”

The human cost of hurricane Katrina in lost lives and property was almost entirely the fault of the Democratic administrations of the state of Louisiana and the city of New Orleans. Both jurisdictions failed to implement their carefully planned hurricane response procedures until it was too late, even though there would have been plenty of time to save their constituents. Despite this obvious truth, Democrats and their media lackeys were quick to blame the disaster on the Republican president George W. Bush.

Now a catastrophic oil spill has been polluting the Gulf of Mexico since April 20th, well over one month, and the current Democratic president has done NOTHING. But only now are some Democrats and media figures beginning to criticize his failure to act.

Last Thursday, native Louisiana son James Carville lamented Obama’s inaction to CNN’s Anderson Cooper:

I’m as good a Democrat as most people, and I think this administration has done some good things. They are risking everything by this ‘go along with BP’ strategy they have that seems like, lackadaisical on this, … they seem like they’re inconvenienced by this, this is some giant thing getting in their way and somehow or another, if you let BP handle it, it’ll all go away. It’s not going away. It’s growing out there. It is a disaster of the first magnitude….

Also last week, Chris Matthews appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and expressed disappointment with Obama’s lack of leadership:

The president scares me. He’s been acting a little like a Vatican Observer. When is he actually going to do something?

And I worry. I know he doesn’t want to take ownership of it. I know the politics. Because the minute he says I’m in charge, then he’s blamed. But somebody’s got to take charge.

On Sunday morning, ABC’s This Week brought more Obama disapprovals. From Cokie Roberts:

The oil is gushing and we’re being lied to by how much oil is gushing … and the administration has now named a commission. Now this is what you do when you really don’t have anything else to do: You name a commission. That’s not going to stop the oil.

And from Democrat strategist Donna Brazile:

One of the problems I have with the administration is that they’re not tough enough. They are waiting for BP to say, ‘Oh we have a new plan to stop the oil leak.’ They need to stop it, contain it, clean it up and try and help us conserve our coastal wetlands.

Obama’s press secretary Robert Gibbs is struggling to deflect the blame. According to the Huffington Post:

The tensions peaked during the daily press briefing at the White House on Friday when Gibbs was repeatedly questioned as to what, exactly, the administration was doing to help with the catastrophic spill. The line of inquiry grew so contentious that Gibbs ended up calling reporters after the briefing finished to ask them about their tone.

In this time of high unemployment, the damage to the fishing and tourism industries is especially hurtful. Yet the Obama administration is focused on saving its political reputation, and not on soving the problem.

The situation here is that Barack Obama had no executive experience before taking on the management of this country. Zip. Nada. Not even a MacDonald’s franchise. By contrast, Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal is showing real leadership. Despite not having the requested federal approval, he plans to go ahead with construction of sand booms to block the oil offshore:

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) said the state will not waiting for federal approval to begin building sand barriers to protect the coastline from the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Oil has pushed at least 12 miles into Louisiana’s marshes, with two major pelican rookeries awash in crude….

The governor said he has been forced to protect Louisiana without the approval of the Army Corps of Engineers, which is weighing the ecological impact of the construction of more sand booms. “We are not waiting for them. We are going to build it,” Jindal said.

“….we can fight this oil … on the Barrier Islands 15 to 20 miles off of our coast, or we can face it in thousands of miles of fragmented wetlands,” Gov. Jindal said… “Every day we’re not given approval on this emergency permit to create more of these sand booms is another day when that choice is made for us, as more and more miles of our shore are hit by oil.”

So there you have it. Obama’s lack of leadership in stark contrast to Jindal’s decisive action.

One more note for those who care about the environment — for one month this administration has allowed British Petroleum to use a toxic chemical as an oil dispersant, one that “may cause lasting damage to coastal ecosystems.”

Related:

Michelle Malkin — Louisana Gov. Jindal blasts Obama inaction, moves on sand booms

Hewitt Blog — Obama’s Oily Beaches and Wetlands

Los Angeles Times — White House slammed for oil spill — Obama’s Katrina?

Right Pundits — Sarah Palin Slams Obama, Gulf Oil Spill Enters Fifth Week

The government spent a lot of money. We’ll save a fraction of that in oil. The environmental benefits are small.

I guess I must be on the wrong page…

• A vehicle at 15 mpg and 12,000 miles per year uses 800 gallons a year of gasoline.
• A vehicle at 25 mpg and 12,000 miles per year uses 480 gallons a year.
• So, the average clunker transaction will reduce US gasoline consumption by 320 gallons per year.
• They claim 700,000 vehicles –- so that’s 224 million gallons / year.
• That equates to a bit over 5 million barrels of oil.¹
• Five million barrels of oil is about ¼ of one day’s US consumption.²
• And, 5 million barrels of oil costs about $375 million dollars at $75/bbl.
• So, we all contributed to spending $3 billion³ to save $375 million.

How good a deal was that ???

Say, wasn’t that one of Green Czar Van Jones’ programs for redistributing the wealth?

They’ll probably do a better job with health care though!!

¹42 gallons of oil per barrel

²US consumes 20,680,000 bbl/day

³$3,500 and $4,500 payments under the Car Allowance Rebate System (CARS)

A wave of refrigerator explosions caused by environmentally-friendly coolant is the price of political correctness in the UK.

In the last three years, the UK has had at least four violent refrigerator explosions, two of them since May; and the environmentally-friendly coolant, isobutene, is the prime suspect.

In one incident, a homeowner likened the explosion to an earthquake, describing the blast as having ripped the fridge doors in half, torn a gaping hole in the home’s front door, and blown out all the lower-level windows.

The problem appears to have started 15 years ago with the widespread switch to “Greenfreeze” technology and the use of isobutane and propane hydrocarbon gases as refrigerants.

Although Greenfreeze refrigerators are designed with safety features to prevent the flammable natural gas inside the pipework from leaking into the fridge, a powerful explosion is theoretically possible if the isobutane gas should happen to leak and is ignited by a spark.

“There are hundreds of millions of these fridges,” stressed Jane Gartshore, president of the Institute of Refrigeration, “and these incidents are very, very rare.”

Before the switch to Greenfreeze technology, chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) were used as refrigerants, but enviro-conscious weenies whined incessantly about CFCs and HFCs damaging the ozone layer and contributing to global warming, so the coolants were banned.

Now, more than 300 million Greenfreeze refrigerators exist worldwide, and no one knows how many of them are “ticking-time bombs” ready to explode.

[Cross-posted from The Millstone Diaries.]

Boeing has completed three test flights, single engine prop, flying on a hydrogen fuel cell. Environmentalists should love this concept as the exhaust is only water. While these were the first ever flights of a piloted aircraft using the fuel cell, the space shuttle has used them since day one but not as a propulsive force. See the Boeing plane below.

The Boeing pilot had the fuel cell on the second seat during the flight. Will this technology be capable of flying large multi-engine aircraft one day? At this time there may be some skepticism on doing that. However, 50 years ago we relied on vacuum tubes for electronics and now micro devices smaller than your little fingernail are able to handle millions of electronic commands. So why can’t we look forward to technological advancement where fuel cells can handle larger power systems?

Fellow ADMC contributor Ron Hei says:

I’m printing out the 114 page manual right now on converting my vehicles to hybrids utilizing this technology.

Note: Ron has two Corvettes in his garage. He could use some aircraft technology. He drives them like they were planes flying low. (The manual is here — Run Your Car on Water.)

ADMC first reported on hydrogen technology for cars on May 15, 2006 with this article — Hydrogen Technology and this webcast — Water as Fuel.

BMW has had a hydrogen-powered car available since the fall of 2006. Hydrogen fuel has been commecially available in the District of Columbia since December 2004. Now there’s a good choice for the environmentally conscious limousine liberals.

The Wall Street Journal Does it again, bringing to the fore an energy CEO who sees through all the BS. Read it here. The consequences of this global warming hot air will be catastrophic for the US economy, something its proponents are banking on. Now is the time to do something. Call your Congresspeople and Senators. Don’t let them get away with this.