Ken Nelson

Fake!

John Hinderaker at Powerline offers a nice summary of the global warming fraud:

The ‘manufacture’ of a ‘man-made’ warming trend, when there is none, likely involved (i) selection of stations that showed a trend, and (ii) inadequate correction for purely local warming influences such as the ‘urban heat island’ effect (see HTCS Figs 7 and 8; and the recent extensive publications of Joe D’Aleo and Anthony Watts).

He misses just plain algorithm error and software bugs that also contributed.

He also introduces a new term that I think will be useful “hoaxer”. That is what we should call anybody relying on this faulty science – like Al Gore or Obama – who I doubt care  a lick about the science but love the money it brings them and the damage they can do to our economic system while using it.

Big fuel cell claims to be better than all the rest
But customers seem to be in it for the major tax breaks and PR so far…

This seems cool:

A Silicon Valley firm has unveiled a device that it says could revolutionize the way that we produce and consume electricity.

The Bloom Energy Server, publicly shown for the first time on February 24, mixes gas and air to produce electricity via a clean chemical reaction. Originally developed to provide power on Mars, the invention could soon be powering our homes, dramatically reducing our reliance on the fossil-fuel powered electricity grid for energy.

But a few things concern me… First, their website doesn’t really explain how it works.  Second, it is littered with “sustainable” and “green” and “environment” which usually means “please subsidize me”. And third, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Colin Powell were at the unveiling.

Bloom claims they will have a device that costs $3,000 and can power a house in 10 years:

The scientists behind the project hope that a pint sized version of the Bloom Energy Server could soon make its way into the home. At its launch, Bloom Energy boss Dr. KR Sridhar showed a brick sized device that he claimed could power a house. The firm reportedly aims to make these available for less than $3,000 (€2213), although Sridhar warned that domestic applications such as powering electric vehicles and mixing with solar energy could take another ten years.

10 years is essentially forever.  So, it may be real, but I’ll consider it  useless hype because at that pace it isn’t going to help anybody but those willing to lose money trying to save a planet that doesn’t need saving or those unwilling to lose money but happy to get  money taken by force from me (i.e. a subsidy).

It could be cool, but probably isn’t.

More reading here.

About $10 bucks at Wal-Mart

Everything Obama touches turns to crap. Even the simple process of weatherstripping a home.

ABC News reports that the General Accountability Office will declare today that the Energy Department has fallen woefully behind — about 98.5% behind — the 593,000 homes it initially predicted would be weatherized in the Recovery Act’s very first, very chilly year.

But no matter how little gets done the government bureacracy has to be paid, so they’ve spent $522 million dollars to do just 9,100 homes – at a amazing value price of just $57,362 per home.

BTW: The reason it goes to crap when Obama touches it is that he touches it with GOVERNMENT.

You are a greenie. You buy a hybrid even though the math doesn’t work out. You don’t mind, you love doing your part for Gaia.  Eventually science catches up and the math does work, likely through the creation of nifty lithium batteries.

Thorium reactors come on line, electricity becomes cheap, and every night you top off your new electric car.  Everybody joins you.

What happens?

Well it becomes quite conceivable that lithium, your new batteries most important part, becomes the new economic king maker.

And Bolivia takes top honors:

Soon the Organization of Lithium Exporting Countries (OLEC) forms a cabal to control the price of lithium and to make themselves “players”.

This scenario might work out fine. But I’m sure the typical Greenie advocating a shift to electric cars hasn’t given a whit of thought as to were the geopolitical cards will land.

I use a made up word, “historisis” to describe why we do things in our software that we could do better but don’t. History forced us down a path, and it is too difficult/expensive/long to backtrack and move down another.

“Historisis” happened to our nuclear program also back in the 50’s and 60’s.  Historisis forced us from a method of nuclear power that:

• had zero risk of meltdown
• was VERY efficient
• left little to no radioactive mess
• used a locally abundant fuel

to one that could (and did) melt down, used an expensive fuel and caused radioactive trouble for thousands of years.   No, we didn’t use that method. We used uranium based fission instead. Why? We needed plutonium to make hydrogen bombs:

Uranium reactors had already been established, and Hyman Rickover, de facto head of the US nuclear program, wanted the plutonium from uranium-powered nuclear plants to make bombs.

The calculus and exigencies of the Cold War caused historisis that derailed nuclear energy in this country for 50 years.

Read the nuclear energy article above and you will understand that we still pay the costs of the Cold War today.

The Economist has a helpful overview of the coming technology in nuclear energy production:

The six most promising “generation IV” designs identified by the GIF from an original list of over 100 concepts depart markedly from the light-water moderated, once-through models that dominate the existing fleet. Even those reactors that draw upon aspects of current designs add some new twists.

Of the six, I like the one they wrote the least about – the Molten Salt Reactor, in particular the Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor (LFTR) variant:

One form of MSR, the liquid fluoride thorium reactor (LFTR), has garnered particular enthusiasm among those who regard thorium as an attractive replacement for uranium and plutonium in the fuel cycle. (Thorium is both cheaper and more abundant than uranium.) According to Kirk Sorensen, an engineer at NASA who also runs a blog on the merits of the thorium cycle, natural thorium provides at least 250 times more energy per unit than natural uranium.

Anyway, read the whole thing… 

H/T/ Commenter Carl

Randal Hoven over at American Thinker thinks about the “just in case” argument supporting expensive action on C02 and finds it “flawed”:

The average annual temperature in Memphis, Tennessee is 62.3^o F.  The temperature of Lexington, Kentucky is 54.9^o F.  That is a bigger difference than the IPCC’s worst-case scenario.

Could mankind handle that kind of adaptation – moving from Memphis to Lexington in the next 100 years?

Thomas Friedman thinks it’s worth $2 trillion a year to avoid even the slightest probability of that.

He also notes that:

• We are now in what is called an interglacial period, or the time between ice ages.  Previous interglacial peaks were three degrees warmer than now.  In Antarctica, these previous peaks were actually six degrees warmer.
• Since the last ice age, the oceans rose about 400 feet.  Most of that occurred before the pyramids were built (and well before modern use of fossil fuels), but the trend for hundreds of years up to the present has been rising sea levels.

Basically, we aren’t causing whatever “it” is and even if we were $2 trillion / year would require a catastrophe eliminating 2/3rds of the planet GOP to be cost effective.

In other words… doing something about global warming is stupid in two ways… first it isn’t real, second it will hurt more than it helps.

Who pays for the sign?

Economists call costs that fall outside the buyer seller relationship “externalities”.  So, for example, if you hire a cheap illegal alien landscaper, you get landscaping, he gets money, and I get the externalities of his healthcare bill, lower wages if I’m a landscaper, school trouble, cultural impacts and gang crime.

When I bitch about illegal alien costs, economists say “just put the externals in the price”.  Okay… how?  I don’t have access to the off the books transaction between the sleazy homeowner (you) and the illegal alien landscaper.  And if I did make it harder, say for instance, by building a fence, might that hurt our economy?

So we have three things we need to know when dealing with externalities:

• where to collect the cost
• what is the cost
• what are the costs/side effects of collecting the cost

Now lets flip the situation… Imagine you have the perfect place to charge for externalities, but gosh darn it, no externals in sight. But you want money… what to do?

You invent an externality!

I just described global warming.  Different groups invented the global warming externality for various money centered reasons.  Scientists found that the threat of global warming yielded research funding. Politicians like that global warming can be used to regulate, control and tax. And socialists find it useful to distribute wealth or prevent wealth creation.  There was no “grand conspiracy” – just recognition of a useful tool.

But what of the three requirements to properly use externalities do we know about the proposed global warming externality?  Only one of three.  We know where externalities costs could be collected (Cap & Trade, Carbon Taxes).  We do not know if the externality cost really exists (google “climategate”).  And if it does we don’t know what the impact would be of collecting the externality cost (high energy costs, bad economy, etc..) .

Why prematurely collect externality costs on CO2?  Come back when you know more than how you will charge me.

Fox News Business hired away John Stossel from ABC News recently. His new show, Stossel, began airing this week.

I’ve watched two episodes and recommend it highly.  His show entertains, informs and does not descend into guest over-talking shout fests. He also takes time to cover an issue in detail. 

For tonight’s show on climate change he had two guests and packed the audience with climate change faithful.  Polite, informative, discussion followed. The climate faithful, including a number of climate science students, gave it their best shot but he and his guests countered effectively in ways that clearly made them uncomfortable about the views they held.  And everybody was happy at the end.  And I didn’t feel like throwing a remote control into the TV.

Well done Mr. Stossel!

Learn more here; http://www.foxbusiness.com/on-air/stossel

In 1883 the volcano Krakatoa erupted and cooled the planet:

In the year following the eruption, average global temperatures fell by as much as 1.2 degrees Celsius. Weather patterns continued to be chaotic for years, and temperatures did not return to normal until 1888. The eruption injected an unusually large amount of sulfur dioxide (SO₂) gas high into the stratosphere which was subsequently transported by high-level winds all over the planet. This led to a global increase in sulfurous acid (H₂SO₃) concentration in high-level cirrus clouds. The resulting increase in cloud reflectivity (or albedo) would reflect more incoming light from the sun than usual, and cool the entire planet until the suspended sulfur fell to the ground as acid precipitation.^[10]

^{Earlier that century gave us the “Year without Summer”:}

Most consider the climate anomaly to have been caused by a combination of a historic low in solar activity and a volcanic winter event; the latter caused by a succession of major volcanic eruptions capped off by the Mount Tambora eruption of 1815, the largest known eruption in over 1,600 years.

The proven, frequent, even likely, threat to our society is from COLD.  We need more energy and a broad mesh of different food creation and distribution networks.

Does what the Greens and Socialists propose make you feel warm and fuzzy about being cold?

 
Liar

From George Will:

Barack Obama, understanding the histrionics required in climate-change debates, promises that U.S. emissions in 2050 will be 83 percent below 2005 levels. If so, 2050 emissions will equal those in 1910, when there were 92 million Americans. But there will be 420 million Americans in 2050, so Obama’s promise means that per capita emissions then will be about what they were in 1875. That. Will. Not. Happen.

So is Obama lying?   Or is he stupid?  Both?

All I know is that I have NO INTEREST in keeping a President who promises to return me to 1875.  You?

Steven Andrew makes the point I’ve been touting – that nuclear is the only realistic and physics backed way to keep our nation powered.   Also, it turns out that we are the “Saudi Arabia” of nuclear waste products and have enough of it laying around to power fast breeder nuclear reactors for 700 years:

Fast reactors could power this country for decades using that same waste as fuel. Fast reactors also happen to be about 100 times more efficient in converting that radioactive mass into electrical energy than thermal reactors, meaning they use relatively less fuel over time. Moreover, the waste from some types of fast reactors decays safely away in a matter of decades, making storage a far less worrisome and way less expensive proposition. And if we include the depleted uranium (DU) left over from the enrichment process, it would be something like 700 years before any more mining would be needed, once the current “thermal” types of reactors have been phased out. At the current price of energy, the existing DU alone is worth trillions in kilowatts and dollars.

Maybe if we agreed to let new plants be unionized we would get some?

It is unfortunate that, now, when we need strategic leadership with our common and future interests at heart, we instead have corrupt Chicago thugs partnered with America hating leftists in charge.

The answers really are simple… if you start with the right question.

The question “How can I steal for my voting block and donors” probably won’t lead to a better life for most of the U.S.

Put this in the category of “yippee” and “glad there are smart people”…

Sandia National Labs, looking for ways to make hydrogen, instead found a way to make gasoline from CO2 and sunshine:

uses the sun’s energy to convert water and carbon dioxide into the molecular building blocks that make up transportation fuels. The "Sunshine to Petrol" system could ultimately prove a practical way to recycle CO₂ from power and industrial plants into gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel, assuming the process can become at least twice as efficient as natural photosynthesis.

A simple way to look at it is that it puts the stuff that burned in your car back together again.

I don’t see this becoming economical for mass replacement of drilling for oil. It could be useful for making fuel where you can’t pipe it – like for powering a generator in a remote location. 

Alas, it is 15-20 years away from market. But cool, none the less.

Original Sandia announcement here.

 
Make one of these daily

If Barack Obama really wanted to create jobs, instead of just lard out union favors, with stimulus money he might have focused entirely on getting our nation more energy.  In fact, each megawatt made would create $103,000,000 (1990 dollars) in annual economic activity. Since a megawatt from a nuke plant costs about $30 bucks, this seems pretty good doesn’t it?

Tim Garrett, a professor at the University of Utah, has quantified a “simple physical constant” that ties global energy use to economic productivity.

That "constant" is 9.7 (plus or minus 0.3) milliwatts per inflation-adjusted 1990 dollar. So if you look at economic and energy production at any specific time in history, "each inflation-adjusted 1990 dollar would be supported by 9.7 milliwatts of primary energy consumption," Garrett says.

Other important findings in Garrett’s work are:

• energy conservation or efficiency spurs economic growth and more energy consumption
• keeping carbon stable in our atmosphere would require the equivalent of 1 new nuclear plant per day, forever.

The important thing to note is that the constant doesn’t care if energy available rises or falls – the economy moves up or down at 1 dollar per 9.7 milliwatts.

So if we stop making MORE energy, or heaven forbid, if we make LESS energy, our economic productivity will stagnate or plummet.

When asked about energy conservation:

"I’m just saying it’s not really possible to conserve energy in a meaningful way because the current rate of energy consumption is determined by the unchangeable past of economic production. … If it feels good to conserve energy, that is fine, but there shouldn’t be any pretense that it will make a difference."

What I really like about Garrett is that these findings are opposite what he believed about conservation.   That is GOOD science.   Follow the data to a theory, not fit the data to a theory.

I’m a fan of nuclear power for the core electricity our culture uses. It can scale up and has less negative externalities than coal, gas, wind and rooftop solar.

That said, I really do want my cell phone, iPhone, laptop and other stuff I roam with to just charge itself. To just WORK.

From my Dad comes Konarka -  a maker of plastic that is a solar panel:

Put it in a bag and you can power the stuff inside it:

http://www.energysun-bags.de/

Yes!

Other vendors in the solar film game are Solexant and First Solar

Solar power, driven by MARKET demands, moves along rapidly.  Math and Physics say it won’t make enough juice to power our future lifestyle, but it can full niches in detached from the grid power quite well.