EnergyGuy's Musings

Green Jobs and Energy

2009-10-11T10:04:00.000-07:00

What are green jobs, and how does energy production tie in? The current thinking among the Carbon is Killing Us Crowd, those who devoutly believe that CO2 in the atmosphere is already causing catastrophic world-wide changes, is that green jobs derive from reducing or eliminating a fossil-fuel economy in favor of increasing a renewable energy-driven economy.

As one example, in California, the Air Resources Board (ARB) states that job losses in low-intensity industries will be more than offset by job gains in high-intensity industries. Their definition of "job intensity" is such that a major power plant that burns natural gas (and has few employees per unit of production, kWh electricty) has a very low job intensity. In contrast, a wind power farm with hundreds of windmills has a high job intensity due to the greater number of employees required to service and repair the windmills. This is a two-fer for the greenies, as evil carbon is not emitted, and more people have a job.

Yet, just a few decades ago, it was patently obvious that high labor cost was a hindrance to economic efficiency. To name just a few fields, bookkeepers were quite common before the computer age, but automation now does the job. Automated factories require far fewer employees than did the older, manually operated factories.

The green power revolution is said to cut jobs in traditional, fossil-fuel plants, and create many times the jobs in the green collar field.

This week saw a major announcement of job losses in the fossil-fuel plants, as Sunoco announced the closing of an oil refinery in New Jersey with the loss of 400 permanent jobs and hundreds more independent contractors. Should we wait to see the announcement of what, 3 times that number of green jobs? That would be roughly 1500 to 2000 more green jobs if the greenies' jobs-math is correct. One must wonder (as I certainly do) just how long is required for those 1500 to 2000 new green jobs to appear, and those displaced workers have steady paychecks again. Will that be by Christmas, so everyone has a merry Christmas? I doubt it.

The closure of the Sunoco refinery also plays into the Grand Game - the world-wide competition to provide energy. New refineries are under construction world-wide, and a couple of major expansions are underway in the U.S. India started up a very large refinery almost a year ago, and is exporting the products, some of which are imported by the U.S. Excess refining capacity drives down the price of petroleum products - this is basic economics - and that encourages greater consumption. More and more refineries will close, especially those that are smaller and inefficient compared to the larger and modern refineries.

As petroleum prices decrease, the economic incentives for renewable power plants also decrease. Hybrid electric, and pure electric vehicles have an initial cost premium that is supposed to be offset by the fuel savings - but only if petroleum fuels are sufficiently costly. At this time, the additional $3 to $4 thousand premium for a hybrid vehicle is simply not a wise investment.

Obama's Cash for Clunkers program accelerated the purchase - distorted the market - of high-miles-per-gallon vehicles and the (literal) destruction of older, gas guzzling cars. Thus, the demand for gasoline is lower than it otherwise would be, the gasoline price is also lower, and refineries in the U.S. are shutting down. Yet, now the automotive companies see fewer customers following the Cash for Clunkers fiasco, as a person with a new car will not likely set foot in a car dealership for several years.

And so it goes in the Grand Game. Hybrid cars that are not worth the price, oil refineries shutting down, fossil-fuel workers out of work, renewable power plants stagnating due to low economic incentives, and oh yes, crops barely beating the killing freeze this year to provide raw material for the bio-fuels industry. Who knows what the summer of 2010 will bring in that arena.

One wonders if the farmers will be asked to hire more workers as green jobs, and park the tractor in the barn. We tried that for centuries, using manual labor on farms. Those are exhausting, monotonous jobs that paid very low wages. Still, they are green jobs. There are approximately 700 newly-jobless workers in the New Jersey area. Does anyone think that farmers will hire any of them?

Dilute Energy Sources

2009-10-04T14:00:00.000-07:00

A thread on WattsUpWithThat.com strayed onto nuclear power the other day, and I offered a few comments. This seems appropriate to reproduce them here, with additional comments added.

As some may remember from the 1960s an old saying "What if they gave a War, and nobody came?" Today, we can rephrase that for the South Texas Nuclear Project's proposed expansion as "What if they wanted to build a new nuclear power plant, and nobody invested?" The city of San Antonio is scheduled to vote on their level of participation in the STNP expansion, with the date presently set for October 13. This date keeps getting pushed back, so we shall see. The topic is wildly controversial, with very few people trusting or believing the nuclear advocates who insist that the plant can be built for only $13 billion, and be producing power four years after start of construction. My assessment, published in comments to various articles at mysanantonio.com, is that the expansion will cost at least $22 billion, and require 10 years or more to produce power. It is more likely to cost $25 billion.

As background, the City of San Antonio already owns 40 percent of the existing twin-reactor STNP, with the City of Austin owning 20 percent. It is quite instructive that the City of Austin this time declined to be a party to the STNP expansion. Austin learned its lesson quite well in the original fiasco, in which the nuclear proponents for STNP stated the plant would only cost $900 million, yet its final cost was $5.4 billion, for a cost over-run of $4.5 billion or six times the original estimate. There is no recent experience in the United States, but the new Generation III nuclear plant presently being built in Finland is billions of Euros over-budget, and so far behind schedule (it was to be started up by now, 2009), that the builder cannot provide an end date to the construction at this time. What an industry - who can trust the promoters? Their track record is horrendous.

The exchange of comments on the WUWT thread is shown below.

A commenter (beng) wrote the following. My response is below that.

(beng) : "Sorry, WUWT, for being OT.

Roger Sowell, the present state of nuclear power development is similar to objective climate research — they have been and are presently mostly dead-in-the-water in the US. Environmentalism and litigation have done their jobs very well over the decades.

If the US had maintained its can-do attitude, we would already have safe and proliferation-proof nuclear plants reprocessing their own fuel. The US is now falling behind the progressive (non-European) countries in science and technology development in general. Space exploration has been the exception, but now even that is at risk.

Sorry, but “renewable” energy sources are and will always be bit players in the big view. It’s a basic thermodynamic thing — low-density energy sources (wind, solar, even hydro) can never replace high-density sources like fossil fuels and especially nuclear (very high density). Unless we want to return to an 18th century society."

4102009

Roger Sowell (13:19:30) :

beng,

What a pessimistic viewpoint!

The reality is that renewable energy sources are now major players, as designed. The incubation and encouragement of innovation via government assistance has provided economically viable renewable power generation plants. Although the Road Not Taken argument makes it impossible to know where we would be today if not for the government assistance, the fact is that we do have viable solar power, viable wind power, viable geothermal power, and very promising wave power. Ocean current power is the next big thing, and it needs zero storage.

For California, only because I live here and am familiar with these numbers, in 2008 (source and percent of total state power generation):

Natural Gas 46.5%
Nuclear 14.9%
Large Hydro 9.6%
Coal (out of state) 15.5%
Renewable 13.5%

Renewables provided more than large hydro, and almost as much as nuclear in that year. As renewables continue to grow, and coal is eliminated, it will soon be the second largest power source. That is hardly a “bit player.”

The horrible realities of nuclear energy (outrageous cost, toxic byproducts that endure for centuries, among others) spurred development of renewables also.

The US government has very recently increased emphasis on offshore renewables development in wind, wave, and ocean current. Other countries also are developing their offshore renewable resources.

http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/renewables-in-outer-continental-shelf.html

The thermodynamic argument is laughable! A dilute resource is just as viable as a concentrated resource. By your argument, sunshine is not viable because it is so dilute. Yet billions of plant leaves silently refute your argument every day, and have done so for billions of years. By extension, water vapor is not a viable energy source because it is spread out across the entire atmosphere. Yet thousands of hydroelectric plants give mute testimony that such a dilute resource (in the form of rainfall) is perfectly capable of providing economic energy. And, before hydroelectric plants were built, waterwheels provided power for centuries.

Thermodynamics has a place in the debate, but not where you seek to place it. A far better argument is one of economics. If I can build a windmill (taking advantage of that highly dilute resource, wind) and provide power at a lower cost than the highest alternative resource (e.g. a new nuclear power plant or a gas-fired peaker plant), then that is all that matters. Perhaps I tie the windmill to a water source, and use the windmill to pump water uphill into a hydroelectric plant, rather than direct generation of power. In this manner, I obtain a time-shifting of the power in the wind, and I do not care that the wind blows mostly at night while my electric demand is during the day. Thermodynamics has absolutely nothing to do with that aspect, simply economics does.

As to the US and its can-do attitude, it of course still exists. What we learned in the 60s and later the 70s is that radioactivity is too deadly to ever be widely implemented except under very carefully regulated and monitored conditions. There is a reason that children should not play with firearms, and there is a similar reason why nuclear fission processes are heavily regulated. If that increases the cost of building a power plant, and the time required to build it according to the laws, then so be it.

As I have stated before, if you do not like the existing laws, you are welcome to change them. This is the USA. We have in place procedures to do exactly that. Good luck to you.

A bit earlier in the comments, "crosspatch" offered that the modern Generation III nuclear power plants are much less costly due to a simpler design, which uses what he referred to as "the same technology that makes toilets work" or float valves. That hardly gives one a good feeling that the plant will actually operate safely. Float valves are notoriously unreliable - has anyone ever had to repair one of these on a toilet? Here is crosspatch's comment, and my reply.

crosspatch (10:21:32) :

"You might want to recognize a few facts about the US nuclear power industry’s abysmal record of building power plants on schedule and on-budget. Cost overruns of 5 or even 6" [this is crosspatch quoting what I had written earlier - RES]

[crosspatch's statement here] There has not been a single nuclear plant started in the US that I know of since 1979. Your figures are sheer propaganda and not related to any reality. Today’s plants are MUCH simpler to build than those plants were. China has ordered 200 of the AP series plants from Westinghouse.

Two of the drivers of plant construction costs are the cost of financing during the construction phase and the substantial amount of skilled-craft-labor hours needed on site during construction. The AP1000™ technique of modularization of plant construction mitigates both of these drivers.
Overnight construction costs
The AP1000 was designed to reduce capital costs and to be economically competitive with contemporary fossil-fueled plants. The amount of safety-grade equipment required is greatly reduced by using the passive safety system design. Consequently, less Seismic Category I building volume is required to house the safety equipment (approximately 45 percent less than a typical reactor). Modular construction design further reduces cost and shortens the construction schedule. Using advanced computer modeling capabilities, Westinghouse is able to optimize, choreograph and simulate the construction plan. The result is very high confidence in the construction schedule.
…
Simplification was a major design objective for the AP1000. The simplified plant design includes overall safety systems, normal operating systems, the control room, construction techniques, and instrumentation and control systems. The result is a plant that is easier and less expensive to build, operate and maintain.
The AP1000 design saves money and time with an accelerated construction time period of approximately 36 months, from the pouring of first concrete to the loading of fuel. Also, the innovative AP1000 features:
* 50% fewer safety-related valves
* 80% less safety-related piping
* 85% less control cable
* 35% fewer pumps
* 45% less seismic building volume

With so many of these plants currently being built worldwide, the construction has been modularized and the process refined so that they go in quickly. The plant design has eliminated much of the complexity of older designs. Passive emergency systems means they work without having to be activated by a computer or a person and can not be accidentally deactivated by a computer or a person.

To greatly simplify, it works like this:

If the pool surrounding the reactor core begins to heat, water evaporates. It condenses on the inside of the containment vessel and the water returns to a reservoir. When the water level in the pool drops to a certain level, float valves operate allowing water from the reservoir to flow and replace the water lost in the pool due to evaporation. Basically the same technology that makes toilets work. This can continue for two weeks worst case (longer in winter when the containment dome can shed heat to the outside air) without any pumps, external power, HVAC, anything. At the end of that period, cooling water sprayed on the containment vessel (fire hose) will allow operation indefinitely.

But in any case, you cost overrun argument is silly as there is not a single modern plant to which that argument can be applied in the US.

Also, much of the additional cost is due to “lawfare” applied by misguided, uneducated, fear mongering groups who would want to scare the living crap out of people about nuclear power. They have convinced a great portion of California that nuclear plants are unsafe in seismic areas, for example. We have reactors capable of surviving greater seismic loads than Earth can dish out. What is the equivalent seismic load of a depth charge going off next to a submarine hull?

The anti-nuclear movement is based on ignorance and works by stoking irrational fear in people. The only legitimate concern is spent fuel. If you reprocess that fuel on-site, that concern is gone, too. That is why China is doing it, India is doing it, France is doing it, Japan is doing it, and Germany will now likely be doing it. The entire world EXCEPT the US will be generating carbon-free power in huge quantity while we base our energy policy on rainbows, unicorns, and technology that might be here someday.

It is idiotic.

3102009

Roger Sowell (12:26:12) :

Crosspatch, and Mike Borgelt,

Those are the same tired (and untrue, ultimately) arguments the nuclear industry made 40 years ago — and look where we ended up. “We have a good design,” and “these plants are inherently safe,” and “we know how to build these plants.”

Sure you have, and sure they are, and sure you do. [sarc off] You cannot kid me, crosspatch, because I have worked all across this globe building and running process plants, refineries, chemical plants, and power plants. You can probably sell that propaganda to the gullible, non-technical public, but not to me nor any of my colleagues. We know better.

But the arguments at this point are futile. I will be accepting the apologies of all the nuclear nuts, after a so-called Generation III nuclear power plant is built here, in the US, not in other countries. The cost overruns and schedule delays will be public record. The higher cost of electricity will be common knowledge. (on second thought, nuclear nuts will likely not apologize, but instead will make perpetual excuses how it was not their fault, if only the environmentalists and their lawyers had stepped aside none of the cost overruns would have happened).

The nuclear power industry has always had rose-colored glasses, in a hopeless dream to build the most expensive, toxic legacy-creating, misguided form of power man has ever devised. The retail power price increases due to massive cost overruns will harm the poor and those on fixed incomes, and it will be those people who share your misguided optimism who are squarely to blame.

One last point, and that is end-of-life-cycle increased accidents. The existing nuclear power plants are entering the final phase of their operating lives, and they will (because they must) experience increased system failures and radiation emissions. This has already begun as pressures exist to maintain or increase operating rates, systems and pipes corrode, tritium leaks into groundwater, and other systems slowly fail over time.

With at least 50 nuclear power plants older than the average (in the US), the odds are increasing with every passing day that an accident that releases deadly radioactivity will happen. This is not good for your cause.

3102009

Roger Sowell (13:47:09) :

crosspatch, I respect your writings on WUWT, as you usually have interesting and (mostly) accurate things to say. But this time, IMHO, you fell quite a bit short of that mark.

Do you really want to hinge your argument for nuclear power plant safety on float valves, the “technology that makes toilets work?” I suppose toilet float valves work with close to 100 percent success somewhere in the universe, but not on this planet. Even a 99.9 percent success rate is not good enough for a nuclear power plant. That missing 0.1 percent represents 0.36 days, or roughly 8 hours of each year when the float valve will not work. Not nearly good enough.

I have spent too many hours fixing faulty float valve systems on toilets for that to be a convincing argument. I suppose next you will tell us that these are nuclear-grade float valves, not the cheap junk that are installed in actual toilets. Still, a float valve is one of the LEAST reliable of all instrumented control systems, and I have seen thousands of these in industrial (e.g.non-toilet) applications in my career. Their failure rates are legendary.

For just a partial list of float valve failure mechanisms, consider that float valves stick open, stick closed, stick partially closed, they corrode, they rust, they bend, they spring a leak and fill with fluid (water), the hinges freeze, and many, many others.

Thanks for the laugh on that one, I will be sure to include it in my presentations in the future! I think a bumper sticker is also in order.

“Don’t worry folks! These new nuclear plants are SAFE!!! We use the same float valve technology that makes your toilets work!!”

And a few final comments from me. The entire concept of allowing water to vaporize (boil) to prevent a runaway nuclear reaction from exploding or melting down has several problems. First, the amount of water that must be boiled then condensed is immense. Consider that a nuclear reactor produces approximately 3 times the amount of heat compared to the amount of electricity produced. Thus, for a 1250 MWe reactor/power plant, the nuclear reactor side is producing the equivalent of 3,750 MWe of heat.

The heat transfer surface (interior of the reactor dome, as offered by crosspatch) that is required to condense this amount of water would be absolutely immense. Further, the design apparently has the heat being transferred across a very thick wall of steel, then to the ambient air (hence the reference to better heat removal during winter, and it can be continued indefinitely by shooting water on the outside of the containment dome).

Finally, heat transfer to air has a very low "efficiency" or what is referred to technically as the heat-transfer coefficient. In practice, that means that a very large surface area is required to transfer the heat to the air. The smooth exterior of the containment vessel just does not have the surface area.

I do hope that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is competent at performing the necessary heat transfer calculations, and uses the appropriate heat-transfer coefficients. These new reactor designs are a disaster just waiting to happen.

Dumb Move by GM to End Saturn

2009-09-30T14:18:00.000-07:00

"GM CEO Fritz Henderson said in [a] statement that Saturn and its dealership network will be phased out [following breakdown of talks to acquire Saturn by Penske]." [words in brackets my addition - RES] source: the Associated Press, September 30, 2009.

This has to go down in history as one of the dumbest business moves of all time. Shutting down Saturn, the car company that rescued GM a decade ago. Saturn, the car company that revolutionized the car buying experience - no haggling on the price. Everybody pays the same for a given model. Saturn, the car that runs and runs and runs, dependably, reliably, and with very low maintenance. Saturn, the car that tow-truck drivers almost never had to tow.

I have owned 3 different Saturns, all 4 door sedans with the 4 cylinder engine, all manual transmission, and they ran like the fine machines they are. Never any maintenance or engine problems. Easy to work on, to change the oil and filter, to change the spark plugs, and that is all the tuneup they required.

Brilliant, GM. Just brilliant. No wonder your company is bankrupt.

Oil in Abundance

2009-09-27T09:25:00.000-07:00

Some fear-mongers drone on and on that oil is a scarce resource and that Peak Oil has happened. They view the rapid consumption of oil as a very bad thing, and spin fantasies about apocalyptic events created by a shortage of oil, such events due to happen any day now. Or perhaps next year. Or, really no later than about 20 years. They are quite interesting, these Peak Oilers. Their views are so optimistic in one sense, yet so pessimistic in another.

The optimism, and this is misplaced in my view, is that Man can and will develop sufficient green energy supplies - not based on fossil fuels - to keep every energy demand satisfied without oil, whether for transportation, heating, cooling, industry, entertainment, military, or otherwise. The green energy revolution they insist will be found does not emit carbon dioxide or other killer greenhouse gases, (although there is absolutely no proof that such emissions kill anything), instead, these green energy sources use the sun, the wind, the tide, plant material, even animal fats to produce vast amounts of energy. The technologies for the green energy are being frantically pursued by the laboratories, the scientists, engineers, financiers, and governments. Yet, to date, only small amounts of energy are produced from this massive effort.

The Peak Oilers' pessimism is for the ability of the earth to provide more oil, and for those in the oil business to find and produce that oil. Apparently, in the minds of the Peak Oilers, only those in the green energy field are smart, and those in the oil business are not too bright. Yet, history shows just the opposite to be true. Consider the efforts of Occidental Petroleum very recently.

Oxy, as it is commonly called, found a large amount of oil in California's Kern County, a place that was known for oil but was thought to contain no significant additional quantities. In fact, a refinery that processed local crudes in that area was to be shut down due to lack of crude supplies and imminent financial losses. The refiner, Shell, was not allowed to shut the refinery down but was forced to find a buyer, which they did. The buyer soon filed for bankruptcy.

A key element of Oxy's Kern County find, according to some sources, was the technology they used to evaluate the rocks deep in the earth without drilling. This takes considerable technology, involving seismic surveys, and computer analysis of the seismic results. If one has seen the movie Jurassic Park, a movie director's version of this is included where the fossilized skeleton of a dinosaur deep in the ground is discovered by a computer that analyzes seismic waves. Oxy declines to discuss their technology because that is an important competitive advantage in a very competitive industry.

Yet, we can surmise how this technology works. There are two components, improved imaging, and identifying the images. Seismic waves are sound waves produced from a sharp and very loud noise at the surface, then reflected upward by rocks deep underground. Different types of rocks, and different shapes of rocks, reflect the sound waves in different ways. The key is to have multiple sensitive microphones at key locations, listening for and recording the reflected sound waves. The phenomena is very much like an echo canyon, where a person can shout a short phrase, wait a second or so, and hear the sound echo back. A computer then assembles all the recorded sound waves, and processes them for issues such as time delay until returning to the surface, and strength. The exact interpretation process is proprietary because so much value lies in these computer programs.

The second issue is identifying the images. With a sufficiently large pool of data, one can label the images as to being a particular type of rock, its location, and whether there is likely to be oil or not. This data is obtained by actually drilling, and carefully recording the contents of the rock cuttings as the well progresses downward. What is actually discovered is compared to the computer images, and statistics are brought in to play. The geologists are also consulted, as they play a key role in understanding what rocks are where, and how old they are, and whether they are likely to contain oil or not. The Peak Oilers apparently do not understand much, if any, of this entire process, but instead hold the wrong view that oil companies are a bunch of brainless bumblers who haul a drilling rig out into a wasteland, then drill like mad, hoping to find oil. That may have been true in the early days of oil discovery, but no more.

So, congratulations to Oxy. Well done, guys and gals. One can only wonder how many additional oil discoveries will be made, using the high technologies of the modern oil company.

It helps, of course, to have the price of oil above $70 per barrel. OPEC has fumbled yet again, just as they did in the late 1970's with their sudden and dramatic price increase for oil. With oil at $70 per barrel, it makes economic sense to re-evaluate old oil fields, deeper drilling, and more seismic surveys.

Sea Level Silliness

2009-09-27T08:15:00.000-07:00

We hear repeated bleatings from the Carbon is Killing Us crowd, the AGW true-believers, that the sea levels will rise and coral reefs around the world will die. What utter silliness.

We know that the seas rose many meters just after the most recent ice age, most likely on the order of 300 to 400 feet. Coral reefs did not die during the ice age, nor did they die during the ice melting period with the sea levels rising. As discussed elsewhere, several times during the past 12,000 years, the rate of sea level increase was much higher than that of today.

Coral reefs are darlings of the tree-huggers because they support a variety of sea life, and they look pretty in photographs. It is also fun to fly to a tropical paradise, don the snorkel, face mask, and swim fins, and swim around near a tropical coral reef.

So, who are we going to believe, the obvious facts staring us in the face, or the gloom-and-doom AGW Carbon is Killing Us crowd?

Zero Cost LNG

2009-09-06T23:27:00.001-07:00

Can LNG, even after re-gasification and compression into distribution pipelines, ever be considered to have a zero cost? The answer is very, very close to yes, but only if one uses the same idiotic rationale as does the nuclear power industry.

For many years, the nuclear power advocates (see Nuclear Nuts) have bleated incessantly that nuclear power is the cheapest form of electric power, citing the infamous South Texas Nuclear Project for production costs of 1.35 cents per kWh. Fine, marvelous, superb, stupendous achievement. One hardly requires an advanced degree in finance, or a Certified Financial Analyst designation, to easily determine that no one in their right mind would build a new 2200 MW nuclear power plant for $17 to $25 billion and sell the power for 1.35 cents per kWh. Yet that is the completely misleading and irresponsible disinformation that nuclear nuts spread in their daily campaign for nuclear power.

On the same basis, therefore, what would be the price of LNG? Could it be zero? Probably not zero, but it would be far cheaper than nuclear power. Even the electric power produced from a natural gas power plant would have nearly zero cost. The way the nuclear nuts obtain their 1.35 cents is merely to ignore the many billions in capital costs to build the plant, and focus instead only on the fuel cost, labor, and maintenance. Natural gas from LNG is almost free on that basis. The gas fields are directly connected to the LNG plant, and the LNG plant provides its own energy by consuming a bit of the natural gas. The re-gasification plant also consumes zero energy, as it too is powered entirely by burning a bit of the re-gasified LNG. Even the LNG ships that transport the LNG across oceans have zero operating cost, as they too are powered by burning re-gasified LNG.

The next time one hears a nuclear nut telling anyone that nuclear power is the cheapest power around, at only 1.5 to 3 cents per kWh, tell them that electric power from natural gas is far cheaper. Tell them that LNG is just about free. Then when they begin to argue, ask them if they want to include capital costs, and compare prices on that basis. Otherwise, nuclear nuts should just shut up.

Their little game has been exposed.

Global Warming and Zero Wind

2009-08-31T23:38:00.000-07:00

Unseasonal frost alerts and warnings were, and are, being issued by the National Weather Service in August of 2009. The northern states of Wisconsin, Michigan, upstate New York, Maine, and other New England states all have had such frost warnings in the past few days, as shown above in the bright blue areas in those states.

Is it a coincidence that masses of high pressure air, bearing no wind, settle over these areas? Is it coincidence that the humidity is lower than usual in the high pressure air? The cold temperatures are due, we are told, to heat radiating away from earth through the still, dry air and into the almost perfect blackness of outer space. Yet, we must understand that the CO2 concentration in the air remains the same.

One must suspect, as I certainly do, that winds or the lack thereof, play little to zero role in the vast GCMs, global climate models or general circulation models, so much favored by the AGW crowd who insist that Carbon is Going to Kill Us All -- sometime next week, likely on Tuesday. Yet it is quite apparent that the cold temperatures are due, at least in large part, to dry air masses that remain in a locale with little or no wind. It seems that the U.K. (England etc.) had a few days or weeks this past winter in which a high pressure cell remained fixed over the country, leading to very cold temperatures and no wind. The complaint was that the windmills produced no power during that period, and were useless.

It is also quite apparent that the IPCC's predicted increase in humidity, caused entirely by too much CO2 in the atmosphere that radiates heat downward and into the ocean, is not occurring. The dry air masses that are causing the early frost warnings in the northern U.S. states have, by definition, very low humidity. Yet, the CO2 continues to increase as measured by the station in Hawaii at Mauna Loa. Is there a disconnect here?

This leads to several questions.

1) Is global warming real?

2) Does CO2 actually increase air humidity?

3) Where is the humidity increasing?

4) If the CO2 is already at alarmingly high levels, shouldn't the humidity already be increasing, and these dry air masses that lead to frost warnings be a thing of the past?

5) If, as the IPCC claims, the tropics will have increased humidity, how will they know? Have any IPCC scientists ever been to the tropics? Did they notice that humidity is already very high, and not much increase can occur?

Many of us, myself included, are not trained as climate scientists. Yet, we are trained (as I am) in chemistry, physics, analytical thinking, statistical methods, and quite a few more in my particular case. I must add engineering principles, process control principles, legal principles of causation, production and introduction of evidence, material evidence and hearsay, expert witnesses, forensics, and rhetoric.

Just how long must we, as a country in the U.S., and other countries around the world, be expected to believe the IPCC when the evidence so clearly in front of us belies their deepest held and professed theories? To paraphrase an old but good one, Who are you going to believe, the IPCC or your lying eyes?

Crop-endangering frost in August in the Northern Hemisphere. In a global warming world, per the IPCC. Next they will be telling us all that snow last winter that blanketed Canada from coast to coast (for weeks on end) was really just white powder, likely due to China's power plants pumping out their aerosols. No telling what they will fabricate (or is it prevaricate?) to explain away the vast amounts of snow and cold weather this next winter will bring.

It is an ill wind that blows...nope, not this time. No wind. No humidity. But lots of frost. And CO2 continues to rise.

Money Well Spent for CNG Vehicles

2009-08-30T07:56:00.000-07:00

The DOE awarded almost $300 million in grants this week to promote non-petroleum fuels in transportation. There were 25 grants to 24 different entities nationwide, because South Coast Air Management District received two separate grants. SCAQMD is the air pollution control district in Southern California with jurisdiction including Los Angeles. The combined effect of the program is to eliminate 38 million gallons per year of petroleum products consumption, in favor of more consumption of natural gas and bio-fuels. However, some of the vehicles will burn propane, which is produced both from petroleum and as a co-product of natural gas.

The savings of 38 million gallons per year sounds impressive, but place in context of total petroleum demand, it is barely a drop in the ocean. 38 million gallons per year is the same as 2,523 barrels per day. The U.S. consumes approximately 11 million barrels per day. Still, this is a move in the right direction.

As T. Boone Pickens advocates, more wind power frees up natural gas that would have been burned to produce that power. The natural gas is then available for vehicle consumption. Furthermore, every barrel of gasoline replaced by natural gas means that we import two fewer barrels of oil. When diesel fuel is replaced by natural gas, we import three fewer barrels of oil. This is somewhat simplified, but is not far off the mark.

The interesting thing is the cost effectiveness of these programs. The money will be spent on creating refueling infrastructure, plus purchasing trucks and other vehicles that will consume the alternative fuels. The DOE money represents approximately $7 .70 per gallon, one-time cost. Looked at another way, that is $118,000 per barrel per day. A new refinery costs approximately $28,000 per barrel per day, so DOE is spending roughly 4 times what a new refinery would cost on a per-barrel basis.

It could be worse. The federal government is known to spend money on some ridiculously frivolous things; at least this time the money is spent on reducing oil imports, and reducing transportation fuel costs by consuming natural gas. The bio-fuel and electric hybrid portion, though, will increase transportation fuel costs.

Bio-Diesel from Municipal Waste

2009-08-21T21:38:00.000-07:00

The day has arrived, almost. Synthetic diesel fuel made from municipal solid waste and sewage sludge will be used by ground service equipment at Los Angeles International airport, LAX. Rentech announced this week it has contracts for 1.5 million gallons per year of its bio-diesel that several airlines will purchase.

The bio-fuel will be made in a plant near Los Angeles (where there is abundant trash and sewage sludge). Startup is expected in late 2012, but this presumes there will be a break in the impasse over environmental permits.

For some perspective, diesel sales in California typically are approximately 400,000 barrels per day, or 16.5 million gallons per day. Thus, the bit sold by Rentech will not make much of a dent in refineries' production.

But, with all the green energy credits available for converting waste to bio-fuel, the plant may be a money-maker. As an added bonus, the plant produces and sells electricity.

What is not known, yet, is the delivered price of the fuel to the airlines. Will it cost more than petroleum-based diesel? Will the state tax this fuel in the same amount as conventional diesel?

This is but one small part of the green revolution. Presumably there will be some green jobs in designing, building, operating, and maintaining the plant. California could use some more jobs, with unemployment at 11.9 percent based on the numbers announced today.

What is interesting about this process is that it should be immaterial how much CO2 is emitted, because it is all from biological origin. This CO2 will simply recycle through the cycle, from air to plants to useful materials to the trash and back into the plant. The part burned by the diesel engines will also create CO2, and this will join the cycle. Thus, the EIR will not have a very long section in discussing the harmful effects of CO2 from this plant. What a concept.

Earth Cloudiness 1969 and 2009

2009-08-09T20:58:00.001-07:00

What a difference four decades makes! Below is a August 2009 photo of the Earth from space, showing almost no clouds. Below that is a famous photo from July 1969 taken from the Apollo 11 spacecraft, showing the Earth almost covered in clouds.

View of Earth from Apollo 11, July 1969, showing clouds covering much of the surface. Such cloudiness increases the Earth's albedo and leads to reduced air temperatures.

Natural Gas Pipelines in the US

2009-08-09T20:42:00.000-07:00

Natural gas pipelines, as shown in the map below, cross much of the U.S. and have done so for many decades. This map shows only the major pipelines, and there are far more pipelines operating at low pressure that distribute the natural gas into businesses and homes. This map provides an excellent visual reminder that natural gas is safe and flows reliably and cheaply into almost every business and home in the U.S.

Farewell Mr. FatBigot

2009-08-09T13:14:00.001-07:00

With some surprise I saw today that one of my favorite blogs, The Fat Bigot Opines, is no longer posting or accepting comments. I write this in the hopes that Mr. Fat Bigot himself reads this, or in the alternative, someone else sends the word to him.

Mr. Fat Bigot wrote a wonderful blog at TheFatBigotOpines.blogspot.com, with a witty, pithy, sometimes scathing point of view on many topics, typically from his British perspective and flavored with his attorney background.

I read almost every blog entry over the past several months, always with great interest and sometimes amusement.

Mr. FB, I wish you all the best in your new endeavours. (British spelling there, in your honour).

Cogeneration Reduces Grid Purchases

2009-08-08T12:35:00.000-07:00

In the steel-making plant of Essar Steel Algoma, a new gas-fired cogeneration plant is reducing the load on the grid to the tune of 70 MW and at a cost of only $135 million. This is just one example of a theme I hit from time to time, that as power prices increase, industries will build their own power plants, or self-generate and reduce their purchases from the utility-supplied electrical grid. This happens at much smaller levels, also.

Here is an 8.5 megawatt cogeneration plant in a Las Vegas hotel, which could easily be duplicated at 1000 hotels or more across the country. Hotels have a need for electricity and hot water for their guests and restaurants, and are ideal for cogeneration from natural gas.

Another project is a tri-fecta, with a 12 MW gas-fired cogeneration plant installed in a tomato-growing greenhouse. The greenhouse utilizes the heat and CO2 from the engine exhaust, and electric power is sold to the grid.

With all this cogeneration activity today, with low electric prices, one can only imagine the flurry of activity when (or if) nuclear power plants are built again and severely raise power rates, and the costs of Global Warming legislation such as California's AB 32 are realized. Self-generation is not a fad, not a toy, and not a pipe dream as those in the nuclear power industry insist. Engineers have worked diligently and creatively for decades to provide robust, safe, clean, and economic alternatives to high power prices caused by poorly-considered nuclear power plants with their $20-plus billion price tags and decade or longer construction times. Imagine the surprise on the utility executives' faces when the new nuclear power plant is finally started up after 10 to 12 years, at a cost over-run of 200 or even 400 percent, and their customers say "No thanks, I have all the electric power I need at one-fourth the cost of yours."

There is no need for them to act surprised. This is exactly what happened in Louisiana just a couple of decades ago. It is known as the Nuclear Death Spiral.

Natural Gas Power Plants Booming

2009-08-08T10:48:00.000-07:00

It is always a pleasure to watch the market work, especially when unrestricted by overly-burdensome government regulations. When natural gas was regulated in the 60's and 70's, a shortage of natural gas occurred and then-President Carter announced we had an energy crisis, a shortage. There was a crisis, allright, but it was a crisis of over-regulation and stifling the creative energy of oil and gas men. When those regulations were relaxed, amazingly, the energy crisis disappeared. Natural gas today is far more abundant, and less expensive as a result. Based on the huge reserves of natural gas, and the confident prospect of even more being placed into production for the foreseeable future, power companies are building combined cycle gas turbine (CCGT) plants all around. First, a 350 MW combined-cycle natural gas power facility in Brockton, Mass, then TVA is moving ahead with plans for an $820 million, gas-fired power plant instead of a nuclear plant, finally (to name just three), CPV wants to construct a 1,200-megawatt, high-efficiency gas [fired power] plant that can help supply electricity demand in southern Ontario, Canada, instead of a nuclear plant.

Meanwhile, in the forlorn and gloomy world of new nuclear power, nothing is being built in the U.S., and those who planned to build nuclear power plants are scuttling those plans in favor of, what else, natural gas power plants (see above for two examples). Utilities do have some sense, after all. They also have shareholders who have the right and the power to sue the corporation in a shareholder derivative suit. The corporation could, of course, claim the business judgement rule defense, as their company loses money and the stock price plummets - all because they built a nuclear power plant that cost tens of billions of dollars, took a decade or more to complete, and then found their customers reducing their power demand by self-generation. With apologies to Field of Dreams writers, "If you build it, we won't buy."

Some pundits write that the natural gas industry is behaving irrationally with prices low, and production continuing as storage volumes are filled. That analysis shows a failure to grasp the fundamentals of business: buy low, and sell high. This is not complicated stuff, here. With natural gas prices at or near historic lows, yet the almost certainty that prices in the coming winter will be higher due to increased demand caused by cold weather and a (hopefully) increased economy, it makes all the sense in the world to produce gas now, store it, and sell it later for a nice profit. This cycle of produce and store in summer, and sell in winter has been with us for a couple of years at least. With global warming on the wane, indeed, winters are growing more severe, thus the demand for natural gas to heat buildings and homes is assured.

There is no conspiracy, no market manipulation, no chicanery, just common business sense by people who know what they are doing. Buy low. Sell high. A winning formula.

More Cooling from LNG Flowing

2009-08-04T18:32:00.000-07:00

"Sempra LNG, a subsidiary of San Diego-based Sempra Energy, said on July 31 that its second North American LNG terminal, this one near Lake Charles, La., has begun commercial operations." And with that, LNG importing into the U.S. Gulf Coast now has 4 terminals operating, plus two under construction. The only LNG terminal on the West Coast is just south of San Diego, as Mexico has fewer qualms about operating an LNG facility than squeamish Californians. But, much of the re-vaporized natural gas is sent to California, where it is burned as fuel in low-emission power plants and used as transportation fuel.

The advent of numerous LNG receiving and vaporization terminals is great news for everyone, as this ensures a low price for natural gas for decades to come, plus ample supplies of clean-burning, reliable, safe, and versatile fuel. No other fuel can match the versatility of natural gas, as it is used for power plants that are base loaded, also load following, also peak load service, for heating in homes, cooking in homes, process heating in industry, and as a chemical raw material for indispensible products such as ammonia for fertilizers, and industrial hydrogen. Natural gas is also used directly as a transportation fuel in cars, trucks, and buses. Natural gas is so abundant and so cheap that there are plants that convert it into synthetic diesel.

Even though the US has discovered and is exploiting huge deposits of natural gas from shale formations, it continues to be economic to import LNG from overseas. Some is from the Middle East, but other areas also have vast deposits of natural gas and convert the gas to LNG for export. Trinidad and Tobago have LNG plants, and so does Australia.

The re-gasification process requires heat input, or, stated another way, the environment cools somewhat around LNG re-gasification.

Natural gas: a safe, clean, non-toxic, abundant, low-cost, fuel that is welcome around the world, and serves as a political buffer to those European nations that suffered last winter from threats and actual shut-offs of natural gas from Russia. Plus, no one has ever been irradiated from natural gas, unlike toxic nuclear fission power plants. No natural gas furnace or gas turbine needs de-contamination after its useful life is over, as do nuclear power plants. When a natural gas power plant reaches the end of its useful life, workers in normal safety attire take the plant apart, bolt by bolt, and send the parts and pieces off to recycling. Production of natural gas does not forever poison the production site, unlike yellow cake for uranium that is used as nuclear fission fuel.

And, no plutonium is created by natural gas combustion.

Why would anyone want to build any other kind of power plant than natural gas? Especially one of the nuclear fission variety that costs 6 times as much, takes 3 or 4 times as long to build, and must charge triple or quadruple the price for the power produced? Nuclear power plants easily cost $10,000 per kW, while natural gas plants cost $1500 per kW. Also, new nuclear power plants under construction attract opposition group lawsuits the way bees are drawn to honey.

The kicker in modern times, though, may be the lower water consumption from a natural gas fired power plant, compared to the vast quantities of water required by a nuclear power plant. On an equal power output basis, a nuclear power plant will require twice as much water due to the inherently inefficient use of heat in the nuclear power plant.

Natural gas. The only logical choice.

Recession Causes Refinery Closures

2009-07-27T17:45:00.000-07:00

One of the results of the ongoing economic recession is very low refinery utilization rates, and low operating margins. One recent source states that marginal refineries will shut down, especially those that are independent refineries with no oil production of their own.

That could very well happen, especially if crude prices rise as the U.S. dollar fluctuates in value, which it very well could do. The demand for products is not likely to increase soon, in fact, it will likely decrease as the end of the summer driving season nears. Diesel fuel consumption is not likely to increase because that is tied to overall economic activity, and despite (or because) of the Obama administration's intervention into the economy, there is no sign that diesel fuel demand will increase anytime soon.

California, the largest state economically as well as by population, is in intensive care mode even though last week a compromise budget was passed. The compromise did nothing to cure the economic problems, but merely postponed them for a few months. In fact, some local governments are threatening lawsuits against the State of California for not sending money to the local governments. This is a bit like four people about to eat lunch, with money enough for only three, then the biggest and strongest robs the weakest of his lunch money. There still is not enough money to go around, it is merely distributed differently. The impact on national fuel demand is due to the ripple effect from California's problems. Each state in the U.S. has some impact from California's fiscal irresponsibility, because California grows (perhaps grew is the correct word here) food crops and has three major ports (San Francisco, Los Angeles/Long Beach, and San Diego).

As to which refineries will close, traditionally the smallest in a competitive market are vulnerable, or those with the least efficient processing. As I wrote earlier, in California a refinery closure that was proposed drew the ire of a U.S. Senator and threats of anti-trust litigation. That refinery is now in bankruptcy proceedings. One must wonder if any other refinery must tolerate such treatment at the hands of Senators.

However, the above-referenced article states that Shell is considering shutting at least a part of a large refinery near Houston, the Deer Park complex. Shell Deer Park has a refinery and petrochemical complex.

At what point will the tax-and-spend and more-regulations-are-good forces realize that industry is the golden goose in America? It takes very little for massive refineries to choose to shut down and their tank farms converted into receiving terminals. Foreign refineries such as the new refinery in India are quite willing to refine crude oil and ship the products to the U.S. The loss in tax revenues to the local governments will be noticed. The improvement in air quality will not.

The looming cap-and-trade regulations, and additional burdens of ethanol-blended gasoline and bio-diesel will further erode refinery utilization, causing further shutdowns. Does the USA actually want to have the transportation infrastructure dependent on the vagaries of weather? That is exactly what is at stake with bio-fuels from corn, soy, and other crops. As one recent article states, "When the Bush administration and Congress required gasoline refiners to blend in 15 billion gallons of corn-based ethanol by 2015, they made the impossibly rosy assumption that American farmers would always enjoy good weather. But as every farmer knows, years with perfect growing conditions are uncommon and getting more rare.

In early April, Environmental Working Group Founder Ken Cook warned that the government’s food policy amounted to “hope for good weather.”

OPEC Reaction to Energy Storage Systems

2009-07-19T19:27:00.000-07:00

In the Grand Game of global energy supplies and technology (which I describe here), OPEC is of course a key player. OPEC has some control over a few things, chief among which is the production rate of oil under their member states' control. In general, when OPEC increases production, oil prices fall, and vice versa. A key result of lower oil prices, and a major part of the Grand Game, is that the economic incentive for renewable energy decreases. For example, if a consumer is considering the purchase of a new car, either conventional engine or hybrid engine, he must pay more for the hybrid engine vehicle. However, the hybrid engine vehicle will use less gasoline and thus have reduced operating costs. The price of gasoline is a key variable in the calculations. If a sufficient number of consumers purchase the hybrid cars, gasoline demand will be lower than otherwise, and OPEC must reduce production to maintain the price of oil. However, if economies and populations are growing rapidly, the decreased oil demand may merely mean that OPEC is not required to invest in additional production capacity.

In the electric power side of the Grand Game, OPEC is not quite as directly involved, while others are key players. The big debate in the electric power side is renewable energy vs fossil-fired energy vs nuclear energy. OPEC is involved because the price of electric power influences, to some extent, the economic attractiveness of electric vehicles or plug-in electric hybrid vehicles. Electric vehicles that draw power from the grid compete directly with gasoline vehicles, and thus the connection to OPEC.

The renewable energy group includes solar, wind, wave, ocean current, hydroelectric, geothermal, municipal solid waste, and some forms of methane such as bio-gas and landfill gas. This discussion is about producing electric power, thus bio-fuels such as bio-diesel and bio-ethanol are not discussed. The great drawback to many of the renewable energy production technologies is their intermittent nature: the wind is highly variable, the sun shines only for a few hours each day at strengths suitable for power generation, and not at all when clouds or rain block the sun, and waves are variable. The intermittent nature of these renewables can be mitigated with an electricity storage system (ESS), or some other form of storage that consumes renewable electric power and reproduces that power later and upon demand.

Direct storage of electricity is possible, as batteries and ultra-capacitors have shown. The cost per kWh delivered is very high, however. Other ESS include high-speed flywheels, pumped storage hydroelectric, compressed air energy storage, high-pressure hydraulic storage, and a few others. A key breakthrough in flywheel ESS was announced a few days ago, for a large, grid-scale ESS that is to store 30 GW of power, and release power in MW quantities upon demand.

It will be interesting to observe OPEC's reaction to this flywheel ESS. The rules of the Grand Game require that OPEC do what it can to maintain the demand for oil, and the price of oil at a relatively high price. This maximizes OPEC revenue and ensures their survival. The flywheel ESS, if it indeed works as advertised, will release a flood of new renewable power projects in wind, solar, and wave technologies. This may reduce electric power prices, depending on the cost to build and operate the flywheel ESS. If the electric power prices are reduced sufficiently, plug-in hybrid cars or pure electric cars will become very attractive, thus reducing the demand for OPEC oil and the gasoline refined from it.

Therefore, it may be expected that OPEC will increase oil production, decreasing the price of oil and thus the cost to consumers of gasoline. It remains to be seen whether OPEC can increase oil production sufficiently to compete with the new reality of cheap, essentially unlimited electric power.

One interesting outcome could be that OPEC reduces output to create a spike in oil prices, thus increasing their revenue. This would be a short-lived situation, but it could increase OPEC's revenue for the few years remaining until the flywheel ESS are built and integrated into the grid, and intermittent renewable power plants are built in great numbers.

Of course, the flywheel ESS may allow power production at such a low price that nuclear power plants are no longer even considered as candidates for electric production. Nuclear power plants cost many billions of dollars to construct and require a decade-long construction period. The cost of electric power from a nuclear power plant is on the order of 30 to 40 cents per kWh. Renewable-based electricity with flywheel ESS will very likely produce electric power reliably and cheaply, at far less than a nuclear power plant. This is good news for everyone, as there will no longer be an excuse to build toxic, radioactive, ultrazhazardous nuclear power plants that poison the planet with plutonium and other deadly nucleotides for centuries.

Texas Wind Power Generation

2009-07-15T20:07:00.001-07:00

The website found here and shown below is simply fascinating. This is the Texas ERCOT Real-Time information on the electrical power grid throughout most of Texas. What is really interesting (to me) is the line-item that shows Total Wind Output, in MW. As I write this, (8:10 p.m. PDT on July 15, 2009), the system records 2,915 MW from wind generators. That is roughly 6 percent of the total generation at that moment in Texas.

I have been following this for several days now, with a view toward confirming or falsifying several statements one reads in various blogs/journals/media about wind and how unreliable it is. I note several things: 1) wind power in Texas never seems to drop to zero. I have seen it down to around 2 percent during the day. Texans use a lot of power each day, and the wind decreases a bit in the mornings; 2) wind power increases at night usually, consistent with increasing winds; 3) the most I have observed from this ERCOT site, is 8 percent of total generation; 4) spinning reserve is invariably more than the wind power generated, but not by much.

Here is what the website showed at 22:04 local time (CDT): (reload the ERCOT webpage to update the information)

REAL-TIME DATA

Posted Date	15-JUL-2009
Posted Hour	2204
Actual System Demand (Frequency Control)	52712	MW
Scheduled Frequency	60.000	Hz
Actual Frequency	59.960	Hz
Time Error	-1.162	sec
Total Generation	52198	MW
Current Aggregated Regulation Deployment*	-236	MW
Adjusted Responsive Reserve	4134	MW
Total On-Line Capacity	57338	MW
Total Spinning Reserve	5140	MW
Total Wind Output	2915	MW

DC Tie Flows
Line	Scheduled	Actual	Imp. Lim.	Exp. Lim.
DC_E	-579	-574	600	600
DC_L	0	1	70	100
DC_N	72	69	210	210
DC_R	0	0	0	150
DC_S	0	0	30	30
Total	-507	-504	910	1090

Monitored CSC/CRE Flow	MW	MVAR	LIMIT
NORTH-HOUSTON	1407	-38	3203
NORTH-SOUTH	245	58	1403
NORTH-WEST	-62	52	826
SOUTH-NORTH	-245	-58	346
WEST-NORTH	62	-52	1018

* Negative(-) = UP REG Deployed
Positive = DOWN REG Deployed

These observations are based on the various things put forth by those in the wind-power business. First, that wind power is only 1 percent of total generation. Not in Texas, it seems. From my observations, it appears that an average is about 4 percent. Second, that wind power drops to zero, and other generation systems must take over the load. I have yet to see it drop to zero, but then I have only watched for a few days, and then not full-time. Third, that a power grid begins to have troubles when wind energy approaches five or six percent of the total load (various sources use different figures here). The Texas grid seems to work just fine with wind providing 7 and 8 percent of the load. I have not read nor heard of any troubles in Texas due to wind-power.

It would be nice if this data were also presented in a graphical form, as California's ISO does. I would like to see a graph of total grid power generated over the 24 hours in a day, with a second line showing the amount of power provided by wind.

Some say renewables are not reliable, and do not provide any energy. Hah. Facts are stubborn things.

Oh. One other thing: the ongoing operating and maintenance costs for wind-energy is essentially zero. It is far, far, less than the cost of running a nuclear power plant, with their outrageously expensive piping, valves, pumps, heat exchangers, boilers, water softeners, toxic waste fuel storage areas, steam turbines, generators, steam condensers, cooling towers, and the hundreds of personnel required to operate. Not to mention the millions of dollars per year that are paid for the operating license. And wind power plants do not leak radioactive, toxic tritium into the water supply.

The wind is free. The wind is non-toxic. The wind does not create a toxic, radioactive waste that endures for centuries.

UPDATE 1 July 18, 2009: A wind energy resource link for Texas, also US, also offshore.

This link shows the offshore Texas wind resource measured at 50 meters height; for an area 50 miles offshore and to the shore. The best wind areas (Class 5) are just offshore Corpus Christi, and ranging about 75 miles southward down the coast, and extend approximately 50 miles offshore. This area is more than 3,500 square miles, representing a huge un-tapped resource of wind power.

Also offshore Texas, there is an even larger area of Class 4 wind to the north and south of the Class 5 area, comprising approximately 9,000 square miles.

Oil from Algae

2009-07-15T19:18:00.000-07:00

One of the many oil-alternatives (a substance that can be processed or converted into petroleum-like substances) is an oil that is formed from some types of algae. This week, the technology received a big boost when ExxonMobil announced it will invest (reportedly) $600 million in developing this.

The algae grows by consuming CO2 and sunshine, plus water, as do all plants. The product qualifies as a renewable fuel, as do ethanol from crops and bio-diesel.

In the Grand Game (which I described here), oil-alternatives play a crucial role. First, as more oil-alternatives are found or created, there is more competition for traditional petroleum. However, bringing an oil-alternative to market can be difficult, if the cost of production is higher than that of petroleum. Examples of oil-alternatives include tar sands, oil shale, coal-to-liquids plants, ethanol from crops, and bio-diesel. Some would include natural gas-to-liquids plants, an example of which is a natural gas-to-diesel plant.

The costs to produce algae-oil will include land, nutrients, water (this may be from rain), harvesting, and processing plants to yield the oil. There may also be a storage cost, if the algae does not grow well, or at all, during winter months. One can envisage a growing season of six or seven months, so that part of the oil produced is stored up for use during winter months. Or, one can envisage large floating ponds on the ocean near the equator, with the algae growing in specially treated water (not sea water).

Again referring to the Grand Game, one can envisage the great hot deserts of the world, particularly in Northern Africa, using sunshine to desalinate seawater, pumping the fresh water into the desert to irrigate algae ponds, and producing algae-oil for sale to the world. If this comes to pass, it will greatly change the world. Also, the great deserts of the U.S. Southwest can be used to great advantage. This would be a good use of the abundant sunshine, rather than converting the sunshine to electric power via photo-voltaics.

Cold June for Los Angeles 2009

2009-07-05T22:08:00.000-07:00

Well, this is certainly interesting!  The weather is usually cool in June in Los Angeles,

in fact the phrase here is June Gloom.  But this year was colder than usual.  This is even

more pronounced at LAX, the airport right on the coast.  We are seeing a consistent pattern

develop, with colder waters offshore California causing the sea to contract slightly and

sea levels drop.  No fear of sea level rise at all, although the powers-that-be in California's

government agencies hold hearings and pay consultants to tell them alarming tales of what might

happen, someday, if all their dire predictions come true about polar icecaps melting.

The Atlantic ocean is also colder than usual, and zero tropical storms have formed, and zero

hurricanes, too.  That is not so strange, yet, since most hurricanes occur in August and

September.  I am watching the hurricane count with great interest this year, as it is working

up to be a dud, again proving that climate change due to atmospheric Carbon Dioxide is a lie.

The mantra is now the Deniers vs the Liars.  I'm a proud member of the Denier camp.  With all the

evidence now available that man does not and could not cause global warming, any people who

cling bitterly to that lost cause are either deluded or liars.  Liars know the facts and

intentionally say just the opposite.  This is one of the legal elements of a fraud lawsuit.

From the National Weather Service just yesterday:

PUBLIC INFORMATION STATEMENT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE LOS ANGELES/OXNARD CA
600 PM PDT TUE JUN 30 2009

...DAILY MAXIMUM TEMPERATURES WERE BELOW NORMAL ON EVERY DAY IN JUNE
AT DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES AND AT LOS ANGELES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT...

DAILY HIGH TEMPERATURES AT BOTH DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES AND AT LOS
ANGELES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT WERE BELOW NORMAL ON EVERY SINGLE DAY
IN THE MONTH OF JUNE. IN FACT...HIGH TEMPERATURES AT EACH LOCATION
HAVE BEEN BELOW NORMAL SINCE MAY 22ND...A STRETCH OF 40 DAYS IN A
ROW AND COUNTING. WHILE RECORDS FOR CONSECUTIVE DAYS WITH BELOW
NORMAL TEMPERATURES ARE NOT TYPICALLY MAINTAINED...THIS IS A FAIRLY
NOTEWORTHY STRETCH OF COOL WEATHER...THE RESULT OF A PERSISTENT
UPPER LEVEL TROUGH LINGERING ACROSS SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA.

AT DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES...DAILY MEAN TEMPERATURES...THE AVERAGE OF
THE MAXIMUM AND MINIMUM TEMPERATURE ON EACH DAY...HAVE NOT BEEN
ABOVE NORMAL SINCE MAY 22ND. HOWEVER...DURING THAT STRETCH...MEAN
TEMPERATURES HAVE BEEN EXACTLY NORMAL ON 5 DAYS...INCLUDING 3 DAYS
DURING THE MONTH OF JUNE.

ALSO AT DOWNTOWN LOS ANGELES...HIGH TEMPERATURES REACHED OR EXCEEDED
80 DEGREES ON JUST TWO DAYS DURING THE MONTH OF JUNE...THE LOWEST
NUMBER OF SUCH OCCURRENCES SINCE JUNE 1982...WHICH HAD ONLY ONE
SUCH DAY. THE AVERAGE DAILY HIGH TEMPERATURE FOR JUNE 2009 WAS 74.5
DEGREES...5 DEGREES BELOW THE NORMAL OF 79.5 DEGREES.
INTERESTINGLY...THE AVERAGE HIGH FOR JUNE WAS JUST SLIGHTLY WARMER
THAN THE AVERAGE MAXIMUM FOR THIS PAST JANUARY...WHEN THE DAILY HIGH
AVERAGED 74.2 DEGREES. OF COURSE...THAT WAS ABOUT 6 DEGREES ABOVE
NORMAL FOR JANUARY.

AT LOS ANGELES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT...THE HIGH TEMPERATURE FOR THE
MONTH OF JUNE WAS JUST 71 DEGREES...THE LOWEST MONTHLY MAXIMUM FOR
ANY JUNE SINCE RECORDS BEGAN THERE IN 1944. DAILY HIGH TEMPERATURES
VARIED BY JUST 5 DEGREES DURING THE MONTH OF JUNE AT LOS ANGELES
AIRPORT...FROM A LOW OF 66 ON THE 3RD...TO A HIGH OF 71 DEGREES ON
TEN SEPARATE DAYS...MOST RECENTLY ON THE 27TH. THE AVERAGE HIGH
TEMPERATURE FOR JUNE 2009 AT LOS ANGELES AIRPORT WAS 69.3
DEGREES...3.4 DEGREES BELOW NORMAL...AND THE LOWEST AVERAGE JUNE
MAXIMUM SINCE 1982. IT WAS ALSO LOWER THAN THE AVERAGE HIGH
TEMPERATURE DURING THIS PAST JANUARY WHICH WAS 69.5 DEGREES.



BRUNO

Peak Oil and Unicorns Both Mythical

2009-07-03T23:01:00.000-07:00

Peak oil is a subject that comes up from time to time, as the scare-mongers who do not understand the oil industry, nor the world-wide energy industry, completely miss the mark. Peak oil is a theory that maintains that the Earth's supply of oil is finite and that we have reached the maximum of oil discoveries and production rate. The theory maintains that as demand for oil increases, production cannot keep pace so a huge price increase in oil will result, thereby disrupting all economies in the world. The Peak Oil hysterics shriek that "we" should immediately stop using oil, and switch to renewable, sustainable, energy supplies.

Peak oil, however, is a myth.

As the graphs in the following link show, the real price of gasoline (U.S., regular) has steadily declined since 1919. This is deadly data to the peak-oil believers. All during this period (1919 to now) peak-oil believers have sounded their alarms. Peak oil never happened, and never will. Oil price increases are due to temporary market distortions, and nothing more. Technology for finding oil improves much faster than oil consumption, thus driving the price down in real terms. Technology is improving faster and faster, with better computers, more sophisticated production techniques, economy of scale in transportation (ships, pipelines, refineries), and vehicles that achieve higher miles per gallon. All these drive the cost of gasoline down.

As ExxonMobil’s executives state frequently, what is keeping the price of oil up is restricted access to known oil deposits around the world. The Saudis and others in OPEC knew what they were doing when they nationalized their oil assets, kicked out foreigners, and restricted the production of oil so as to increase the price and thus their revenues. Smart guys, have to admire them for that. Those steps not only increased prices, they reduced production and thereby extend the life of the oil fields.

Peak oil is a myth, just as unicorns are mythical.

http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/steo/pub/fsheets/real_prices.html

Just a bit more elaboration on why oil production technology improves. Better seismic geologic data interpretation through improved computers and software allow drilling companies to drill fewer dry holes and hit oil more frequently. Directional drilling allows much more oil production from a given field. Secondary and tertiary production techniques allow much more oil production from a given field. Deeper drilling is possible at lower costs than ever before. Drilling in deep ocean water is possible and cheaper than in decades past. It is a little-known fact that oil companies are prolific inventors, as can be seen from the patent records in the U.S. ExxonMobil, to name just one, receives roughly one patent per day, on average.

We can expect that gasoline prices will drop further as automotive standards change, especially those standards that mandate improved miles per gallon. With the California Pavley standard now approved by the U.S. EPA, (this occurred early in July, 2009), and the U.S. Federal gas mileage standards modified to match California's the normal demand for gasoline will decline. Prices for gasoline will also decline, except as offset by very expensive corn-based ethanol and taxes.

THE GRAND GAME:

The grand game that is being played out around the world involves oil, natural gas, and renewable energy, also automotive technologies, and now climate change legislation. The stakes are high, the players are world-wide, and opportunities for making and losing vast fortunes exist.

OPEC's role in the game includes adjusting the flow of oil into the world market, which is their only move. Increasing oil production does several things: it decreases world oil prices, and shortens the lifetime of the oilfields under OPEC control. But, OPEC oilfield lifetimes are still measured in dozens of decades, perhaps hundreds of years. The real impact is oil price. As oil prices decrease, so does the incentive for alternatives to oil-based transportation systems such as bio-fuels, hybrid vehicles, and pure electric vehicles. In contrast, higher oil prices due to OPEC production reductions lead to not only more incentives for alternate-fuels, but can make oil-alternates more attractive, too. The oil-alternates include tar sands, coal-to-liquid plants, and shale oil. OPEC leaders try very hard to maintain oil price as high as possible without providing incentives for the oil-alternates to be produced and become a competitor to oil.

Enter technology improvements. Natural gas vehicles compete directly with oil-based transportation fuels gasoline and diesel. Some might wonder why the U.S. does not promote CNG vehicles, but instead appears to disfavor them. T. Boone Pickens understands the game, and knows the crucial role that natural gas vehicles can play. CNG cars with hybrid technology are a complete game-changer. With natural gas at historic low prices, currently around $4 per million Btu, the fuel cost per mile is much less than with gasoline. Governments enter the game when they provide rebates or tax credits for non-petroleum vehicle systems such as CNG and hybrids.

Another technology improvement mentioned above is improved gas mileage. Both California, and now the U.S., have laws that mandate 42 miles per gallon from new passenger cars by 2016. Other technology improvements exist, for example the Tata Motors car in India, and the BYD hybrid car from China. The USA has several advanced hybrids, and battery makers are in a furious race to produce better batteries for the transportation market. Infrastructure improvements also are in the works, with at least one company offering a battery-change service that will not take any longer than filling a gasoline tank. The electric car with a low battery charge would pull into a service station, and have the battery exchanged for a fully-charged one within 5 minutes.

Another factor in the grand game is world-wide demand for transportation, whether as gasoline, diesel, CNG, or electric vehicles. Some countries in the world have mature or shrinking transportation demand, while others are increasing. The economies of India and China are mentioned frequently as increasing the demand for transportation fuels, while the US and Europe are stagnant or decreasing. Note that hydrogen fuel cell vehicles are a joke, not worthy of consideration. Even Honda, a leading manufacturer of a fuel cell hydrogen car, admits that the manufacturing cost is outrageous and their cars for lease are for marketing purposes only. Their construction costs are on the order of $250,000 each, and the operating costs for hydrogen for the fuel cells is many times the cost of gasoline. Fuel cell cars are not part of the game.

The net effect of these technology improvements in the grand game is the same as OPEC increasing production, that is, it drives down oil price. The demand for oil decreases as the technologies become more accepted and in use, so OPEC can cut production. These also further delay the day when the oil-alternates will become economic, and increase the operating life of OPEC oil fields.

A fascinating window into the future, especially the oil future, may be found by watching oil commodity futures prices. One is available from finance.yahoo, with contracts out eight years. As I write this, the contract for December 2017 is priced at $89.30 cents per barrel. The closing price for oil today was right at $67 per barrel. If peak oil were imminent, crude futures price eight years from now (2017) would be a lot more than $89 per barrel. In fact, one can also look at oil inventories and note that these are at historic highs. This also indicates that the price of crude oil is about to drop due to oversupply in the market.

The game is grand. The game is fascinating. The game provides immense opportunities for profit, and for loss. As my old buddy Todd Wehner says, Stay tuned, sports fans. This is about to get interesting!

(Note about my old buddy Todd Wehner: we grew up together from 3rd grade, including every grade through college graduation - except for two years when he went off to a fancy private university. He values his privacy, but I can safely say he has done quite well. He is one of the smartest people on the planet, and one of the funniest. We played intramural softball, and he not only managed our team, also played a position, and kept the scorebook for each game. He has a phenomenal memory, and never missed a play even while he was on deck, batting, running the bases, or playing the field. He just remembered everything and wrote it all in the scorebook when he was in the dugout. )

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

Musings on Many Things - 2

2009-06-21T09:19:00.000-07:00

A few more items crossed my desk and screen this week.

++ Pete du Pont, former governor of Delaware, came out strong in favor of nuclear power plants for the U.S. Apparently he has not read about the high cost of nuclear plants, and the subsequent high cost of the power from them. I question why any Republican wants to raise electric power prices, which will happen if and when nuclear plants are built again.

++ Meanwhile, the natural gas glut grows greater. The U.S. reserves of natural gas are growing ever-larger as more shale gas is added to the number. There is no way nuclear power can ever compete with the overall cost of natural-gas-based power.

++ MIT issued a report on Carbon Capture and Sequestration, primarily focused on coal-fired power plants. Their conclusions include 1) it is very expensive to build, 2) it is very expensive to operate, and 3) there are no good sites for storage once the CO2 is captured. We knew this, didn't we?

++ I gave my scheduled presentation on California's AB 32 to the Los Angeles chapter of AIChE this past week, with an outstanding response from a very knowledgeable and attentive audience. It is always an honor to address any group, and I especially love the questions from my fellow chemical engineers.

++ California's electric utilities signed agreements for great amounts of solar-based power this week. This makes sense, given the 20 percent requirement for renewable power in this state by New Year's Eve of 2010, plus 33 percent by 2020. Wind-power has little room for growth in California, and geothermal has only a few locations undeveloped. Thus, it will be solar.

++ Cap and Trade discussions continue in California under AB 32, with a blue-ribbon panel of advisors announced just a few days ago.

++ There is mounting opposition to AB 32 as California's economy sickens further. This week, the unemployment rate jumped to 11.5 percent, the highest ever. More jobs will be lost in the manufacturing sectors as AB 32 regulations are enforced, starting in 2012. A cement plant in Southern California announced they must shut down because the cost to comply with AB 32 is simply too great. They will discharge 140 direct employees, and that will have a ripple effect throughout the economy. If California continues to build and use concrete, their volume must be imported. The foreign imports likely create far more pollution and CO2 than this California plant.

++ Graduation just occurred for a great many students, and their jobs prospects in California are grim. Having a state minimum wage that is higher than the federal minimum wage surely decreases the total number of jobs. Having a "living wage" in many cities (including Los Angeles) that is higher than the state minimum wage further reduces the number of jobs available.

++ The state of California is in dire circumstances, fiscally. The next fiscal year begins in only 10 days, and the $23 billion state budget deficit remains. The bond rating agencies are prepared to further de-rate California's bonds.

++ Meanwhile, reports are surfacing that Green Jobs are being created by AB 32. I suppose that is true, to a certain extent. After all, somebody will have a job installing the new solar power plants, and connecting them to the grid. Somebody will have a job advising the Air Resources Board about Cap and Trade. But, the coffee shop baristas are losing their jobs as coffee shops shut down. People learn pretty quick that a cup of coffee made at home costs less than the $4 at the corner coffee shop.

++ Today is Father's Day, and I am very happy to have two fine sons with whom to share this day.

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

legal website

Radioactive Tritium Leaks from Nuclear Plant

2009-06-10T20:37:00.000-07:00

Those who argue for constructing great numbers of nuclear power plants as the safest and most environmentally benign form of power for the world's future should read this and reflect upon it.

Near Chicago, Illinois, Exelon's Dresden Nuclear Plant was found to have leaked radioactive tritium into local monitoring wells. Exelon apparently has a history of leaking tritium-laced water into the biosphere but covering it up.

A bit of research on health effects of tritium shows that tritium's radioactivity is rather weak when external exposure occurs, but can have devastating ill health effects when ingested, as through drinking contaminated water.

From the article in the Chicago Tribune: "Exelon officials said leaked tritium has not entered the public water supply. But the company hasn't found the cause or source of the leak."

This is yet another instance of the nearly constant radioactive leaks from nuclear power plants that nuclear nuts would like to ignore in their quest to poison the planet with radioactivity. Such reports occur frequently from news sources around the globe, and this is with only 400 or so nuclear power plants operating. More leaks will surely occur as more plants are constructed and operated, and as time passes.

As a chemical engineer I know only too well the effects of corrosion on steel and other metal pieces such as the pipes and parts in a nuclear power plant. The costs to a plant are high to detect and prevent leaks by shutting down and replacing pipes before a leak occurs, and the adverse publicity adds to the pressure to keep generating.

As an attorney, I also know the liability incurred by nuclear plant owners who bear full responsibility for any radioactive exposure to people or property under the ultrahazardous tort laws. Essentially, the nuclear plant owner is at fault no matter how the injury from radioactivity occurs. There are numerous fine points to this legal standard, which I will not get into here.

Is nuclear power safe, when the plants leak radioactive water into the ground? Would you drink water with tritium in it? Or allow your family and friends to drink water with radioactive tritium in it?

Natural gas power plants yield no tritium. They also yield no plutonium, which is used for making nuclear bombs.

It is time to stop the insanity of calling for ever more nuclear power plants.

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

The Coming Nuclear Death Spiral

2009-06-02T20:31:00.001-07:00

I have written several times before on the nuclear death spiral, and will add to that in this posting.

This will likely fall under the California attorney solicitation rules, so I state here at the outset that THIS MAY BE A SOLICITATION. I ask readers near the end of this piece to contact me for assistance in obtaining relief from the nuclear death spiral effects, by obtaining permits and financial assistance with installing self-generation systems.

NUCLEAR DEATH SPIRAL

The nuclear death spiral is a phenomenon whereby utilities build nuclear power plants, raise power prices, customers find a way to self-generate and go off the grid, and the utility increases power prices yet again.

The nuclear death spiral is the result of utilities in the U.S. building nuclear fission power plants, of which 104 plants are in operation as of today (June 2, 2009). Contrary to the overly-optimistic projections of nuclear proponents, the power plants cost far more than estimated, sometimes by a factor of 5 or more. Yes, nuclear power plants that were promised to cost only $900 million were finally started up years after a cost of more than $5 billion. Most were many years behind schedule. Building a nuclear power plant is the first step in the nuclear death spiral.

The power price after starting up those out-of-control nuclear power plants, charged to customers to recoup the investment, went up and up. Raising the power prices to customers is the second step in the nuclear death spiral.

The consequence of rapidly increasing power prices is that customers look for alternatives, rather than paying the exorbitant price to the utility. Many customers, especially industrial and large commercial customers, have the ability to identify alternatives, and the financial resources to implement alternatives. And so they did. High electric prices create a financial incentive to install cogeneration of various forms, including gas-fired gas turbines connected to generators, and process heat steam generators to drive steam turbines connected to generators. At one time in my career, I was one of those who evaluated self-generation alternatives and designed and built a few. The result of building a self-generation plant is that the utility no longer sells power to that customer, or at least as much power as before. This is the third step, reducing a utility's power sales.

When fewer kWhrs of electric power are sold by the utility, the utility sees less revenue. This is intolerable, so the utility seeks a rate increase from the Public Utility Commission, or other rate-making agency, to maintain the revenue stream. This is the fourth step in the nuclear death spiral.

The PUC then grants the rate increase, (the fifth step), and now more customers see an economic advantage in pulling the plug on the utility, and installing their own generating plant. The cycle continues, spiraling downward until the utility is selling power at a very high price, and customers no longer have opportunities to generate their own power.

The net effect of the nuclear death spiral, in the past, was to unfairly burden those who could not afford to purchase a self-generation system. These included the poor, the elderly on fixed incomes, and those families and persons just struggling to get by month to month. The nuclear death spiral with the very high power prices forced some into making a horrible choice between paying for electricity, or for rent, or for food, or for medications. The nuclear power industry is and was directly responsible for those hardships endured by so many, many people.

In this modern day, the situation is different. Those who want to and plan to build new nuclear power plants in the U.S. should be aware of what is facing them. If more of the very high-cost nuclear power plants are built in the U.S., the nuclear death spiral will occur again, but the outcome will be somewhat different this time.

SELF GENERATION (Distributed Generation)

When the nuclear death spiral occurred in the 1980's and 1990's, technology did not exist in as many forms as exist today for self-generation. Large industries, such as refineries, chemical plants, and petrochemical plants, could and did install cogeneration facilities of substantial size and great expense.

Today, a customer can install, and in many states is encouraged to install, solar PV, solar thermal, small wind turbines, large wind turbines, geothermal, bio-gas, landfill gas, power from municipal solid waste, small hydroelectric, and natural gas-fired small turbines or micro-turbines. Other technologies will surely be developed or invented as the years pass. Offshore technologies such as wave and tidal power, or ocean current, and run-of-the-river systems will be options very soon.

Solar PV uses solar cells in flat panels, usually mounted on a building roof or parking lot, to produce electricity from sunlight. The electricity is converted appropriately and safely into useable power for the home or building, such that the customer buys less power from the utility. The incentive is great in some areas, where a utility charges more for each increment of power that is used. For example, the utility may charge 15 cents per kWh for a base amount of power, 20 cents for power from 100 percent of the base up to 200 percent of the base, and 25 cents for power in excess of 200 percent of the base. It does not require many years for a solar PV system to pay for itself with government financial assistance and avoided power costs of 25 cents per kWh.

Solar thermal uses a reflecting collector to concentrate the sun's rays onto a thin pipe that carries a liquid, usually a special oil. The hot oil then boils water into steam, and the steam spins a turbine connected to a generator. Hot oil from solar thermal also provides heat to a thermal refrigeration plant to provide air conditioning instead of running an electric air conditioner.

Small wind turbines allow the homeowner or business to generate power from the wind. Much like the solar PV, there are appropriate electronics to convert the wind-generator's power into power for the home or business. This reduces the amount of power purchased from the utility, with the same incentives as described earlier.

Large wind turbines are appropriate for a customer with more land, where the wind turbines generate power for sale to the utility, thus offsetting power purchased by the customer.

Geothermal uses heat from wells deep in the earth to boil water that is pumped into the wells, producing steam that is used to spin turbines. An alternative is to use hot water from the geothermal wells to boil an organic liquid such that the vapor spins a turbine connected to a generator. An electric customer can invest in, or build itself, a geothermal power plant, and thus sell power to the utility. The power sales offset his own purchases.

There are various forms of producing natural gas from waste, including bio-gas and landfill gas. One form of bio-gas is the gas collected from manure, such as at dairy farms or cattle feed lots. The natural gas may be sold as is, or burned on-site to produce electric power and reduce purchases from the utility. Landfill gas uses appropriate collector systems to gather gas formed as landfill material decomposes.

Power from municipal solid waste, MSW, may be from burning MSW, or from thermal decomposition, or anaerobic thermal decomposition. The PHREG patent, recently issued to Peter Nick et al, is an example of anaerobic thermal decomposition.

Small hydroelectric generates power from flowing water or small waterfalls. Other applications exist where water flowing in pipes must flow through pressure control valves to reduce otherwise undesirable pressure. This occurs in terrain with hills and valleys.

Small turbines and micro-turbines burn natural gas in an appropriately-sized gas turbine connected to a generator. The exhaust heat is then used to provide hot water. The system reduces the electric power purchased from the utility, but increases the amount of natural gas purchased. A variation on this is to burn the natural gas in a reciprocating engine rather than a micro-turbine.

PERMITS

Various permits are required to install a self-generation system, with regulations that vary according to state and specific location. In general, one must obtain a permit for air emissions, then a land-use permit, then a construction permit based on an approved design. There may be state agencies, county agencies, and city councils, among other entities that issue such approvals.

FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE

Many states now offer financial assistance in various forms for self-generation projects, as does the federal government. Financial assistance may take the form of income tax credits, rebates on the purchase price, or creative financing. In some California cities, a homeowner can obtain a loan from a government-approved lender for the installation cost, then add the loan payment to the homeowner's property tax bill. The concept is that savings on the monthly electric bill will provide sufficient cash to the homeowner to pay for the increased property tax bill.

If installing a self-generation facility of any type sounds attractive, or for more information on a particular set of circumstances, I encourage you to contact me. My background is chemical engineering, where I evaluated dozens of alternative generation projects in industrial and commercial applications. I now use my engineering experience as an attorney to assist and advise clients in completing the steps necessary to see a project through to completion. Sometimes the steps are numerous, confusing, and time-consuming. A knowledgeable attorney and engineer can smooth the process.

CONCLUSION - UTILITIES BEWARE

The next generation of nuclear power plants, if they are installed, will have the result of raising power prices again. This time, though, customers by the millions will have a wide range of choices to install self-generation systems and cut their power consumption from the utility. In sunny areas, there may be solar PV and solar thermal systems installed. In windy areas, there may be small or large wind-turbines installed. In other areas, there may be gas-fired generators installed, or any of the other systems described above.

A utility must surely consider these facts, before setting out to build a new nuclear power plant in the U.S. People are wiser now, and have the tools to protect themselves from the very high power prices that produce the nuclear death spiral.

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

rsowell@resowell-law.com

Marina del Rey, California

STNP New Nuclear Plant Cost

2009-06-02T19:47:00.000-07:00

Another cost estimate for a new nuclear power plant in the U.S. is shown below, with the article here. This cost is an "all in" cost, as opposed to the usual numerical trickery that the nuclear power industry uses, that of "overnight cost." The overnight cost does not include interest during construction, nor does it include escalation for inflation during construction.

This cost estimate is for $10 billion, and is to construct two reactors at 1,350 MW each on the site of the South Texas Nuclear Project, near Victoria, Texas. STNP is the plant that cost five times its original estimate, and resulted in the contractor being dismissed (Brown and Root), and several lawsuits amongst the owners and contractors. One of the owners, the City of Austin, had to scramble to find power for its customers when STNP was delayed year after year after year. Note that City of Austin is NOT a participant in this STNP expansion. They learned their lesson with nuclear.

The article goes on to state that NRG Energy has a partnership with the reactor designer, Toshiba of Japan. Is Toshiba planning to absorb some losses to make this plant expansion come in on budget?

"The cost to build a new nuclear power plant in Texas has risen to $10 billion, up from early estimates, but much below price tags of other proposed U.S. nuclear projects, an executive with NRG Energy Inc's nuclear development arm said on Tuesday [June 2, 2009].

The "all in" cost to build two 1,350-megawatt nuclear reactors in South Texas has risen 40 percent from 2006 estimates which did not include financing costs, Steve Winn, chief executive of Nuclear Innovation North America (NINA), [said]."

It will be quite interesting to follow the progress of this project. Their press quote includes a startup date of 2016 for the first new reactor, following completion of the federal licensing process in late 2011 or early 2012. This will be interesting, too, since that leaves barely 4 years to actually build the plant.

Stay tuned, sports fans. Texans usually ride the bull in the rodeo, and they are about to get taken for another ride. This will provide a fine opportunity for Texans, a smart group, to say "No, Thanks" to the outrageous power prices that result from this nuclear power plant, and switch to self-generation, distributed generation, or cogeneration as they choose. This is worth an entire post in itself, based on the nuclear death spiral. Nuclear is now competing with distributed generation via solar PV, solar thermal, small wind, large wind, bio-gas, landfill gas, power obtained from municipal solid waste, small or micro-turbines based on natural gas, and a few more that my clients and I are developing but cannot yet disclose for various reasons.

My prediction, if the STNP expansion does receive approval for its Construction and Operating License, COL, for the all-in cost for two reactors is $30 billion in 2009 dollars. First reactor startup will be no earlier than 2020, with the second reactor no earlier than 2024.

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

Wind Map of USA

2009-06-01T10:57:00.000-07:00

A U.S. map that shows wind direction and speed, updated hourly (apparently) is available at this website.

This is fascinating, if accurate. This is a good first step in making wind-power more reliable. Another step is the use of neural networks with wind-speed indicators to more accurately predict the timing of wind and gusts so that power fluctuations are reduced.

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

California Energy and Renewables

2009-05-30T19:38:00.000-07:00

What follows is a response I made to a commenter on WUWT, whose handle is Fuelmaker, regarding renewable energy systems. As my two regular readers will recall, I work to develop cost-effective, grid-scale energy storage systems so that intermittent renewable power systems can provide reliable, on-demand, baseload or incremental power.

Fuelmaker wrote: "This is my sole, but overwhelming disagreement with Roger. The policies he supports has destroyed least cost planning in CA and has burdened the lower class with boutique and obsolete electricity sources. CA has passed law after law practically banning the most economical sources of power. They bungled “generation deregulation” so badly that they bankrupted their utilities. On top of that, they have forced all ratepayers to buy more expensive favored sources of power."

[And now my response:] Fuelmaker, I appreciate the points you made. Policies in California are almost always screwy. However, the bottom line is that electric power prices in California are not that bad, compared to the other 49 states. Our power prices are around 20 to 30 percent above the national average, yet our per-capita consumption of power is about the same percentage less than average. I believe I gave a citation for these facts earlier in this thread. California does not have the highest prices in the U.S.; it is about 11th out of 50.

Now, could the power prices be lower, with different policies? Perhaps. As I stated earlier, I work diligently to repeal AB 32, our Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, because I am convinced the law is detrimental, and will kill the economy. I have only so much energy and time with which to wage my battles, as do we all.

The policies I support re power production are, of necessity, consistent with the avenues that remain open to Californians. Without major legislative changes, those avenues are all we have. The electorate in California, sadly in my view, is not disposed to either A) elect representatives to change those policies, or B) vote via Propositions to change those polices. Only when those policies hit the electorate in the pocketbook, and even then it must be a hard hit, will the electorate rouse themselves and vote. A good power crisis does the trick in Sacramento, too.

The recent cool "weather" (or should I say, cooling climate?) during the past 2 or 3 years has not created a heat-wave-related power emergency, and meanwhile we have built some new gas-fired power plants for a margin of safety. But, if we were to have a prolonged heat wave, coincident with a drought so there is little water available for hydroelectric generation, this place is in serious trouble. If the climate realists are correct, we are due for around 20 years of continued cooling, so an electricity shortage is not likely. If Hansen et al are correct, we should have a block-buster shortage and perhaps things will be changed on the legal front.

The avenues that are presently available to us in this state are few, but include natural gas, and renewables of all types. Natural gas plants meet with fierce opposition due to the NOx emissions, which are capped-and-traded out here, also NIMBY-ism, and charges of Environmental Justice (lower income neighborhoods tend to be where power plants are sited).

Therefore, it makes little sense to argue for coal-fired power in California, nor for nuclear power, nor for oil-burning power plants. Our few windy locations are about built-out, and there are only three of them. Our hydroelectric sites are known, and built up, plus there is horrendous opposition to any more dams out here. So, where does that leave us? With solar in the desert. With wind offshore. With wave, also off-shore. With bio-gas and solid waste burning plants. With geothermal. Offshore power plants require unbelievable environmental scrutiny, and to reach the really good waves/winds, one must go through the U.S. MMS, who has only just now begun to think about issuing leases for these areas. Also, the ocean here is too cold for an OTEC system.

Meanwhile, the population increases, and (at least until recently) so does the economy. Our electrical demand grows with both of those factors. We are in a tight race out here, to do what we can to provide electric power, given the constraints we face. My associates and clients are working non-stop to develop, invent, devise, improve, or otherwise cobble together something that generates power where and when it is needed.

In all seriousness, if any readers see a solution to the situation I have outlined, I would love to hear it!

(I know, I know, we could all turn off our jacuzzis and save 20 percent right there...we could shut down all the floodlights and tv cameras at the Oscars and save another 20 percent...but wait, we already use 20 percent less per capita than the U.S. average!)

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

Weekly Petroleum Analysis

2009-05-20T13:40:00.000-07:00

As I predicted earlier, demand for petroleum products continues to decline in the U.S. Here is an excerpt from the latest EIA release (Wednesday 5/20/09).

"Total products supplied over the last four-week period has averaged nearly 18.3 million barrels per day, down by 7.6 percent compared to the similar period last year. Over the last four weeks, motor gasoline demand has averaged about 9.1 million barrels per day, down by 1.2 percent from the same period last year.

Distillate fuel demand has averaged 3.5 million barrels per day over the last four weeks, down by 12.0 percent from the same period last year. Jet fuel demand is 9.0 percent lower over the last four weeks compared to the same four-week period last year."

We are nearly into the summer driving season, with Memorial Day weekend only 2 days away.  Last summer (2008) saw declines in gasoline use due to very high prices, and this year sees an additional decline due to economic recession.

These statistics have many ramifications for the economy, jobs, housing, tax revenues, demographics, and more.  The global oil market watches these figures closely, because the U.S. consumes roughly one-fourth of all petroleum produced in the world.  The price of oil is affected, at least partly, by the U.S. demand.

Oil refiners are watching these numbers, too.  Of the roughly 142 refineries in the U.S., obviously some are more profitable than others.  The least profitable refineries are the ones most affected by low product demand.  Decisions to remain in operation, or to shut down are greatly impacted by these numbers.

Decisions by refiners to invest in capacity expansions or processing upgrades are also affected by these numbers.  There are a few major expansion projects underway, but the completion dates are under review.  With a surplus of refining capacity in the U.S. due to decreased demand, product imports are reduced, thereby affecting foreign refineries.

Last year (2008), saw diesel demand remain strong but now diesel has declined along with gasoline.  Jet fuel demand decline is reflected in reduced airline ticket sales, as fewer people are flying.  That should provide some relief to the long lines at airport security checkpoints.

The government's radical policies of flooding the economy with printed dollars, dictating which companies survive and which fail, draconian new CAFE (car mileage) standards that will require massive investments in new plant - yet questionable sales, and CO2 regulations that further strangle the economy (as currently the law in California, perhaps soon to be the U.S. law), all contribute to the further decline in the economy.  One need only look at the falling demand for three products to know the government's policies are failures:

Gasoline demand is down, even over last year which was already down;

Distillate demand(primarily diesel fuel used in commerce, e.g. trucks) is down;  and

Jet fuel demand is down.

No matter how much spin or squirming or flat out lies the government spews forth, these three products tell the tale.

There is no economic recovery underway in the U.S.   If and when one begins, these numbers will resume their upward climb.

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

Is Nuclear Fusion the Answer

2009-05-18T22:26:00.000-07:00

I was asked on another site why I advocate renewable energy forms such as wind, and solar, rather than research into nuclear fusion. The point was made that diffuse energy sources (wind and solar) require vast transmission lines that are ugly and ruin the landscape. I replied that I am a rational environmentalist, and completely enjoy the outdoors. Few things are as refreshing as hiking and camping through the High Sierras or sailing the high seas.

But as an engineer, I am also aware that the benefits of abundant energy are worth the costs of having it. Economies of scale dictate that power lines will be built to bring the power from the large generating plant to the consumer. Distributed generation, as that term is now used, reduces the need for power lines because the power is generated either on-site, or much closer to the consumer. Cogeneration in industrial facilities also reduces the need for transmission lines. The realities of solar and wind power require some transmission lines to collect and send the power to the consumers.

One could also argue that telephone poles across the land are a blight, yet for decades that was (and still is) the case, just so consumers could use telephones rather than wait for snail mail for communication. Roads, highways, bridges, railroads, ports, cities, all are useful yet change the natural landscape.

As for nuclear fusion, it has been a long while since I looked into the state of that art (early 1980’s). There seem to be insurmountable difficulties in finding materials of construction that will not melt or evaporate at the very high temperatures obtained in a fusion reaction. Magnetic pinch bottles were used, and perhaps still are, to squeeze plasma until it begins the fusion process. Even if that fusion process is someday sustainable (they were thrilled at achieving fusion temperature for a fraction of a second), melt-down is a very real problem.

There were two fundamental problems to overcome, the first being how to sustain the fusion reaction, the second how to keep the thing from melting. Sustaining the fusion reaction required a magnetic bottle with an inlet for fresh fuel, and an outlet for the reaction products. The nature of a magnetic bottle does not allow for inlets or outlets, at least at that time. There may have been advances since then, I do not know.

Then, finding a way to do something useful with the heat without melting the reactor is a bit of a problem. The materials science professors and researchers were having quite a bit of difficulty with that one. It had something to do with the energy of inter-atomic bonding, under which everything they tried disintegrated at those temperatures.

It is a very good thing that the sun is so very far away from Earth.

Therefore, unless some amazing breakthroughs in magnetic bottles and heat-resistant materials have occurred, or will occur, fusion is off the list of energy providers.

We (the engineers) are much closer to having renewable energy storage systems that work reliably and economically. At that point, wind, solar, wave, and ocean current energy will provide everlasting, cheap, reliable power. And that is a very good thing.

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

Unseasonable Frost Alert

2009-05-17T01:49:00.000-07:00

UPDATE 4: June 4, 2009

Well now, isn't this interesting! We are to have SNOW in June in the Sierras centered on Lake Tahoe, as seen in the map below. The blue area in northern California is under a snow watch. Who wants to bet that this will be front-page news across the country on main-stream media? California legislators need to be aware of this as they continue writing the AB 32 regulations, which are predicated on a disappearing snowpack due to global warming.

June 4, 2009: THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IN SACRAMENTO [California] HAS ISSUED A WINTER

WEATHER ADVISORY FOR SNOW ABOVE 7500 FEET FOR THE WESTERN SLOPES

OF THE NORTHERN SIERRA NEVADA AND LASSEN VOLCANIC NATIONAL

PARK...WHICH IS IN EFFECT FROM 6 AM TO 9 PM PDT FRIDAY.

THE LOW PRESSURE AREA THAT HAS BEEN IMPACTING OUR WEATHER FOR THE

LAST FEW DAYS WILL MOVE INLAND ON FRIDAY. AS THE SYSTEM MOVES

INLAND SNOW LEVELS WILL LOWER TO AROUND 7500 FEET FRIDAY MORNING

WITH LOCALLY LOWER SNOW LEVELS. THE HEAVIEST PERIOD OF SNOW IS

EXPECTED FRIDAY MORNING WHEN AN AREA OF ENHANCED PRECIPITATION IS

EXPECTED TO DEVELOP OVER THE WESTERN SLOPES. THROUGH FRIDAY

EVENING 4 TO 7 INCHES OF SNOW IS LIKELY ABOVE 7500 FEET WITH

LOCALLY HIGHER AMOUNTS. THE SNOW IS EXPECTED TO DECREASE IN

INTENSITY FRIDAY EVENING.

UPDATE 3: May 31, 2009 -- This blogspot-blogger seems to append new images to the top, so I will go along and place the updates up here, too. Kind of confusing, but so be it.

The map shown below, from NOAA, shows a band of snow between the Great Lakes and Hudson's Bay. Is this at all unusual? Is this merely to be expected as the climate becomes warmer and warmer? After all, tomorrow is June 1st! Hot time, summer in the city, surf's up, tank tops and hot pants, and all that, right?

ORIGINAL POST:

"Unseasonable frost" is forecast for Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Ohio for late Sunday night and early Monday morning. Temperatures in the low 30's will pose a danger to outdoor plants.

Hmmmm....where is this consistent with all the Global Warming that is supposed to be killing us all? All that CO2 in the sky, put there by those evil coal-burning power plants, (death trains, as James Hansen calls the coal-trains running to those power plants), what has happened to the CO2 and the warming it is supposed to cause?

A knowledgeable climate realist, KCR, takes actual observations and compares them to the dire predictions from the IPCC, Al Gore, James Hansen, and the rest of the AGW crowd. Looks like they blew it on this one. As usual. Temperatures are not increasing. Seas are not rising, in fact, they are falling off the west coast of North America. Snow and record cold temperatures occurred in great numbers this past winter. Sea surface temperatures are dropping. Glaciers in Alaska are advancing. Polar ice caps are at either normal, or above-normal levels (if a 30-year recent average is "normal.") Polar bear populations are increasing. No islands are inundated with sea water. And sunspots are at a very low point, as they were during each recent global cooling event such as the Little Ice Age.

Maybe when we get snow in July, will that be sufficient for governments to say enough is enough? Frost in the middle of May is a pretty good start.

UPDATE 1: (May 29, 2009)

The blue areas around Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and New York are forecasts for freezing temperatures.

URGENT - WEATHER MESSAGE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE MARQUETTE MI  (Michigan)

359 AM EDT SAT MAY 30 2009  ...SUB-FREEZING TEMPERATURES POSSIBLE SATURDAY NIGHT...

  .HIGH PRESSURE...CLEAR SKIES...AND DIMINISHING WINDS WILL ALLOW

TEMPERATURES TO FALL BELOW FREEZING AWAY FROM THE GREAT LAKES

DURING THE EARLY MORNING HOURS ON SUNDAY. A HARD FREEZE...WITH

 TEMPERATURES FALLING INTO THE 20S...IS MOSTLY LIKELY OVER INTERIOR

SECTIONS OF THE WEST HALF OF UPPER MICHIGAN.  (temperatures given in Degrees F)

The NWS goes on to say that this freeze will kill crops.

This is not good for any farmers in that area.

This is also not good, if this is to be the norm.  I am not familiar with

the weather patterns in upper Michigan, so maybe this is normal for there.

Or, maybe they farmers can quit selling wheat (or whatever they grow) and

go into the snow-cone business.

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

Nuclear Weapon Complacency

2009-05-16T22:00:00.000-07:00

This got started on WUWT following a very nice commencement speech on the realities of energy supply, and how natural gas is a large part of the answer. Some (as usual, there are always some) responded that nuclear power plants should be built to meet the world’s energy needs. I responded as shown below, and some interesting commentary followed.

What floored me was the complete disregard from one commenter on the danger of nuclear bombs. He apparently believes that because none have been used since 1945 (he puts that at 70 years ago), then it is a non-problem. I grew up in the 1950's and 60's, and have a different view of this. Nuclear bombs are a reality, and a serious problem. This problem grows worse each year, as more and more bombs are built, and more unstable countries acquire them.

I reproduce this here, along with my additional comments as noted in brackets [ ~RES ].

@doc-navy, George E. Smith, and others pro-nuclear:

Nuclear power is not safe. It is not affordable. It is not reliable. It is not the answer to increasing energy demands.

See http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/nuclear-nuts.html

The nuclear industry spokesmen have misled the public for decades. Recently, GE stated their Mod III reactor plants would only cost $1 billion for a 1000 MW plant. False. They cost $8 to $10 billion. This is well-documented.

They state that power from a nuclear plant is the cheapest of all sources. False. That statement includes the cost only from variable costs such as fuel. Yet on the same basis, hydroelectric, solar, wind, geothermal, and wave power are much cheaper. Nothing is cheaper than free. On a fully-costed basis, including capital charges, nuclear power must be sold for 30 to 40 cents per kwh. That does not look very cheap next to power from natural gas at 10 to 12 cents per kwh.

They state that France produces 80 percent of their power from nuclear, and sell it for 5 cents per kwh. True, but very misleading, as France subsidizes their nuclear power industry. France also must sell huge amounts of power to neighboring countries each night as their reactors “react” badly to sudden changes in power production.

No natural gas power plant’s waste materials ever were used to make a bomb. CO2, NOx, and H2O just do not make bombs. If nuclear power plants were so benign, why do so many countries have so much angst and heartburn over certain other countries building and running nuclear power plants (Iran, North Korea).

I could go on and on. Nuclear power is not the way to go. Our generation knows better. Our generation can do better. Future generations will not thank us for creating a legacy of toxic radioactive wastes for them to deal with.

[David Porter wrote: ~RES]

“Roger, as a spectator here (lurker I believe is the term) you have made the point on several occasions that the French nuclear industry is subsidised. I would like to know where you get this information from because this is not my understanding. “

From EDF’s website “On April 8, 1946, the law nationalising 1450 French electricity and gas generation, transmission and distribution companies gave birth to the industrial and commercial public undertaking (EPIC) Electricité De France, an enterprise with an innovative corporate model: gender equality, single salary scale, internal training etc. Marcel Paul, the Communist minister of Industrial Production, was the main architect of this law.” From this can be seen that the French electric utility was state-owned. France built their nukes while in the state-owned mode.

The EDF website is here:

http://group.edf.com/the-edf-group/presentation-of-the-group/profile/history/1946-1962-95139.html

However, in 2004 EDF became public: “On July 1, 2004, 70% of the electricity market was opened up to competition. On November 19, EDF changed status and became a Public Limited Company. This new status created new opportunities for EDF by making it possible to create multi-energy offers combining the supply of gas and electricity.

In 2005, EDF signed a new public service contract with the French Government on October 24, and on November 21 the Initial Public Offering took EDF into the Stock Market, with 5 million private individuals taking the opportunity to buy shares. Between 2006 and 2010, EDF Group will be investing €40 billion in the context of the total opening up of the electricity market, which takes place on July 1, 2007.”

“In fact from what I have read the French nuclear industry is highly profitable and safe.”

At this time, with the nuclear power plants depreciated or nearly paid for by some mix of revenue from power sales, plus subsidies as a government-run entity, EDF can state that the power plants are profitable. With no cash payments to banks to repay loans, or bond payments to bondholders, their profit/loss statements merely indicate ongoing operating costs. On that basis, nuclear power plants (and the company that owns them) will appear profitable.

This is one result of the nationalization – then – privatization maneuver. Entities that would not be built in the private sector due to very high initial costs are built by the government, with no (or very lax) requirements to control costs. Then, these entities are sold to private investors at a fraction of what it would cost to construct them.

“At 1993 costs these reactors ( 59 of them) cost $1 billion/1000MW. Now you imply that this will now be 10 times this.”

I don’t imply it, I flatly state it as a fact. A detailed (and very accurate) cost study was published by Craig A. Severance, CPA, which shows the costs are as I stated, $10,000 per MW. I have some expertise in designing, estimating, and financing large projects (multi-billion dollars) and concur with Mr. Severance’s results. Also, several utility companies have submitted similar cost estimates to their regulating Public Utility Commissions.

see http://energyguysmusings.blogspot.com/2009/02/nuclear-power-costs-2008.html

and see http://sowellslawblog.blogspot.com/2009/04/nuclear-plant-cancelled-in-missouri.html

“These 59 reactors produce 430 billion KWhrs which they sell for around 7 cents/KW. So if they do subsidise and your fully costed figure of 30 to 40 cents is correct then using your low figure of 30 cents the subsidy would be 23 cents on 430 billion Kwhrs. This comes to a grand annual total of $99 billion and that is just so unrealistic.”

I doubt if France’s power plants were built at $10,000 per MW, as those are 2007 costs. It is more likely their plants cost between $2000 and $4000 per MW in then-current dollars. However, a modern, new nuclear plant will cost $10,000 per MW. Although the Chinese are claiming they are building nuclear plants for around half that price. I question their (the Chinese) numbers.

Next, leaving aside the irrefutable facts that nuclear bombs are made from nuclear plants’ spent fuel, and the spent fuel is a toxic, radioactive waste that endures for generations, why would anyone want to build electric power plants that must charge 30 to 40 cents for the power, when so many less-expensive alternatives abound?

[Here, Bill Befort makes the point that if a country has 90 percent of its power from nuclear plants, over a 30 year period, and sells the power cheaply for 7 cents per kwh, that proves that nuclear power is the best and lowest price option. – he is referring to France, of course. – RES]

[My response to Bill Befort: ~RES]

Great idea! How about finding an island, say, one that has a demand during peak hours of 1,000 MW? That would be a perfect fit for a 1000 MW nuclear power plant. GE has them ready to sell, just place a phone call.

Then, ask the islanders why they have not built just one solitary nuclear power plant, as that is “obviously” the most economic source of power? Surely, it will be less costly than importing diesel fuel for diesel-generators, or importing LNG for natural-gas fired power plants. Or importing coal, if that is what they are using…

Does anyone know of such an island?

Here’s your chance, greenies and nuclear advocates. Show me the island. I am willing to learn. Let’s help these islanders obtain the “cheapest source of power there is.” After all, that is the prevailing wisdom from the pro-nuclear crowd!

Only a couple of rules, here. First, the islanders must pay for the nuclear-generated power. No subsidies allowed. Second, no selling any power to any other customers. All power is to be consumed strictly on the island.

I can’t wait for this one.

[It turns out there are currently approximately 15 islands that meet the above criteria, with Oahu in the Hawaiian Island chains prominent among them. The entire list is, by estimated population (and hence power demand):

Island ……………….population, millions

Okinawa…………………1.25

Mauritius………………...1.245

Bohol…………………….1.23

Hong Kong……………….1.18

Mindoro…………………..1.16

Xiamen Island…………….1.08

Sao Luis Island……………1.08

Trinidad…………………...1.03

South Island (NZ)…………1.008

Oahu……………………….0.876

Tenerife……………………0.865

Cyprus……………………..0.855

Grand Canary……………...0.815

Majorca……………………0.814

Reunion (France)………….0.793

Note that none of the listed islands has power provided by a nuclear power plant. This is rather curious, as it should be obvious to the nuclear proponents that these are ideal candidates for a solo, single-reactor nuclear power plant. After all, these unfortunate islanders are paying some of the highest prices for power in the world – Hawaii residents pay 26 cents per kwh in 2009, as just one example. Following France’s example, one could build a nuclear power plant on Oahu, and sell the power for 7 cents per kwh (all this according to the nuclear proponents, of course – not my view at all). The lucky residents of Oahu would see their utility bills drop by a factor of almost 4! (26 / 7 is roughly 3. 7)

It is curious, because I just do not read anywhere about nuclear power plants under construction on any of these islands, nor any plans to do so. Why is that, one must ask? Perhaps a nuclear proponent can correct this serious injustice, or just explain it to me.

For anyone reading this who, at this point, believes I am serious about building a nuclear power plant on an island, let me explain why that will not happen. First, an island’s power system follows a typical demand curve, with high demand during the day and low demand at night. The power plants must follow the demand curve, as at this time it is impractical (but not impossible) to store power in massive quantities for later use. Nuclear power plants just do not have the ability to follow the load. Second, as I have written many times, the power from a new nuclear plant is very expensive, at 30 to 40 cents per kwh. Even Oahuans, who pay 26 cents for power, would not find that an attractive deal. Third, many islanders are serious about their environment, and abhor nuclear fission in any form. I like islanders, and become one (at least as a visitor) as often as possible. ~RES]

[Next, this from David Porter again: ~RES]

“I have read your through your response several times but nowhere do I read that the French nuclear industry was subsidised. It seems to me that you have this opinion simply because it was a nationalised industry it must therefore be subsidised. My impression of nationalised utility industries is that they were labour intensive an incredibly inefficient.”

Let’s start with how a country operates a nationalized industry. I do not know what country you are from, or in presently, so I will use the United States as an example. There are very few nationalized industries in the U.S., but we can point to an equivalent, the interstate highway system. These highways were built using federal dollars, at taxpayer expense, then some fees were and still are collected from those who drive on them. More fees are collected in the form of gasoline taxes that are designed to pay for repairs and upkeep. (I leave aside for the moment the increasing ownership and involvement of the U.S. federal government under President Obama into banks, car companies, and who knows what next).

The construction of the interstate highways, in contrast to private toll-roads, was paid for by taxes without obtaining investors or bank loans. To the extent the federal government sold Treasury bills and went into debt, one could say these roads were financed, however there was no clear one-for-one loan for highway. One could therefore say, and be correct, that the state subsidized the building of the interstate highway system. Clearly, they were not built with private funds (except for some small tollroads).

Similarly, the French government (as shown above) built nuclear power plants when EDF was a part of the state. Whatever amount of taxpayer’s funds were spent, they were not built privately to my knowledge. Now, the French government has privatized EDF, as described earlier. When the government builds something for a lot of money, then sells that same something for a small amount, the new owners have a capital asset that was, indeed, subsidized by the government.

If you can find evidence to the contrary, perhaps the French government took out loans to fund the plants’ construction, and paid them back, or issued bonds for their construction, and paid the coupons and the face value upon maturity, then please, I would like to see this.

Or, if the French government sold the EDF assets for fair market value, then please, show me the evidence of such a sale and the resulting cash deposit into the French treasury.

” I think you are so anti nuclear you believe anything negative about this industry. Your comments and opinions on a recent “climate progress” blog debating the exaggerated costing of Craig Severance illustrate my point admirably.”

[I jump in here to explain that reference to “climate progress,” as I made some comments on that blog where Craig Severance’s paper may be found. I had several lively exchanges, and made zero converts as to be expected. None of the arguments raised against me hold any merit, but it was entertaining, at least for me. ~RES ]

[My reply to David Porter continues: ] I state my grounds for being opposed to nuclear power, and I try to carefully research the various claims pro and con by and about the industry. If you have read my blog post on Nuclear Nuts, then you should be aware of my grounds. To date, no-one has refuted any of my points. None.

As to the “exaggerated” costs stated by Mr. Severance, that is your opinion, and apparently, you are standing alone with that view. Serious players in major utility corporations have publicly corroborated those costs. By public statements, I refer to submissions to public utility commissions. If those costs were exaggerated, as you maintain, why would a utility company not just tell the PUC the real numbers, perhaps $1 billion for a 1000 MW new plant? Why are so many utility companies going with the Severance figures?

Next, you take issue with my statement about high power prices, but you duck that one and go into apocalyptic consequences of nuclear bombs. I clearly stated I would leave that aside, but I will answer this since you focus on this point.

I wrote: “Next, leaving aside the irrefutable facts that nuclear bombs are made from nuclear plants’ spent fuel, and the spent fuel is a toxic, radioactive waste that endures for generations, why would anyone want to build electric power plants that must charge 30 to 40 cents for the power, when so many less-expensive alternatives abound? “

[Porter responded:]“When was the first and last nuclear bombs dropped? Who and how many people have been killed, maimed, destroyed, liquidated, evaporated, due to nuclear power since 1946. If you don’t mind me saying so but you have a fear of nuclear power some 70 years after the two and only nuclear bomb were dropped that is irrational. If it is such a great threat why is it still only in the minds of people like you. You have mentioned many times that you have worked in the energy industry, including nuclear, and yet you continue to shower us with apocalyptic views, which would only make sense if we were in the 1950’s.”

I am dumbfounded at this. Nuclear bombs, the proliferation of them, and threat of nuclear war are not subjects to gloss over so lightly. Yes, only two such bombs (and they were very small ones by today’s standards) were ever used in a military or aggressive manner. And yes, they were used roughly 60 years ago (not 70). Since then, the number of nuclear warheads worldwide has grown rather alarmingly. While there have been some efforts to reduce the numbers, there are still a great many remaining.

If this were not such a great issue, why then did (and some still do) heads of state make nuclear arms treaties and disarmament such major items in their agendas?

Let me try to put this in some perspective for you. The horrific terrorist attacks on New York, and the Pentagon, on 9-11-2001 resulted in two skyscrapers destroyed, the Pentagon damaged, and approximately 3,000 lives lost. Yet, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki nuclear bombs wiped out far, far more lives and caused far more property damage. Remember, those were very small explosions by today’s standards.

The disruption to not just the USA, but much of the world as a result was, to say the least, intense. One can only imagine what the resulting panic would be from a nuclear bomb explosion instead of airplanes smacking skyscrapers.

You may not know, or remember, what it was like to live in the U.S. and have nuclear air raid drills, or to watch the news and listen to the radio while President Kennedy navigated through the Cuban Missile Crisis. I know, and I remember only too well. I suspect that many European countries have and had similar anxieties knowing that various missile systems were and are deployed near them.

This is the problem with so many decades of relative peace, with respect to nuclear weapons. People (and I include you in this) diminish the importance and the threat and horror of these weapons. I believe that those groups that maintain the memory of the Jewish holocaust, and never let that memory die, have the right idea. Such a program should exist for the horrors of a nuclear weapon.

This is far too important to be dismissed lightly, as if this is all a big game. I have serious concerns about nuclear power plants, not only for their outrageous costs and subsequent high prices for power, but because those plants produce plutonium.

I pose the question directly to you: If this is no big deal, then why do so many countries devote so much time, money, and energy in dealing with nuclear power and associated programs in Iran, and North Korea?

You state that nuclear power is safe, and you are of course entitled to that view. You accuse me of being a fear monger. If you consider what I write fear mongering, you have that right. I leave it to others to judge. I, on the other hand, try very hard to stick to the facts, to the evidence, and valid arguments based on those facts and evidence.

As it turns out, the high price of nuclear power plant construction appears to have stopped the plants, for now, in the U.S. However, our government has pledged at least some money as loan guarantees, which is a form of subsidy.

My clients and I are working as hard as possible to bring reliable renewable power at a lower price than nuclear. When that day arrives, we can finally begin dismantling them, hopefully world-wide.

As the bumper stickers said in the 1960’s: One Nuclear Bomb Can Ruin Your Entire Day.

[Next, David Porter says this: ~RES]

“I have heard all your arguments before so your this diatribe does not come as any great surprise. However I stick with my view that you are wrong on nuclear, for whatever reason.

I would certainly hate to have your imagination. It must frighten you to death. And by the way I live in the UK directly in the line of fire, sitting next to the Trident warheads on your US airforce bases. So please don’t give me any crap about how dangerous they are. For most of us they were there for our protection and since there has never been another bomb dropped you might say they were highly successful.

I will end on this:

“As the bumper stickers said in the 1960’s: One Nuclear Bomb Can Ruin Your Entire Day.”

That statement speaks volumes. You are just out and out anti nuclear and you sure as hell aint going to change your mind.”

[David Porter is absolutely correct, that I am anti-nuclear, and will likely never change my mind. I have seen too many negative issues with nuclear power plants, and too many negative consequences, and know full well that other sources of power are far superior. No arguments that I have ever heard or read, thus far, have altered my position. The day that nuclear plants can stand alone and compete with natural gas for sales price of power (and they never will), and will not produce nuclear bomb material (and they never will), and not require massive decommissioning costs (and they never will), and not require time measured in generations to store and then process their spent fuel wastes (and they never will), when that day arrives, please let me know. I will be happy to endorse nuclear power at that time. ~RES ]

And this, from David Porter:

“I think Bill [an earlier commenter]had it right. We had a rather large country do the experiment so there is no need to consider a small island. The country in question is doing fine. It hasn’t gone bust (which of course it should have done by your calculations) and continues to supply the UK with electricity at less than half the price of our domestic product. Incidentally we pay almost 20 cents for our electricity, something to with the Renewables Obligation Certificate (fancy title for subsidy).

Vive la France.”

[David Porter is either deliberately obtuse, or in massive denial. It should be quite clear that France is selling cheap power only because their power plants were subsidized, and the capital costs are not reflected in their power price. But, for a buyer of power such as David Porter, what would he care? It was the French taxpayers who got screwed in this deal, not him! ~RES ]

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

Musings on Many Things - 1

2009-05-08T17:33:00.000-07:00

From the various things that cross my desk and screen these days, a few are worthy of comment.

++ A huge oil field was just discovered in Iraq, with between 2.3 and 4.2 billion barrels of oil. The figure will be improved as more wells are drilled. This qualifies as an elephant field, and again puts the lie to those who say we have passed the peak of oil. Not so. Never have, never will. Imagine the world as a stack of pancakes, and we have just stuck a fork in the upper layer of the top pancake. Such is our situation with drilling for oil. There are lots of pancakes down deeper, and we have not even begun exploration and drilling there.

++ More natural gas is being liquefied and shipped around the world, so much so that there is a glut of natural gas. The world is swimming in natural gas. More is found almost daily, it seems, in shale formations. Even more is produced from coal beds, known as coal bed methane. The price of natural gas is around $3.5 to $4 per million Btu. On an equivalent basis, a barrel of oil would be $25. So, either natural gas should increase to $8, or oil should drop from around $50 back to around $25. Yet, OPEC is throttling production to prop up prices in the $50 range. They would prefer it be in the $70 to $80 range. As more car owners wise up, and convert their cars to CNG as fuel, the demand for gasoline and diesel will decrease. What a strange turn of events...OPEC countries may go broke, as they cannot raise prices for oil enough to produce the cash flow they must have to support the infrastructure in place. Stay tuned on this one, and watch for massive dis-array within OPEC, as the smaller members cheat and produce more than their quotas.

++ Nuclear power plants are really so expensive that some utilities are abandoning their plans to construct new ones. About time. Who wants to pay 30 and 40 cents per kwh for nuclear power, when we can enjoy reliable, clean, and virtually unlimited power from natural gas, at around 10 cents per kwh?

++ The sun is in a strange mode, at least during modern times. No sunspots. For a long time. In the past, when such a thing happened, the entire earth got cold. Very cold. As in crops failed, snows were very deep, and people suffered greatly. This is completely unpredicted by the Anthropogenic Global Warming hysterics. Also, the oceans are cooling down, as best we can tell from actual measuremens. The AGW folks tell us incessantly that the oceans will heat up, the atmosphere will heat up, and the great ice fields in Greenland and Antarctica will melt. The melted ice will increase the sea level, along with thermal expansion of the oceans as they heat up. The result, they say, is islands under water, cities on the shore inundated, and most of Florida underwater. It is not happening. Sea level is stabilized, the oceans are cooling, and the ice packs are growing. When will the grown ups stand up and tell those ill-behaved AGW alarmists to go to their room?

++ California is having yet another fiscal crisis. This is getting to be more regular than clockwork. The gloom and doom this time is $23 billion shortfall, by July of 2009. Note that we just fixed the $42 billion shortfall in January or February, a mere three or four months ago. How can a state be so mis-managed that it produces a fiscal shortage of $23 billion in only six months (January to July). This is a bit like the Titanic, after striking the iceberg, having the captain tell everyone not to worry, the water is so cold that ice is plugging the hole. Meanwhile, everyone can see the ship is slowly sinking. It is, or should be, obvious to one and all that California is no longer the Golden State. It is the Ship of Borrowing and Sorrowing, instead. Perhaps Obama will bail out the state, again, only this time, attach some serious strings to the money. One such string should be that the state have a balanced budget. No borrowing, ever. None. If the revenue is not there, then cuts in services automatically follow. The state can attempt to increase tax rates, but that is not a wise move. Businesses soon depart to greener pastures, as it were.

++ Meanwhile, California's woes continue as the state pushes ever onward with the Bill that Killed California, AB 32. For those who may not remember, AB 32 is a landmark legislation passed in 2006, and steadily being implemented in all its numerous parts, to choke economic growth in California by imposing limits to carbon emissions. AB 32 is ambitious, as virtually every sector of the economy is impacted. Cars, trucks, fuels, industry, the ports, buildings, land developments, services, electric power generation, all of these and more are being impacted. Recently, the Air Resources Board passed the Low Carbon Fuels Standard, mandating ethanol and bio-diesel for transportation fuel. Never mind that even the Obama EPA, now run by greenies, have themselves stated that ethanol does not clean the air of much, if any, carbon. Never mind that producing ethanol from corn requires huge quantities of fresh water to irrigate the corn. Never mind that water is scarce in California, so the state will import ethanol from the mid-west, using up great quantities of diesel fuel (from petroleum!) to run the trains to bring the ethanol to California. What is truly needed, as I have written elsewhere, is to force every step of the ethanol process to use nothing but ethanol for their fuel. Then, see how much is left over for sale to gasoline stations. And, I mean every step. Farmers tractors for plowing, seeding, cultivating, harvesting, all must burn ethanol. Trucks to haul the corn to corn refineries must burn ethanol. All the fertilizer and pesticide plants must burn ethanol, not natural gas or another fuel. The corn refineries must burn ethanol for any outside fuel purchased. They can burn the corn cobs if they want. Then, the trains must burn ethanol to bring the ethanol to California. Lest anyone say that is not fair, not the way it works, baloney. Oil refineries have done it for decades. And still had plenty of product left over for sale.

++ I love it when one environmental group shoots at another. This week was rich with such shooting. Bio-diesel in California (that land of such fiscal restraint) now cannot be stored in underground tanks, at least not unless it is diluted with petroleum-based diesel. There is a fear that raw bio-diesel will corrode the tank walls, leading to leaks and groundwater contaminaton. So, the state agency in charge of groundwater ruled that this must be stopped while studies are performed. The state agency in charge of air quality, ARB, insists that bio-diesel be used in the state. Hmmm...I suppose they could sue each other. The result is that above-ground storage tanks will be used, but there are space issues in urban settings. Not going to happen. This will be great fun to watch.

++ Los Angeles is modernizing their major airport, LAX. Also known as Los Angeles International Airport. But most people just say LAX. (El Ay Ex) The construction projects must meet ever-increasing pollution requirements, especially for air pollution. Construction vehicles must be equipped with smokestack scrubbers, known as DPFs. DPF stands for Diesel Particulate Filter. The Air Resources Board (here they are again) has a list of about 20 such DPFs from various vendors that ARB has verified are up to the task. These DPFs remove up to 90 percent of the soot from the smokestack, leaving behind a very clean air. These things are expensive, at around $30,000 each. I am waiting for the next set of project specifications to require the diesel equipment to run only on bio-diesel.

++ Last musing for today, and that is for the fire tragedy in Santa Barbara. This latest wildfire has been burning for four days now, and has consumed hundreds of houses and dislocated thousands of people. The numbers grow by the hour. The area is blasted by strong winds, at 50 miles per hour and more. The area is also very rugged, which means mountains that can only be attacked by air for firefighting. The local air temperatures are very hot, and the air is dry, at around 90 degrees F and humidities in the low teens or even lower. All together, this makes for a fire that cannot be stopped. One of the cases in law school comes to mind, from ancient England. When a city was faced with an out-of-control fire, the mayor gave the approval to bulldoze several rows of houses to create a fire-break. One can only wonder at what point the mayor of Santa Barbara does something similar to save the remainder of the city.

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

Sea Level Surprises at Hilo

2009-05-03T19:54:00.000-07:00

While doing research for my comment to EPA on their Proposed Finding that CO2 is a dangerous air pollutant, I ran across some data for sea level in Hawaii, taken at Hilo which is on the Big Island of Hawaii. The data has some surprises, and quite frankly, I am asking for comment and insight from those who have a better understanding than I have.

The first graph below (Figure 1) shows the same time period as does University of Colorado's sea level as measured by satellites. The upward trend is roughly the same as the global average from U. Colorado, which shows 3.3 mm/year. Figure 1 has 2.9 mm/year, or roughly 10 percent lower than the global average. This makes sense to me, as Hawaii is almost in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and very tropical. The ocean there should be warm, and expand along with the Pacific Decadal Oscillation in its warm phase.

Figure 1. Rate of increase 2.9 mm/yr

Figure 2, shown below, has me puzzled, however. This shows the sea level from 1978 through 2002, with an almost zero slope to the trend-line. The very slight downward trend is negative 0.1 mm/year. My puzzlement arises because this time period was reportedly during the warming phase of the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and the ocean water surrounding Hawaii should have been warming, and therefore expanding. The sea level is a function of ocean temperature, according to the climate scientists who incessantly tell us the globe is warming due to man-made CO2 emissions into the atmosphere. How, then, could the sea level at Hilo, Hawaii, not be rising during 23 years? We know that the CO2 in the atmosphere was rising steadily all during that time.

Figure 2. Rate of increase -0.1 mm/yr

Finally, Figure 3 shown below shows the entire record of sea level measured by the University of Hawaii researchers, from 1927 through 2008. The overall trend is positive, with the rate of sea level increasing at 3.2 mm/year. The rather flat trend from 1978 through 2002 is what aroused my curiosity.

Another odd thing about Figure 3 is the increase in sea level from 1945 through 1961. This was the same time period as a cold phase of the PDO.

Figure 3. Rate of increase 3.2 mm/yr

The information on the PDO and its phases is taken from JISAO at the University of Washington. Something just does not add up, at least not to me.

Any comments?

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

Why I Support Renewable Energy

2009-04-30T19:37:00.000-07:00

I was asked recently why I, a former oil company employee, and now an attorney, am so much in favor of renewable energy. Don't I know that renewables are intermittent, unreliable, too expensive, and too dilute to ever replace the fossil fuels?

Waxing a bit philosophical here, but I see many worthy reasons to pursue renewable energy over fossil energy and especially over nuclear energy. Nothing is free, but all products must carry the cost of their raw materials, production, and maintenance. Even a canister of compressed air is not free, yet the raw material (air) is certainly free. Nor is a bottle of spring water free, although the water flows eternally from a spring. Not even hydroelectric power is free, although the rain falls freely from the sky to fill the reservoir behind the dam.

But I disagree with some about using coal, oil, and especially nuclear power. I leave natural gas to the side for the moment. My point is that combustion of fossil fuels is not truly clean, but produces various levels of toxic substances, such as SOx, NOx, soot or particulate matter, and in the case of coal, mercury, plus ash that contains solid toxics. I also have written about this elsewhere on this blog, and hope to see the day when all our energy needs are provided by clean renewable sources such as hydroelectric, wind, solar, wave, ocean thermal, and ocean current, and possibly geothermal.

I foresee a day when oil can and will be used exclusively for high-value purposes such as petrochemicals, pharmaceuticals, lubrication, and asphalt. When that day comes, oil will drop in price due to low demand, and pharmaceuticals will also drop at least somewhat in price. Lower prices for medical drugs are good for society. The world political balance will shift dramatically, and some of the current tensions will ease. Transportation will be petroleum-free, as electric vehicles and hydrogen from electrolysis will provide motive power.

As for nuclear power, in my view, it is now completely uneconomic, unnecessary, and should be forever banned. That should be the goal of every country, and any world-wide body such as the U.N. I am encouraged each time I read that another planned nuclear power plant is cancelled due to inability to obtain the exorbitant financing.

I look forward to the day when the engineers, my clients, can proudly state that the renewable power systems they developed provides power that is cheaper than any other power, also more reliable, more abundant, more secure, and less polluting than any other power source. No more coal miners need die deep underground, or from breathing black coal dust. No more children need grow up with the spectre of nuclear bombs falling on their heads. No more poor and elderly need make horrible choices between heating their homes or buying medicines or buying food. No more people anywhere need suffer from a lack of abundant, fresh, clean water, as they will have sufficient cheap energy to make fresh water out of seawater or brackish water. No more people anywhere need suffer from tainted food because they will have abundant, and cheap, electric power for refrigerators and freezers. No more people need sleep miserably in hot, humid homes while fighting off mosquitoes and flies, but will sleep in air conditioned comfort with the insects buzzing outside.

The promises that were made in the 1950's by the nuclear power engineers regarding abundant power, that is too cheap to meter, will finally be realized. However, it will not be nuclear power providing that cheap energy, it will be a mix of renewable energy sources coupled to reliable energy storage systems. No matter how cheap uranium is, nor how efficient it is at producing electrical power, nothing is cheaper than free. Wind is free. Sunshine is free. Ocean currents are free. Rain is free.

Those are worthy goals for renewable energy, and CO2 has nothing to do with any of it. The engineers are close, and getting closer.

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

legal website

LNG Cheaper than Ever

2009-04-12T14:21:00.000-07:00

As my two regular readers will remember, I earlier predicted that natural gas prices will fall, and fall they have.

Merrill Lynch energy analyst Francisco Blanch wrote: "Only 12 months ago LNG demand seemed insatiable, with Asian and European consumers soaking up any available spot cargoes. As the market overheated last summer, spot LNG prices hit record highs of $25/MMBtu. Since then, the LNG market has tumbled, with spot prices in Asia now trading in a $3.80-5.00/MMBtu range." Blanch forecasts LNG prices dropping further, to $0.70 per million Btu.

The LNG market consists of two segments: long-term contracts, and the spot market. The spot market has the volatile swings in pricing. As new LNG plants begin operation, more and more product is available for consumption, thus driving down prices under classic supply/demand theory.

This is good news for utilities that burn natural gas, such as those in California. It is not such good news for natural gas companies and independent gas producers. There are sufficient LNG import terminals in the U.S. to provide competition to domestic producers.

It is even better news for drivers who own CNG vehicles, as their costs per mile will decrease. This will perhaps spur car companies to make and sell more CNG vehicles, and that will help decrease gasoline consumption and prices. However, the effect of lower gasoline prices will be a reduced incentive for car buyers to purchase hybrids, with their added costs for the hybrid system. The net result is oil prices will also remain relatively low.

What effect will this have on major car manufacturers, who have apparently committed to building hybrid cars? Once again, they will be shown to have made the wrong moves. On the other hand, CNG conversion of existing cars may see a revival. Now, at least, the car companies can share the blame with Obama's omniscient government. "You told us to make hybrids, so we did. We should have made CNG cars, but you would not allow it."

For European countries, more imports of LNG will provide a welcome alternative to pipeline supplies from Russia. As an example, the U.K. very recently received its first cargo of LNG from Qatar into the South Hook LNG receiving terminal in Milford Haven, Wales.

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

AGW Is Not a Problem

2009-04-04T10:46:00.000-07:00

[This arose from an exchange on WUWT with a die-hard Global Warmist, one who (rather typically) is snide and just short of being nasty with his / her comments. He/she writes anonymously, which says much for his/her character. I'm going with "his," just a guess, of course. Commenter DJ is unhappy that WUWT devoted blog space to the unusual and prolonged snow events across the U.S., in particular as measured by snow depth at two ski resorts. Apparently, in DJ's world, it is perfectly OK and indeed a public service to trumpet daily each warming weather event, such as heat waves, record high temperatures, wildfires, sea ice decreases, polar ice meltings, glaciers retreating, polar bear population counts, etc. He did refrain, at least thus far, from repeating the AGW mantra "The U.S. is not the whole world." Perhaps he forgot for the moment. The "good for the goose, good for the gander? comment is mine, reminding DJ that his side continually blares on and on about any warm event, so he is hypocritical by whining about anyone publishing and discussing a cold event. He then responded that the skeptics must hold ourselves to a higher standard if we want respect. ]

AGWer DJ wrote: “What is good for the goose, surely is good for the gander?” is exactly wrong. Hold yourselves to a higher standard if you want respect.”

My reply:

Respect is something one earns. Wanting it or craving it is never the way to earn it. It is earned by doing the right thing at the right time, without regard to the consequences or the cravens who take potshots from the sidelines, especially those who hide behind a sorry excuse for science.

Practicing proper science, as Dr. Richard Feynman so eloquently stated it, would go a long way toward earning some respect for your side, the AGW proponents. That would include such things as carefully measuring the data, providing all the data in a completely transparent manner, drawing logical and supportable conclusions based on sound physics and math, stating the areas of uncertainties, and how those would impact the conclusions.

And yes, what is good for the goose is good for the gander. Why shouldn’t WUWT or any other blog publish cold weather events as they occur? Are you advocating censorship?

Speaking (writing, actually) only for myself, I could care less if anyone respects me or not. My concern is keeping the policy-makers from heading down the wrong path, wasting trillions of dollars (and other currencies) on an ideologically-driven, scientifically-unsupportable movement to punish affluent Western societies for having had the resources and opportunities to build a better world.

As I wrote elsewhere, Western man has done more good in this world with energy and ingenuity than the liberal idealogues will ever admit. Obama got one thing right thus far, and that is that we should be willing to extend a helping hand to others. But that help is provided by energy, and comes in the form of using energy. As E.M. Smith wrote on his chiefio blog, there is and never will be a shortage of energy. He is right.

And because there will never be an energy shortage, if and when the Earth is ever in dire need of reducing excessive air temperatures, or the opposite, reversing severe cold, the engineers will step up and get the job done. If the AGW proponents turn out to be correct in their assertion that CO2 causes unacceptable global warming with the massive increase in sea level, in perhaps 10 or 20 or 30 years, there will be plenty of time to make adjustments. As I have written before, there is no technical challenge to adjusting the atmosphere’s composition with respect to any component gas. We have all the knowledge we need, right now, to remove 100 ppm or more of CO2 or any other gas within a very short time frame.

When (I should say, IF) the first non-floating polar ice slides off into the ocean, and the sea level rises that first centimeter, call me. Let me know. At that point, the engineers will stop the ice slides and fix any other problems that require fixing, and nobody need panic. Impossible, you say? Hardly. Talk to some engineers sometime.

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

legal website

Cogeneration Increases Again

2009-03-29T11:47:00.000-07:00

Some of my correspondents bitterly cling to the idea that nuclear-generated power is cheaper by far than any other form of generation. They cannot believe, nor understand, that cogeneration is vastly superior. Below is an excerpt from a March 23, 2009, news release showing that cogeneration continues as an economically viable and superior technology.

"ANTWERP, Belgium--ExxonMobil today inaugurated its newest high efficiency cogeneration plant at its Antwerp refinery in Belgium. Cogeneration is the simultaneous production of electricity and useful heat or steam used for industrial processes. In addition to generating 125 megawatts, the new plant will reduce Belgium's carbon dioxide emissions by approximately 200,000 tonnes per year, the equivalent of removing about 90,000 cars from Europe’s roads.
"Energy efficiency is one of the most effective tools available for reducing greenhouse gas emissions," said Sherman Glass, president of ExxonMobil Refining & Supply. "Since 2004, ExxonMobil has invested in over 1,500 megawatts of cogeneration capacity in five countries."
With the inauguration of the Antwerp facility, ExxonMobil now has interests in about 4,600 megawatts of cogeneration capacity in about 100 individual installations at more than 30 sites around the world. This is enough capacity to supply the needs of more than 5 million homes in Europe.
"This new cogeneration plant allows for the efficient generation of electricity to run pumps, compressors and other equipment in our facilities, while at the same time, producing additional steam that is needed in processes that transform crude oil into refined products," said Gilbert Asselman, manager of the Antwerp refinery.
"With the latest technology, cogeneration is significantly more efficient than traditional methods of producing steam and power separately. This results in lower operating costs and significantly less greenhouse gas emissions."
Additional new facilities under construction in Singapore and China will increase ExxonMobil's cogeneration capacity to more than 5,000 megawatts in the next three years."

In fact, as more unsubsidized nuclear power plants are built, grid power prices go up and up. The incentives for industry to install cogeneration also increases. As not many recognize, the steam from a cogeneration plant need not be used for heating or reboiling or stripping uses, although those are the most common. When the grid power prices are sufficiently high, steam is used to drive turbines, rather than electric power to energize a motor. This is commonly found in complex chemical plants and refineries, where a pump driven by a motor has a spare pump driven by a turbine. The operator can easily switch between the two, depending on whether electric power or steam is more financially attractive.

Further, the smaller-scale devices that are suitable for hotels, apartment houses, commercial buildings, and even individual homes become much more attractive as the costs of grid power increase.

ExxonMobil just built a cogeneration plant in Antwerp, Belgium. Europe is famous for having much of its power generated by nuclear plants, yet apparently the power is not so cheap that cogeneration is uneconomic.

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

Contact Mr. Sowell at his legal website.

Intro Environmental Science versus Reality

2009-03-27T19:39:00.000-07:00

This is the first posting of what will likely be a long effort, my deconstruction and refuting the numerous illogical, skewed, and biased arguments found in a college textbook on Environmental Science. This particular one is Third Edition, by M. L. McKinney and R. M. Schoch.

I read through this book, and answered a few questions that were asked to me by a student taking the class who had to use this book. The student knows I am a chemical engineer and environmental attorney, and wanted clarification on several subjects. I was happy to answer his questions. The questions made me curious, and I read the book with growing dismay at the level of distortion and blatant agenda of the authors. Each of the major points, and quite a few minor points, I will give in these blogs, with my response based on facts. The students who take these classes are bright, and are eager to understand and learn, but it is giving them an unfair and biased view of the world to let them see only one side of the issues. Most students will not learn about the other side or sides, for one reason, they do not have the curiosity, for another, they trust college professors to teach them the truth, and for another, even if they are skeptical and have the curiosity, they do not have the time. I hope this series of blogs is helpful in those respects.

I will start at the beginning, on page 5, where it is asserted "many environmentalists consider human population growth, or, more precisely, the impact of humans on the environment, to be the single most important issue that the world currently faces." The authors then have a diagram, showing interactions of humans with the environment (lithosphere, biosphere, hydrosphere, and atmosphere). They further state that "raw elements of the natural environment pass through human society to produce the global environment in which we currently live. For all practical purposes, there is no pristine wilderness remaining anywhere on Earth."

This is very misleading, if not outright absurd. Is it true that many environmentalists consider the impact of humans on the environment to be the single most important issue the world currently faces? No doubt, there are many in that camp who would agree. But that leaves off the more important questions, doesn't it? Questions like attacks from terrorist groups, threats from new diseases, threats from impacts of asteroids, threats from major solar eruptions, threats from super volcano eruptions, and the cataclysmic threat from the sudden breaking away of a portion of the Hawaiian island that will result in a titanic tsunami of more than 1000 feet height. The relative impacts of each of the threats listed above would show that impact on the environment is not nearly as important as the others.

As to no pristine wilderness existing anywhere on Earth, that is far from the truth. I have had the good fortune in my life to travel to many places on the Earth, and seen firsthand many of its areas. Northern Canada is very pristine. So is much of Alaska. The Grand Canyon has a few trails, but the vast majority is pristine. The jungles and subtropical areas of Brazil are virtually untouched. The fact is that most humans live within a few miles of a coast. The interior of most continents are sparsely settled. North America, particularly the U.S.A. is well-developed, but vast areas of Australia, China, Russia, and South America are essentially pristine.

Next, the authors assert that man's depletion of environmental resources is one of the two types of environmental disturbance. The other type is discharging waste into the environment. Further, the authors state that environmentally friendly ways to address these problems are explored, meaning ways to utilize resources productively without pollution and environmental damage. I will come back to this as a recurring theme, to provide balance to the discussion.

The authors then mention a very bleak post-industrial age that will occur unless man lessens its detrimental impact on the environment. This shows a level of hopelessness and disregard for man's abilities that I will attempt to put right.

Next comes an assertion without foundation or facts to back it up: that cleanup of waste and pollution are the most expensive way to solve environmental problems. Next they assert that a holistic approach is needed that will be much better and less expensive. Again, no factual backup is provided.

The real complaint that environmentalists have is stated next, those being 1) human population is too high, and 2) resource consumption, or material goods is too high. This is the recurring theme throughout the book, that if only we could remove some or most of those horrible humans, the rest of us would be so much better off! And secondly, even after removing most of those horrible humans, we must reduce the consumption by those remaining humans. Are these authors advocating eugenics, to kill off undesirable people? If so, by what yardstick are humans to be measured for the decision on remaining alive, or being killed? And, what material goods are to be allowed, and who decides, and who enforces this?

The authors go on to assert the Big Three of the environmentalists' mantra: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. By Reduce, they mean that the amount of natural resources must be reduced, that is, the flow of resources used by mankind. By Reuse, they mean using something more than once rather than throwing it away. And by Recycle, they mean convert a used item into a new item, rather than placing the used item in a landfill then mining more natural resources to produce another similar item. Each of these Big Three are fundamentally flawed, and I will discuss this.

Reduce. One example given in the book is that logs are cut in sawmills, which is wasteful because sawdust cannot be used as lumber. This is very misleading, because few wood products today are made from solid wood. Only very few, and very expensive items are solid wood. Most are wood veneers, a thin layer of wood that is peeled from a log using a specialized wood peeling machine. The veneer is attached to a backing made of plywood. The plywood is made from wood chips and an adhesive. Where saws do cut wood, the sawdust is collected and pressed into shapes such as a fire-log for fireplaces. The inconsistency is apparent, as environmentalists want to ban wood-burning fireplaces due to the smoke and CO2 emissions, yet if left in the forest, the trees will die and decompose into CO2.

Reuse. An example of reuse is to use metal eating utensils rather than plastic ones. The idea is that metal knife, spoon, and fork can be washed and reused, but plastic ones will be thrown away after one use. Another is to substitute worn-out tee-shirts for paper towels. Rather than buy paper towels, one is to use an old tee-shirt that can be washed with other clothes. The absurdity soon appears, as the same people advocate not washing clothes until a full load accumulates. Otherwise, the thinking goes, one is wasting water and energy while washing a partial load. Therefore, one should wipe up a kitchen spill with the old tee-shirt, and toss it into the laundry basket for a few days until wash day arrives. This is highly unsanitary and would lead to health issues, not to mention smelly odors. It is far better to buy and use a paper towel, and throw it away to maintain proper health and hygiene.

Recycle. This is the well-known means of discarding waste goods into separate containers that can be collected and taken to recycle centers. In many areas, recycling containers are provided by the city or town for paper, glass, plastic, and metal. Some go so far as to have containers dedicated only to aluminum cans such as soft drinks. What many people do not realize is that recycling has little impact on raw material usage. With paper, for example, there is a glut or overabundance of used paper that cannot be recycled. The reason is that many paper products will not function properly if too much recycled paper fiber is added. Another is glass. Recycled glass cannot be used for many purposes because of purity issues. Plastic also cannot be recycled into the same products, but sometimes can be made into other products. Finally, metals are not all the same and separating them can be very costly.

Next, the authors gloss over one of the most discredited positions of environmentalism: the exponential growth rate. They even mention two of the books that were gross exaggerations, and predicted outcomes that never came to pass and likely never will. The Population Bomb by Ehrlich, and Limits to Growth by the Club of Rome. According to the Population Bomb, the world was to reach its limit of humanity by some years ago, which clearly did not happen. The Club of Rome book, Limits to Growth, was equally wrong in all its predictions. It predicted exponential growth in several key areas, all leading to the destruction of mankind. One was population, another energy use, another raw material use, another water use, another was financial capital, and finally the growing mountain of pollution or waste. Not a one of these came to pass.

The facts are quite different. Food never ran out, as was predicted, instead we pay farmers to not grow food to prevent price collapses. Water has never run out and never will, as it is cleaned up in the oceans and recycled naturally by the heat of the sun and falls as rain or snow. Resources not only have not disappeared, they have actually grown less expensive over time, indicating an abundance rather than a shortage. Population is not growing exponentially, in fact, many countries are shrinking in population. Japan recently issued a request for its citizens to go make babies. A wonderful book on the population growth topic is America Alone.

Thus ends the first installment.

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

Late Winter Storms

2009-03-22T10:36:00.000-07:00

California, where I live and work, is getting hammered again today by a winter storm. This is a big one, as the adjacent map shows. The storm extends from Washington State south through Southern California, and east into Arkansas, up to Michigan. This is roughly two thirds of the U.S.

In California, this storm is bringing rain to the lowlands, plus snow to the Sierras, which will melt later and become very welcome fresh water in a time of drought. But it is also bringing cold temperatures, resulting in my running the furnace in my humble abode.

How things have changed since I first moved to Southern California 23 years ago. My interview day was around February 1, 1986. It rained that day. My future colleagues assured me, almost apologetically, that this was very unusual and there would be no more rain for the next 9 months. Being from Dallas, and before that Houston, this was out of my range of experience. It rains frequently in those two Texas cities. Yet my colleagues' words were prophetic, and it indeed did not rain again until November.

Now we have rain plus snow on the 22nd day of March. The high temperature for today in Los Angeles is expected to be 59 F. The normal for today is 70 F.

A word to all the global warming alarmists, and the climate change proponents, especially those who fervently believe that man's activities are the cause, or culprit. Many of us, like me, are paying very close attention, collecting and archiving data. I am highly skeptical of man's part, if any, in the slow warming and cooling of the earth's atmosphere. Part of my skepticism arises due to wholesale adjustments to measured temperatures from the past, by those particularly at NASA under James Hansen. It is telling that the adjustments were broadly downward for data before about 1965, then broadly upward since. The impact is to increase the upward slope of the time-vs-temperature curve. Hmmm...this is a slap in the face to all the good people who took the time to carefully look at a thermometer, then write down their reading and report it to others.

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

A Waste of Taxpayer Dollars on Solar

2009-03-20T20:14:00.000-07:00

In Southern California, where I live and work, the government agency in charge of the air quality is the South Coast Air Quality Management District. We just call it the AQMD. They regulate all sorts of things, such as refineries, dry cleaners, cement plants, basically anything that creates air emissions and does not have wheels. Even then, the wheeled emitters can fall under their jurisdiction if the wheels do not roll for more than 12 months. This includes things like portable (wheeled) generators, even portable concrete batch plants.

AQMD tries to lead by example at times, by employing green technologies at their headquarters, for example, and using compressed natural gas (CNG) for its fleet of business vehicles. They have lots of cars for their inspectors to drive around, inspecting things.

From their website, they are installing still more solar panels on the roof of their very large headquarters building in Diamond Bar, just east of Los Angeles. Their website crows about their saving $24,000 per year in not purchasing electric power, as the solar photo-voltaic (PV) system will generate power for them.

What they are spending is $780,000, and what they are getting is 80 kilo-watts of generation. These are special, new PV systems, that will generate power even in less-than-full sunshine. Even at 8 hours per day, 365 days per year, and an avoided power cost of $0.10 per kwh, the system will barely reduce the electric bill by $24,000 per year. At that rate, it will require 33 years to break even on the investment.

But, AQMD claims that the system will break even in 15 years. This is due to state rebate money paid to them, and likely due to higher power price instead of the $0.10 I used above. At peak times of the day, their power price could be $0.20 per kwh, thus giving a 15 year break even time. They also state that the time to break even could be much shorter, if power prices increase. Well, here's the deal. The power company only charges the very high rates during the summer season, not all year. That is because cooler weather does not force the power company to run the high-cost peaker power plants, essentially just a gas turbine with a generator spinning on one end. Those only are fired up on the hottest days of summer, when the air temperature soars to 90 F or more.

Ah well. It is money that has at least SOME return on investment. It could be spent in worse ways, I suppose. But, if a business had to choose this investment, or putting the money in the Standard and Poor's 500 Index fund, they would do far better with the index fund. It pays around 10 percent per year, over the long term. The PV project pays 2.9 percent, even with the 15 year payout. To achieve the same return as the stock market, the power price for power avoided by the PV project must be $0.35 per kwh. And that is for the full 8 hours, every day, 365 days per year.

Even in California, where the state mandated that 33 percent of all power sold by 2020 must be from renewables, that will take some doing. For some perspective, the present cost of electric power for a residence is $0.11 per kwh, unless one consumes more than the allotted amount. Then, the power price can reach $0.20 or even $0.30 per kwh, but only for the amount over the allotted. For a commercial facility such as the AQMD headquarters, the power price is just over half what a homeowner pays.

And to be fair, AQMD may have little choice in the matter. The state of California has mandated that all government facilities spend tax money to cut their utility bills. So, these sorts of 30-year payout projects are sprouting all over public buildings in California. Mind you, these expenditures are in addition to all the other social services that are funded. Meanwhile, the state budget deficit grows and grows. It was $42 billion up until a few weeks ago, when it was miraculously reduced to zero by a combination of tax-increases, service cuts, and massive borrowing. However, just this week the deficit reappeared in the amount of $8 billion. Is there any connection between the massive spending on solar panels, and the huge deficits?

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

Contact Mr. Sowell at his legal website.

California MayDay MayDay MayDay

2009-03-15T09:06:00.000-07:00

Again from WattsUpWithThat.com, a commenter using the handle Squidly responded to a statement I made earlier. So I responded thusly: [my additional comments are in brackets]

@ Squidly (22:50:50) :

“Roger, do you really believe that California’s economy could pick up by then? I sure hope it can and does, but I don’t share your optimism. I think California’s economy is basically toast for a very long time. But, on the other hand, if it does, I am sure you are correct that the AGW crowd will attempt to either take credit for it, or use the improvement to minimalize the impact of their “green” policies. I really feel for Californian’s right now. I believe they are in for a very rough road ahead.”

I do not believe California’s economy will pick up any time soon. Our eternal state budget woes just keep increasing. Yet, many residents seem to have confidence, witness real estate buyers who continue to pay $600,000 for an average, 3-bedroom 2 bath home with 1700 square feet. Without an ocean view. [a good friend has a home in Thousand Oaks, a small bedroom community of 100,000 residents where the big employer is Amgen. The prices I gave are from zillow, and in an average neighborhood there.]

A few make it big in the movies, and that road to destruction (boulevard of broken dreams) lures people here by the thousands. [although California no longer has a monopoly on movie-making; animated films and CGA (computer generated art), plus state tax incentives for movie producers to film elsewhere make the balmy California weather less of a factor. Still, the wanna-be's keep showing up, taking jobs as waiters and waitresses, going to the "right" clubs and the "right" parties, hoping to be given a part in a movie. Like Las Vegas, where a jackpot occurs every few minutes to remind the slot-players that it IS possible, and could happen to them next, Hollywood keeps anointing a very few each year.]

The things I watch are the unemployment numbers (most important), and budget deficit (second most important), then the status of California’s bonds. As long as California can sell bonds to mortgage the future, the state has little incentive to cut spending. If and when the state defaults on its bonds, the place will collapse overnight. [the bond rating agencies have recently cut California's bonds to the lowest rating of all 50 states, including perennial cellar-dweller Louisiana. Ronald Reagan would be so proud (NOT) ]

It is said that what starts in California soon infects the rest of the country; well, I hope the rest of the U.S.A. has enough sense not to follow the “tax and spend and borrow the rest” attitude that has placed California in this predicament. [although judging from the federal lunacy of print-and-spend, calling it various things like Bail-Out, Stimulus, with justifications like "XYZ is just too big to be allowed to fail" it appears California is just riding the current fiscal trend.]

Several negatives are about to happen one after another. When Obama’s EPA allows California’s exemption for automobile tail-pipe CO2 emissions, we will not have very many new cars to buy. So the auto dealerships will go broke, and the auto repair shops will boom. The EPA is expected to grant the exemption in early April or May. [cars today cannot be repaired at an affordable price, as they were designed to fall apart after 4 to 5 years operation. The average consumer is then faced with a horrible choice: buy a new car or newer used car with very high payments, or repair the current car knowing that it will just keep breaking down. Further, car makers do not have many cars that meet the strict new California standards. This is an interesting situation: what will the State of California do, when the law says new cars must meet XYZ standards, but the car makers do not make such cars?]

The state tax increases on sales, and gasoline, and personal income, will decrease per-capita personal spending. Many more companies will fail, close their doors, and put people out of work.

The state’s Low Carbon Fuel Standard, LCFS, part of the AB 32 lunacy, will increase gasoline and diesel prices.

The RPS (Renewable Portfolio Standard), which requires 20 percent of all electric power sales in California be from renewable sources by 12/31/2010, will also increase power costs to everyone. The amount is uncertain, but will likely be around 10 to 20 percent. [the price increase could be much more in hot weather, when the wind does not blow and there is not much solar generation installed]

The state minimum wage keeps increasing, it is $8 per hour now, yet major cities have an even higher “living wage” requirement. This is great in the short term for the minimum wage-earner, but it keeps many people unemployed.

Finally, if the special election in May succeeds in changing the state’s rules for passing a budget, California is done. Currently, a budget requires 2/3 vote to pass the legislature. The new rule would require a simple majority vote.

Then it will be tax and spend, baby. No drill, baby, drill. Just tax, baby, tax, and spend, baby, spend. The California “experiment in socialism” should end with a bang. But, the curious thing is that tax-and-spend voters far outnumber the others. And the media spin-machine convinces the tax-and-spend voters that other people, the rich people, will pay the taxes, not them.

There is a gubernatorial election in 2010, and our Governator Scharzennegger is already a lame duck in many respects. The only viable candidates are far more to the tax-and-spend side than he is/was.

This is not going to be pretty.

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

Contact Mr. Sowell at his legal website.

Global Cooling: Hurricanes Getting Weaker

2009-03-14T12:17:00.000-07:00

One of the primary dire predictions of the AGW crowd (anthropogenic global warming, now known as Climate Change) is that hurricanes and tropical cyclones will grow in number and especially in intensity as the man-made CO2 increases in the atmosphere. The increased CO2 is supposed to reflect or re-radiate thermal energy onto the earth's surface, and warm the oceans.

Warm ocean water tends to increase formation of hurricanes and tropical cyclones. So, what does the measured data show? The AGW warmists claim that the globe's temperature has increased dramatically since 1975, along with CO2 in the atmosphere. They claim the increased CO2 is primarily due to man's consumption of fossil fuels such as oil, coal, and natural gas.

As the graph above shows, average hurricane and tropical cyclone energy did increase from 1974 to about 1992, but has been declining ever since. By March of 2009, the most recent point on the graph, the metric is lower than at any time since 1974.

How can this be, when CO2 has been constantly rising over the period? The data for CO2 in the atmosphere, measured at Hawaii's Mauna Loa observatory, shows continued increase in CO2.

Once again, the underpinnings of the global warming alarmists are shown to be false.

Every legislator, whether in California, other states, or at the federal level, should take this into consideration. The claims of Al Gore, James Hansen, and the other AGW alarmists are just not true.

A responsible legislator would immediately draft legislation to repeal any global warming laws already on the books, such as AB 32 in California. For global warming laws in the works, a responsible legislator would vote NO, and argue persuasively for his/her colleagues to do the same.

We need responsible laws based on demonstrable science, not economy-wrecking laws based on unsupportable supposition.

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

Contact Mr. Sowell at this site.

California Budget Crisis -- Again

2009-03-14T11:27:00.000-07:00

The news from Sacramento, California, yesterday stated the state is facing an $8 billion shortfall. This follows the marathon budget-fix conducted only three weeks ago, in which taxes were"temporarily" increased $12.5 billion, state services decreased $15 billion, and federal stimulus plus borrowing bridged the gap remaining for a total of $42 billion. That $42 billion is by far the greatest state budget deficit in the nation.

At this rate, $8 billion per month, California will be in the hole by $100 billion one year from now. (ok, it will only be $96, but I rounded up).

So, what can we expect from the Sacramento lawmakers this time? Will it be more tax increases? Probably. Will it be more services reductions? Not likely. Will it be more borrowing to bridge the gap, and to be repaid sometime in the future with tax revenues collected at that time? Well, maybe, if anyone steps forward to purchase the debt -- that is, lend California their money.

The economy is grinding along, with the sand in the gears making louder and louder shrieks. Unemployment increases weekly. Traffic declines as the formerly employed stay at home, watching the tv and cruising the internet. My daily commute gets better and better. Same distance, less time required. Better gas mileage, too, since there is less stop-and-go. Hey, maybe there is a silver lining here?

The lines at the grocery store where I shop for sustenance are growing longer and longer, while the restaurants' parking lots have fewer and fewer cars.

Schoolteachers in California yesterday received 'preliminary pink slips' to notify approximately 29,000 teachers that they will need to seek other employment, and soon.

What was it we heard in the 60's on the pop radio stations?

And the hits just keep on coming.

Men of The West

2009-03-13T20:59:00.000-07:00

What follows is from WattsUpWithThat.com, a blog for climate change discussions in which those who believe man's activities are cooking the planet are taken to task by those of us who know better.

An anonymous commenter, using the handle 'thefordprefect' regularly chimes in to needle the skeptics, spewing forth such stuff as 'skeptics never produce any evidence to show that AGW is false.' This is generally met with the statement, and rightfully so, that it is the AGWers' burden to prove, not ours to disprove.

My response:

@thefordprefect

Re “The problem with you skeptics is you value your current lifestyle (= wealth) over the needs of the planet.”

Hmmm…. sir, your ignorance is showing. You are way out of line.

I am a skeptic, as I have written before on WUWT, and I emphatically deny that which is demonstrably false in the AGW mantra. I do value my lifestyle, yet that is consistent with achieving the greatest good for the greatest number on the planet.

So, let me just state how my colleagues in various engineering fields, and I to a small extent, have made the globe a safer, healthier, less polluted place, extended life expectancies, and that sort of thing. First, I worked as a chemical engineer in the petroleum and petrochemical industry for 25 years. I am an attorney now, but that is another story.

During those 25 years, I worked first in the chlorine and caustic industry, manufacturing chlorine and sodium hydroxide and hydrogen from salt, water, and electricity. Chlorine is one of modern man’s most important manufactures, valued for its use as a bleach, a cleansing agent, a disinfectant for water, and it greatly improves health all around the world where it is used.

Chlorine is also a major ingredient in plastic, especially PVC and other types of plastic pipe. Such pipe has made plumbing cost-effective in much of the world, greatly improving health. A high-grade of PVC plastic is used extensively in medicine, as an example, to hold a fluid that is fed into a patient’s veins (the IV bag), and the plastic tubing itself. The other major component of plastic comes from petrochemical plants, usually ethylene or propylene.

I cannot even begin to describe the innumerable medicines, drugs, and pharmaceuticals that are made from the petrochemicals we create in the big refineries and petrochemical plants. None of those would be possible if not for the ingenuity of chemists, chemical engineers, and a host of other highly educated and trained professionals.

The overall clean air of this planet is entirely due to petroleum and natural gas. Without them, the population would have choked to death or wheezed in coughing agony during a very short life-span.

Prior to oil use and natural gas, energy was provided by burning coal, and from animal power such as horses, mules, and oxen. The coal smoke and soot, and huge piles of poop left by those animals was a very great problem in cities, and made obsolete by gasoline, diesel, and electric motors. The poop dried, attracted flies, and created toxic dust particles when the wind blew. People inhaled that toxic, polluted air with every breath. But no more, thanks to oil and natural gas.

I could go on and on, describing the very low cost of almost all goods and services due to the extremely cheap energy provided by oil men, the refineries, and power plants. Transportation costs dropped dramatically across the board as trains grew faster, longer, and used less fuel per ton-mile. The same is true for large trucks, and ships.

I could also mention the low cost of food, whether grain or beef, pork, chicken, lamb, or the myriad of fruits and vegetables, all of which are very low-cost as a result of chemistry and chemical plants that produce fertilizers and herbicides. Engineers also design, build, and operate the efficient food processing plants that place low-cost groceries in the stores.

So, I invite you to do some reading, do some research, and find out the facts about what wealth does to improve the plight of the common man. Find out which countries in the world have a long waiting list before being allowed to enter to work or live or become a citizen. Find out which countries have good medical care, have sanitary water and dispose of waste in a sanitary manner, have sufficient food to eat that does not make the population sicken and die, and sufficient affordable energy to heat and cool their homes to a comfortable level.

I should know. As a chemical engineer, I traveled and worked in more than a dozen countries, from first-world (USA, Europe, Canada, Japan) to third-world (China, East Germany, Poland (pre-demise of Soviet Union), Brazil, Indonesia). I have seen it all, and did my part to improve much of it, along with my colleagues. I have suffered many bouts of intestinal illness in third-world locales.

After you improve your education, then come back and tell me I value my current lifestyle, wealth, over the needs of the planet. As Dr. Thomas Sowell (no relation) of Stanford University’s Hoover Institution has written, increasing prosperity is the only sure and lasting solution to poverty.

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More to be added, if and when other responses occur. This should be good!

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

Legal website is here.

Oil, Refineries, and Cars

2009-03-13T20:14:00.000-07:00

There were more developments in the oil, refining, and transportation sectors this week.

First, ExxonMobil today (March 13) announced the discovery of a huge oil field off the coast of Brazil. The recoverable barrels of oil is estimated at 8 billion. The day of Peak Oil is moving further out, as it always has.

Meanwhile, back in the U.S., Marathon announced the extension or delay of their refinery expansion project in Detroit, Michigan. The decline in gasoline demand has quite a lot to do with that, I suspect. Project completion is now scheduled for mid-2012, an 18 month delay.

And in transportation, Honda announced their Insight Hybrid LX will cost around $20,000, much less than Toyota's Prius. The Insight will achieve around 43 mpg. The annual savings with gasoline at $2 per gallon will not be great, but I suspect few buyers believe that gasoline will stay that cheap for long.

Also, BYD, the car maker from China, will begin selling its plug-in hybrid soon. Warren Buffett plans to have one on display at Berkshire Hathaway's annual meeting. Buffett purchased 10 percent of BYD in 2008. The BYD is advertised as driving 150 miles on one charge of the battery, before the gasoline engine kicks in. If it only gets 100 miles per charge, that is still a huge improvement over US offerings.

On the renewable energy front, in which California aims to have 20 percent of all electric power sales be from renewable energy by 12/31/2010, there currently are approximately 4,500 MW of solar thermal power plants announced or under review by the California Energy Commission. There is an additional 800 MW of photovoltaic solar power to be built.

All of this is just beating around the bush. What I really want to write about is what was said at a meeting I attended earlier this week. I was astonished at what I heard. Perhaps my two regular readers are so jaded that this will not raise your eyebrows, but it certainly did mine!

A spokesperson for a never-to-be-named company told a group of us that her company cut its carbon footprint by 45 percent in the late 1990's after 20-plus years of operating a fabric finishing plant as part of their manufacturing operation. This was announced to the group as a worthwhile thing to do, as it saved the company more than $50 million per year in operating costs. The reduced carbon footprint is now being touted as a leading attention-grabber, and the sales are increased dramatically by tipping the undecided buyers to their products because they are so green. Not that all their products are a shade of green, just that their carbon footprint is lower so they can be called green. Green can be red, or blue, or any other color that guys never know that to call it, somewhere between peach and apricot is where I throw in the towel.

What immediately came to my mind, as the spokesperson spoke, was how much money did it cost the company to achieve that 45 percent carbon emission reduction? Assuming around a $50 million per year savings, did they invest $150 million, for a 3-year payout? So, I asked the lady the question. She seemed quite upset with the question, and did not answer it. She did say that part of it cost them nothing at all!

That then led me to my followup statement, directed at the others in the meeting. I said, if a company has an investment opportunity that will save them energy with a short payout, or can be done with no investment, it shows a level of neglect to not have identified this and acted much earlier. What I did not say was, somebody was asleep at the wheel for a long time. Perhaps this is what comes when management cuts the payroll and fires the technical staff. Or cuts expenses by not hiring an energy analyst.

From my refinery engineering days, we would have identified such an opportunity in the early 1980's just after the Iranian oil crisis and OPEC shortage with increased prices.

So, maybe my pessimism about AB 32 and the energy savings that will make all this worthwhile is not aligned with reality. Can California really have that many asleep-at-the-wheel business owners, who have a gold-mine sitting on their premises and just do not know it? Could be. Stranger things have happened in this state, as my two regular readers will know.

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

Legal website is here.

200 MPG Carburetors

2009-03-09T20:39:00.000-07:00

This is a subject I have been long interested in, and have done a fair amount of research into. I was trying to determine if such a super-carburetor could exist, or did exist, and if it did, why is it not in widespread use in cars today?

What I found is the following:

1) Some cars are claimed to have run with a super-carburetor, even large V-8 engines, some claim 100 miles per gallon (mpg), some claim up to 200 mpg. There were eyewitnesses to some demonstrations, and technical experts who examined the cars carefully for hidden fuel tanks. None were found.

2) At least one of the super-carburetors used a form of thermal catalytic cracking, aka TCC, at least that is the term reported.

3) The super-carburetors declined in performance over time, and eventually gas mileage reverted back to the normal level.

4) Inventors and advocates accused the oil companies of placing an additive in gasoline that would deactivate the TCC super-carburetor. This was viewed as a malicious effort to discredit the inventors.

I have some specialized knowledge when it comes to gasoline, oil cracking processes both thermal and catalytic, and how oil companies make gasoline. I write this to shed some light on why the TCC carburetors do not work, and how oil companies did nothing nefarious or malicious to cause a super-carburetor to fail.

First, a little background on gasoline. Gasoline is made up of many petroleum compounds, ranging from iso-butane through carbon chains with 11 or 12 carbons. The average length of a carbon chain in gasoline is around 8 to 9. Gasoline is added to an engine along with air, on the piston down-stroke. The air/gasoline mixture is compressed on the piston up-stroke, and ignited by a spark plug firing just before the piston reaches the top of its stroke. The gasoline reacts chemically with the oxygen in the air, burns, and produces heat which increases the pressure above the piston. The increased pressure pushes the piston back down on the power stroke. Not all of the gasoline is burned, however, and that is where the super-carburetor enters the picture.

In theory, if more oxygen is added, and the gasoline molecules were not 8 to 10 carbon chains long, there would be more chemical reaction in the combustion chamber. That would release more heat, and less gasoline would be required.

Now, to digress a bit and discuss cracking of oil. A thermal cracker is a process unit in a refinery that receives a heavy oil, much heavier than gasoline, normally known as gas oil. Whereas gasoline has 8 to 9 carbons in each molecule, gas oil would have on the order of 30 t0 40 carbons per molecule. Gas oil in a clear jar is visually much like lubricating oil that service stations pour into the engine's crankcase.

The thermal cracker heats the gas oil to a high temperature, perhaps 900 to 950 degrees F, and then allows the very hot oil to flow into a separator vessel. The hot oil literally cracks apart, so that the long carbon chains break into smaller chains. The smaller chains are not all the same, but some have 2 carbons, others 3, 4, and so on up to about 20. Each breaking point in the chains also results in a chemical double-bond, also known as an olefin in chemistry. One of the by-products of the cracking process is very high-carbon number chains that resemble asphalt or coal. These compounds, and they are key to understanding why super-carburetors do not work for long, are called petroleum coke.

A catalytic cracker is somewhat similar to the thermal cracker, except that a very fine catalyst that resembles fine sand is used. The catalyst is heated to around 1100 degrees F, then mixed with the gas oil in a fluidized reactor. Steam is injected upward to provide the fluidizing. The gas oil cracks, but the catalyst affects the cracking so that more molecules form in the gasoline range of 8 to 9 carbons compared to thermal cracking. Also, petroleum coke forms and coats the catalyst particles until they are dark gray, or black. In the catalytic cracker, the spent catalyst, which contains the coke coating, is processed in a regenerator vessel where the coke is burned off by injecting hot air. This heats the catalyst also, and the regenerated catalyst without very much coke is recirculated back to the feed section to react with more gas oil.

From what I have read about the TCC super-carburetors, they used a heated tube filled with a special sand to crack the gasoline into smaller carbon chains. The smaller chains would have carbon numbers ranging from 2 to about 5, and would have many olefins. The flow out of the TCC tube would also be very hot. The hot, olefinic, short-carbon-number material was then mixed with air and directed into the engine.

I could not determine how the super-carburetor TCC reactor tube was heated, but it may have been heated with hot exhaust plus an electric heater that used power from the alternator or generator. The very hot fuel/air mixture would burn even hotter in the engine, thus providing more power. Less fuel would be required, also. I suspect that achieving 200 miles per gallon would be quite difficult in a big V-8 engine, as that would represent a 10-fold improvement over 20 miles per gallon. Still, it might have happened.

But what slowly decreased the TCC super-carburetor performance was the petroleum coke, the black residue that would coat the particles of sand in the TCC tube. Once the coke residue coated the sand, the cracking would cease and no benefit would be seen.

Some are probably asking why don't the oil companies just crack the gasoline for us, and sell it that way? There are a couple of reasons. First, olefinic hydrocarbons with 3, 4, and 5 carbons in the chain will not remain liquid in hot weather. Most of the liquid would evaporate, and a vapor cannot be pumped by the fuel pump. This causes vapor lock, and the car will quit running. Second, olefinic hydrocarbons do not remain in that form over long periods of time. Instead, the olefins tend to combine with each other and form a gummy substance. This gummy substance plugs up fuel lines, fuel filters, fuel tanks, and carburetor surfaces.

Another question is why don't car companies install that fuel heater, and use electric power from the alternator to vaporize and heat the gasoline before it enters the carburetor, or the fuel injection nozzle on modern cars? The most obvious answer is safety. A fuel heater would leak eventually, and hot gasoline would or could explode in the engine compartment.

A final comment, as one source I read stated the super-carburetors worked even better on rainy days, when running the car in the rain. What likely happened there is that the air intake would draw in a few fine drops of rain with the air, mix this with the hot cracked gasoline components, and that would enter the engine. After combustion in the engine, the small water droplets would vaporize and expand as water vapor, adding somewhat to the pressure in the cylinder.

This only works for a short time, as the water droplets tends to plug up the air filter where trapped dirt particles turn to mud.

I hope this helps to explain super-carburetors.

My knowledge of refining processes, and gasoline, and engines, comes from my engineering days in refineries, and having a bachelor's degree in chemical engineering.

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

Contact Mr. Sowell at his legal website.

Nuclear Power Plants Again

2009-03-08T20:18:00.000-07:00

[This from an entry on Anthony Watts' WattsUpWithThat.com, on March 8. I respond initially to one hareynolds, who declaims at length about the glories of the oil industry, then closes with this gem: ]

". . . Every single petroleum engineer I have met in the last 30 years favors nuclear power. Every single one. Period."

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[We must not know the same petroleum engineers, so, I respond to hareynolds thusly: ]

I was with you all the way up until the last, where nuclear power was endorsed. Sorry, that power source is too expensive, and creates a lasting legacy of toxics.

See This Link and [to my earlier posts on nuclear power plant costs]

See This Link

Any U.S. utility that builds a new nuclear power plant will undergo the death spiral in power rates: Build a nuke, increase the power rates, customers go off-line by building cogen, PUC allows another rate hike to increase revenue to utility, more customers go off-line as their cogen projects become attractive. The ones hurt the most in the nuclear death spiral are the poor, and elderly on fixed incomes who cannot afford to install their own cogen power.

The oil and gas industry is partly to blame for their bad reputation by not doing more to educate and counter the mass media’s reports.

The people may learn, someday, when the lights go out and it gets cold. Or, when the lights go out and the A/C does not work.

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[Next, tallbloke steps in with this comment: ]

tallbloke (17:52:34) :

Roger Sowell (16:11:12)

The people may learn, someday, when the lights go out and it gets cold. Or, when the lights go out and the A/C does not work.

How did the Inuit manage during the little ice age, or didn’t they notice it?
I take it that ‘cogen’ means installing alternative means which backfeed onto the grid. I firmly believe that local generation is efficient until it’s transmitted over long distances. Reliability is the issue. Efficiently combusting local waste with minimal emissions is the answer to part of the equation.

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[My response to tallbloke, thusly: ]

Cogen has several meanings, but as I am using it, this means generating power and heat for one’s own use. There are several designs on the market, one is a natural-gas powered piston engine that turns a generator, then the exhaust is used to produce hot water for domestic use. Other designs burn natural gas in micro-turbines for power generation, and recover heat from the exhaust.

Industrial-strength versions also produce steam. There is also a tri-gen technology that produces power, hot water, and chilled water.

Some cogen systems will generate excess power that is sold back to the utility. A side benefit is no new power transmission lines are required because the power is used either on-site, or returned via existing power lines.

I got into a debate over this with a dis-believer on another site last year, and posted this (see below) to my blog. The presenter referred to, Mr. Tommy John, has some rather serious credentials, and was an invited speaker to an engineering society to which I belong.

See: This Link

Re the Inuit, I am told that until about 100 years ago they used no external energy such as gas, oil, or electricity. I suspect they adapted and coped quite well during the Little Ice Age, but that is not my area. There may be some native Alaskans on WUWT that may know.

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[And Mike Bryant steps in: ]

Mike Bryant (18:03:33) :

“Sorry, that power source (nuclear) is too expensive, and creates a lasting legacy of toxics.”

Hard to believe that the French are smarter than we are…

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[My two regular readers will know that I could not let that hanging curve ball pass, so I take a swing thusly: ]

I had to research this a few months ago, and found that 1) French nuclear reactors are owned by the government, and their true costs are never revealed. 2) They are heavily subsidized by the government, 3) Their nuclear reactors generate far more power than is required at night, so they export power to neighboring countries. Nukes apparently have a very poor turn-down ability, and cannot easily follow the load, 4) spent nuclear fuel is stored on-site in pools just like in the U.S.

So, if the U.S. were to build enough nukes to provide 80 percent of our power demand, it would require heavy federal subsidies to maintain customer prices at 10 to 12 cents per kwh (subsidize 20 to 30 cents), plus we would then export power to neighboring countries each night, uh…that would be Mexico, and Canada. Not sure they want our power on those conditions.

The first new plant with the French design (Areva), called a Mod III, is under construction in Finland, and it has serious cost over-runs and 3 years of construction delay.

What this effectively means is, that even if the U.S. government bans all lawsuits against nuclear power plants, and gives carte-blanche to utilities to build all they want, we will never have more than about 30 percent of our power supplied by nukes. We currently obtain about 20 percent via nuclear. Those who say we must shut down coal-fired plants and replace them with nuclear, know not of what they speak, because that would require 70 percent generation by nuclear.

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[Next, hareynolds steps in again, and apparently does not know my background, nor has he read the above comment about France having to export a lot of powr at night, this gets pretty funny: ]

Roger, didn’t say nuclear was as easy as say NATURAL GAS, in the near term, but that PETROLEUM ENGINEERS (the folks who actually make-up Evil Big Oil; anybody actually met one??? I have. Oops, I guess I ARE one) favor a nuclear solution. Not necessarily the CURRENT nuclear solution (whatever that is, we haven’t started one in 30 years, so I’m not quite sure). For sake of argument, say an updated version of a French lightwater reactor (Westinghouse design, do I remember that correctly?)

The thinking, from an engineering perspective, is that (a) biofuels won’t work as they are predicated on a preexisting CHEAP fossil fuel transpotation system and coal-fired electricity. (b) Wind won’t work without MASSIVE subsidies, and then only 30% of the time, AND NOT even that if we get a little icy. (c) Solar, like wind, isn’t nearly dense enough. All the “alternatives” are cute, and I like the diversification and the possibility of offshoot technology, but they are small scale solutions only.

For an elementary discussion of the thermo of power systems (really “power density”) see Design News middle of last year.

(Anybody notice now the LEFT, once proponents of massive economies of scale (Aswan High Dam, Three Gorges, TVA, Bonneville Authority, ALL USSR heavy industry) has now reverted to Tiny Scale (ala Mao Tse Tung's Great Leao Forward and the Backyard smelters; always wanted one of those). It's as if we have gotten scared of large things we can't understand; rather than work harder on the understanding part, we seem to throw the baby out with the bathwater)

Simply from an ENGINEERING PERSPECTIVE, nuclear is the very best option across the board.

Frankly, it’s also the safest (another thing that nobody wants to hear, and the government doesn’t broadcast), even long term. Coal and oil and gas extraction are much safer now, but ONE mine or rig disaster has a way of killing more folks than ALL the nuclear accidents in the west (excluding the USSR) for the last 50 years.
Of course, irrational fears of bicoastal types are worth more politically than the lives of coal miners from West Virginia and oilfield workers from Louisiana.

(N.B. IF AGW were indeed real, the one and only logical source of power would indeed be Nuclear. Some greens actually are espousing that course, now, too, although for the wrong reasons to my way of thinking)

And of course, Mike is correct that the French have had NO major accidents and produce a high percentage of their electricity (what 80%??) from nukes. HOWEVER, they have the great advantage that they had NO CHOICE (”A death sentence is a wonderous way to focus a man’s attention” -S. Johnson, by Boswell) so they replicated, over and over, a standard proven design, and they pay attention to what they’re doing. It CAN be done. It’s just that we’re, well, to borrow from Atty. Gen’l (”say what, brother?”) Holder, we’re just cowards.

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[And, my response to hareynolds on the nuclear issue: ]

You might want to click on my name, then read my bio; and see if I have ever met a petroleum engineer.

From what you wrote above, you have parts of it right.

We can discuss this nuclear issue at length on my blog -http://www.energyguysmusings.blogspot.com

Or, if it is ok with Anthony and the moderators, we can kick this around here. I will be linking often to my blog. Either way is fine with me!

----------------------------------------------------------------------

[Now, hareynolds again, responding to yet another commenter re CNG and windpower: ]

I respect T. Boone for stuff he did in the early days (Mesa Petroleum was a North Sea pioneer with their Beatrice platform, named after T. Boone’s wife; gutsy move naming a grotty old oil platform after your wife) but lately everybody here understands that T.Boone is just trying to suck a little harder on the Public Teat than everybody else. Considering the competition, that;s saying something.

Unfortunately, the public persona of the oil business lies somewhere between JR Ewing (and NO, Dallas is NOT larger than Houston) and T.Boone. It’s no wonder we’re dissed.

This country ought to know and revere guys like Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon. While GM and GE and AIG and every d-darned bank in the country were self-immolating, Exxon has been slowly, steadily improving every year. I think they are the best company in the world (return on capital employed 34%), but everybody else (none of whom have never set foot on a drilling rig, let alone actually SEEN crude oil) seems to think they are criminals.

AS for CNG, you are right that it isn’t the perfect fuel, as it’s bulky and low-”octane” and early tanks had a habit of coming apart (read: kaboom)if you spilled battery acid on them (but who doesn’t?). But it is a GREAT urban fuel and CLEAN CLEAN; heck, forklifts run on LP gas INSIDE.

T. Boone IS right about the Nat Gas part of his plan (of course, he’s had the same plan for 30 years, but never before had the “energy crisis” as an interview enabler. Ooops, where did I put that darned energy crisis?? It was here somewhere, I sware. )

The windpower part is pure pork (esp the “please pay for transmission lines to my windmills”), but in Texas we wouldn’t respect him if he wasn’t AUDACIOUSLY trying to stuff public money into his trousers by the fistful. c.f. Mssrs Brown and Root. All the better to mock and pillory. Even if he fails this time, we know he’ll be back, heck he’s only like 75, isn’t he?

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[Next, hareynolds responds to my nuclear entry above: ]

Good post. All absolutely true AFAIK.
I whole heartedly agree that nukes are complicated, expensive, dangerous if mismanaged, etc. etc.

I think it’s especially telling that the new gen French reactor in Finland is horribly over budget, but I see that as evidence of the decline of French engineering (Peugeot much?) in the last 40 years, and especially abandonment of the guiding principles that made their program work in the first place.

Like the Brazilian oil business, the early French program concentrated on simple robust design, and repetitive builds to speed-up the learning curve.
They’ve thrown that away and are believing their own press about how smart they are.

I agree that 80% nukes is too high for a country with the opportunity for a rich mix of alternatives hooked to the grid(s). But if we don’t start building NOW (assuming say min 8 years start to finish) nuke’s share of US power will get down to about 5% before it starts to recover.

Actually that sounds like I want the government to BUILD nukes I just want a level playing field for ALL electrical generation methods so the market can assess the risks without having to weigh wacky sovereign risks (like pulling the plug on Shoreham and South Texas withut reason) and give us the most efficient power possible/

-----------------------------------------

[And finally, my response re Rex Tillerson, CNG and windmills: ]

So true about Rex Tillerson. I had a few classes with him many years ago in undergrad. It is no surprise to me, nor anyone else who knows him, that he rose to the highest position in the biggest oil company in the world.

But about the wind-power and CNG, aka the Pickens Plan, it works quite well here in California. It will not work as well elsewhere, no doubt, especially where the wind turbines are subject to icing over. Icing over is not a problem in California, at least thus far! But the fact is, in California we have thousands of CNG powered vehicles, from cars to buses, and thousands of windmills generating power every day. This has existed for many years.

T. Boone sells the natural gas and compressor stations out here, and made a fortune.

---------------------------------

Roger E. Sowell, Esq. Link to legal website is here.

AB 32 and Sea Level Rise

2009-03-08T16:26:00.000-07:00

[This is taken verbatim from my comment on Anthony Watts' blog, WattsUpWithThat.com, on March 8, 2009, What WILL They Think of Next. I waxed a bit lyrical on this one. This is in response to a commenter jrshipley, an avowed AGW proponent, and fairly snide and nasty writer. The moderators on WUWT find it necessary to {snip} quite regularly on his writings. This indicates bad language, or insults to the person, usually. -- Roger]

--------------------------------------------

Me, at 10:05:59: Label me a skeptic, then, and a serious denier where the IPCC and other so-called “scientists” have blatantly lied, distorted, manipulated, and/or hidden their data and methods from scrutiny.

I do wish Dr. Richard Feynman were still alive, just to hear what he would say about the IPCC and all the “science” surrounding it.

Many of us, even those having no PhD after our names, are quite capable through education and experience of reading and understanding what is served up. Our good and trusty servants physics, math, thermodynamics, chemistry, and statistics do not let us down. I also rely heavily on economics. I wish more people would.

A good skeptic, in my opinion, listens to the “science” but verifies with his/her own eyes. As President Reagan said in a different context, Trust but Verify.

So, we are told the debate is over, the science is settled. Is that a skeptic, or denier issue? Well, if the science is settled, why did NASA send a (failed) satellite up to measure CO2? There are many, many, other such examples of knowing that the science is not “settled.”

Or, another good one, does settled science have multiple models, none of which agree with the other? The GCMs are manifold. Are there truly as many models, with different results, for predicting the speed of a falling object acted upon solely by gravity? When the GCM’s can agree, and get their predictions as accurate as a gravity equation, THEN will I agree that the science is settled.

Ya’ll have a ways to go.

If the IPCC (the “scientists”) are correct, why have so few of their gloom-and-doom predictions come to pass? Is that a skeptic or denier issue? (refer to predicting velocity of a falling object acted upon by gravity, above) Smokey regularly posts links to IPCC global temperature predictions, yet none of the (at least three!) measurements of global temperature match the IPCC.

The “scientists” tell us the seas are rising. Not off of California, they are not. The government’s own satellite data shows this. Further, why is the sea level data not on the public website after December 31, 2008? The trend was downward; could it be that the trend is continuing downward, and that is just too embarrassing for the AGW crowd?

Hurricanes are supposed to be growing greater and more frequent, per the “scientists.” They are not. Should a thinking person accept that as a skeptic, or a denier?

The ice at the poles is predicted to melt away and cause great rises in sea level, islands inundated, and huge population relocations. From above, we know the seas are not rising, so the ice is not melting. Which islands are underwater, and how many million people are dislocated?

Oceans are cooler, not hotter. Air temperatures in Europe, and North America are colder, and snows are greater.

All of these things exist even while CO2 is increasing in the atmosphere. But, no major volcano erupted recently to cool things down.

Just how many lies, and flat-out wrong predictions, are we supposed to accept from the “scientists,” before a rational person says this is a bunch of crap?

We have our own eyes, and our own ears, and with the internet, we can find stories such as the party ship and the icebreaker (!) caught, stuck, in ice in the St. Lawrence — weeks before the ice usually closes in. Sure, that is an anecdotal piece of evidence, but it has photos, and eye-witness accounts, and official statements. As an attorney, I can assure you that is very strong evidence.

This is not a game anymore. This is deadly serious business. California, where I live and work, has already passed strong legislation to adversely impact all aspects of our once-great economy; this is known as AB 32. I predict it will be known in history as the Bill that Killed California.

President Obama, with a complicit Congress and Senate, has promised to sign into law a similar bill in 2009. Watch for the Dow Jones index to take another swan dive when that one becomes law. Dow 2000, anyone?

The social and political consequences of millions of retirees with zero funds on which to live, because Global Warming legislation cratered the economy, are things the politicians should be contemplating.

So, I deny what is obviously and demonstrably false. And, because of the falsehoods and obvious manipulations that we have seen repeatedly thus far, I am highly skeptical of anything else spouting forth from the so-called “scientists,” especially the IPCC.

Long rant, ya’ll. I’ll go have my soothing herbal tea now, and contemplate the snow storm in the Seattle area.

Again.

In March.

------------------------------------------

[Mike Bryant wrote next, a very nice compliment]:

Mike Bryant (11:30:45) :

Wow, Roger, I enjoyed the detailed and passionate response. It sounds like a summation for the jury, devastating. I’m voting guilty.
Mike

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[I answered Mike back, thusly: ]

Mike Bryant (11:30:45) :

“Wow, Roger, I enjoyed the detailed and passionate response. It sounds like a summation for the jury, devastating. I’m voting guilty.

Mike”

Thank you, sir. You may take your seat in the jury box. [grin]

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[jrshipley responded with a nasty-gram, complete with {snip}, thusly: ]

jrshipley (11:44:19) :

Roger, you say that sea levels are not rising off of California. The IPCC report I referenced makes clear that there are regional differences in changing sea levels and thoroughly discusses the physical basis for these differences. Even the post on this very blog that I referenced made clear that sea levels are in fact rising, but you deny [snip] this?

Finally, thank you for indicating who the real fearmongers are in this debate, namely people such as yourself who claim that we cannot stop changing the climate and also rebuild our economy after the Bush collapse. So pessimistic. I believe that America is up to these challenges, if only we can overcome the natering (sic) nabobs of negativity and get to work.

---------------------------------------------------------------

[I decline to engage in the name-calling, "fearmonger," "natering (sic) nabobs of negativity." I prefer to let facts and logic do the heavy lifting. After all, I firmly believe that he who resorts to name-calling concedes the debate. He has run completely out of ammunition in the form of facts and logic. So, I responded thusly: ]

jrshipley:

Yes, I say the sea levels are not rising. For evidence, have a look at the U. Colorado site’s “wizard,” and gaze at all the blue/purple area on their world map. Then, click the cursor in the blue next to San Francisco, and observe the little graph that shows up. My graph of their data shows 5 mm decrease since 1993. If the seas are rising at what is it they say? 3 mm or 4 mm per year? Then over 15 years that graph should trend UP by 45 to 60 mm (that’s about 2 inches).

Over the past 5 years, 2004-2008, the decreasing trend is much more pronounced, at 50 mm in 5 years. This is clear and convincing evidence that IPCC has something very, very, wrong in their sea level claims.

For anyone who wants to verify or duplicate these results, this is from latitude 38 North, Longitude 236 in their nomenclature. Don’t believe me, go run these numbers for yourself.

http://sealevel.colorado.edu/wizard.php

Then, compare the small amount of red area on the map, with all the blue and purple. After that, please tell me again that the global sea level is rising.

I do not have to make claims that the economy is in a shambles, and the Global Warming (AB 32-style) laws will make it worse. Just watch the economic indicators, they speak far louder than I ever could or will.

Start with unemployment figures. Then the stock market indices around the world, not just the Dow Jones. Tokyo, Hong Kong, and London are also down. Then look at the consumption of basic energy, in particular oil and natural gas. Note that OPEC has cut production in attempts to prop up the price of oil above $40 per barrel.

Examine the leading economic indicators. Note that the financial markets are in chaos, still, after having billions upon billions pumped into them. Note how many banks failed in the trailing 12 to 18 months.

Then, tell me again how the measures to save-the-world-from-frying-and-drowning are going to put people to work, and kick the economy in the gas. Tell me how higher electricity prices are going to boost the economy. Tell me how higher gasoline and diesel prices, due to bio-fuels, are going to boost the economy. Tell me how it will only cost the consumer $300 more per car to purchase a new car that achieves 49 miles per gallon, as California’s Air Resources Board stated in the AB 32 regulations.

[Parenthetical note: bio-fuels are mandated in California to comprise 10 percent of gasoline and diesel, as for example ethanol or soy oil for diesel. The cost of gasoline and diesel increase with these as additives.]

Then, make a convincing argument that the millions upon millions of people who cannot afford new cars, but must buy a used car, will have more money in THEIR pockets from buying more expensive gasoline for 5 years or so, before they have the chance to buy one of those 49-mpg used cars.

Before the AGW proponents shut down every coal-fired power plant in the U.S. and Europe (Poland will NOT be happy about that), please give us all a good plan for replacing that power. You might want to read what I wrote earlier on another WUWT thread about what happens when nuclear power provides more than about 30 percent of the total power in a national grid. [in hindsight, it was on this same thread, a few hours earlier. I will put that one on energyguy's musings, also. It is a classic.]

As you seem likely never to be dissuaded from your AGW views, how about you just keep watch, as I will, for the ice to melt, and the beaches to disappear. We have lots of beaches in California, and you can bet there will be plenty of news coverage when they go under.

I will give you one to watch near Los Angeles, California. In Playa del Rey, for example, just south of the breakwater at Marina del Rey, there are dozens of expensive homes right on the beach, approximately 300 feet from the water. At high tide, the homes are only about a foot or so above sea level. Large waves at high tide sometimes swirl the water to within 100 feet of the homes. Keep an eye on those. (For those interested, from Google Maps the latitude/longitude is 33.956105;-118.449526) [this beach is one where I sometimes go to jog, or sail by when we take out the boat. The beach patrol constructs a sand dune each winter in front of the homes in question, as that is when the winter storms bring the big waves that would otherwise send water into the homes. The sand dune is usually down by March. But, we do have the occasional big waves at high tide at other seasons of the year, so that is when the water swirls to within a few feet of the front doors.]

I look forward to your, or any other AGW proponent’s, responses on these issues.

-------------------------------------------------------

Roger E. Sowell, Esq. Link to legal website is here.

California Dreaming -- AB 32 and Southern Cal

2009-03-07T01:29:00.000-08:00

On Friday, March 6, I attended an all-day seminar at UCLA (U. California at Los Angeles) at which the AGW (anthropogenic global warming) faithful gathered, repeated their many mantras, and applauded themselves long and loud. In fairness, there were a couple of voices of reason among the many panelists. But the AGW faithful heard from Mary Nichols, Chair of the Air Resources Board, and Senator Fran Pavley, (California state senator, co-author of AB 32), who both repeated the seas are rising, the globe is warming, and we are just SO happy that our AB 32 is now in place so we will save the world.

No kidding.

About the seas rising, Ms. Nichols stated that the seas COULD rise 8 inches in the next 40 years, and that would be devastating to the half-million people living near the Sacramento River delta and its inadequate levees. No mention of a range of possibilities or likelihood, confidence intervals, or basis for that claim of 8 inches in 40 years. No mention that the satellite data shows the sea level is falling offshore San Francisco. The 8 inch rise was just thrown out there, for the faithful to accept. And they did.

Ms. Nichols flatly stated that hurricanes are growing more violent and more frequent. No one challenged her on that, even though hurricanes are not more frequent nor violent.

Ms. Nichols also stated that the summer heat waves are growing more intense, and wildfires are getting out of hand. One person (maybe he reads WUWT!) did ask her if that was not related to planned burns by federal forest officials? Ms. Nichols spoke in circles and did not answer on that one. I suppose Ms. Nichols has not been informed that wildfires are a regular, normal, natural part of a forest eco-system. One can have a look at weathered bluffs along rivers and creeks, and see bands of charcoal buried in the layers of dirt. These bands of charcoal are the remains of ancient forest fires. Isn't it odd that the evidence of ancient wildfires is right there, yet today when a wildfire occurs it must be due to man's reckless emissions of CO2 into the atmosphere? I knew those indigenous peoples were holding out on us, and were driving around in Hummers and SUVs for millenia before the Europeans arrived in North America. I wonder where those ancient gas-guzzlers were buried?

We also heard that the people must be “kept in their neighborhoods” and given disincentives to drive anywhere, as that will cut down CO2. (that was from the urban planner). The command and control mentality was quite evident on that one. Has anybody ever been to such a planned community? And seen the prices charged in those shops? Can someone please explain to me how ordinary people, or poor people, or elderly on fixed incomes, are supposed to live there and purchase the goods and services? Or, are the planners talking about making such communities only for the wealthy?

We then heard from the water guy, who told us that we must install a separate water distribution system to reduce the pumping energy required for potable water. I am still trying to untangle that one. Apparently (according to him, anyway) 19 percent of all California energy (I think he meant electric power) is expended on producing, purifying, pumping, and distributing fresh water. So, if we install a second parallel system, we don’t have to pump the water? I don’t get that one.

The Power guy from Los Angeles DWP (Dept of Water and Power) assured us that DWP will cease importing power from the nasty coal-fired plants in Utah, from which DWP imports about 48 percent of its power. This would occur by 2019 and 2027, just as soon as the existing power purchase contracts expire. By then, the utility will produce power from the oh-so-green geothermal sources at the Salton Sea, build the long transmission lines, and power will still flow to Los Angeles. I tried to get my question asked, but the microphone-dispensing-people did not make it over to me. (these plants may emit sulfur (H2S), briny wastewater, metal salts, and mercury, depending on the geologic formation).

We were also told that the Obama AB 32 copy-cat plan for the U.S. is coming along just fine, and we should see a federal law by late this year. Meanwhile, California’s death-stab at the car companies is coming along nicely, as the U.S. EPA held hearings yesterday to decide when (not if, mind you) California will be granted its more strict tail-pipe emission standards for CO2 on all new-cars sold in-state. Just what the highly-profitable car companies need, a third emissions standard. (One is for Europe, one is for the U.S. without California’s strict standard, and the third is the Pavley standards for California).

[for those reading this in the future, this is sarcasm. The car companies in March, 2009, are in dire fiscal straits, facing bankruptcy and losing vast billions of dollars quarterly because so few people are buying their products. There is a bit of a credit crisis occurring as well, also an economic slump, unemployment rising rapidly, and a new President (Obama) who just printed more than a trillion U.S. dollars to give away in a massive "stimulus" plan. The stock market has tanked from 14,000 to 6,600 on the good news. -- Roger]

DWP had a few moments of comedy, too. We were told that each household in their utility district can drop by the department and pick up two compact fluorescent light bulbs for free. (Well, I thought that was funny…as if that will make any difference!) This next bit was not funny, but serious: low-income Californians can request a new refrigerator from DWP, and they will bring over a new, energy-efficient refrigerator, install it, and take away the old one. No charge. Then more comedy: we can also expect to have free neighborhood make-over parties, during which homes will be weatherized to plug the drafty spots, shade-trees will be planted, and rooftops painted white. This was met by great applause. I can just picture the conversation at the front porch in certain neighborhoods: Hi, we’re from DWP and we are here to weatherize your house, can we come in? Uh, hold on, we were not expecting you, we need to clean up the place first. Ok, we can wait! Furious activity to put away the drugs and the paraphernalia and the guns and ammo. (This is Los Angeles, remember?)

We were also told that California is having a water shortage, a drought actually, now in its third year. Then, completely disregarding the drought line from just a few minutes earlier, we were told that bio-fuels require an awful lot of water to grow and manufacture. Bio-fuels are mandated under AB 32. My question (again, unasked) was, hey fellas! Remember that drought discussion? From where can we obtain all that water for growing and processing bio-fuels?

No one stood to say the seas are not rising, at least off the coast of San Francisco, and not for the past few years.

No one stood to ask about the recent cold snaps, and snowfall.

No one stood to ask about the near-normal arctic ice extent, and the increased Antarctic ice.

No one stood to ask about the cooling oceans.

No one stood to ask about the cooling atmosphere since 2002.

No one stood to state there is zero relation between CO2 and climate warming.

California is Dreaming, all right. I just wonder how bad the economy must be, before the AB 32 nonsense is postponed or repealed forever. How much unemployment? How expensive for bio-fuel blended gasoline and diesel? How expensive for electricity? How unreliable the utility systems due to over-reliance on solar and wind?

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.

Wind and Utilities - How Much is Good?

2009-03-04T21:21:00.000-08:00

An item caught my eye the other day while reading Warren Buffett's 2008 annual letter to shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway, his multi-billion dollar corporation where he is Chairman. Buffett wrote that wind-generated power makes up 20 percent of the power generation in Iowa. Berkshire Hathaway (BRK) owns a major utility in Iowa, MidAmerican Energy Holdings.

Buffett wrote: "MidAmerican has maintained this extraordinary price stability while making Iowa number one among all states in the percentage of its generation capacity that comes from wind. Since our purchase, MidAmerican’s wind-based facilities have grown from zero to almost 20% of total capacity."

This is interesting because many people write that wind-power cannot provide more than about 20 percent of a utility's power due to the instability it creates on the grid. For comparison, California has about 2 to 3 percent of its electric power provided by wind. It appears there may be significance in word choices here, as Buffett wrote "total capacity," and the total wind-generated kwh is probably one-fourth of that, or roughly 5 percent of total power generated.

California's goal is to have 33 percent of all electric power sold in 2020 to be from renewable sources of all forms: wind, solar, biomass, geothermal, small hydroelectric, and wave. Thus far, geothermal, small hydro, and biomas are predominant, with wind at 2.3 percent and solar at 0.3 percent (2007 figures).

Way to go, Iowa! This is especially interesting, since the State of California considers itself a leader in so many things, and proudly boasts of its landmark AB 32 as showing the rest of the world how to conserve energy, go green, stimulate the economy, and create green jobs. Words to that effect are written into the AB 32 statute.

And Iowa is leading in the wind-generated power category, as a percent of total capacity. Meanwhile, Texas is leading all states in total installed wind capacity.

Warren Buffett is no dummy. His investment in wind-power in Iowa indicates strongly that wind is a good investment. Again, way to go, Iowa! Show California how it is done.

Roger E. Sowell, Esq. Legal website is here.

Wind, Water, Farms and Power Generation

2009-02-28T14:18:00.000-08:00

Earlier, I wrote on a plan to divert a portion of the Missouri River, pump it uphill and 800 miles into the tributaries of the Colorado River to supply water and power to California.

My proposed National Excess Water Transport Aqueduct Project (NEWTAP) will go a long way to solving a couple of problems. First, and obviously, is the chronic water shortage in California and other western states, and flooding along the Missouri. Second, what to do with wind power in the Plains when the power demand is in the big cities (the lack of transmission lines problem).

As I wrote earlier: “One possibility on the national level is a water transfer system from the Missouri River at Kansas City, that runs approximately 800 miles southwest to the continental divide in New Mexico, just south of Interstate 40. From there the water would flow into tributaries of the Colorado River. The hydroelectric plants are already in place on Hoover Dam and Glen Canyon Dam. Therefore, some of the power required to pump the water uphill and 800 miles would be recovered. The elevation change is on the order of 6,000 feet.

The water route will be through the U.S.’ great wind corridor, so it is conceivable to use windmills to provide energy to the pumps.

A further improvement on this plan is to also divert a portion of the upper Mississippi River west and into the National Water Transport Project. One possibility is a 150-mile canal due west along US route 36 from Hannibal to St. Joseph. This would allow a water flow of approximately 2,000 cubic feet per second, or more.

The water transfer to the Colorado River would eliminate the need for power transmission lines, because power would be generated at Glen Canyon Dam and Hoover Dam, then sent to Southern California or elsewhere through existing transmission lines. Thus, there would be some savings by not having to build power transmission lines to connect the wind-generators to cities.

A useful means of storing excess wind-generated power is to pump water uphill for later use in hydroelectric plants when the power is needed. This trans-continental, uphill waterway would do exactly that, storing the water in Lake Powell and Lake Mead.

I see no technical reasons why this would not work. Crossing existing creeks, rivers, highways, railroads, and hills, can all be done. However, on the legal and environmental side, there are more difficulties. There is a water-rights legal issue of transferring water from one water basin into another. This plan would transfer water from the Missouri water basin across a couple of other basins and into the Colorado water basin. Then there are the eminent domain issues to acquire the right-of-way. This is not a problem, if the governments decree the project is in the public interest. In practice, though, such decrees at times generate public hostility. Finally, the environmental issues are rather large. One can envision the EIR (Environmental Impact Report) for an 800-mile canal crossing several states!

Still, such a project would be of ultimate good. The money spent would provide employment for thousands, and for many years. The energy generated by the windmills would be recovered (at least in part), which is in line with the “Generate Green” movement. That is far better than building a few nuclear power plants. And the water would go to good use, irrigating farms to feed the U.S. and the world.

Roger E. Sowell, Esq. Legal website is here.

Westward Ho: A Water Transfer System

2009-02-27T18:39:00.000-08:00

It is becoming more and more apparent that the U.S. must transfer some of the excess water that floods the Mid-Western states to the dry Western states. My colleagues and I have been researching this for several years, and have some ideas. We conclude that it is in the national interest to do, and should be a no-brainer.

Ancient civilizations realized the critical need for water, and did what it took to move the water to where it was needed. The Romans of course built their famous aqueducts, and the ancient Chinese routed water also. Many others did, too.

While the current Presidential administration is passing out money as if it grew on Sequoia trees, this is a project that should be on the list.

California has an extensive history with water projects, with routing water from the Sacramento River south to Los Angeles, from the Owens Lake area to Los Angeles, and more recently the Colorado River to Los Angeles and San Diego. However, none of these is adequate given the growing California population, droughts, and decreased snow in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

An amazing fact is that water pumps consume approximately 10 percent of all the power sold in California. Some of that is recovered as hydroelectric power. The recovery of power from water factors in this.

One possibility on the national level is a water transfer system from the Missouri River at Kansas City, that runs approximately 800 miles southwest to the continental divide in New Mexico, just south of Interstate 40. From there the water would flow into tributaries of the Colorado River. The hydroelectric plants are already in place on Hoover Dam and Glen Canyon Dam. Therefore, some of the power expended to pump the water uphill and 800 miles would be recovered. The elevation change is on the order of 6,000 feet.

The water route will be through the U.S.' great wind corridor, so it is conceivable to use windmills to provide energy to the pumps. How the water is transferred is of course an engineering problem, one solution is to use a buried pipeline, or build a series of open canals with a slight downward slope to the southwest, and install water lift (pumping) stations at regular intervals. Something of the same magnitude was done by the construction of the Erie Canal in New York, which runs approximately 365 miles, and 600 feet uphill. It took 8 years to build and was finished in 1825.

This is the type of project that has enormous benefits for almost all Americans, and would certainly be less expensive than building and operating desalination plants using reverse osmosis. The existing lakes Mead and Powell could store the water as necessary. One benefit is an assured supply of agricultural products from the fertile but arid California farmlands and dairies. California supplies a large part of the nation's foods, when there is adequate water.

An advantage of the buried pipeline alternative is no water loss due to evaporation, but a disadvantage is higher initial cost, and higher pumping costs due to friction as the water flows through the pipe.

An advantage of the open canal design is lower pumping cost, but a disadvantage is slight water losses due to evaporation.

The amount of power required to pump the water is tremendous, at roughly 800,000 HP for a flow of 1,000 cubic feet per second.

Given a simple design of 800 miles broken up into 10 mile sections of canal, with a pump at each section, would require 80 pumping stations at 10,000 HP each. The 10,000 HP is roughly 7.5 MW of energy. Of course, an actual design would follow the contour of the land and have pumps sized appropriately for each section. Even if all 80 pumping stations are built, the amount of power required is approximately 600 MW.

The Missouri River flow varies of course, but is somewhat regulated by a series of flood-control dams upstream. The USGS shows the typical flow is about 4,000 to 5,000 cubic feet per second. Therefore, diverting 1,000 cubic feet per second would not likely be a problem. Diverting twice that amount, or three times that amount, could conceivably cause problems.

This would be a job for the Army Corps of Engineers, and is a worthy challenge to their expertise.

Addendum: I added a second piece to this at Wind, Water, Farms and Power Generation.

Roger E. Sowell, Esq. Legal website is here.

Computers, AI, and Fortran

2009-02-20T21:40:00.001-08:00

Now here is a rather interesting exchange of views from WUWT on Feb 19 and 20 of 2009, on computers and what they can and cannot do. My added comments are [in brackets.]

[The basic post is about Global Climate Models, aka General Circulation Models, and just how poorly they are written, validated, and that their resulting predictions are very bad when compared to reality]

David Halliday wrote:

“Computers can’t do anything humans can’t do. Computers can’t think. Computers can’t create. What computers can do is some of what humans can do only faster.”

[My response:] In my experience, computers can do many things humans cannot do. As just one example, when I studied artificial intelligence theory, algorithms, and systems, it was eye-opening to discover that a properly programmed computer can do “things” that humans just cannot do. There appears to be a limit to the amount of information a human (even great humans) can assimilate, process, and keep account of. Computers can do this far better. There are also documented examples of, for example, neural network algorithms that *learn* from mistakes, from partial successes, and deduce rules or answers that have eluded even the most experienced and smartest humans.

There are also relationship-discovery algorithms, aka data mining, that explore vast reams of data and reveal insights that humans have never before discovered.

In the field of computerized advanced process control, well, let’s just say that many of us are very glad humans are not at the controls, but instead let the computers do the work. Fly-by-wire is just one example of this, wherein advanced aircraft fly in or near the unstable regime, a regime where human responses and anticipation just cannot adequately respond.

John Galt – re is Fortran still in use? [This in response to John Galt, a programmer with some experience, who evidently doubts Fortran is in use due to its creaky age and inadequacies. True, it is not too good at writing code for internet applications. But for engineering applications, it has few if any peers. IMHO.]

Absolutely. Operating companies have millions of lines of code written in Fortran, that works and works quite well every day. No one in the private sector has the time or budget to rewrite perfectly good code just to bring it up to some newly-written standard. Those new standards change every few years, and rewriting would be a complete waste of effort. There may be some limited instances where this is done, but it must have a justifiable positive influence on the financial bottom line.

[This is based on my experience and knowledge of oil and chemical companies, and the process models and process control software that we wrote in the 60's 70's and 80's. It was Fortran 72 and Fortran 77 for most of my time writing this code. Some of it was later used as black-box subroutines called by other languages, such as GUIs (graphical user interfaces) for simulators and training software.]

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[David Halliday responds:]

David Holliday (20:02:43) :

[Quoting my earlier comment] “In my experience, computers can do many things humans cannot do. As just one example, when I studied artificial intelligence theory, algorithms, and systems, it was eye-opening to discover that a properly programmed computer can do “things” that humans just cannot do.”

My original statement is correct. There is nothing a computer can do that a human can’t do. The computer can just do it faster.

Computers are machines. Programs are instructions to the machine to do things. Humans design the programs. Humans write the programs. Humans test the programs. And humans run the programs. Therefore, humans can do the same thing the programs do but just slower.

Computers aren’t creative. They have no independence of thought. They don’t think at all. They have not independence of action. They have no cognitive understanding. They simply execute the programs. One of the biggest misnomers in Computer Science is Artificial Intelligence. There is no intelligence in a computer. And we’ve never been able to put it in there.

I first studied Artificial Intelligence in the early 80’s. Neural nets, which are often purported to be advanced, self-learning computers, are fundamentally self-weighting algorithms that can varying their behaviour based on feedback mechanisms. Expert systems are simply rule-based approaches to decision systems. Humans build the neural nets and humans write the rules. There is nothing about how these programs work that we don’t understand. The HAL 9000 of 2001: A Space Odyssey doesn’t exist today or maybe ever.

[Now, David Halliday may not realize just what I referred to earlier about neural networks solving problems that the best and brightest human minds had spent countless hours on with no results: A complex chemical plant just could not make product that met specifications. The stuff it did make had to be sold at a deep discount as bad quality. The plant had several processing steps (not uncommon) and many independent variables in each step. The chemists and engineers did all they could from theory and experience, but to no avail. The neural net guys were trotted in, built their NN, and fed data from each failed trial into the NN. They fed in all the variables and settings for each failed test, with the resulting yield and quality of product. Then, they ran it in Predict mode, with the goal being highest yield of on-spec product. The NN churned away and produced a new combination of independent variables for each of the several process steps. After the chemists and engineers reviewed these settings for safety and reasonableness (e.g. can this pump generate that much flow? Can that heater produce a stream at that temperature?) they agreed to give it a go. And it worked. The question is, could humans have eventually found that precise combination of variables? Maybe. But then, they had been trying for a long time to do just that, with no success.]

As someone who has worked in computers for over 26 years from programmer to Chief Technology Officer, I can tell you with a high-degree of confidence I understand how computers work and what they can do. They don’t do anything we don’t tell them to do. And since everything they do is something we tell them to do we can do it.

Don’t confuse that computers can do things much faster than humans with what humans can do. The point is they are just doing what we program them to do. Of course they do it orders and orders of magnitude faster than we can. Hence, the old joke, “To err is human, but to really [mess] up takes a computer.” [This is a family-friendly blog...editorial license is hereby granted to me by me to clean up offending language -- Roger; our version of that last line was "to really foul things up requires a computer."]

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[Next, Richard M chimes in with:]

Richard M (21:22:24) :

I agree with almost everything David Holliday (20:02:43) : said. Computers do not have any intelligence and a superfast human could do everything a computer could do. However, there are no superfast humans, so in reality computers can do many things us poor slow humans could never do or would even attempt to do.

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[As I am taking shots from all points of the compass here, I finally had some slack time to respond thusly:]

Roger Sowell (21:51:48) :

David Halliday [wrote]

“One of the biggest misnomers in Computer Science is Artificial Intelligence. There is no intelligence in a computer. And we’ve never been able to put it in there.”

[My response is:} We must have taken different classes in AI, then. Mine was from UCLA where the instructor wrote the AI for NASA’s Mars rovers. AI definitely exists, and I stand completely by my earlier assertions.

But I will not get further into a Did so! Did Not! contest, as it is fruitless and a waste of Anthony’s and moderators’ time.

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[Next, Squidly jumps in with a response to my longer earlier comment:]

I would agree that there are “some” things that computers can do that humans cannot. Computational speed is perhaps one, but that is just about where it ends. I have studied AI for quite some time and it was my primary collegiate focus, and I too play with neural networks from time to time just for fun. But the human brain by contrast, can perform many things that computers presently cannot do and some things that they may never do. One very humanly simple thing that computers are extremely poor at is pattern recognition. Humans process patterns with astounding accuracy and at an astounding rate. As a very simple example of this, I was recently sent an email from a colleage, the special thing about it was that the letters were all jumbled up. All words were written with the proper beginning and ending letters, had the proper number of characters and the correct characters as a whole, but, all inner letters were out of order. The interesting part of this is that you can read it almost as easily as you read anything else. As long as the words contain the correct letters, length and beginning and ending letters, it doesn’t matter. Your brain automatically compensates on the fly through pattern recognition. Its an interesting experiment and one that you can easily try for yourself. Now, one would say “so, a computer can do that”, yes, but through iteration and rearranging, not through first take pattern recognition, and certainly not with the efficiency of the human brain. And as for “fly-by-wire”, your brain handles more fly-by-wire than our entire fleet of Stealth bombers combined, every moment of your life, monitoring thoughts, temperature, body functions, heartbeats, internal clock, circulation systems, neural systems, and on and on, all in real-time. That’s pretty tough to beat. We may get close someday in the future, but for now, not even close.

As a tiny example, that goes to this and the model topic, have you seen and heard, even a short film that was completely computer generated, that you could not discern from reality? And that is the simple stuff.

Unfortunately, we still have actors (politician interchangeable)…

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[And again, we hear from Squidly:]

Squidly (22:07:38) :

David Holliday (20:02:43) :
My original statement is correct. There is nothing a computer can do that a human can’t do. The computer can just do it faster.

By in large I agree with you. There seems to be a popular misconception that I think has been largely fueled by Hollywood. Computers cannot do the things you see on the big screen. Unfortunately, even my father suffers from this misconception, and he is a retired engineer from MIT! And the worst part is that he is eating up AGW like there is no tomorrow. I fight with him on the AGW subject daily.

BTW, to all, yes, AGW is most certainly a religion. I have seen this transformation in my father, and it is rather disturbing. I would never have guessed that I would be seeing this behavior from my father, but he’s clearly had too much kool-aid. I’ve always viewed him as perhaps the most rational and objective person I have known, but wow, not when it comes to AGW. It is some scary stuff!

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[Next, we hear from Alan the Brit, also agreeing with Halliday:]

Alan the Brit (01:36:49) :

David Holliday:-)

That is just about bang on. I am so delighted to see so many mature heads making the point, GIGO. There will always be a human being at the end of it somewhere. Assume & presume nothing, ever!

As an engineer, & I know I have said this before, computers are little more than powerful calculators & number crunchers, sure they can churn out the numerical answers by the nanosecond where we mere fleshy lumps take minutes to do the same thing. However, the wee, wee, wee, wee, tiny flaw in the whole thing, is that if you get the design philosophy wrong, no amount of number crunching will lead you to the right solution, but only to many ways in which you prove you got it wrong! This point I would like to direct to Roger Sowell, yes computers are wonderful things, but they are after all just a tool to do a job;-) I spend many hours recommending to graduate engineers they sit down with a pad & a pencil & sketch things out by hand before they ever get near a computer programme. As a 51 yo luddite I mistrust computers, & with the current political administration losing personal data left, right, & centre I feel vindicated.

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[And again, this time from John Galt:]

John Galt (07:51:40) :

John Galt – re is Fortran still in use?
[Quoting me from above] Absolutely. Operating companies have millions of lines of code written in Fortran, that works and works quite well every day. No one in the private sector has the time or budget to rewrite perfectly good code just to bring it up to some newly-written standard. Those new standards change every few years, and rewriting would be a complete waste of effort. There may be some limited instances where this is done, but it must have a justifiable positive influence on the financial bottom line.

[Now John Galt's reply] I work as a software engineer/consultant and I’m well aware of the problems of maintaining and updating code.

Remember the Y2k crisis? That came about because old code was never updated. Nobody knew if programs that had been in operation for decades would work and in many cases, nobody could dig through the layers of patches, bandaids, paperclips and hacks to decipher the internals of the programs, either.

I should not be surprised by the reported size of the Fortran code base, but I am. This language isn’t part of the Computer Science curriculum in any universities in this part of the USA. Is it still taught in the Engineering schools?

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[And now me, with a reply to John Galt re Fortran in engineering schools: ]

Roger Sowell (10:08:27) :

John Galt: re Fortran still taught in engineering schools?

Yup. The University of Texas at Austin, for one. UT is a decent institute of higher education (and my undergrad alma mater). (not to be confused with University of Tennessee, another UT)

see http://www.utexas.edu

Click here for fortran class

Also, the other UT (Tennessee) teaches fortran . From this site: “For example, we’ve made changes in the NE [nuclear engineering] Fundamentals course in response to alumni feedback, bringing the Fortran computer language back to the curriculum in order to prepare graduates for the field.”

The Y2K fortran bugs were not that hard to fix. Refineries, chemical plants, power plants, etc. with fortran made it through midnight 12/31/1999 into 2000 just fine.

Just another scare-mongering non-event.

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[And John Galt, a gracious fellow, responds:]

Thanks for the update regarding Fortran in engineering schools.

pre-Y2K was a great time to be in software consulting. This business never made so much money. If you had asked me about the seriousness of the threat, I would have repeated the industry line about it being the gravest danger you could imagine.

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[And finally I respond to Alan the Brit, but by now I am uncomfortable really getting into this on Anthony's blog, as it uses up his space and occupies his time to moderate (or his other moderators'); so I offer to take this over here. But, probably none of the other participants know about this blog. Anthony has requested on an earlier thread that we stay on topic. We shall see if anyone finds this.]

Roger Sowell (16:46:09) :

Alan the Brit,

“This point I would like to direct to Roger Sowell, yes computers are wonderful things, but they are after all just a tool to do a job;-) I spend many hours recommending to graduate engineers they sit down with a pad & a pencil & sketch things out by hand before they ever get near a computer programme. As a 51 yo luddite I mistrust computers, & with the current political administration losing personal data left, right, & centre I feel vindicated.”

I also am/was an engineer, dating from the slide rule days. I completely agree that it is usually best to think it through first with a pad and pencil, perhaps even research a bit to see what others have published. There are, no doubt, many thousands of good software routines in regular use that are just doing what humans can do, only faster and error-free. I have written and implemented my share of those.

I think this all comes down to semantics, just what is "artificial intelligence." To me, if a human cannot do it (whatever “it” is), but the computer can, that is a form of AI. The examples I gave earlier are on point.

We as humans give a label to people with great memories, or abilities to solve problems that no one else can. That label is usually “intelligent.” There are even standardized tests (albeit controversial) that purport to give a score that measures IQ. As an attorney, I had to take quite a few rather difficult tests to prove a certain level of ability before I was awarded my license to practice law. [Note, none of those tests involved IQ, at least not directly] Other professions do too, and I have no intention to place attorneys in a spotlight. Professional engineers, PhDs, MDs, CPAs, CFAs, the list is long. I have a lot of respect for others without fancy degrees, too, especially my auto mechanic. Even he uses a computerized diagnostic tester from time to time; I think it has a rules-based expert system in it.

Hence, when a computer can solve a problem no human could or ever will, is it also “intelligent?”

Anthony, if this is too far off-topic, I can take this over to my energyguy’s musings blog so as not to waste your time. — Roger

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Roger E. Sowell, Esq. legal website is here.

aka energyguy on townhall.com

Mortgage Mess

2009-02-19T22:22:00.000-08:00

My two regular readers will note that this is a bit off-topic in that it discusses financial matters rather than energy matters; but it is related in a tangential manner. The energy industries require financing, whether the technology is solar, wind, wave, geothermal, solid waste conversion, natural gas, coal, nuclear, or whatever. If the credit markets are non-functional, then every such project is in jeopardy.

Years ago, a bank or other lending institution held the loans it made until maturity. The bank made money by a small upfront fee, and by the interest collected over the life of the loan. More recently, banks would sell the loan to obtain cash in hand in order to make more loans at a faster pace than simply waiting for the monthly payments with interest to come in.

The lenders made money by charging points and other fees on each transaction. The more loans that were made in a given month, the more money the bank made from those points and fees.

Where things began to unravel was derivatives. A mortgage loan, or more accurately, a package of mortgage loans, was sliced up into tranches, each paying a different interest rate, from high to low. Investors could then buy the tranche that suited their appetite for risk/return. The low-risk tranche may have paid as little as 5 percent on a loan that was made at 8 percent interest rate. The highest risk tranche may have paid 12 percent interest. But, if the property values declined, the highest risk tranche would be worthless, as it was the last in line to be paid if the properties were foreclosed. It did not require much of a decline in the real estate values for the highest risk tranches to be worth zero. And that is one of the primary causes of the present crisis.

One may have read about worthless securities, yet it is obvious that real estate prices did not decrease to zero. In many areas, real estate prices declined only 30 percent or so.

Former President Clinton was quoted recently as admitting he should have regulated the tranches and associated transactions more carefully during his 8 year presidency.

Until this problem is addressed, the financial markets will not regain stability, or investor confidence. Having a significant portion of a bank’s assets (or other institutions that purchase the mortgage-backed securities) with the potential to be worthless after a small decrease in real estate prices is a relatively new phenomenon and must be addressed. I try to follow this in my spare time, but have not read anything on the Obama administration's changes to this aspect of finance.

Roger E. Sowell, Esq. legal website is here.

aka energyguy on townhall.com