energy – Page 30 – Len Bilén's blog, a blog about faith, politics and the environment.

The spillway at the Oroville Dam fails. Blame Climate Change, not the politicians. A Limerick.

The spillway at Oroville Dam:

The “permanent drought” was a scam.

“No more need for repairs,

if it fails, no one cares.”

“It’s Climate Change. Blame Uncle Sam.”

In May of 2016 California Gov. Jerry Brown made some of the state’s temporary water restrictions permanent. The executive order, in response to the state’s drought, permanently bans wasteful practices like hosing sidewalks and washing cars with hoses that don’t have shut-off nozzles.

“Californians stepped up during this drought and saved more water than ever before,” Brown said in a statement. “But now we know that drought is becoming a regular occurrence and water conservation must be a part of our everyday life.”

Meanwhile, the concerns for the existing dams faded. They would never be filled to capacity again, so why worry about emergency spillways? Regular maintenance and repair work, not of an emergency nature was delayed yet another year, and resources were diverted to other priority items, such as a Satellite program to monitor Climate change if disaster should strike and Donald Trump, perish the thought, would be elected.

This was in the middle of the last El Niño, and temperatures had only one way to go, up, and with that increasing capacity to hold water vapor. Now the El Niño has been replaced by a La Niña, the temperature are getting back to normal, the 19 year pause is back, and now the excessive humidity is raining out over the Pacific West.

This should not have come as a surprise. The Great flood of 1862 was worse. The Oroville Dam spillwater empties out in what is Sacramento river, and flood control by building dams has been successful to avert major flooding like that. Politicians have short memories and even less sense of history. The climate changes all the time. We are now raining out from a very temporary temperature rise, and we know that eventually our descendants will have to face another ice age. More CO2 may delay that inevitability by a few hundred years, but the long term trend is down. 2016 was still on of the 1000 coldest in the last 10000 years.

From Sweden come the trolls, They are climate feminists, cold. A limerick.

From Sweden with love came the troll.

They must live in darkness, their goal.

Must reduce CO2

dark and cold, way to go.

They’re feminists, that plaid a role.

Trolls are very special creatures. They live in the deep forests of Sweden, do a lot of mischief, come out at night and you can see them in the dim moonlight of the most dense woods, but at the crack of dawn they disappear. No one have seen them by day. But for a true image, take a look at the John Bauer paintings. He must have seen them clearly.

WASHINGTON, DC – JANUARY 23: (AFP OUT) U.S. President Donald Trump signs the first of three Executive Orders in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC on Monday, January 23, 2017. They concerned the withdrawal of the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a US Government hiring freeze for all departments but the military, and “Mexico City” which bans federal funding of abortions overseas. Standing behind the President, from left to right: US Vice President Mike Pence; White House Chief of Staff Reince Preibus; Peter Navarro, Director of the National Trade Council; Jared Kushner, Senior Advisor to the President; Steven Miller, Senior Advisor to the President; unknown; and Steve Bannon, White House Chief Strategist. (Photo by Ron Sachs – Pool/Getty Images)

The newly elected U.S. President Donald Trump went on a signing spree, signing several executive orders the first days of his presidency. One of them was to deny tax funds to international organizations that promote abortions. This didn’t sit well with the Swedes, so they took notice.

Sweden is a very egalitarian society , so naturally the government cabinet since many years must consist of 12 men and 12 women. It is now a very weak coalition between the Social Democrats and the Greens, and they have less than 40% support in the uni-parliament. The Sweden Democrats have 14% of the seats, but all other parties refuse to have any dealings with them, even the opposition. Climate control is the holy grail however of Swedish politics, so they managed to get along well enough to sign a Climate Bill that promised “zero net CO2 emissions by 2045”.

There are those who say that the Green Party vice prime minister Isabella Lovin trolled Trump. Maybe so, for she also tweeted

Isabella Lövin ‏@IsabellaLovin 17h17 hours ago Just signed referral of Swedish #climate law, binding all future governments to net zero emissions by 2045. For a safer and better future.

756 replies 12,339 retweets 25,595 likes

A remarkable response to a tweet from Sweden.

She also claimed “We are a feminist government”.

Well, if zero CO2 emissions is feminism I remain cold. Not even candlelight for Valentine!

Background: Sweden’s prime minister on Thursday criticized climate skeptics within the new Trump administration and warned that all countries need to “step up and fulfill the Paris Agreement.”

“The position we hear from the new administration is worrying” Stefan Löfven told The Associated Press after announcing an ambitious new climate law promising zero net greenhouse gas emissions by 2045 and a 70-percent cut to emissions in the domestic transport sector by 2030.

The Swedish minister in charge of climate policy, the Green party Isabella Lövin, urged European countries to take a leading role in tackling climate change, since now “the U.S. is not there anymore to lead.”

The new Swedish law sets long-term goals for greenhouse gas reductions and will be legally binding for future administrations.

Lovin said Sweden wanted to set an example at a time when “climate skeptics (are) really gaining power in the world again,” and felt encouraged by pledges by China and India to fulfill their commitments to the Paris Agreement.

China is “investing billions and billions of dollars in solar (…) it’s a game changer,” she said warning that “those that are still wanting to invest in fossil fuels will be ultimately the losers.”

U.S. President Donald Trump, who has called climate change a Chinese hoax, has raised speculation that he might pull the U.S. out of the Paris Agreement.

The new Swedish law enters into effect on Jan. 1, 2018. It was developed after agreement from seven out of the eight political parties in parliament.

Oh, as to the picture of President Trump surrounded by only men, there was at least one woman witnessing the signing

Biomass subsidy scandal in Britain, a Limerick

Burn USA pellets in Britain

The British are subsidy smitten.

It’s the ECO-freaks turn

Must have money to burn.

Keep warm, lest we all get frost-bitten!

From BreitBart:

A green energy scandal that is saw people heating empty buildings just to collect government grants could cost British taxpayers more than £1 billion.

The UK Treasury faces a huge bill after spending on Northern Ireland’s Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) went out of control, with businesses installing otherwise useless biomass heaters just to profit from the scheme.

The RHI was championed by Northern Ireland’s First Minister Arlene Foster back in 2012 when she was minister in charge of business and enterprise. There are now calls for her to resign over the fiasco.

The scheme was supposed to cost £25 million in its first five years, but will now likely be closer to £1.15 billion over 20 years. Around £660 million will have to be funded by taxpayers in the rest of the UK after ministers failed to cap costs, The Times reports.

Under the scheme, businesses could receive £160 for every £100 they spent on biomass fuels such as wood pellets. As businesses realised the profits they could make, there was a huge uptake and costs soon went out of control.

Finally, a whistle-blower exposed how businesses were purchasing biomass boilers just to collect the grant. One farmer in particular expected to make £1 million heating an empty shed, while another person hoped to make £1.5 million heating empty factories.

A similar scheme exists in the rest of the UK, but with much stricter spending controls. Northern Ireland’s Auditor-General, Kieran Donnelly, calculates that under that scheme a business could receive £192,000 over 20 years if it runs a boiler all year round. A similar business in Northern Ireland, however, could get £860,000.

Such is the outrage over the scandal that Mrs Foster’s political future is now in doubt. She survived a no-confidence motion last month, but new letters have come to light showing how she encouraged banks to “look favourably” on loan applications.

Martin McGuiness, the Deputy First Minister and leader of Sinn Fein, may now resign, causing the Northern Ireland government to collapse and triggering new elections.

A study in 2014 found that biomass may in fact be worse for the environment than fossil fuels, as the wood pellets used are often imported from North America, creating a bigger carbon footprint and contributing to deforestation in the United States.

Save the coal, burn a forest, a Limerick.

The European Union’s Renewable Energy Directive establishes an overall policy for the production and promotion of energy from renewable sources in the EU. It requires the EU to fulfil at least 20% of its total energy needs with renewables by 2020 – to be achieved through the attainment of individual national targets. All EU countries must also ensure that at least 10% of their transport fuels come from renewable sources by 2020.

Cut forests! Stop mining the coal!

Decarbonization the goal.

Do not frack, do not drill

Stop the nukes, that’s their will.

The endgame is one world control!

The U.K. electricity producer DRAX recently got permission from the EU commission to convert a third coal fired power plant to biomass.

Great Britain is already importing biomass, mostly from U.S. in the form of wood pellets. If the pellets are used to make electricity it will generate more CO2 than the equivalent from coal. Wood pellets are more efficient and burns more clean in stoves than wood, especially non seasoned wood.

If this is not bad enough, protected forests are being indiscriminately felled across Europe to meet the EU’s renewable energy targets, according to an investigation by the conservation group Birdlife.

Up to 65% of Europe’s renewable output currently comes from bioenergy, involving fuels such as wood pellets and chips, rather than wind and solar power.

Because of the shutdown of coal powered plants, wind and solar power is supposed to carry an ever increasing load. But when the sun doen’t shine and the wind doesn’t blow, the backup energy plants are increasingly diesel farms, inefficient, polluting and costly.

This is central bureaucracy at work.

The DOE refuses to answer questions from the incoming Trump administration, a Limerick.

Department of Energy fights,

scared Perry will turn out the lights.

For it will not admit

what it does, and won’t quit.

Its chutzpah is reaching new heights.

The incoming Trump administration sent out a rather lengthy questionnaire, in short asking what each employee has been doing.

The Department of Energy refused to answer, citing Academic Freedom.

Excerpts from the letter: (Thanks, Willis Eschenbach for the list and comments!)

Questions for DOE

This memo, as you might expect, is replete with acronyms. “DOE” is the Department of Energy. Here are the memo questions and my comments.

1. Can you provide a list of all boards, councils, commissions, working groups, and FACAs [Federal Advisory Committees] currently active at the Department? For each, can you please provide members, meeting schedules, and authority (statutory or otherwise) under which they were created?

If I were at DOE, this first question would indeed set MY hair on fire. The easiest way to get rid of something is to show that it was not properly established … boom, it’s gone. As a businessman myself, this question shows me that the incoming people know their business, and that the first order of business is to jettison the useless lumber.

2. Can you provide a complete list of ARPA-E’s projects?

Critical information for an incoming team.

3 Can you provide a list of the Loan Program Office’s outstanding loans, including the parties responsible for paying the loan back, term of the loan, and objective of the loan?

4 Can you provide a list of applications for loans the LPO has received and the status of those applications?

5 Can you provide a full accounting of DOE liabilities associated with any loan or loan guarantee programs?

6 The Department recently announced the issuance of $4.5 billion in loan guarantees for electric vehicles (and perhaps associated infrastructure). Can you provide a status on this effort?

Oh, man, they are going for the jugular. Loan Program Office? If there is any place that the flies would gather, it’s around the honey … it’s good to see that they are looking at loan guarantees for electric vehicles, a $4.5 billion dollar boondoggle that the government should NOT be in. I call that program the “Elon Musk Retirement Fund”.

Folks, for $4.5 billion dollars, we could provide clean water to almost half a million villages around the world … or we could put it into Elon Musk’s bank account or the account of some other electric vehicle manufacturer. I know which one I’d vote for … and I am equally sure which one the poor of the world would prefer.

7 What is the goal of the grid modernization effort? Is there some terminal point to this effort? Is its genesis statutory or something else?

Asking the right questions about vague programs …

8 Who “owns” the Mission Innovation and Clean Energy Ministerial efforts within the Department?

I love this question. Orphan departments are legendary in big bureaucracies … nobody owns them and they can do what they want. I don’t predict a long future for this Mission Impossible—Clean Energy effort..

9 What is the Department’s role with respect to the development of offshore wind?

Given that offshore wind is far and away the MOST EXPENSIVE of all the renewable options, the answer should be “None”.

10 Is there an assessment of the funds it would take to replace aging infrastructure in the complex? Is there a priority list of which facilities to be decommissioned?

Another critical question, about the state of their own facilities.

11 Which Assistant Secretary positions are rooted in statute and which exist at the discretion and delegation of the Secretary?

Like I said … these guys know how to do what they plan to do, which is to change the direction of the agency. All discretionary Assistant Secretaries must be sweating …

12 What is the statutory charge to the Department with respect to efficiency standards? Which products are subject to statutory requirements and which are discretionary to the Department?

Same thing. They want to find out what they can just cut, where the low-hanging fruit might be. I suspect this is about Obama’s ludicrous CAFE standards mandating a 50+ mile-per-gallon average for all car manufacturers.

13 Can you provide a list of all Department of Energy employees or contractors who have attended any Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Carbon meetings? Can you provide a list of when those meetings were and any materials distributed at those meetings, emails associated with those meetings, or materials created by Department employees or contractors in anticipation of or as a result of those meetings?

Now, this is the one that has the “scientists” involved most concerned. Me, I think they damn well should be concerned because what they have been doing all this time is HALF OF A COST/BENEFIT ANALYSIS!!

This is a pet peeve of mine. You can’t just talk of costs in a vacuum. To do that without considering the accompanying benefits is scientific malfeasance. To do it as a policy matter is nothing less than deliberately lying to the public. As a result, I hope that everyone engaged in this anti-scientific effort gets identified and if they cannot be fired for malfeasance then put them to work sweeping the floors. Talk about “fake news”, the so-called “social cost of carbon” is as fake as they come.

14 Did DOE or any of its contractors run the integrated assessment models (lAMs)? Did they pick the discount rates to be used with the lAMs? What was DOE’s opinion on the proper discount rates used with the lAMs? What was DOE’s opinion on the proper equilibrium climate sensitivity?

Cuts to the core, and lets the people know that vague handwaving is not going to suffice. These folks want actual answers to the hard questions, and they’ve definitely identified the critical points about the models.

15 What is the Department’s role with respect to JCPOA? Which office has the lead for the NNSA?

The JCPOA is usually a “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action”. In this case, however, it refers to the Iran nuclear deal, and is an interesting question. The NNSA is the National Nuclear Security Adminstration.

16 What statutory authority has been given to the Department with respect to cybersecurity?

Critical in these times.

17 Can you provide a list of all Schedule C appointees, all non-career SES employees, and all Presidential appointees requiring Senate confirmation? Can you include their current position and how long they have served at the Department?

Here’s the deal. It’s basically impossible to fire a government worker unless they held up a bank and were caught in the act, and even then you’d have to have full-color video to make it stick. Public employee unions are among the world’s stupidest and most destructive idea … the government unions use their plentiful funds to affect the election of the people who set their pay scale. Yeah, that should go well …

BUT … if you can get rid of their position, then you’re not firing them, you just don’t have further work for them. They are trying to figure out who they can cut. Hair is catching fire on all sides with this one.

18 Can you offer more information about the EV Everywhere Grand Challenge?

Never heard of it, but then I never heard of a lot of things in this memo … which just shows that the memo makers did their homework. Turns out that the EV Everywhere Grand Challenge is another clumsy attempt to get Electric Vehicles Everywhere regardless of the fact that the public mostly doesn’t want Electric Vehicles Anywhere.

19 Can you provide a list of Department employees or contractors who attended any of the Conference of the Parties (under the UNFCCC) in the last five years?

An IPCC Conference of Parties is much more party than conference—it’s basically an excuse to party in some lovely location (think Bali, Cancun, …), with the party occasionally interrupted by the pesky conference. It is a meaningless exercise which ends up with an all-night session that finishes by announcing that everyone has signed on to the latest non-binding fantasy about how to end the use of fossil fuels, drive up energy prices, and screw the poor. And yes, if I were appointed to run the DOE, I would definitely want to know who has gone on these useless junkets.

Now, I know that people are going to complain about “scientific freedom” regarding the memo asking who worked on what … but if you don’t want to tell the incoming team what you’ve worked on … why not? Are you ashamed of what you’ve done? Look, every job I’ve had, if a new boss came in, they wanted to know what I had worked on in the past, and I simply answered them honestly. Scientists are no different.

Finally, government scientists presumably work on what their agency directs them to work on … so the issue of “scientific freedom” is way overblown in this context where they are NOT free to work on projects of their own choice.

20 Can you provide a list of reports to Congress or other external parties that are due in 2017?

Again, a critical question when you take over an organization—what deliverables is it contracted to produce? Like I said, these folks know what they are doing.

21 Can you provide a copy of any Participation Agreement under Section 1221 of EP Act signed by the Department?

We’re way down in the weeds now. This section of the EP Act allows three or more contiguous states to establish a regional transmission siting agency. Not sure why they’ve asked this, but it does add to their knowledge of the projected vague transmission grid actions, which appears like it could be a big money drain.

22 What mechanisms exist to help the national laboratories commercialize their scientific and technological prowess?

A forgotten task at the DOE, I’m sure.

23 How many fusion programs, both public and private, are currently being funded worldwide?

Huh … looking for duplication of activities.

24 Which activities does the Department describe as commercialization programs or programs with the specific purpose of developing a technology for market deployment?

Incoming administrations, if they’re smart, look for low hanging fruit. In this case if there are commercial programs near completion, they can be fast-tracked to provide evidence that the new administration is on the job.

25 Does or can the Department delineate research activities as either basic or applied research?

This is a critical distinction, and one that they possibly have never made.

26 Can you provide a list of all permitting authorities (and their authorizing statutes) currently held by DOE and their authorizing statutes?

Again, the local denizens will not like this a bit, more hair will spontaneously ignite. In part any bureaucracy prides itself on its power to stop people from doing things … in other words, they demand a permit for an action and then they can refuse to issue it. This asks not just for the permitting authorities, but once again for their authorizing statutes. Again, the easiest way to get rid of something is to show it was built without authorization …

27 Is there a readily available list of any technologies or products that have emerged from programs or the labs that are currently offered in the market without any subsidy?

Quite possibly not, but if so it would be an interesting list.

28 Are there statutory restrictions related to reinvigorating the Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management?

29 Are there any statutory restrictions to restarting the Yucca Mountain project?

These two questions show us that they plan to restart Yucca Mountain, the shuttered nuclear waste repository.

30 Which programs within DOE are essential to meeting the goals of President Obama’s Climate Action Plan?

Because you can kiss them goodbye along with the CAP …

31 If DOE’s topline budget in accounts other than the 050 account were required to be reduced 10% over the next four fiscal years (from the FY17 request and starting in FY18), does the Department have any recommendations as to where those reductions should be made?

This is brilliant. It’s like my gorgeous ex-fiancee regarding colors. She asks me what color I like so she can cross it off the list of possibilities … and rightly so given my color sense. This strikes me as the same deal. The new Administration asks where the current denizens would cut ten percent … then when they are told it, they know they might want to cut somewhere else … useful info either way.

32 Does the Department have any thoughts on how to reduce the bureaucratic burden for exporting U.S. energy technology, including but not limited to commercial nuclear technology?

Likely not … but worth asking …

33 Is the number of Assistant Secretaries set by statute? Does the statute establish the number as a minimum or a maximum, or is it silent on the question?

Assistant Secretaries are now on DEFCON 1, or DEFCON 0.5, their hair is totally engulfed in flames …

34 Can you provide a list of all current open job postings and the status of those positions?

35 Can you provide a list of outstanding M&O contracts yet to be awarded for all DOE facilities and their current status?

36 Can you provide a list of non-M&O procurements/awards that are currently pending and their status?

Open jobs, outstanding Maintenance and Operation contracts, non-M&O procurements, they want to find out just exactly what is the current state of play. It will also allow the incoming folks to see what last-minute hires they’ve tried to jam through before the changeover.

37 Does DOE have a plan to resume the Yucca Mountain license proceedings?

They may have shelved or previous plans, good to know if so.

38 What secretarial determinations/records of decisions are pending?

Have they made decisions that are not written down? If so, what? Man, these people are thorough, I wouldn’t have thought to ask that one.

39 What should the incoming Administration do to balance risk, performance and ultimately completion in contracting?

40 What should this Administration do differently to make sure there are the right incentives to attract qualified contractors?

An interesting pair of questions.

41 What is the plan for funding cleanup of Portsmouth and Paducah when the current uranium inventory designated for barter in exchange for cleanup services, is no longer available (excluding reinstating the UED&D fee on commercial nuclear industry or utilizing the USEC fund)?

Back into the weeds, proving that these folks have done their homework. Right now, those shuttered nuclear plants are trading uranium, a valuable resource, for cleanup … what happens when the uranium runs out? Who is on the hook for the costs?

42 What is the right funding level for EM to make meaningful progress across the complex and meet milestone and regulatory requirements?

According to the Energy.gov glossary, “EM” is environmental management. I’m not sure what the DOE is required to do in this, and that’s what they are asking.

43 What is the greatest opportunity for reduction in life cycle cost/return on investment?

44 Describe your alternatives to the ever increasing WTP cost and schedule, whether technical or programmatic?

45 With respect to EM, what program milestones will be reached in each of the next four years?

47 How can the DOE support existing reactors to continue operating as part of the nation’s infrastructure?

48 What can DOE do to help prevent premature closure of plants?

49 How do you recommend continuing to supporting the licensing of Small Modular Reactors?

50 How best can DOE optimize its Advanced Reactor R&D activities to maximize their value proposition and work with investors to development and commercialize advanced reactors?

All of these questions are concerned with the regulation and waste disposal of nuclear plants, suggesting strongly that the new administration is interested in keeping existing plants open and licensing new plants.

Questions for EIA

EIA is the Energy Information Agency charged with collecting and maintaining energy-related data.

51 EIA is an independent agency in DOE. How has EIA ensured its independence in your data and analysis over the past 8 years? In what instances do you think EIA’ s independence was most challenged?

Now this is a fascinating two-part question, especially the second part. Basically they are asking, can we trust the EIA, and what pressures is it subject to?

52 Part of EIA’s charter is to do analyses based on Congressional and Departmental requests. Has EIA denied or not responded to any of these requests over the last ten years?

53 EIA customarily has or had set dates for completions of studies and reports. In general, have those dates been adhered to?

54 In the Annual Energy Outlook 2016, EIA assumed that the Clean Power Plan should be in the reference case despite the fact that the reference case is based on existing laws and regulations. Why did EIA make that assumption, which seems to be atypical of past forecasts?

Uh-oh … caught messing with the books …

55 EIA’s assessments of levelized costs for renewable technologies do not contain back-up costs for the fossil fuel technologies that are brought on-line to replace the generation when those technologies are down. Is this is a correct representation of the true levelized costs?

Since this is an issue I’ve raised publicly in my posts on levelized costs, I’m overjoyed to see them ask it.

56 Has EIA done analysis that shows that additional back-up generation is not needed? How does EIA’s analysis compare with other analyses on this issue?

This seems like they’re talking about some EIA analysis that says that such generation isn’t needed, and asking them to justify it. If not, they are simply forcing them to admit that yes, backup is needed, and no, they haven’t been including those costs … good on them.

57 Renewable and solar technologies are expected to need additional transmission costs above what fossil technologies need. How has EIA represented this in the AEO forecasts? What is the magnitude of those transmission costs?

Again, excellent questions that the EIA has not been posing, much less answering.

58 There are studies that show that your high resource and technology case for oil and gas represents the shale gas and oil renaissance far better than your reference case. Why has EIA not put those assumptions in your reference case?

Yes, they definitely should put those in … but then from all appearances they hate fracking with a passion …

59 Can you describe the number of personnel hired into management positions at EIA from outside EIA and compare it to the number of personnel hired into management positions at EIA who were currently serving at EIA?

Hiring outside vs promoting inside … interesting question.

60 How does EIA ensure quality in its data and analyses?

61 Where does EIA think most improvement is needed in its data and analyses?

I’d love to see the answer to this one.

62 We note that EIA added distributed solar estimations to your electricity data reports. Those numbers are not part of your supply/demand balance on a Btu basis. Why has that not been updated accordingly?

Uh-oh again … someone finally asking the hard questions.

63 How many vacancies does EIA have in management and staff positions? What plans, if any, does EIA have to fill those positions before January 20?

64 Is the EIA budget sufficient to ensure quality in data and analyses? If not, where does it fall short?

More questions to clarify the fiscal landscape.

65 Does EIA have cost comparisons of sources of electricity generation at the national level?

Not that I know of … but then they may have them and have not released them. We’ll see.

Questions on labs

DOE labs are separate from the DOE itself … I knew the DOE had labs but I had no idea they had seventeen of them, viz:

National Energy Technology Laboratory at Albany, Oregon (2005)

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at Berkeley, California (1931)

Los Alamos National Laboratory at Los Alamos, New Mexico (1943)

Oak Ridge National Laboratory at Oak Ridge, Tennessee (1943)

Argonne National Laboratory at DuPage County, Illinois (1946)

Ames Laboratory at Ames, Iowa (1947)

Brookhaven National Laboratory at Upton, New York (1947)

Sandia National Laboratories at Albuquerque, New Mexico and Livermore, California (1948)

Idaho National Laboratory between Arco and Idaho Falls, Idaho (1949)

Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory at Princeton, New Jersey (1951)

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory at Livermore, California (1952)

Savannah River National Laboratory at Aiken, South Carolina (1952)

SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory at Menlo Park, California (1962)

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory at Richland, Washington (1965)

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory at Batavia, Illinois (1967)

National Renewable Energy Laboratory at Golden, Colorado (1977)

Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility at Newport News, Virginia (1984)

Let me say that as a businessman looking at that list, it screams “Duplication Of Effort” at about 180 decibels. Hence the following questions:

66 What independent evaluation panels does the lab have to assess the scientific value of its work? Who sits on these panels? How often do they hold sessions? Do they publish reports?

67 Can you provide a list of cooperative research and development grants (CRADAs) for the past five years? Please provide funding amounts, sources, and outcomes?

68 Can you provide a list of licensing agreements and royalty proceeds for the last five years?

69 Can you provide a list of the top twenty salaried employees of the lab, with total remuneration and the portion funded by DOE?

70 Can you provide a list of all peer-reviewed publications by lab staff for the past three years?

71 Can you provide a list of current professional society memberships of lab staff?

72 Can you provide a list of publications by lab staff for the past three years?

73 Can you provide a list of all websites maintained by or contributed to by laboratory staff during work hours for the past three years?

74 Can you provide a list of all other positions currently held by lab staff, paid and unpaid, including faculties, boards, and consultancies?

The answer:

Energy Department spokesman Eben Burnham-Snyder said Tuesday the Energy Department will not comply.

“Our career workforce, including our contractors and employees at our labs, comprise the backbone of (the Energy Department) and the important work our department does to benefit the American people,” Burnham-Snyder said.

“We are going to respect the professional and scientific integrity and independence of our employees at our labs and across our department,” he added. “We will be forthcoming with all publicly available information with the transition team. We will not be providing any individual names to the transition team.”

He added that the request “left many in our workforce unsettled.”

From whale oil to shale oil to microwaved oil shale. A Limerick.

Once Whale oil was packed in Nantucket.

Now Shale oil is fracked, you can suck it.

Let the Oil Shale be zapped;

it’s too rich to be capped.

It’s clean: EPA, you can chuck it!

Oil shale as fuel has been used since prehistoric times. It can be made to burn without processing, albeit with a lot of smoke, kind of like burning tires. The first patent for extracting oil from oil shale was British Crown Patent 330 granted in 1694, so the process is hardly new. But coal turned out to be much cleaner and with a lot more heat energy per ton of ore, so for a long time coal was king. Then from about 1820 to 1900 whale oil was the in thing, used for lamps and making of margarine. After the discovery of crude oil 1859 in Oil City, Pennsylvania the age of petroleum took off in earnest.

Since then we have had about a 30 year supply of proven oil reserves, and we still have about a 30 year supply of proven reserves.

This is about to change. Oil shale has always been there, abundant but unrecoverable unless mined at considerable expense and environmental destruction. I remember oil shale mining in my childhood’s Sweden. Travelling even within ten miles from Kvarntorp the stench of hydrogen sulphides were horrendous, the trees died, but it was WWII and it was the only source of oil to be had. What remains today is an immense ash heap, still smoking after 60 years.

The change is coming in form of leaving the shale in the ground and heating it using microwaves. The process is not new, but recent advances in microwave technology makes it commercially viable. Fracking to release shale oil is already commercially profitable, but it uses immense amounts of water, so it is not practical in the arid West. Microwaving oil uses no water, only a lot of energy as part of the extraction process. It is profitable at oil prices above $50 per barrel. So now we have a 150 year supply of proven reserves.

The Trump EPA landing team: A Limerick.

The new EPA: Let’s reneg.

The Trump team: A chill up my leg.

These are folks of reknown

and their cause is well known.

All honest, not one is a yegg.

This is the Trump EPA transition team:

Myron Ebell: Director of Global Warming and International Environmental Policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Amy Oliver Cooke: the Executive Vice President and Director of the Energy Policy Center for the Independence Institute, Colorado’s free market, state-based think tank.

David Kreutzer: The Heritage Foundation.

Austin Lipari: The Federalist Society.

David Schnare: Energy and Environment Legal Institute.

David Stevenson: Caesar Rodney Institute.

George Sugiyama: The Sugiyama Group LLC.

verse 96 of the Obama impeachment song: Sign the Paris Climate 2015 “treaty”.

By Myron Ebell : https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/08/26/china-and-us-to-ratify-landmark-paris-climate-deal-ahead-of-g20-summit-sources-reveal/

The South China Morning Post reported on Thursday that U. S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping “are set to jointly announce their ratification” of the Paris Climate Treaty when they meet on 2nd September before the G-20 Summit. This is curious because ratifying treaties in the United States requires a two-thirds vote of the Senate.

Here is the language from Article Two, Section Two, Clause Two of the U. S. Constitution: “[The President] shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur.”

The article by Li Jing references this curious requirement: “There are still some uncertainties from the US side due to the complicated US system in ratifying such a treaty, but the announcement is still quite likely to be ready by Sept 2,” said a source, who declined to be named.

In China’s Communist Party dictatorship, ratification merely requires their Maximum Leader to say, “So be it.”

Later in the article, Li Jing again tries to explain the inscrutable U. S. methods for ratifying a treaty: “US law allows the nation to join international agreements in a number of ways, including through the authority of the president.”

Lo and behold, the President of the United States can ratify a treaty in the same way as China’s Maximum Leader. He merely has to say the magic words, “So be it.” And it is so. Who knew that President Barack Obama has become our Maximum Leader, or perhaps I should say our dear Maximum Leader?

http://www.globalwarming.org/2016/08/26/china-and-us-to-ratify-paris-climate-treaty/

This leads to verse 96 of the Obama impeachment song (as if sung by President Barack Hussein Obama to the tune of “Please release me, let me go”)

I will sign the climate deal,

The Senate won’t dare to repeal!

Though they will both squirm and squeal

They will fold as soon as I say: Heel!

Here is the complete impeachment song: https://lenbilen.com/2015/02/25/the-complete-obama-impeachment-song/

Hillary Clinton rejects the Keystone XL pipeline. Warren Buffett endorses Hillary Clinton. Crony Capitalism at its best.

Hillary Clinton has decided against building the Keystone XL pipeline, thus satisfying the environmentalists that want to wean us off our dependency on carbon based products, such as fuel, food and fertilizer. The arguments for denying the decision are nearly exclusively political, while the arguments to build the pipeline are concerns for our national security and economy.

Here is the deal:

Canada has the tar-sands and is extracting the oil. This was not our decision. If we don’t buy the oil, China will.

We are importing crude oil from the Middle East (Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, etc.), Nigeria, Venezuela and other volatile places, leaving us exposed to supply and price disruptions.

We export refined products to the Caribbean islands, which by the way have a larger carbon footprint per person than the U.S. This is good business, since the islands are too small for a refinery.

It takes more energy to run a refinery up north in a cold climate than in hot, humid Baytown, Texas.

The last time a major oil refinery was built in the U.S was 1976. A small refinery was built in 1993, in Valdez, Alaska. The US. regulatory climate is hostile to refineries. Colombia, O.K, U.S. No.

Warren Buffett bought Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad in February 2010 and paid 44 Billion dollars for it. The railroad paid Berkshire Hathaway 2.25 Billion in dividends during the first 13 months. Warren Buffet bought the railroad after President Obama took office.

Right now the crude oil is transported from the Athabasca tar sands to Houston mostly by Warren Buffet’s Burlington Northern Santa Fe LLC railroad. It is among U.S. and Canadian railroads that stand to benefit from Hillary Clinton’s decision to reject TransCanada Corp. (TRP)’s Keystone XL oil pipeline permit.
With modest expansion, railroads can handle all new oil produced in western Canada through 2030, according to an analysis of the Keystone proposal by the U.S. State Department.
https://lenbilen.com/2012/01/25/warren-buffet-profiting-from-working-on-the-railroad/
The cost of transporting the oil is about #14 dollars per barrel, much of it the cost of energy (CO2). The pipe-line can do the job for about seven dollars per barrel, much of it capital costs.
We can see what happens when transporting crude oil: https://lenbilen.com/2013/07/07/ttain-derailment-in-quebec-and-keystone-xl-pipeline-a-limerick/

Warren Buffet is a major player in the Obama Administration; he has frequent access to the White House and is a major contributor to Obama and the Democrats’ campaign. It is therefore in his self interest to endorse Hillary Clinton.

Sarah Palin succinctly coined the phrase: “This is Crony Capitalism.”

By not importing oil from Canada the total carbon footprint will increase. We lose, and Canada loses. (I am not concerned that the CO2 is increasing, but that a valuable natural resource is excessively depleted.) Now it turns out that Canada has left the Kyoto Protocol, thereby being free to burn as much of its carbon as they want. Was that really what the environmentalists wanted?

So why is Hillary Clinton against the Keystone XL pipeline? Here are seven possibilities:

1. Like Obama, Hillary is a true believer that ”this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal”. As a politically correct environmentalist her role can not be overestimated .

2. Hillary is deliberately wrecking our economy to create a more fair society of shared sacrifices, refuses to have an energy policy that will create jobs, but will support protest movements and foment unrest.

3. Hillary is acting on orders from Global Governance people that do want U.S. to be totally dependent on international law and U.N. mandates.

4. Hillary wants to show leadership in implementing the Paris Climate Conference 2015, and its associated treaty.

5. Hillary and Obama want to show leadership on something, like touting the “breakthrough” agreement with China, where China is allowed to emit six times as much CO2 by the year 2030 as the U.S.

6. The real reason? Like Obama, Hillary is fully bought and paid for. https://lenbilen.com/2014/02/14/the-real-reason-obama-wont-approve-the-keystone-xl-pipeline/

7. Hillary is half insane and surrounded by bad advisers.

This is the best I can do to explain the reasons for this decision.

Verse 91 of the Obama impeachment song: Executive order fireworks finale.

It is now less than one hundred days left of Obama’s reign.

He will finish with a barrage of executive orders: Regulation frenzy like the finale of a fireworks display.

The thing with regulations is that they can be undone by his successor, and that is why this election is so important. All his political appointees will be replaced by new ones.

Obama is doing what he can to make his regulations permanent by having his political appointees promoting only hard core progressives to the top career positions in every department. Previous presidents have relied more on promoting the most qualified candidates to these positions. This will make it so much harder to change the direction of the bureaucratic inertia. Bureaucrats, once given power, are loath to relinquish it.

Should Donald Trump win the campaign it is therefore of utmost importance he chooses department heads that are capable of fighting the bureaucratic behemoth. Luckily, the Republican bench of candidates is deeper than ever.

Should Hillary be elected, regulations will become even more stifling and will increase crony capitalism, which depends on favorable regulations to prevent competition. This will time cause an economic gridlock.

This leads to verse 91 of the Obama impeachment song (as if sung by President Barack Hussein Obama to the tune of “Please release me, let me go”)

Less than hundred days remain

of fundamental transform pain.

All my efforts were in vain,

I was ineffective, end my reign.

Here is the complete impeachment song: https://lenbilen.com/2015/02/25/the-complete-obama-impeachment-song/