pollution – Page 29 – Len Bilén's blog, a blog about faith, politics and the environment.

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.”

Al Gore’s new movie bodes for a cold winter, a Limerick.

The Sundance Film Festival will be held January 19 – 29 in Park City, Utah with a new climate change movie from Al Gore yet to be named — and the timing could not be better, it coincides with the Presidential inauguration. Whenever there is a meeting on climate change, In Copenhagen, jn Cancoun, Washington, D.C or wherever, it seems to be unusually cold. This film festival has an environmental theme, so the Polar Vortex is here to last.

Bur fear not: Here is Al Gore in front of a radar image of a rare Southern Hemisphere hurricane:

Al Gore was the champion of hype

Catastrophe fear was his gripe

“CO2, it is bad

we’ll all die, we’ve been had.”

The Grinch, not the Santa Claus type.

Meanwhile, up near the North Pole it is unusually warm. Why? Because it is snowing much more than normal. Look at this week’s map and chart of Greenland. The snow accumulation is nearly twice normal since the start of the season.

smb_combine_sm_acc_en

The Polar Vortex is now firmly established over Siberia and North America. Burr, it’s cold outside.

The Pope: Priests to preach global warming.

The sin of the world: Unbelief!

The Pope has surrendered: Good Grief!

To the climate change lot;

It’s the globalist plot.

But Jesus, our only relief.

Who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshiped and served the creation rather than the One having created— Who is blessed forever, amen. Romans 1:25

“You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman. “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” Genesis 3:4-5

What did God say? From Genesis 9:8-17

⁸Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him: ⁹“I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you ¹⁰and with every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on earth. ¹¹I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be destroyed by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth.”

¹²And God said, “This is the sign of the covenant I am making between me and you and every living creature with you, a covenant for all generations to come: ¹³I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and the earth. ¹⁴Whenever I bring clouds over the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, ¹⁵I will remember my covenant between me and you and all living creatures of every kind. Never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life. ¹⁶Whenever the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will see it and remember the everlasting covenant between God and all living creatures of every kind on the earth.”

¹⁷So God said to Noah, “This is the sign of the covenant I have established between me and all life on the earth.”

So the Pope has exchanged the Gospel of Jesus Christ, salvation from sins through belief in Him, redemption through His death on the cross and His resurrection, and substituted it with the gospel of global governance to save the world from global warming. The claim is they do it for science when global control is their true aim.

The truth is that the promise of God is in the clouds. They act as a near perfect regulator to prevent overheating. We will never exceed the temperatures of the Minoan optimum, but we will go to another ice age. The increase in CO2 will delay the onset of the next ice age by at least 2000 years.

God’s promise to Noah is quite profound: ( Genesis 8:21b-22) “Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.

²²“As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease.”

How are the harvests coming? Thanks to increased CO2 the earth is getting greener! 11% without additional fertilizers, benefiting both people and animals. O2 is increased!This means another billion or more will be rescued from starving, the increase is the greatest in developing countries.

I doubt this is what the Roman Catholic Priests’ will be preaching from the pulpits.

Instead, this is what they will learn: The Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences is the world’s oldest, longest running scientific mission. That body, which advises the pope on matters of science, has concluded that global climate change is real and is caused, at least in significant part, by human activity.

This is important to the Church because creation care is part of our mission. We are called to be stewards of creation. It’s also important because climate change can exacerbate the ills of poverty. Poor people in much of the world are the most vulnerable to changes.
In the western, industrialized world, a drought means bottled water becomes more expensive. In the developing world, a drought means people starve and die.

Unfortunately, the issue is politicized. In the late 1970s, when the issue threatened the financial interests of the fossil fuel industry, the political lobbies, chiefly in the United States, financed a massive political disinformation campaign to manufacture the illusion of dissent within the scientific community.

We know because this manipulation of public opinion has been caught and documented. The fossil fuel industry funds nearly all of the climate change skeptics, going so far as to commission questionable studies, to financing think tanks, and even paying individual bloggers. The deception continues today.

Few things could be further from the truth. The established community of experts agree with frightful consensus that the planet is warming because of human activity. And while nature may play a role in the natural heating of the planet it is known that the Earth’s temperature is dynamic, humans are clearly responsible for much of the present warming.

The Earth’s temperatures are spiking faster that at any time in history. The speed of the warming is so great, it is fueling extinctions and other crisis. Natural selection, evolution and adaptation cannot keep up with the pace of rapid change.

Climate change is costing lives already, and will continue to cost more lives in the future.

source: http://www.catholic.org/news/green/story.php?id=72433

the whole pontification http://www.clerus.va/content/dam/clerus/Ratio%20Fundamentalis/The%20Gift%20of%20the%20Priestly%20Vocation.pdf

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.

Scott Pruitt nominated head of EPA, a Limerick:

After the incredible incompetency and gross irresponsibility shown in the Gold King Mine spill and pollution of the Animas river the EPA is in dire need of an overhaul. Hopefully Scott Pruitt can do a better job of cleaning up the EPA than the present administration.

Yes, Trump seeks advice for his picks,

While “experts” like Gore take their licks.

Pruitt’s new EPA

has to change, come what may,

and end CO2 politics.

The reactions are predictable: From The Energy and Environment Legal Institute (E&E Legal):

“We are delighted with President-elect Trump’s selection of Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). ….”

Meanwhile, from Oakland, CA – In response to news reports that Trump will nominate Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt as EPA Administrator, California League of Conservation Voters CEO Sarah Rose issued the following statement:

“The naming of a climate denier like Scott Pruitt to head the EPA is nothing less than an effort to undermine the agency’s core mission to safeguard our environment. On the campaign trail President-elect Trump vowed to break America’s commitment to the Paris Climate Agreement, to open our public lands to drilling, and to dismantle the EPA. By nominating Scott Pruitt he’s making it clear he intends to follow through on those promises….”

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.

Climate change is on balance good! A Limerick and explanation.

The Epoch named Anthropocene:

Man’s fire appeared on the scene.

CO2, it is good

makes it green, grows more food.

To call it THE threat, that’s obscene.

We live in a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, where Earth faces the immediate danger of runaway heat catastrophe. So says Science Advances 09 Nov. 2016: Nonlinear climate sensitivity and its implications for future greenhouse warming. The paper claims that as temperature increases due to increased CO2 levels the climate sensitivity also increases leading to global heating runaway. To prove the point it provides the following graph:

It was timed for the day after the U.S. election to highlight the necessity of complete adherence to the Paris accord. This accord is one of the accomplishments of the Obama administration, as President Barack Obama said April 22, 2016: “Today is Earth Day — the last one I’ll celebrate as President. Looking back over the past seven years, I’m hopeful that the work we’ve done will allow my daughters and all of our children to inherit a cleaner, healthier, and safer planet. But I know there is still work to do.

Can this really be true that implementing the Paris agreement is our only chance to avert this disaster?

I still remember well the first Earth Day, April 22, 1970, the 100th anniversary of Lenin’s birth. It was in Philadelphia, and Ira Einhorn, later known as the Unicorn killer was master of ceremonies. At that time the great fear was that we are heading for another ice age because of all the acid rain the coal burning electricity plants spewed out, and having just visited Pittsburgh, I totally agreed and was ready to jump in and help. The acid rain was said to wipe out the trouts in the Northern, acidic lakes, and pollution was seen everywhere. Being from Sweden and having just immigrated I was appalled at the lack of concern for the environment, and the imminent threat of the coming ice age. Even Time Magazine jumped into the fray and wrote about the rapid increase of the Arctic Ice cover and other signs of the onset of a new Ice age. Average temperatures was to be maybe up to seven degrees colder by the year 2000, so prepare!

In 1975, the National Academy of Sciences published this graph and warned of dramatic global cooling.

That was then. Look at it now:

This graph overlays the IPCC graph in red on the 1975 National Academy of Sciences graph at the same scale. The IPCC artist knocked half a degree off most of the 20th century.

Notice that the NAS graph is only for the Northern Hemisphere, whereas the IPCC graph is global. Note also that the designer who created the IPCC graph forgot to put in the late 1930s peak. The IPCC in conjunction with NASA and NOAA has completely rewritten Earth’s history. They have made adjustments to make temperature history fit a near perfect alignment with the temperature models versus CO2.

As the real temperature data is increasingly monitored from satellites it is now possible to check the models and see how well they are doing compared to real data. See for yourselves:

It is high time to take a deep breath and a fresh look.

Having been raised in Sweden, born in a town on the granite covered shores of Skagerrak there were signs of the last ice age everywhere. Sweden is still recovering from it and is rising out of the ocean at a rate of up to three feet per century and has been doing so since the inland ice began to melt. Of course this contributes to sea levels rising in the rest of the world. The Ice Age left evidence of cataclysmic events as the climate switched from cold to warm. I still remember when as a lad my father took me to a place in Western Sweden, called “Brobacka” where there are around 40 “jattegrytor” (giant kettles), including the biggest giant kettle in the Nordic countries, measuring 59 feet wide. They were formed when large rivers formed under the rapidly melting icepack. We learned in school about ice ages, and that we are at the end of the interglacial period, and we narrowly avoided a new ice age in the 1600’s and are thankful it didn’t happen then.

The normal climate for the earth is that we are in an ice age, which is a very stable period, but for some reason an imbalance occurs and the climate switches abruptly to an interglacial period. After a few thousand years we go back into an ice age and stay there for around 100000 years and the cycle repeats. The question is, what mechanism is ruling ice ages and interglacial periods?

Does CO2 concentration drive climate change? From the chart above it seems so. Properly plotted there seems to be a near perfect alignment. But to find what is cause and effect we need to expand the time scale as is seen in the figure below:

We can see from these charts that CO2 concentrations and temperature follow each other closely, but, and this is important: Air Temperature rises first, then comes the increase in CO2 and finally the rise in ocean temperature. As ice melts and the ocean temperature increases it releases CO2, and this leads to a further temperature rise. But at some time the temperature stops rising while CO2 levels still rise. Since about 10000 years ago the temperature has been slowly decreasing and so has the CO2 levels. The Coral reefs make carbonates, the bogs make cellulose, the oceans revert to cooling and start to absorb CO2 again.

What is the reason for the cooling? Could it be volcanic eruptions?

Maybe, but volcanic eruptions are temporary and does not cool the climate for more than a few years. Meanwhile enjoy the vegetation during this interglacial warm period.It is true that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, second only to water vapor in importance.It is responsible for about 9 degree Celsius rise in global temperature, and if CO2 increases, so does its greenhouse effect. The increased temperature leads to more water vapor in the air, and water vapor is the strongest greenhouse gas, so there is a risk of reaching a “tipping point” when we could experience a thermal runaway of the planet. All of this is true, so U.N. and many governments around the world have sponsored studies to model climate change, over a hundred models have been constructed, they all come up with rather gloomy forecasts. The research is so intense that over 3 billion dollars of government monies are spent yearly on climate change research.

All models show a similar pattern, a fairly steep and more or less linear rise in temperature as CO2 increases. There is only one major thing wrong with them. They do not agree with what is happening to the global temperature. We have now had 224 months (Sep 2015) without any global warming. Since then there has been a rather strong el nino, much like the one in 1998 and global temperatures have been at new record temperatures after adjustment of old temperatures.

Back to the climate models chart

What is wrong with the models? They all assume a passive earth, where there is no negative feedback to the changing environment. It turns out, the earth has a “governor”, and it can be expressed in one word, albedo, which means “whiteness” or how much of the incoming sunlight that gets reflected back into space. The major albedo changes of the earth are the appearance of clouds. How do the models do on clouds?

None of the models agree with reality when it comes to clouds. It also matters what type of clouds there are, and when they occur. Night clouds keep the warm in and increases the greenhouse effect. Daytime clouds reflects the incoming sunlight and the result is a net cooing effect.

Other albedo changers are the amount of ice around the poles, but even land use changes such as forests cut down and replaced by agriculture and urbanization.

When there is snow or ice on the ground, more sunlight gets reflected and it gets colder still. Urban heat islands are warmer than the surroundings, airports are warmer than its surroundings. Interestingly, that is where we are placing our new weather stations. (This is great for pilots that have to evaluate take-off and landing conditions, but is less than ideal for climate research. But then again, climate research has moved from the realm of physical science to political science, where different rules do apply.)

The most important albedo changers of the earth are clouds. Without them no land based life would be possible since clouds serve both as rain makers and temperature stabilizers. If there were no clouds the equilibrium temperature at the equator would be around 140 degrees F.

Over the oceans, in the so called “doldrums” where there are no trade winds, the mornings start with a warm-up, and when the conditions are right a shower or thunderstorm occurs. The ambient temperature is usually between 84 and 88 degrees when this happens. As CO2 concentrations increase thunderstorms occur a few minutes earlier and last a little bit longer, but they are no more severe and as a result the average temperature stays the same.

See the following chart. It is divided into five regions, Arctic, North temperate, tropical, South temperate and Antarctic.The next region is the North temperate. This includes the desert areas. In desert areas of the world this temperature regulator doesn’t work well, so deserts will receive the full force of temperature increase which is 1.6 degrees Fahrenheit per doubling of CO2 levels.

In the temperate region the temperature increase will be somewhere in between. Dry days will be warmer, cloudy and rainy days will have the same temperature as before, since the cloud regulator starts to function.

The Arctic and Antarctic regions are a special case. None of the models have done a good job at modeling the clouds at the poles, especially the South Pole. (See the cloud chart above.) The Arctic will warm up more than 2 degrees F, how much is a question. In the South average temperatures will rise from – 70 degrees F in the interior all the way to maybe – 63 degrees F, and come closer to freezing in the summer at the northern edges. There may be added snowfall that will expand the ice sheet. The Antarctic ice sheet has set new records since record keeping began, and war 2 years ago bottoming out at 30% more ice than the 30 year average. Recently even the Antarctic ice sheet been receding.

The North Pole region is even more complicated since it is partially land, partially ocean. The oceanic ice cap has been shrinking at a fairly constant rate the last 30 years, but since 2012 it broke the trend and grew back to break the trend line. The winter snow cap has remained at about the same level year to year with a slightly positive trend line, this year being no exception. So, why is the snow cover growing slightly, but ice cover shrinking? The common explanation has been global warming, but the ice cover kept shrinking even as the temperature increase leveled off. There are two possible explanations: Warming oceans and changes in pollution. The North Atlantic Oscillation has been mostly positive (warmer) since 1970 and has only recently turned negative, so that is certainly part of the cause of the shrinking of the icecap, but another candidate is even more likely: Carbon Pollution. With that I do not mean CO2, but good old soot, spewing out from the smokestacks of power plants in China. 45% of all coal burned is burned in China, often low grade lignite with no scrubbers. The air in Beijing is toxic to humans more days than not. Some of that soot finds its way to the arctic and settles on the ice, changing its albedo, and the sun has a chance to melt the ice more efficiently. This occurs mostly in the months of August and September when the Sun is at a low angle anyway, so the changing of the albedo has very little effect on temperature. The net result of all this is that the temperature in the North Pole region will rise about 4 degrees Fahrenheit for a doubling of the CO2. This will have a very minor effect on the Greenland ice cap since they are nearly always way below freezing anyway (-28 degree C average). The largest effect will happen in August and September in the years when all new snow has melted and the soot from years past is exposed. This happened two years ago with a sudden drop in albedo for the Greenland ice. It will also lead to an increase in the precipitation in the form of snow, so the net result is the glaciers may start growing again if the amount of soot can be reduced.

An interesting fact is that the sunlight reflection is larger over water than over ice in August and September in the Arctic, co melting the Arctic ice reduces the greenhouse effect.

The conclusion is: The temperature regulator of the earth is working quite well, and the increase in temperature at the poles is welcome as it lessens the temperature gradient between the tropics and the polar regions, which in turn reduces the severity of storms, and tornadoes, since they are mostly generated by temperature differences and the different density of warm, humid and dry, cold air.

The Polar Bears will do quite well, their numbers have more than doubled in the last 50 years.

Will droughts increase? The data does not indicate so:

What about ocean acidification? As CO2 increases, a lot of it will be absorbed in the oceans, thereby making the oceans more acid. This is true, but CO2 is a very mild acid and has a minor acidic influence. Of much more importance is acid rain. At one time in the 70’s some lakes in Norway had a Ph. of about 4.5, enough to kill most trout fishes. In Sweden it was said they fertilized their rivers and lakes four times as much as tilled soil, leading to significant acidification of both the Baltic and the North Sea. The Baltic Sea is still in danger of total oxygen depletion. By comparison to these dangers CO2 in the ocean is only a very minor disturbance. Clean the rivers and lakes first!

Oh, and one more thing. The sea level rise is a natural phenomenon of tectonic plate movements, the Atlantic Ridge is rising and the Eastern Seaboard is sinking. These movements will continue to occur regardless of the climate.

John Kerry said in Indonesia the other day: “The science is unequivocal, and those who refuse to believe it are simply burying their heads in the sand. We don’t have time for a meeting anywhere of the Flat Earth Society. And in a sense, climate change can now be considered another weapon of mass destruction, perhaps the world’s most fearsome weapon of mass destruction. “

The opposite is true, increased levels of CO2 is a major vehicle of wealth distribution. (Green is increased plant growth, red is decreased, 1982 – 2010)

The increase in temperature is manageable and even desirable in most regions of the world, desert areas and areas prone to flooding being the exception.

In conclusion:

CO2 is a clean gas, necessary for life, and an increase in the amount of CO2 is highly desirable.

The very minor increase in temperature is on balance beneficial, since it leads to a less violent climate, with fewer storms, hurricanes and tornadoes.

The increase in CO2 makes us able to feed another 2 billion people on earth, not to mention additional wildlife.

Ocean acidification is a problem, not so much from CO2, but from sulfuric acid, nitrates and other pollutants. The major offender: China.

The increase in precipitation is beneficial, except in areas already prone to flooding. It is especially welcome in arid areas. The chart below show no increase in heavy rains as CO2 increases.

On the other hand the great conservationist SARAH PALIN once said: “We’ve got to remind Americans that the effort has got to be even greater today toward conservation because these finite resources that we’re dealing with obviously – once oil is gone it’s gone, once gas is gone, it’s gone. And I think our nation has really become kind of spoiled in that arena.”[Fox News, Hannity’s America, 10/12/08]

Coal, oil, peat, wood and natural gas are our best raw material to sustain life as we know it, and are far to valuable to waste on electricity production, so let us switch electricity production to thorium based nuclear energy

. https://lenbilen.com/2012/02/15/nuclear-power-and-earthquakes-how-to-make-it-safer-and-better/

https://lenbilen.com/2012/02/15/eleven-reasons-to-switch-to-thorium-based-nuclear-power-generation/

https://lenbilen.com/2012/02/15/eleven-more-reasons-to-switch-to-thorium-as-nuclear-fuel/

https://lenbilen.com/2012/02/15/nuclear-power-why-we-chose-uranium-over-thorium-and-ended-up-in-this-mess-time-to-clean-up/

https://lenbilen.com/2012/01/31/energy-from-thorium-save-500-million-from-the-budget-now/

Coal can be converted to jet fuel and gasoline, air planes have no alternative fuels.

I welcome constructive comments. Tell me where I am going wrong. I have done my very best to look at what is really happening to the earth and from there draw conclusions, rather than rely on climate models.