Saturday, November 30, 2013

Email To Marin IJ Congressman and Assemblyman


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I wrote this email today to the editor of this email to editor of the Marin Independent Journal and to the staff of my congressman and assemblyman.  I let them have it.   Lynn Woolsey was my congresswoman till Jared Huffman took her seat.   Assemblyman Levine took over Huffman's seat in thet Assembly in Sacramento.   Here is the email.



In early 2010 I met with Lynn Woolsey and her staff to warn her of the waste OBama and Chu would bring upon us with their "green" junk policies that was just money for their friends.   Woolsey ignored me.   At the same time Mr. Huffman was busy giving away hundreds of millions to Bloom (Al Gore, John Doerr and Colin Powell) and AT&T in his quest for "green".  In February 2010 I wrote outside testimony to the US Senate on the matter of Lithium Ion Batteries and I quote



"Argonne National Labs published an exhaustive review of the materials and associated costs of lithium batteries back in May of 2000.http://www.transportation.anl.gov/pdfs/TA/149.pdf The total material cost for the cell was estimated at $1.28 and the total manufacturing cost of the cell including overhead and labor was estimated at $1.70. This Argonne report is perhaps the best report written on the economics associated with lithium battery fabrication. Actually had folks read this report back in 2000 they would have realized that the learning curve for lithium batteries would be painfully slow. Materials just make up far too much of a fraction of the battery cost and the quantity of materials is fixed by the chemistry. Therefore economies of scale could not drive a Moore’s Law type rate of learning and a very fractional Moore’s Law resulted. In the early years of lithium cell development from approximately 1990 to 2000, the improvements in chemistry and in economies of scale did allow the technology to enjoy a Moore’s Law type learning rate and it has been reported that costs of an 18650 cell reduced from $18 to $2 per cell in that decade. Unfortunately the technology has now hit an asymptote in their cost reduction curve"


John Petersen wrote in November 2103 on the matter of lithium ion batteries.

"Journal of Power Sources 231 (2013) (pp. 293-300) recently published an article that drills down into the costs of building a new factory for 18650 cells. The quick overview is that the capital costs are about $4 per unit of annual production capacity, materials costs run about $1.30 per cell, and materials costs typically represent 78% to 80% of direct manufacturing costs."


Total material costs are essentially identical in February 2010 and November 2013 and direct manufacturing costs are again essentially identical almost 4 years later.   The learning rate for battery manufacture has simply offset the rate of inflation.   Lindsay Leveen The Green Machine was right!

Mr. Huffman is a continuing disgrace.  Lynn Woolsey was a disgrace.  Mr. Levine is an absent assemblyman.  The Marin IJ is just a mouthpiece for junk that Mr. Huffman espouses such as his OP Ed on the late great President Kennedy.   You all should hang your heads in shame.  You all let the crimes against the people and nature happen.

Happy Holidays.

Lindsay Leveen
The Green Machine

Saturday Post Thanksgiving





I tried not to eat too much and actually was pretty good about pacing myself in my calorie intake.   I did get some tryptophan and felt good and sleepy.   Parmesan cheese as well as Mozzarella cheese actually has more tryptophan per ounce than does turkey but we never associate a tryptophan induced sleep with a pizza.   Egg whites have the highest concentration of tryptophan.  Next time I am at Papa Johns I will ask for a cheese pizza with a meringue crust and a dusting of parmesan.



The green news is sparse except for my continuing efforts to end the Bloom Boondoggle in Delaware and California, but I won’t bore you with technical details of the investigation.  Tesla is being investigated for fire safety issues and Elon Musk is still MSing that the Model S has a 5.4 out of 5 star safety rating even though the Feds told him they only report safety stars in integers and they told him to cut the crap of MSing he has 5.4 inches  when he only has 5 inches.   Dirty you I was discussing ground clearance inches.



Actually the temporary measure the Musketeer has come up with for his Model S to be a little less fire prone is to adjust the suspensions for higher ground clearance on the highway such that road debris does not make the car pyrophoric. 


The President pardoned Popcorn the turkey but Popcorn asked to be put down rather than sign up for Obamacare.  Popcorn came from a Red Backer state and simply dismissed the pardon of the President as being a vote getting ploy for vegans who get their tryptophan from mozzarella.  That my fellow thermodynamicists is the way it is this Saturday at the end of November in 2013.

Thursday, November 28, 2013

The Left Handed Screwdriver Award






I have blogged several times about how we have paid high prices for supposed green technologies that simply were not worth the money being spent on them.  I awarded screwdrivers and calculated the imputed carbon tax in dollars per short ton for these dumass ideas to lower CO2 emissions and then priced the screwdriver accordingly.   Now I have found the dumassist green project in the world other than the Bloom Coffin.  Note the Bloom coffins have an infinite carbon tax and no one can afford that screwdriver.

This project is in Whistler British Columbia Canada.  The transport authority BC Transit bought 20 fuel cell buses to transport folks in the beautiful and pristine resort in the Canadian Rockies.

The 20 fool cell buses cost 42 million Canadian dollars to buy and were primarily funded by the BC provincial government.  They could have bought 20 diesel buses for $10 million Canadian.  The fuel for the proton exchange membrane fuel cells is liquid hydrogen that is shipped in from Beconcour Quebec where it is manufactured some 5,200 kilometers away from Whistler.  The cryogenic tanker truck uses diesel and hauls a load of about 4 short tons of liquid hydrogen as the liquid hydrogen has a very low specific gravity (7% that of water) and a big crogenic tanker does not hold much mass of hydrogen.  The tanker truck returns back to Quebec empty.   At best the tanker truck achieves 7 MPG on the diesel and each round trip of 10,400 kilometers needs 928.6 gallons of diesel.

Of course the liquid hydrogen is produced using hydroelectric power in Quebec so I did not impute any carbon foot print to the manufacturing of the hydrogen only to the transportation.

Over the course of the program, the 20 buses have travelled 3.4 million kilometers and consumed 515,600 kilograms of hydrogen.  Each trip from Quebec has 1,818 kg of load of liquid hydrogen.   Approximately 10% is lost along the way and in transferring the cryogenic liquid hence 1,636 kg are delivered in each load.  Therefore 315.16 loads were needed and 292,656 gallons of diesel were needed to transport the hydrogen.  Had the buses simply travelled the 3.4 million kilometers on diesel 303,571 gallons of diesel would have been used.  The net savings on diesel is therefore a paltry 10,815 gallons over the entire project period.  

Well to wheels a gallon of diesel emits 28 pounds of CO2.  Therefore 10,815 gallons of diesel that is not consumed saved 137.6 metric tons of CO2 emissions going into the air.  As the hydrogen is much more expensive than diesel and as the maintenance costs of the fuel cells was more than diesel engines the whole program cost $89 million Canadian in subsidies.    Had they bought diesel buses, maintained the diesel buses, and bought diesel that program would have cost $12 million Canadian.  The extra cost is $77 million Canadian to save 10,815 gallons of diesel.  

 The imputed carbon tax for this gangrene project $559,430 Canadian per tonne of CO2.   Not shabby as a carbon offset for a tonne of CO2 emissions trades in Europe for less than $6 Canadian.  I guess the folks in Whistler got tired of paying 93,238 times too much for their saved CO2 and the program will likely end next year.


Al Gore was seen whistling a happy tune in Whistler and was heard saying $559,430 a tonne of CO2 is cheap when Bloom manages to sell the same Tonne for an infinite price.  Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack was heard saying I will buy CO2 at the $559,430 and will give the Canadian Bio-diesel made from pine trees in Mississippi.  Dr. Moniz was heard saying what me worry it’s only the people’s money!

The Green Machine was heard saying whistle while we work to pay for this utter nonsense of paying $559,430 for a left handed screwdriver.

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Bloom Gets Idiotic Faking Waste





I have been in discussion with the Solid Waste staff at the Delaware DNREC.   I had to give them the data I had on the Bloom permit that was issued by the DNREC as their staff could not find the data that they previously "reviewed'.  Hence  I did a data dump in multiple emails to the DE DNREC.

I then reread the paper (article) on Sulfur removal that Mr. Brockenborough the GM of Bloom Electrons submitted in his letter of January 13, 2012 that formally changed the air emissions of SO2.  Note this was a formal letter changing a formal permit application.

The paper can be found on the internet at the following link:



OK we now have Bloom formally telling the DNREC that the sorbent can hold at a maximum 3.2% sulfur and that nearly 14,400 pounds a year of SO2 (7,200 pounds a year of Sulfur) are removed in a sorbent that at most can be 3.2% sulfur by weight.   Simply multiplying 7,200 by 100 and dividing by 3.2 we get that using the best sorbent under the best conditions the minimum amount of sulfur laden sorbent will be 225,000 pounds per year.

Less than a month later Colin O’Mara the Secretary of the DNREC then issued his completeness report with the same amount of solid wastes that were in the November 2011 initial permit application that total 15,000 pounds a year for all solid wastes streams (paper, glass, metals, plastics, and E-wastes).

The January 13 Brokenbourough letter was sent to the Ali Mizakhalili Director Of The Air Division of the DE DNREC.  Colin O’Mara is in charge of all divisions Air,Water, and Land.  We will soon see if the Land Division (solid waste) can replicate my simple calculation that using the data Brockenborough the Bloom GM submitted to the DNREC almost 225,000 pounds of solid waste is unaccounted for. 

Note Colin O’Mara attended Oxford University to study environmental economics.  We shall soon see if he can do fifth grade math to determine how much solid waste is missing in his completeness report.  The only thing about that report I can think of is that Simon Cowell would call it “complete rubbish”.



Monday, November 25, 2013

Vilsack Sells Your Sugar for 2 Cents a Pound





The beat of the USDA Sugar drum goes on but the sound is only getting worse.  Obama and Vilsack sold our sugar for 2 cents a pound last week.   This was a 90% discount to market prices.  Yeah Pacific Ethanol picked up 51,500 tons of sugar for 2 cents a pound.   OBama and Vilsack have to be the worst general store owners in the history of the US.  Obama certainly gets the prize for being the absolute worst president ever but now the Prez is giving away even sweeter deals to friends.  Obama certainly has more singing skills than GW the architect of the ethanol in fuel debacle but the grand larceny in the larder is now at a pace of a sugar high!   The beet goes on so to speak. 

Here is the Wall Street Journal Article about the sugar give away by Vilsack at the USDA.


That anyone still believes the President is honest or capable is the mystery of the century.  Maybe Mitt the Twit was right 47% of Americans are lost forever.