Sustainability Is Not Possible – Minimal Impact Is Possible

The word Sustainability is the most overused hackneyed phrase of the day.  If we believe the planet is not affected by the passage of time let alone human activity we are simply dreaming.   Entropy increases in time as we measure time in the direction that entropy increases.  This was said by Stephen Hawking. 

Hence we cannot leave the world as the same place we were born into even if we did zero burning of fossil fuels or zero cutting down of forests.  Even photosynthesis increases entropy.  Some argue that photosynthesis lowers entropy but it simply does not.

My book Hydrogen – Hope or Hype? explains all of this much further and is an easy read and very inexpensive  EBook linked below

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0070YIZWY

National Geographic asked me to answer the following question:

Do you think that by tapping into the new alternative energy sources we can reverse most of the damage we have done to our environment?

Of course the answer is No.  Entropy happens and we cannot ever reverse that.  What we can do is move forward in a manner that brings progress with minimal impact.  This includes a major modification in behavior to reverse population growth.  It requires a social change in our mindset to live very differently.  We cannot blame the fuel we must blame the lifestyle.  Getting rid of the Brady Bunch lifestyle is needed to slow down the rate of damage to the planet.  Some damage will occur no matter what simply because Entropy increases.

National Geographic is airing a series titled "Breakthrough:   Energy on the Edge” that premieres December 6 at 9 pm ET on National Geographic Channel.   This series is well worth you all watching.  

I would expand the title from Energy on the Edge to Planet Earth on the Edge.  We do have the choice of how much Entropy we add and the rate at which we add it but folks forget the misguided dream that alternative energy can reverse entropy.  Even the impingement of photons on solar cells adds to our collective entropy.

Lindsay Leveen The Green Machine AKA The Thermonator writes at www.greenexplored.com and he is an award winning Chemical Engineer as well as an award winning Journalist.  He is quoted as saying “you can fuel some of the people some of the time but you cannot fuel all of the people all of the time.”

COP21 and July 3, 2010

COP21 is a very important meeting and will set global policy of carbon emissions.  We need to substantially lower carbon emissions and we need real science to do it.  I have long complained that real science is sorely missing in the green energy policy space of the UNited States and that those who have studied and comprehend thermodynamics should be the only ones allowed to set energy policy.

Sadly we have a thermodynamic  neophyte for a president.  I take you back to July 3, 2010 in his message for Independence Day of that year.  Blaming republicans and espousing pure poppycock in policy where he touts two thermodynamic failures.  Abound Energy and Abengoa.  Abound went bankrupt and had to have the state bury toxic waste that they left in the abandoned factory.  The toxic waste was entombed in concrete. 

http://www.denverpost.com/ci_23621546/bankrupt-abound-solars-toxic-wastes-cleaned-at-4

Abengoa is going bankrupt now and is Enron plus Solyndra cubed.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/11/27/abengoa-bonds-idUSL8N13L47Y20151127

Here is the link to the President’s July 3, 2010 address.  I also quote from it.

"That’s one of the reasons why we’re accelerating the transition to a clean energy economy and doubling our use of renewable energy sources like wind and solar power – steps that have the potential to create whole new industries and hundreds of thousands of new jobs in America.

In fact, today, I’m announcing that the Department of Energy is awarding nearly $2 billion in conditional commitments to two solar companies.

The first is Abengoa Solar, a company that has agreed to build one of the largest solar plants in the world right here in the United States.  After years of watching companies build things and create jobs overseas, it’s good news that we’ve attracted a company to our shores to build a plant and create jobs right here in America.  In the short term, construction will create approximately 1,600 jobs in Arizona.  What’s more, over 70 percent of the components and products used in construction will be manufactured in the USA, boosting jobs and communities in states up and down the supply chain.  Once completed, this plant will be the first large-scale solar plant in the U.S. to actually store the energy it generates for later use – even at night.  And it will generate enough clean, renewable energy to power 70,000 homes.

The second company is Abound Solar Manufacturing, which will manufacture advanced solar panels at two new plants, creating more than 2,000 construction jobs and 1,500 permanent jobs.  A Colorado plant is already underway, and an Indiana plant will be built in what’s now an empty Chrysler factory.  When fully operational, these plants will produce millions of state-of-the-art solar panels each year.

These are just two of the many clean energy investments in the Recovery Act.  Already, I’ve seen the payoff from these investments.  I’ve seen once-shuttered factories humming with new workers who are building solar panels and wind turbines; rolling up their sleeves to help America win the race for the clean energy economy.

So that’s some of what we’re doing.  But the truth is, steps like these won’t replace all the jobs we’ve lost overnight.  I know folks are struggling.  I know this Fourth of July weekend finds many Americans wishing things were a bit easier right now.  I do too.

But what this weekend reminds us, more than any other, is that we are a nation that has always risen to the challenges before it. We are a nation that, 234 years ago, declared our independence from one of the greatest empires the world had ever known.  We are a nation that mustered a sense of common purpose to overcome Depression and fear itself.  We are a nation that embraced a call to greatness and saved the world from tyranny.  That is who we are – a nation that turns times of trial into times of triumph – and I know America will write our own destiny once more.

I wish every American a safe and happy Fourth of July.  And to all our troops serving in harm’s way, I want you to know you have the support of a grateful nation and a proud Commander-in-Chief.  Thank you, God Bless You, and God Bless the United States of America."

https://m.whitehouse.gov/photos-and-video/video/weekly-address-a-solar-recovery#transcript

Sadly this President did not even take one junior varsity level course in Thermodynamics.  He is utterly misguided when it comes to energy.   I hope that some of the other attendees at COP21 have more knowledge and capability than Mr. Obama as he certainly is not the one who is going to propose coherent low carbon energy strategies that hold water.  In fact his leaky bucket cannot CONTAIN water.

Science Is Abandoned In the USA

Sadly the Green Machine has to report that science is now almost fully abandoned in this country.   Jeb’s  brother DumbbellU with the help of his two secretaries of energy (Abraham and Bodman) started the trend of favoring cronies over science in the money the department of entropy gave out for low carbon fuels.  Oh Bummer with the help of Chu and Moniz have totally decimated the last semblance of science as a basis for energy policy in favor of funding companies started by Kleiner Perkins and Vinod Khosla.

My latest rant is about Cellulosic Ethanol.  DumbbellU loved to tout this junk in the state of the disunion speeches.  Taxpayers were promised 3 billion gallons of the firewater from stalks for the year 2015.  So far in ten months year to date through October 31 we got 1,875,985 gallons.  Fake scientists like Dan Kammen and Paul Bryan at Berkeley sure owe us an apology for the nonsense they promoted at the end of DumbbellU’s reign and the Oh Bummer irrational exuberance for gangrene crap technology in his first couple of years running Ohbummerland.

Khosla brought us many failures such as Cello, Range, Kior, LS9, Gevo, and Amyris but large companies also got in the act of fake science to extract mucho dinero of our money.  POET-DSM a JV of POET of South Dakota and DSM of Europe has been in start-up mode for the last 14 months at their Emmetsburg Iowa cellulosic ethanol facility.  This project received $120 MILLION of taxpayer money.  We received almost zero gallons of the fire water in the 14 months since the plant was opened with fanfare.

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/money/agriculture/green-fields/2014/09/03/poet-dsm-celebrate-opening-cellulosic-ethanol-plant/15025949/

I have asked the Head of PR at POET to make the CEO of POET available for an interview for my movie Celsius 1960 – Fake Science and Bloomdoggles.   Sadly my old university Iowa State played a similar role to Berkeley and Stanford in promoting spurious projects that had no thermodynamic basis for existence.   Berkeley was owned by BP, Stanford by Exxon Mobil, and Iowa State by Conoco Phillips.  These three oil companies funded research by fake scientists like Kammen at Berkeley in the pretense of being green.  Real science was ignored.  Talking of Thermodynamic fools, yesterday I saw Thomas Friedman on CNN pontificating on ISIS.  Tommy is the thermodynamic neophyte who believed CODA and Project Better Place would dominate the auto industry.  I bet Tommy told Oh Bummer how to deal with the minor setbacks we are experiencing in the WAR ON Terror.

In Hebrew the word Emmet means truth.  It is time for POET DSM in Emmetsburg Iowa to tell us the truth what is happening in the ethanol plant that is yielding Bupkis.  We paid $120 MILLION towards that plant.  Oh Bummer and DumbbellU would not know thermodynamic truth even if we reeducated them for several years.  My congressman Huffman and Al Gore are simply incapable of uttering a single word of Emmet.   It is high time for Emmet in Emmetsburg Iowa.

Musk Loses To Gore At CPUC

After a six month battle the CPUC has decided to waste Ratepayer money on Bloom Energy rather than Tesla.  These two gangrene companies have looted the SGIP fund for over half a billion dollars with Bloom outpacing Tesla four to one.

The CPUC has decided to let Bloom continue the greenwashing Bloomdoggle by continuing to “qualify” as a low carbon alternate for self-generation of electric power.

http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/Update-CPUC-Decision-Continues-to-Reward-Blooms-Fuel-Cells

My take on all the gangrene nonsense is that Musk tried very hard in Sacramento to get the lion’s share of future SGIP waste for his grid battery storage.  Al Gore and his team at Bloom own the CPUC and President Picker who is no different than President Peevey and is in Al’s camp, probably because Moonbeam (his boss) is in Al’s camp.   Personally both companies are gangrene not green, and all the SGIP money should come back to ratepayers who have funded their greenwashed lies for years.

President Oh Bummer was asked to comment on Musk’s setback and Oh Bummer stated that although the Bloom Box is only a junior varsity team in the field of power generation their players are very well paid and could soon join NBA teams.  Al Gore is happy that President Picker is picking blooms for Moonbeam’s office that is otherwise drab.   The Green Machine just shed a tear for the ratepayers in the Caliphate of Caliphornia where the movers and Sheikers are still the lobbyists for Kleiner Perkins.

Vive La France

If only Obama could say the same!!!!

si seulement Obama pourrait dire la même chose !!!

Obama and Kerry Prefer Iran to Alberta

All this talk about the keystone pipeline comes to one thing.  Who do Obama and Kerry love?  They wanted Iranian crude to reach market not Albertan syncrude from the tar sands.  Now that the worst negotiated deal in the history of man (the nuke deal) has happened approximately one million barrels a day of additional heavy and light Iranian crude will reach the global market.

Had the Albertans been Ayatollahs and threatened the existence of Manitoba they too would have got their crude to market via a pipeline.  The CO2 story is a smokescreen, it is all about the geopolitics of threatening western civilization that gets Obama to become weak kneed and drop to his prayer mat.  Also the oil companies who are reeling after the drop in global oil prices did not want more oil to flood the already oversupplied market.

I did a quick calculation that the $50 per barrel drop in prices has caused global GDP to drop by $1.7 trillion given the 93 million barrels a day of oil that is produced worldwide.   I am happy that consumers from Capetown to Calcutta have more in their pockets and that sheiks and Russian oligarchs are eating less caviar and only having sex each night with 12 women not 20.   But I am actually quite concerned that Alberta will now ship their syncrude  over the Rockies and off to China where the oil will be refined with even less concern than at an Exxon Mobil refinery in Texas.

My idiot congressman will applaud Obama as the defender of the environment.  I think of Obama as a weak kneed leader in a world that has an existential threat from countries like Iran rather than provinces like Alberta.  I do worry about CO2 concentration in the atmosphere but on a scale of worries, I worry much more about Iran and their nukes than the Keystone pipeline. 

Our solution is sociological and our victory over completely screwing up the environment will come when we actually live closer to work, drive less, own more efficient cars, and start electing honest politicians who follow science rather than the money given to them by lobbyists.  The Keystone pipeline is irrelevant in the quest for a greener world.   The Tesla gigafactory is irrelevant in a greener world.  The pundits have one or two idiotic poster children that they think make a dent in what is going on.  Good science and educated people can make for a more perfected world. 

We don’t need Theranos we need folks to understand Thermodynamics and that entropy will always increase but if we do fewer exothermic or even endothermic reactions we add less entropy to our surroundings.  Theranos fakes their pinprick blood testing, Bloom fakes their CO2 emissions, KIor faked their wood to diesel chemistry, and Obama fakes his green credentials.  Actually Obama is just a talking head.

 I do not know if Carson faked being a violent teenager, but he certainly slowed down his rate of increasing entropy when he became a “low energy” adult.  The Donald creates massive entropy each time he opens his big mouth.  We need more adults like Ben who should use the campaign slogan “I am low entropy”