Earth Day Gone and Probably Forgotten

My last blog had the beautiful Earth Day Rainbow.  Just like the rainbow Earth Day is over and life continues in the same old way.

The primaries are exciting and it looks like the Donald will take on Hillary.   Hillary has promised to jail executives who are very powerful and Donald will build a wall.  Seeing will be believing in either case.  My guess is neither will jail Al Gore for his crimes against nature and humanity in the BLOOMDOGGLE , and the operatives of the complex are very happy the Bernie is not going to be president.

What does this mean for Green Energy?  Actually not very much!  The US is essentially irrelevant in green space.  We failed in solar, we failed in cellulosic fuels, we failed in thermodynamics, and we certainly failed in honesty.

Latest on the BLOOMDOGGLE is that Apple and Bloom sell electrons to Duke Power in Maiden NC.  The Bloom Boxes do not really power the data center.  The data center is powered by dirty cheap power from Duke Energy and expensive pretend green energy from the Bloom Boxes is sold to Duke Energy who in turn rip off other ratepayers. 

Duke and Kleiner Perkins are tight.  Co-investors in a business called Spruce Financing and Duke also is propping up Aquion batteries which is one of the last standing Kleiner greentech companies.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/600962/new-grid-storage-technology-helps-integrate-renewables/

https://sprucefinance.com/about

OK we know that Duke, Apple, Bloom, and Kleiner are in bed together.  The real question here is who knows there is hazardous solid waste that is not permitted and ends up being transported across state lines to Texas for “treatment”.    Bloom knew years ago they had the hazardous waste.  I told Kleiner Perkins years ago they have the hazardous waste.  I told Apple over a year ago they have the hazardous waste, and I told Duke yesterday they have the hazardous waste.  It will be interesting if these four powerful corporations can evade Hillary’s promise to have them fail and to jail their executives.  I know thermodynamics and that tells me by statistical analysis there is as much chance of this happening as Kasich being the nominee for the GOP out of Cleveland.

What I do know is the 50 Bloom Coffins in Maiden NC are in the bottom right corner of the photo next to the substation and each time an electron is dispatched into Duke’s grid for sale at high price to a ratepayer in NC, more unpermitted hidden hazardous waste is generated and Al Gore and cronies make money while the poor are schlonged.   I love Trumpie and his campaign words.   But I actually think my invention of the words BLOOMDOGGLE and BLOOMERANG should be included in the Oxford Dictionary before some of crude Yiddish words become part of everyday language.  BLOOMDOGGLE and BLOOMERANG are such elegant and refined words even though perpetrators of the eco-crimes associated with the words are so vile.

Earth Day Rainbow

Late yesterday afternoon it rained here in the San Francisco Bay Area.  This is a fairly uncommon event for this time of the year.  We had a pretty wet winter and reservoirs from the Golden Gate up north are full thanks to the El Nino. 

Yesterday was Earth Day and the planet added another 100 million metric tons of CO2 to the atmosphere.  Mother Nature wanted to remind the Green Machine that there is still some hope to slow down this madness.  That is why I believe when I looked out the window over the lagoon I saw the photo of the rainbow that is above.

Israel Kamakawiwo’ole  (Bruddah Iz) added this verse from A Wonderful World to his Somewhere Over The Rainbow:

Well I see trees of green and red roses too,
I'll watch them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself
What a wonderful world

The photo shows the green tree on the left that my daughter climbed as a kid.  She is long grown up now.  The lagoon is the place she learned to swim.  I remember fondly the times she was a child in our care.  The photo was taken from the dining table where we were celebrating Passover Seder.  Yes Earth Day and Passover coincided yesterday.

Passover is the celebration of Freedom.  Bruddah Iz also dreamed of sovereignty for Native Hawaiians.  Maybe the Rainbow was a message from Bruddah Iz or maybe it was just a fluke that rain and sunshine happened to occur in the right spot at the right moment?  Either way I know that Louis Armstrong who is noted for A Wonderful World was an African American who became part of a Jewish family.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_Kamakawiwo%CA%BBole

http://www.bnaibrith.org/magazine-articles/satchmo-and-the-karnofskys-louie-armstrongs-deep-jewish-connection

So maybe it was Satchmo who sent us that rainbow to tell us Happy Passover?   For sure the message of the rainbow is that we have a wonderful world and it is high time to deploy real science and real engineering solutions to reduce and end emissions and pollution.  We need a Budding Red Rose Solution not a Wilted Bloom Box Greenwash.  Mostly we need much more brotherhood and a lot less anti-Semitism, racism, stupidity, greed, lies, greenwashing, corruption, and hatred.

Peace and Chag Sameach

Peet’s Versus Starbucks On The Tiburon Peninsula

Foe almost 20 years on a daily basis I have bought a Venti Soy No Foam Latte from the Starbucks at Strawberry Village.  My wife drinks this as her source of protein as well as caffeine for the day.  The drink was great for 19 years and 8 months and has become terrible for only the past 4 months.  I asked the folks at Starbucks if they had changed their supplier of Soy Milk?  No they have not.  Did they change their coffee?  No they have not. 

I do know that some rookie Baristas have a hard time with Soy as it has a propensity to foam and gets burned if the temperature is too hot.  I had the barista check the temperature of the steamed soy milk to see if that had changed?  No it had not.  I simply was bewildered until I realized the espresso machines at the Strawberry Starbucks’ store are very old and are approaching ten years since the store was remodeled. 

I then found out the machines are hundreds of thousands of shots overdue for replacement.  My source is a Starbucks worker. I then found out the machines significantly dilute the soy milk during the steaming process due to water condensing.  To test if the espresso machines at Strawberry Village are the fault, I started buying the daily Venti No Foam Soy Latte at the Starbucks store on East Blithedale.  The drink returned to its former glory of being tasty and not watered down.  I therefore had found the reason why for 4 months I had bought over 120 horrible tasting drinks and spent well over $500 for the trick of Starbucks selling me water milk not 100% soy milk.

As I am a Starbucks gold card holder since 2008, I called the customer service number.  I spoke with a supervisor about a week ago.  I was promised that within 3 days the region manager would call me.  Of course I have not received a call and of course Starbucks hopes I just go away.  As part of my experiment in the pursuit of good tasting coffee, I started taste testing the 20 ounce soy no foam latte at Peet’s in the Cove.  It is a wonderful drink.  I also found out that Peet’s gives customers three shots of expresso in this size drink not the two shots in the Starbucks’ Venti.  Pete’s also uses straight up soy milk not vanilla impregnated soy milk.

I have to say Peet’s beats Starbucks by a mile for this particular drink in this size.   The only Starbucks store that I now occasionally buy the Venti no foam soy latte at is the one on Blythedale.  Also by saving the two extra miles each way I have a lower carbon footprint by frequenting Peet’s.  I have probably bought 7,000 Venti no foam soy lattes at Starbucks,and If I last another 20 years I may match this number at Peet’s.  The way I feel about Starbucks is they shorted me by 7,000 shots and sold me watered down soy.  I am pretty miffed about Starbucks and may soon have to go after them with the same vigor that I have gone after Bloom Energy.  Let's see if the region manager calls me.

Kaiser Bloom and Greenwashing

An Email to the VP for Sustainability for Kaiser

Ms. Gerwig

I know that Kaiser has tried to be green.  Sadly you have been hoodwinked by Bloom Energy and the 4.3 megawatts of power generation at 7 Kaiser sites are anything but green, they are GANGRENE.

NBC copied did report on Greenwashing by Bloom Energy and Ms. Gerwig on behalf of Kaiser chose to defend Bloom in the first of four reports by NBC.

http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Is-Bloom-Energy-Greenwashing-the-Public-279813752.html

I now have conclusive evidence that Bloom Boxes generate hazardous solid waste that is hauled to an EPA licensed hazmat site in Texas.  Kaiser is therefore a generators of many tons of undocumented hazardous waste from their Bloom Boxes.

I have copied the CPUC as Kaiser benefitted from many dollars of SGIP funds from the Bloom Boxes.  Also copied is my Congressman as there was a lot of federal incentive for these Dirty Boxes.

Attached is a letter from the head of the US EPA Philadelphia office to the Delaware Cabinet Secretary for the environment stating EPA position that the waste is hazardous and should be handled accordingly.

Below is my Blog on the waste and Bloom's Twinkie Defense.  

http://www.greenexplored.com/2016/03/bloom-energys-twinkie-bagel-defense.html

Also attached is a recent article I wrote.

Ms. Gerwig please contact me as I am now writing a piece on how Kaiser is a part of the Bloomdoggle.

Thanks 

Lindsay Leveen The Green Machine

Green Is Good

Often I spend my time exposing Gangrene folks who Greenwash.  That is the job of the Thermonator but on Greenexplored dot com I will now mainly focus on Green that is Good.  The LED blog is an example of how green tech that is really green can make a real difference. 

So what else is really green and making a difference.  My friend Ronni in Australia who started and runs Oz Harvest is really doing a bang up job making sure food does not end up in a garbage dump.

http://www.ozharvest.org/

Ronni and her organization have made sure that 45 million meals end up in people’s mouths and not in some garbage dump.  Six years back when Ronni started Oz Harvest she was one of the few in the world to do this on an industrial scale.  She and I went to high school together many years ago and we linked again on Facebook.  Every year or so I help the team at Oz Harvest calculate their negative carbon footprint.

Yes they prevent methane forming from food decomposing in garbage dumps.  As methane is more of a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide that we breathe out after digesting food, using food for meals instead of waste means a negative carbon footprint in the enterprise of donating food that otherwise would have been wasted.  The negative carbon footprint holds even after netting out emissions for food refrigeration, reheating, and delivery.

Oz Harvest is a world leader in their field and many other organizations in many other countries are now following Oz Harvest’s lead.

Here is an article on the BBC from a couple days ago that reveals interesting global statistics on food waste.

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-35988093

Who said Australians simply were beach bums?  When it comes to preventing food waste the Ozzies are world class.  Ronni even got to meet royalty when Camila and Charles popped in for tea and scones.

http://www.hortidaily.com/article/22201/British-Royal-family-pays-visit-to-OzHarvest-HQ

I do hope to visit Australia one day soon and also pay a visit to Oz Harvest and see my old high school chum Ronni.

Tesla Model 3

There was lots of Hoopla and Excitement this week about the reveal of the Tesla Model 3.  The Green Machine’s opinion is that this is one wonderfully engineered car.   No doubt that this car sets the standard for what can be done with a vehicle powered by lithium ion batteries. 

Tesla revealed that over 190,000 people had made their $1,000 reservation for the car at an average price of $42,000 each.  Sadly for many of these folks they won’t be getting the $7,500 tax credit unless the Feds change the law.  The law as presently written is that only the first 200,000 electric vehicles of any one manufacturer qualify for the $7,500 credit.  I am sure that Elon must have his lobbyists working on changing the law.

The car has an EPA range of approximately 200 miles.  The frame and body of the Model 3 are made of steel not aluminum like the Model S.  This was done to lower cost but adds to the mass of the car.  My guess is the car will weigh around 4,500 pounds and will have 55 to 60 kilowatt hours of batteries.  These specifications have not been revealed.

In 2013 Dr. Chu who was Secretary of Energy wrote a paper that the cost of lithium ion battery packs including all controls and thermal management was approximately $650 per kwh.  Folks are claiming the Model S battery pack will cost Tesla only $100 per kwh when the car starts selling in late 2017.  My educated guess is that the cost of the battery pack at the end of 2017 will still be $350 to $400 per kwh and that each pack will cost around $20,000 to $24,000.  This leaves approximately $18,000 to $22,000 for the rest of the vehicle.

You all may ask why I do not believe the $100 per kwh is possible?  This is because the cost of raw materials for the batteries will experience price increases.  Cobalt, lithium, graphite, copper, etc. will see inflation.  What will be very likely is that he Model 3 will be the last car that folks ever buy.  The batteries might well last 5,000 cycles for a lifetime of a million miles.  I actually think this is the real selling point of the car.  A car that lasts a lifetime!

The styling of the car is superb and Tesla has established their brand as the highest quality most sought out vehicle.  No other brand of vehicles comes close to Tesla for customer appeal and satisfaction.  I still think that the Toyota Prius should outsell the Model 3.  Time will tell how successful the Model 3 becomes and how much profit Tesla makes.   I have to hand it to the team at Tesla they sure know how to create excitement.

NBC Further Exposes Bloom Energy Bloomdoggle

This link is the fourth in a series by NBC Bay Area Investigates that exposes the Greenwashing by Bloom Energy

http://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/State-Regulators-Consider-Decision-to-End-Big-Benefits-for-Fuel-Cells-374152691.html

New data I have obtained from Delaware show for the 9 months June 2015 through February 2016 CO2 emissions from the Bloom Coffins are 896.12 pounds per megawatt-hour.  Bloom permitted only 773 pounds per mwh.  In these 9 months Bloom emitted an extra 10,419 tons of CO2 over and above than they claimed they would.  This is like Al Gore driving 3,000 cars 15,000 miles a year.  I only wish Al would go 45 million miles away and that would get him halfway to the Sun that he created when he was not busy inventing the internet.  Albert Gore is no Albert Camus he is more like Albert Tochus.

The Bloom is Wilting.