Better Place is Lost in Space Dumb gets Dumber

UPDATE October 6 .  I just added this link that points out more of who is involved in this gangrene saga

http://www.globes.co.il/serveen/globes/docview.asp?did=1000788263&fid=4380

Today (0ctober 2 2012) it was announced that Shai Agassi was fired as the CEO of Project Better Place after approximately half a billion dollars of losses in the hair brain scheme be an "operational" company that provides swapped out batteries to electric vehicle owners.

http://www.industryleadersmagazine.com/better-place-ousted-ceo-agassi-due-to-financial-losses/


The blog below was posted in December 2010 the day after Shai Agassi appeared on Charlie Rose to hype his approach to bring electric cars to the world.  Here is a link to the Charlie Rose video of the interview.

 http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11323

 If you have 30 minutes to waste you can watch the interview.  In summary Shai tells Charlie the following:

Shimon Peres the President of Israel challenged him to give up on being the CEO of SAP to start Better Palce

He stated that every 2 years the cost to performance ratio of lithium ion batteries would halve

He stated that by 2020 China will build 40 million electric vehicles a year

He stated that Better Place needed to market a larger car than the Nissan Leaf and hence they chose the Renault.

Here is my blog from 20 months ago that was titled Dumb Gets Dumber



If one set of lithium ion batteries for a plug in vehicle is not a dumb enough idea some guys have come up with the brainwave that multiple sets of lithium ion batteries should be used for a plug in vehicle. Why the need for multiple sets of batteries? So that one can pull up to a service station that has a robot that quickly extracts the on board battery pack and replaces it with a freshly charged pack. Forget that the first battery pack was unaffordable we can quickly change out that unaffordable pack for the next doubly unaffordable pack.

This is the brainchild of a guy named Shai (pronounced Shy) Agassi and his company called Project Better Place. Well my name for his company is “Lost in Space” and his first name should be “Not So Shy” for the almost billion dollars he has raised from idiots in the investment and government community. Last night Not So Shy was on Charlie Rose on Bloomberg touting his brilliant idea and how the great State of California will soon have 50 taxis that run between San Francisco and San Jose that will use his Lost In Space technology. Great a bankrupt state will have 50 taxis out of a fleet of 20 million private vehicles with multiple sets of batteries that no one can afford.

What really got the hair up on my back was when Not So Shy told Charlie Rose that he just met with the Brazilian Foreign Minister and suggested that Brazil use the ethanol the country produces to generate electricity and not use it for a liquid fuel for vehicles. Here is the link to that Charlie Rose interview http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11323 Not So Shy certainly has thermodynamic chutzpah.

I have opined that ethanol as a transportation fuel is dumb, but at least Brazil produces its ethanol from cane sugar and actually has an economic model for ethanol fuel production. Shai here is a lesson from Thermodynamics 101 and Economics 101. Electric power in Brazil is valued at retail at about 8 US cents per KWh. Ethanol is valued at retail at $2.90 per gallon. There are approximately 22 KWh of energy in a gallon of ethanol, therefore as a liquid fuel ethanol’s value is 13 US cents per KWh. OK boy genius Mr. Not So Shy why would a firm take something that sells for 13 cents then lose half the energy generating power while spending tons of capital and then only get half of 8 cents or 4 cents for your product. This is the same economics as your dumb idea to have multiple unaffordable batteries for a car.

Not So Shy does not really care about economics he cares about the environment of our planet and increasing carbon dioxide. Yes his mission is to save the world. His investors and partners include: A123 batteries, HSBC Bank, Lazard, Morgan Stanley, Renault, and Vantage Point Venture Partners. The only guy missing for the take off of Lost in Space is old Bernie who burned on the launch pad. I plead to my readers not to believe this junk science that is made of the same cloth as Bloom Energy.

It is kind of sad that a guy as smart as Charlie Rose could not ask Not So Shy to explain the second law of thermodynamics and how a second set of lithium ion batteries from A123 that cost $50,000 for the Renault ne marche pas Affluence ZE makes any sense to anyone other than Not So Shy who is the grand wizard behind the Lost in Space company.

Spain Lowers Speed Limit

The Spanish government has announced plans to reduce the speed limit on motorways from 120 kilometers per hour to 110 kilometers per hour. The reduced speed is being implemented not for safety reasons but to reduce fuel consumption in this nation that imports all of its oil. The Green Machine applauds the Spanish government for their understanding of physics. The power needed to break through air resistance is proportional to the cube of the velocity at which the vehicle travels. The power to overcome rolling resistance is proportional to the velocity. On the freeway air resistance is the dominant consumer of a vehicle’s engine power. Performing the tedious math one can concur with the Spanish government’s analysis that by invoking the new speed limit on the motorways owners of gasoline powered cars will save 15% and owners of diesel powered cars will save 10% of their historic fuel consumption. The reason why the savings are larger at this reduced speed for gasoline powered cars than diesel cars is that gasoline cars at the lower speed will operate at a more optimum point in their efficiency versus power curve. Diesel engines have almost a constant efficiency rating at most points in their power curve.

Now that the Spaniards have realized the velocity of vehicle affects the fuel consumption perhaps we will deal with the three other major variables that also affect fuel efficiency. The first variable is the mass of the vehicle, the second the frontal area of the vehicle and the third is the coefficient of drag of the vehicle. Most cars and trucks now all look the same as companies have been able to wind tunnel test their vehicles to develop shapes that minimize the coefficient of drag. The Hummer was a design that simply did not even attempt to lessen the coefficient of drag and resembled the shape of a brick. The Toyota Prius and the Honda Insight can easily be mistaken as the other as these two vehicles have striven to minimize their coefficient of drag. Also smaller vehicles will have smaller frontal area and therefore have improved fuel efficiency. Auto companies are striving to minimize the mass of their vehicles. Alas a Prius still is quite heavy and weighs in at over 3,100 pounds. The Toyota Corolla is perhaps 400 pounds lighter than a Prius but as it is not hybrid powered it is not as fuel efficient as the Prius. The small hybrid system on the Prius allows the engine to operate most of the time at close to its peak efficiency on the power curve.

I have opined many times that lithium ion batteries are best suited in transportation for electric bicycles. The reason this is the case is that the bike has a low frontal area, a very low mass, and a low average velocity. The battery therefore only has to provide 200 watts of peak power and 60 watts of average power to keep a cyclist moving with a velocity of 10 miles an hour on a road that is flat. The electric cycle needs about 6 watt hours of energy per mile. By comparison a Tesla Roadster needs about 360 watt hours per mile on a flat road at velocity of 50 miles per hour. On the surface this sounds good. The Tesla only needs 60 times the energy of an electric cycle to travel a mile. The problem is not with the number of watt hours per mile, but with the power in watts needed to accelerate the vehicle. The Tesla needs a battery capable of providing 185,000 watts of peak power. This is 9,000 times as much instantaneous power as the 200 watts of peak power needed for the electric bike. The cost of a battery depends on both the energy stored (watt hours) and the instantaneous power delivered (watts). This is why the Tesla battery costs $55,000 and the bicycle battery only costs $150. If Spain can only get their speed limit down to 16 kilometers per hour (10 miles per hour) we will see a bunch of Spaniards on electric bikes.

Coda Blue- The new code for a voltage flat line

News from DC is that Hu was on first, Obama struck out Shee was on deck and Biden was not even in the ball park


A blog today on micro hybrids. I kind of like things that are small. Micro hybrids are not small cars but cars that use a small assist from a hybrid technology. The small assist is that the engine shuts off when the car is stopped in stop and go traffic. The engine is restarted when the motorist depresses the accelerator. This means the car’s engine may be stopped and started a couple of hundred times a day. A traditional car is started and stopped perhaps half a dozen times a day. This sounds like a really simple solution to improving the gas mileage of cars as well is lowering pollution in urban areas. Yes it is simple but not that simple. Traditional lead acid batteries cannot handle many thousands of restarts of a car or truck and they would be dead within six months if used as a single battery in a micro hybrid. Automakers are equipping cars with two batteries for this purpose and also they are thinking of improved high tech lead acid batteries for the second battery. The improved technology is either a glass mat or some carbon based high surface material for the electrode. This will only add a couple hundred dollars to the cost of the vehicle and by my estimate the vehicles gas mileage for city driving will improve by about 1 mile per gallon for a compact car and perhaps 1.5 mpg for a larger car or truck. The technology is easier to implement in Europe than the USA as most vehicles in the USA have automatic transmissions and the restart of an engine that has an automatic transmission that is engaged in the D (drive) mode is jumpy. Manual transmission cars typically have their clutch engaged when stopped and the restart of the engine is simple and smooth. The Green Machine estimates that some 10 million cars a year will be equipped with this micro hybrid technology starting in the 2013 model year.

The Green Machine estimates that zero Tesla Model S vehicles will be sold in the 2015 model year as Tesla will be dead as dry cell by then. The VCs that funded Tesla have made out like bandits. The boys at Draper Fisher Juvertson sold a bunch of their stock at over $30 per share in late December. This was just after Tesla had a press release that their Model S release schedule is not slipping and they will be on time for the launch. I blogged at that time that the press release did not tell us anything about costs being lowered and that the company will yield a profit by the timely sale of the sedan. Someone must be reading my blogs as Tesla’s stock slumped this week to $23.00. Last week I opined that within a year the Tesla stock will be below the 19 gallons of gasoline they claim are in a barrel. Perhaps I should have said after their next quarterly report the stock will be below the $19.00 a share level.

Talking about taking investors to the cleaners my other villain AONE has lost their CFO. He made about a million dollars selling his shares during 2010 while the stock was high. After 7 years with the company he is leaving to join a LED company. Yeah he saw the light after he made some bucks in the lithium ion business. When will the public wake up and see that the VCs and CFOs of these soon to be dead lithium ion technology based companies have taken them for a ride? Perhaps Obama and Chu will ride off into the sunset in 2014 when the hundreds of billions of dollars of government grants for gangrene technology are all gone and a few thousand low paying green jobs were created. I think Exide, Insterstate and Die Hard will succeed and still be charged in 2015. Their lead acid batteries will be installed in 10 million micro hybrids.

To be fair and balanced the Republicans are also cleaning up on the clean energy boondoggle. Hank the take us to the tank Paulson who let us slide into deep recession and his team at Coda will soon be importing their battery car from China. They hired an ex GM guy as CEO. My prognostication is the Codas will all be painted blue and we will soon use Coda Blue as the hospital code for calling AAA to resuscitate cars with dead batteries that have a flat voltage line at zero.

Teslacle the Gonadwhere Company

Sorry Green Machine readers I have made a new year’s resolution to blog only every fortnight as I am far too depressed after I blog. I know the thermodynamic thieves in government and industry simply won’t change their ways. The latest from Teslacle is that they have saved the world over 22,000 barrels of oil by having sold over 1,500 Teslacles in the past three years since the introduction of the gonadwhere roadster. Their press release is at the end of the blog.

Of course I contacted Teslacle to tell them that their math is wrong. There are 42 gallons in a barrel and 415,000 gallons is only 9,888 barrels not 22,000. They had the chutzpah to reply to my email that there are only 19 gallons of gasoline extracted from a barrel of oil. The remaining 23 become things other than gasoline when refined. Wow this reminds me of my “banter with Blair” a year ago and how I had to help Blair understand that oil yields diesel, jet fuel, residual oil, propane, and other oils and in fact as the crude oil is denser than many of the refined products there is a gallon gain of 5% in the refining process. The best method to evaluate the conversion of crude oil to gasoline is to compare the heat content of a barrel of crude oil with a gallon of gasoline and also account for the energy lost in the refining process. The US DOE uses 5.8 million BTUs higher heating value in a barrel of oil. Gasoline has 130,000 BTUs per gallon HHV. This means there are 44.615 equivalent gallons of gasoline in a barrel of oil prior to accounting for the refining loss. The refining loss is about 5% so we have 42.4 gallons equivalent of gasoline in a barrel of crude oil. If Teslacle were to be thermodynamically truthful, they could have claimed a savings of 9,788 barrels of oil.

It took the Gonadwhere company 3 years to achieve 1,500 vehicles of total sales and they have lost (retained earnings) over $300 million. This is a cost of $200,000 per vehicle sold or $30,653 per barrel of oil saved. The Pres and his Energy Secretary Dr. Chu Chu Train should take note of Telacles accomplishments.

My parting shot to person at Tesla who emailed me is that I predict in less than 12 months their stock will trade for less than their invented number of gallons of gasoline in a barrel and that within 24 months they will join Studebaker, Oldsmobile and Pontiac as a forgotten brand. Here is their press release from January 10 2010:



PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Tesla Motors has delivered more than 1,500 Roadsters worldwide, a significant milestone as the automaker’s momentum builds in North America, Europe and Asia.
The fleet of Roadsters spans more than 30 countries. They have accumulated more than 8.5 million miles (14 million kms) in real-world driving, saving 415,000 gallons (1.6 million liters) of gasoline and more than 22,000 barrels of oil.
“The Roadster has earned global appeal. Our latest delivery milestone proves the Tesla is raising the bar for EVs,” said Tesla co-founder and CEO Elon Musk. “The Roadster’s advanced electric powertrain is the foundation of Tesla’s success.”
The milestone comes after a banner year for Tesla, which acquired an assembly plant in Fremont, Calif., and forged strategic partnerships with Toyota and Panasonic. Tesla also became a public company in 2010.
Tesla also launched the next-generation Roadster 2.5, demonstrating Tesla’s continuous innovation and close feedback loop with its engineers and customers. Tesla opened its first Asian store in October; the showroom in Tokyo’s Aoyama district has the highest foot traffic of any Tesla store worldwide.
In 2010, Tesla delivered cars in more than 30 countries – from Singapore to Switzerland. The most northerly Roadsters are in Narvik, Norway, 140 miles (220 kilometers) north of the Arctic Circle.

LED = Leveen Enlightened Democrats

Lots of news out of Asia that LEDs are gaining market share in the lighting world. I had tried but in vain to enlighten my Congresswoman who is a dyed in the Woolsey democrat. I tried to tell her that the energy policy of Chu Chu Train was headed toward a siding that joins the bridge to nowhere. I wrote her an email this past month saying that had she listened to the Green Machine she may have left a legacy of energy policy that was blazoned in bright white light but alas her legacy is now that of a black hole where no light escapes. Had she listened to the Green Machine she would have been a LED or a Leveen Enlightened Democrat.

LEDs the real ones not the Leveen Enlightened Democrats are amazing devices that emit light with much less energy. Here are two article from a Taiwanese Microelectronics Trade Magazine called Digitimes. Note a lm is a lumen and a 60 watt incandescent bulb emits about 890 lumens. Therefore at $1 per 500 lumens a LED with the same lighting intensity of a 60 watt incandescent bulb will cost $1.80 to produce. A high first cost but the LED will not burn out within 100,000 hours.


Lighting-grade LED chip costs to fall to US$1/500lm in 2-3 years, says Epistar executive

Siu Han, Taipei; Willie Teng, DIGITIMES [Thursday 16 December 2010]


Production cost of lighting-grade LED chips will fall to US$1/500lm in the next 2-3 years, and if that is the case, LED lighting's market penetration will reach 20-30% in 2012 according MJ Jou, president of Taiwan-based LED chip maker Epistar.

At the recent Beijing-Taiwan Science and Technology Forum held in Taichung, Taiwan, Jou said that 40W LED light bulbs are currently US$20-30 and 60W light bulbs are US$40. Judging by market conditions, there is a good chance that the LED sector could beat the target of US$1/500lm in 2015 set by the US' Department of Energy, Jou noted.

At the moment, lighting-grade LED chip costs have reached US$1/200lm at the lowest, and could become the average in 2011.

In the past, manufacturers added red phosphor powder to warm white LEDs, which reduced luminance by 30-40%, Jou said. Epistar's red LED chip has improved from 165lm/W to a laboratory-achieved 180lm/W in December.

According to Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) data, Taiwan's LED lighting production totaled NT$93.6 billion (US$3.1 billion) in 2009 and will rise to NT$16.77 billion in 2010. LED chips and modules will account for 64%, backlight applications 31% and lighting applications 5%. Taiwan has about 50 LED chip makers, 60 chip packagers and 100 end-use application companies, ITRI noted


TSMC aims to become top-5 LED player worldwide
Siu Han, Taipei; Yvonne Yu, DIGITIMES [Wednesday 15 December 2010]


With its LED lighting R&D center to be finished soon, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) hopes to become a top-five LED player worldwide in the future.

TSMC noted that with the LED lighting market taking off, the lineup of current global top-five LED players is expected to change. In addition to players from Japan and Korea, there will be one more player from Asia in the new top-five.

Current top-five LED players are Royal Philips Electronics, Osram, Cree, Nichia and Toyoda Gosei.

TSMC's LED R&D center will be completed at the end of 2010 and start mass production in the first half of 2011. Unlike other LED players using sapphire substrate for production, TSMC will use silicon and will focus on the cost advantages of mass production scales, producing own-brand LED light sources and light engine products and produce LED lighting products through a vertical integrated system.

TSMC noted that although most players expect demand for LCD TV backlighting to increase significantly in 2011, LED-backlit TV market share is expected to be lower than in 2010 due to high prices. Unless LED-backlit TV prices drop significantly, LED-backlit TV market share will not be able to reach 40% as expected.

Demand for LCD TV backlighting brings new hope for the LED industry and is causing players to actively expand their MOCVD sets, overall MOCVD sets in China are expected to reach 300, and 100 sets in Taiwan. However, players did not expect the usage of LEDs in TV backlighting to be reduced through design, resulting in reductions in LED chips while LED-backlit TV shipments continue to increase. Korea-based TV vendors' strategy for LED-backlit TVs is expected to affect the schedule for LED lighting to take off. Once LED capacity exceeds demand, players will become more active to generate growth in the LED lighting market.

All the Leaves are Brown and the Sky is Grey, the EPA is Dreaming and we are Going to Pay

All the Leaves are Brown and the Sky is Grey, the EPA is Dreaming and we are Going to Pay

More fake science from the company that brought us the Le Car. They made the claim the Leaf will get 100 miles on a charge now the US EPA has measured the real distance the Leaf can travel at only 73 miles on a full charge. The batteries in the Relief only have 24 kilowatts of stored energy. The 73 mile range translates into a unit energy consumption of 328.8 watt hours per mile. This is what I had estimated a year ago and I had blogged that the 100 mile range was a figment of the French imagination just like a victorious army. Now the zinger the idiots at the US EPA will allow the Frogs to place a sticker on the overpriced heap of junk that the voiture d’electric gets 99 miles per gallon.

Here is the news release from AP.

Nissan Leaf runs equivalent of 99 miles per gallon
By KEN THOMAS, Associated Press – Mon Nov 22, 5:13 pm ET
WASHINGTON – The Nissan Leaf, an electric car aimed at attracting environmentally conscious motorists, will get the equivalent of 99 miles per gallon in combined city and highway driving, based on government testing.
Nissan Motor Corp. said Monday the Environmental Protection Agency's fuel efficiency window sticker, which provides information about the car's energy use, would estimate the electric car will achieve the equivalent of 106 mpg in city driving and 92 mpg on the highway.
EPA's tests estimate the Leaf can travel 73 miles on a fully charged battery and will cost $561 a year in electricity. Nissan has said the Leaf can travel 100 miles on a full charge, based on tests used by California regulators.
Nissan and General Motors Co. are both releasing electric cars within weeks in the auto industry's most prominent attempt at mass-producing vehicles that shift away from petroleum. The Leaf does not have a gas engine and must be recharged once its battery is depleted.
The tests show equivalent fuel efficiency of nearly twice the Toyota Prius, which gets 50 mpg in combined driving.
GM's entry, the Chevrolet Volt, uses an electric battery for the first 25 to 50 miles and a small gasoline engine to generate electricity once the battery runs down. The gasoline engine can generate power to run the car another 300 miles. GM has not yet revealed the mileage rating for the Volt.
Mark Perry, Nissan North America's director of product planning and strategy, said the vehicle's range would vary based on driving conditions. Tests conducted by the Federal Trade Commission, which regulates advertising claims, had estimated a range of 96 to 110 miles per full charge and the company's internal tests had found a broader range of 64 to 138 miles, Perry said. The California Air Resources Board estimated a range of 100 miles.
"As we've said all along, your range varies on driving conditions, temperature, terrain and we've talked about, very openly, this idea of a range of ranges," Perry said in an interview. The Leaf's label will indicate the vehicle is the best in class in fuel efficiency and tailpipe emissions.
Nissan will start selling the Leaf in California, Washington, Oregon, Arizona and Tennessee in December with a sticker price of $32,780. The Leaf will go on sale in other markets through 2011 and be available nationwide by the end of next year.
The Volt will have a sticker price of $41,000 and GM will sell it first in California, then make it available in New York; New Jersey; Connecticut; Washington, D.C.; Michigan and Texas. The car will be sold nationwide in 12 to 18 months.
Both vehicles qualify for a $7,500 federal tax credit. Some states and communities are offering additional tax breaks that will lower the price further.
GM spokesman Greg Martin said the automaker was working with EPA and expected to announce details of the Volt's mileage estimates soon.
EPA calculated the Leaf's fuel economy based on a formula that says 33.7 kilowatts per hour holds the energy equivalent of one gallon of gasoline. The label estimates a charging time of 7 hours on a 240-volt charge. Cost estimates were based on 15,000 miles per year at 12 cents per kilowatt-hour.

OK so the US EPA says a gallon of gasoline holds 33.7 kilowatt hours and the Leaf needed 24 kilowatt hours to travel 73 miles. The idiots at EPA then do the math of 33.7 times 73 divide 24 and viola ce sa they get 102.5 mpg. Now my thermodynamic friends how did the EPA pull of this slight of hand. Well of course a gallon of gas has 115,000 BTU which equals 33.7 kilowatt hours at a rate of 3,412 BTU/kwh. But first to get 24 kwh of direct current energy into the battery one needs 26.67 kwh of alternating current energy from the grid. But the electrical energy was not generated with 100% efficiency from a fossil fuel. The US DOE reports that the average kwh of electricity generated by natural gas over the past 12 months to the grid required 7,234 BTUs. Therefore if one applies the 10% loss for AC transmission and distribution and converting from AC to DC plus the energy lost in electric power generation one gets the real equivalent fuel efficiency of 43.5 MPG. Of course this is better than Arne’s Bummer but the 99 MPG is pure fantasy of pathological liars at the EPA who believe that the President of the Ignited States can mandate out any real thermodynamics and wish that the French will save America. France is a minor economic power and the Leaf is a minor automotive power that is not as efficient as the Prius, The Leaf cost 50% more than a Prius and will last on the market about as long as a Dauphine or a La Car.

I also see that Alaric Galoric has now admitted to corn ethanol as a failure. More on that in my next blog. I bet old Alaric was the one who provided the EPA in conveniently untrue formula for MPG calculations of the E vehicles as of course EPA stands for Electricity Produced by Alaric.

Relieve BP From Clean-Up Duty

Since the oil rig blowout in the gulf of Mexico on April 20th and subsequent gushing of tens of thousands of barrels of oil per day, BP has demonstrated their negligence in lack of preparedness for the blowout and their utter incompetence in dealing with its aftermath. Here, I address some troubling aspects of the botched response and suggest a simple solution: Relieve BP, send them the bill.

A mainstay of BP's response has been the use of oil dispersants. BP has already used about 1 million gallons of an oil dispersing chemical on the blowout, some applied directly to the broken wellhead and more sprayed on the ocean surface by aerial tankers. Dumping additional toxic chemicals to clean up toxic oil? Have they gone mad? First of all the goal of this approach is simply to hide the oil. It does not make it go away or clean it up in any way. In fact, scientists are saying dispersed oil is more toxic to fish. Additionally, the dispersants being used are not even good ones! According to EPA data, COREXIT dispersants rank far above dispersants made by competitors in terms of toxicity and far below them in effectiveness in dispersing southern Louisiana crude. Specifically, COREXIT 9500 ranked 13 of 18 in terms of effectiveness and more than 10 times more toxic to marine life than some of the 12 more effective ones. Ah, but when one looks into who makes COREXIT, one finds it is Nalco Co., whose current leadership includes executives from BP. The EPA ordered BP to stop using Corexit dispersants by May 23, but BP ignored the order and continues to use the COREXIT products, taking issue with EPA toxicity testing methods and stating they "have an inventory of 246,380 gallons of COREXIT that are available for immediate use, and the manufacturer is able to produce an additional 68,000 gallons/day, which is sufficient to meet all anticipated dispersant needs at this site.” BP clearly has a conflict of interest here and needs to be relieved of dispersal duty.

BP is also attempting to use boom, those floating yellow or orange plastic devices, to stop the oil on the ocean surface from reaching the shore. BP has boasted they have deployed more than 2 million feet of boom in the gulf. Wow, that's a big number. Should we be impressed? The problem is that much of the boom is being deployed improperly and will do nothing to stop the oil from coming ashore. We've seen much evidence already of boom washed up on the shore and oil-soaked marshes and beaches. In short, there are three types of boom deployment: containment, deflection, and exclusion. Boom can be deployed perpendicular to the flow of oil as BP is doing, but requires calm weather, minimal current, and recovery sites. BP's booming is missing the point - collection. The fact of the matter is the shoreline needing protection is too long, and the resources needed for proper booming and collection are too small. Stretching brightly-colored boom straight across miles of rough seas does little more than give the appearance of protection. This is probably all BP is after, anyway.

Now, BP's CEO Tony Hayward is featured on a $50 million (we're a nice company, please don't put me in jail) TV ad saying they'll make it right. Well, Mr. Hayward, we just don't trust you. We want you off the job. We kicked the British out of here 227 years ago, and we should do it again. Oh, and we should send them the bill. They're good for it. BP's average profit is $93 million PER DAY.

~Mark Bremer, Green Explored Contributor