Category Archives: Energy

What’s Behind the Pretty Face and Promises of the EnergyTomorrow Ads?

November 27, 2012

To listen to some of their ads you wouldn’t know that the promises lobbyists for oil, coal and natural gas are making about being energy independent are based on wishful thinking , deluding the American public that stalls our need to convert to clean renewable energy now.

Does this lovely lady look familiar? She should. You may have seen her warm and smiling countenance on a previous post of mine here. It is more likely however that you have seen her more recently as the face of the pro-fossil fuel website, EnergyTomorrow.org, on TV ads sponsored by their lobbyist, the American Petroleum Institute(API). These ads promote misleading information giving the public a half-baked view about the abundant energy below our surfaces to make America energy independent again. Something we haven’t been since the 1950’s

Her name is Brooke Alexander, a former soap opera star, beauty queen and a former FOX correspondent. Her new gig encourages viewers to “learn more” about how “we can secure our energy future” Supposedly we have enough untapped oil & gas resources “to power 60 million cars and heat 160 million households for 60 years” Ms Alexander assures us in her ad here.

But learning more at the EnergyTomorrow website is like getting the news from FOX. It’s all heavily slanted with circumspective data and substantial omissions. And it doesn’t hurt when a smart, pretty woman is making the pitch for the likes of Exxon-Mobil, Conoco and Chevron.

Technically Ms. Alexander’s comments are correct but here’s what’s missing in her message:

In the oil & gas industry, resource means the amount of gas or oil that remains underground, and reserve means what could be produced from the resource.

Only a portion of the resources could be recovered technically.

Only a portion of the technically recoverable resources could be produced economically.

Only a portion of the economically producible resources could be produced into supply. That is called reserve. SOURCE

Much of the oil resources in North America touted in these ads are expected to come from the tar sand pits out of Canada. The oil from these tar sands takes enormous amounts of energy to convert into liquid gas adding that much more CO2 into the atmosphere, warming the planet even further. The ads also conceal the fact that any oil or gas we bring up from below the surface is not ours entirely. All oil and gas are part of a global market. Nor will its close proximity to us, like in Canada, mean cheaper gas. The price of oil is set on world markets.

Within the United States, foreign companies are acquiring stakes in oil resources that can now be extracted with fracking, but regardless of where the oil is produced and who produces it, the price of oil is set on the global market. Such globalization means that widespread drilling and fracking for oil in the United States will do nothing for American consumers who are paying the high price of oil. SOURCE

So what “portion” of that oil and gas is actually capable of being converted into real sources of energy for consumers? Well, according to Bill Powers, author of the upcoming book, “Cold, Hungry and in the Dark: Exploding the Natural Gas Supply Myth”, there may be only 5-7 years of shale gas resources after the realities of extraction and production confront the industry.

My thesis is that the importance of shale gas has been grossly overstated; the U.S. has nowhere close to a 100-year supply. This myth has been perpetuated by self-interested industry, media and politicians. Their mantra is that exploiting shale gas resources will promote untold economic growth, new jobs and lead us toward energy independence.

In the book, I take a very hard look at the facts. And I conclude that the U.S. has between a five- to seven-year supply of shale gas, and not 100 years. That is far lower than the rosy estimates put out by the U.S. Energy Information Administration and others. In the real world, many companies are taking write-downs of their reserves. SOURCE

Powers is the editor of Powers Energy Investor and according to his website has “devoted the last 15 years to studying and analyzing various aspects of the energy sector”.

Another expert in the field is Arthur Berman. Berman is a petroleum geologist, Associate Editor of the American Association of Petroleum Geolgists Bulletin and Director of the Association for the Study of Peak Oil. He maintains the blog Petroleum Truth Report. Berman tells us that the declining rates of shale gas validates Powers’ assessment about severely limited supplies.

“I’ve looked at this”, he tells James Staffiord with OilPrice.com. “In the Eagleford shale, which is supposed to be the mother of all shale oil plays, the annual decline rate is higher than 42%”. They’re going to have to drill hundreds, almost 1000 wells in the Eagleford shale, every year, to keep production flat. Just for one play, we’re talking about $10 or $12 billion a year just to replace supply.” SOURCE

It appears then that if you take the industry’s perception of North American reserves and fill in the blanks they are leaving out with Berman and Power’s assessments, then the reality is not all that rosy about securing America’s energy future. I heard essentially the same talking points at a recent Planning and Zoning Council meeting here in Denton. Out of about 50 attendees to this meeting most were citizens and students who were there to oppose considerations by the city for drilling new wells within city limits, citing the unresolved hazards of leaks and water contamination from fracking fluids. Two young and attractive ladies however were there to state the case for the gas well drillers.

These two women gave only their names and addresses, indicating that they were nothing more than mere residents who saw positive contributions for drilling more wells. But clearly they were there to promote the industry’s talking points about “energy security and independence” and “job creation”. One read directly from written notes in a monotone voice without looking up while the other ad-libbed essentially the same comments but with little conviction about what she was saying, unlike those who gave testimonials in opposition to inner city gas well drilling.

America will never be energy independent because no matter how much we produce we will still consume more at current rates than we can produce. Friendly tar sands oil from Canada won’t change that picture either.

[There is] the distorted viewpoint that the U.S. will soon become energy independent and will no longer need to import foreign oil. The U.S. has used more oil than it produces since records were kept in 1920 but became a true net oil importing country after World War II. SOURCE

The Fossil Fuels Job Myth

The notion too that oil and gas production creates thousands of jobs is somewhat dubious. For instance, one report shows that direct hiring specifically related to oil extraction and production is a far cry from the claims of 1 million jobs being touted by the industry. The 1 million figure relies on the multiplier effect where the true figure of 36,000 oil related jobs created will be expected to impact other businesses in their community and this only occurs after about seven years according to one report.

While job estimates, using a so-called multiplier effect of spending, are common in economic impact calculations, the “direct hiring” by the oil industry is far more modest [than other industries].

The 36,000 jobs specifically created to drill for oil and natural gas, refine petroleum or coal products, or for pipeline operation or in gas stations, came in well below “direct hiring” in other industries, which don’t enjoy the same tax breaks the Obama administration has been fighting to end for Big Oil.

The construction industry is prime among them — adding 69,000 jobs in 2011.

Roll into this the fact that these jobs also will continue to contribute to air and water pollution along with increasing green house gases that threaten our ecosystem and the image of an earned income becomes diminished with increased health care costs. This information also ignores that job creation in renewable energy fields will easily supplant and even surpass job creation in the fossil fuel industry, absorbing a lot of the fossil fuel industry workers into the more green technologies.

… a 2009 report published by the University of Massachusetts found that net job creation is substantially higher with clean energy investments than fossil fuels at different educational levels. The paper determined that, when compared to fossil fuel energy, clean energy investments create 2.6 times more college degree jobs; 3.0 times more ‘some-college’ jobs; and 3.6 times more ‘high school or less’ jobs. While average wages are higher in fossil fuel, there are more types of all jobs in cleaner energy.

The Massachusetts researchers also found that a shift from fossil fuels to clean energy investments will yield a net increase in U.S. employment of 1.7 million jobs—i.e. an increase in 2.5 million jobs through clean-energy investments and a corresponding decline of about 790,000 jobs in fossil fuels. This assumes that there is available unemployed labor (there would be no change in employment if people had to be moved from one job to another). SOURCE

These are jobs that reduce potential health and safety hazards for workers and the people in the communities they are positioned near. Healthier workers and their families are more productive and able to keep more of their earned income for other things outside doctor and hospital bills, such as college tuition and retirement savings. But such positive outcomes are not something shared with you in ads aimed at continuing more of the same practices of extracting finite resources that are destined to expire in a lot less time than we are being led to believe.

Just Another Case of Corporate Profits Over Human and Social Needs

So why the apparent deception by the oil and gas industry? If the writing is on the wall as Mr. Berman, Mr. Powers and others are strongly suggesting, why not take all of the huge profits that the oil industry has seen (natural gas entrepreneurs are barely breaking even) and start making smarter, long-term choices that will not only be profitable for them but truly make us energy secure and independent? Rather than invest vast sums in an infrastructure to accommodate the limited resources of fracture-extracted carbon products, especially natural gas, why not reinvest and re-tool for the inevitable conversion from fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy sources? There clearly is a future for those who become engaged at these early stages.

It appears the answer lies within the concepts of short-sightedness and simple greed. The current leadership within the oil industry is tied to the past and like anything else, real change is hard to turn towards when your bread has been so amply buttered for several decades now by bleeding every conceivable drop of carbon-based material from the earth. The record profits that the oil giants have been experiencing of late will not be apparent early on with clean, renewable energy sources as the conversion process begins to reconfigure their industry, even with the aid of government loans and start-up financing that will be at their disposal. This is a turn off for people who have become accustomed to a steady flow of great wealth.

The corporate mind is too locked-in to profits rather than making contributions to a future that essentially has them leaving their comfort zone and consists of unfamiliar risks. A global market makes for a bigger playground to continue their old practices and as along as they can still influence the governments of various nations, including our own, there’s no reason or incentive to consider human and social needs over stock holder and investor expectations.

The new entrepreneurs whose efforts will usher us into the 21st century with green, clean innovations to fuel our autos and heat our homes are in place and waiting to be unleashed. But as long as the aging fraternity of oil, gas and coal still hold most of the cards with their influence in Washington and state legislatures, progress will be sluggish and consumers will have to tolerate the consequences of this greed and short-sightedness; the biggest consequence being ever more numerous and larger natural disasters from man-made climate change.

Resources:

Shale Gas Bubble About to Burst: Art Berman, Bill Powers (DeSmogblog.com)

Why Fracking for Oil and natural Gas is a False Solution

Posted by lbwoodgate in Energy Tags: American Petroleum Institute, Berman, Brooke Alexander, Canada, clean, deceptive fossil fuel ads, EnergyTomorrow ads, ExxonMobil, fracking, fracking in Denton, limited fossil fuel reserves, Natural gas, natural gas leaks, Renewable energy, Shale gas, shaleoil

14 comments

Connecting the Dots: Junk Mail, GOP Policies and Our Dwindling Supplies of Fresh Water

August 22, 2012

For every action there is a reaction and there are unseen consequences that can negatively affect the general welfare of the public when decisions are too narrowly focused on things that have short-term benefits. Short term benefits that too often only really benefit a small, financially sound group.

Oh the irony of drowning in junk mail and its effect on diminishing water supplies

Inherent in the U.S. Postal Service’s struggle to stay solvent and viable is an action that will have negative consequences for a diminishing resource that the human race depends on for its existence. The problems USPS faces stems primarily from the enactment of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 that requires the USPS to pre-fund the pensions of its workers 75 years in advance. They say that the devil is in the details so when we look closely at this we do see the efforts of those loyal to Grover Norquist’s dream at play here to shrink government small enough to drown in a bath tub.

This act was one of the “poison pill” pieces of legislation that a GOP-controlled congress enacted to sabotage public services, much like the Medicare Part D legislation they also passed which, among other things, increases prescription costs for beneficiaries. By creating this debt burden for the postal service, USPS is now forced to close over 250 mail processing centers by the end of 2014, eliminating tens of thousands of postal worker jobs to the unemployment rolls. But not only did this legislation become a “job killer”, it also had the indirect consequence of contributing to reducing perhaps the single most important resource necessary to sustain life on this planet – WATER!

Sadly, one of the choices now facing the USPS to aid them in overcoming their debit issue is to seek revenue through other sources like direct mail advertisers. One of the biggest enterprises in direct mail services is Valassis Communications Inc. and the postal service is offering them huge discount rates to increase their mailings.

The post office expects to generate $15 million in profits over three years by cutting what it charges Valassis Communications Inc. for new mass mailings. Livonia, Mich.-based Valassis sent more than 3 billion pieces of so-called junk mail through the post office last year. Under the proposal, Valassis has promised to send even more bulk mail. On those additional mailings, the Postal Service will give the company a discount of up to 34 percent. Valassis has agreed to pay a penalty if it does not boost its use of the mail service. SOURCE

That means you and I get more garbage to toss and burden the already overloaded landfills in this country. Nearly 40% of all paper tossed wounds up in those landfills. If you’re lucky enough to have recycling services in your community there is some sense that this waste can still be beneficial. “According to the American Forest and Paper Association, nearly 80 percent of America’s paper mills are designed to use paper collected in recycling programs, and they depend on paper recycling to supply the raw materials they need to make new paper.”

And though the remaining 20% comes from new trees that are sustained with more than 1.7 million new trees being planted each day, there is still the issue of the amount of water used to produce the paper that this junk mail comes from. It takes approximately 85 gallons of water to produce a little less than two pounds of paper. That’s a little less than what the Sunday NY Times weighs with its advertising flier inserts. Average worldwide annual paper consumption is 48 KG per person with North America accounting for over 1/3 of that total.

There is another popular Republican issue we are currently facing that threatens to reduce fresh water in even larger quantities than paper manufacturing. That’s their support for increasing oil and natural gas exploration over cleaner energy sources through the use of “fracking” to extract the more difficult to reach fossil fuel resources.

In order to fracture shale formations that often exist thousands of feet below the surface, drillers use anywhere from 1 to 8 million gallons of water per frack. A well may be fracked up to 18 times. The water, usually drawn from natural resources such as lakes and rivers, is unrecoverable once it’s blasted into the earth, and out of the water cycle for good. SOURCE

Of the total Earth’s water supply, only 2.5% of it is freshwater. Over two-thirds of that is locked up in the polar caps and glaciers around the globe. Of the remaining potable water for human consumption nearly 70% of that is polluted from industry, agriculture, human and animal waste, leaving only about 0.5% of the world’s freshwater supply available for human and animal consumption around the globe.

And of that 70% of fresh water that becomes polluted from industry, agriculture, human and animal waste, how many of you automatically think of Republicans in a positive light when you think of efforts to reduce air and water pollution?

All people make mistakes with decisions that had the best intentions. The sign of good leadership however is observed in people who, upon realizing their poor choices, show the ability to recognize that fact and take the speedy action necessary to reverse or diminish the negative impacts they effected. But have we created a form of gridlock in this country that will in effect prevent such leadership from being put into effect?

Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better. – Harry Truman

In an age where ideology trumps compromise and reasoned alternatives, and corporations and their money are seen as equals to real people and free speech, are we creating the seeds of our destruction? Have too many gone too far in being captivated by the allure of Randian “objectivism”? Have the extremists on the right demonized all government so bad that trust in those institutions no longer exists sufficiently to coordinate and unite us as a people? Is e pluribus unum dead and with it the strength to face the global challenges, not only from nature’s wrath but from our own short-sightedness?

Posted by lbwoodgate in Budget Crisis, Corporate Influence, Energy, Social Discourse Tags: burgeoning landfills, corporate use of fresh water, diminishing water supplies, Grover Norquist, paper waste, Republicans, United States Postal Service, USPS, Valassis Communications, water pollution

9 comments

Can the Battle Over the Keystone XL Pipeline Serve as a Turning Point to Finally Initiate a 21st Century Energy Policy

January 20, 2012

Here’s a news item that exposes the threat we face as a nation today for our failure to implement a strong energy policy decades ago that addresses the hazards of increased carbon-based fuel use.

Oil demand has fallen for the first time since the 2008-09 global financial crisis, a result of the weakening economy, a mild winter and high crude prices, according to new estimates from the International Energy Agency.

The industrialised nations’ watchdog said oil demand dropped by 300,000 barrels a day year-on-year in the final quarter of 2011. While still forecasting overall growth in demand for 2012, the agency revised down its outlook for this year to growth of 1.1m barrels a day, from 1.3m b/d, and said further downgrades were possible. Global oil demand in 2011 was 89.5m b/d.

David Fyfe, head of the IEA’s oil industry and markets division, said the drop in demand late last year reflected the mild winter, which was in sharp contrast to the cold winter of 2010-11. But it was still surprising. “It is quite rare” to see an absolute contraction, he said. “We’re flagging that there are clearly downside risks to the global economy and to oil demand.” SOURCE

It may not grab those who aren’t looking for it, or worse, who are in denial, but part of the reason oil demand decreased was the result of a warming climate this winter, a trend defined as “season creep” by phenologists, that will continue as the planet continues to warm at an alarming rate. Deny all you want that increased rates of CO2 from using fossil fuels is the culprit here but the evidence is mounting to not only support this view but such evidence also further debunks some of the old arguments that attribute rapid increases of global warming simply to the sun and reflectivity.

As jobs are lost, less demand will occur for coal, oil and natural gas to heat homes and businesses. Unless those job losses are offset by new ones in the renewable energy field, the economic impact in northern most regions, like the upper continental U.S., will be significant.

But not only will warmer, shorter winter seasons effect jobs, it will affect overall health.

As climate change causes winters to warm and seasons to shift, a host of exotic invasives and destructive natives are marching their way into our lives at an ever increasing rate.

According to a new report from the National Wildlife Federation, these climate invaders will continue to spread disease, destroy valuable natural resources and push out the native plants and wildlife Americans cherish if global warming continues unabated. SOURCE

Our short-sightedness to plan for this eventuality is evident with the current efforts by the fossil fuel industry and pro-pipeline labor unions to push through the TransCanada pipeline known as known as Keystone XL, which would bring approximately 800,000 barrels of oil per day from the Canadian oil sands to the U.S. Gulf Coast. Both sides of this argument dispute the number of jobs this pipeline would create but whatever the number is, the bigger picture of what the environmental impact will be from this pipeline seems to play second fiddle to the more immediate need of job creation.

It a tough line to tow for policy makers and the GOP and their corporate backers are making as much hay about this as they can to get the Presidential permit needed to move this project forward. Sarah Ladislaw, senior fellow with the Energy and National Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. illustrates the quandary the fight over the Keystone XL pipeline makes:

[The] denial or approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline will not bring the United States any closer to discovering real answers about how to pursue a lower-carbon pathway in this country. Many in the environmental community argue that we should be investing more in alternatives to oil, and they are right. But in the absence of coordinated U.S. policy to do this on a more expedited basis, it is nearly impossible to force that kind of a transition by stopping oil production one pipeline at a time. U.S. policymakers should not be let off the hook on this larger policy question by placing disproportionate focus on a single pipeline debate. SOURCE

She makes a succinct point but then seems to forget that our energy policy battles are not something new, as I point out shortly. But first, I would argue that a line needs to be drawn in the sand (no pun intended) somewhere and it might as well start here. A strong case needs to be made to point out that the tar sands are some of the dirtiest sources of oil. The International Boreal Conservation Campaign released a report that explains how “tar sands extraction and refinement is the most polluting and carbon intensive oil process on earth, draining wetlands, diverting rivers and stripping all trees and vegetation from the forest.”

Canadian tar sand pits

Where this pipeline runs through Nebraska is an underground aquifer that provides drinking water for several states. A rupture in this line could taint it and make it unusable for millions of people who depend on this source of water for their families and businesses.

The long term affects for pushing this and other fossil fuel initiatives through for short term job gains needs to be presented in a manner that the public can easily discern the risks involved in picking one course of action over the other. Sadly, most people can’t see or won’t look beyond their own immediate wants and needs to realize that 2 to 3 decades from now their kids and grandkids will be paying a high price in terms of costs related to health care and preservation for choices their parents made today.

Ms. Ladislaw and others may feel that we need to lay the ground work for an energy policy that addresses the short term energy needs to the long term adverse affects before attempting to stop oil production “one pipeline at a time”. But the overwhelming evidence that such slow moving efforts will be negated has been apparent for sometime. The ill-effects of anthropogenic global warming today are the result of policy makers 30-40 years ago failing to come to terms with this issue back when it was first presented to them by the climate science of that period.

We have already passed the point of no return where our ability to limit CO2 created by man’s activities will prevent some of the adverse affects, like longer, warmer summers and shorter winters, massive ice melts and acidifying large areas of sea water. To argue that planned policy must be put in place first no longer has the reasonable appeal it once did, before the current threats manifested themselves. We need the courage to act more dramatically now and pay what consequences may arise; consequences that will surely hurt some but will be less painful and less enduring than those consequences that will come from further delay.

Making policy under such adversarial conditions won’t be that problematic. We know what the problem is and what the best solutions are. We just need to get past the corporate self-interest that hang tenaciously on and the reality that there will be slightly higher fuel prices initially. Once we achieve this we can set a course that gives some assurances to our progeny that their future will have a measure of security instead of being victims of climate change that in large part resulted from our failure to reduce and ultimately eliminate dependence on fossil fuels.

Keystone XL Pipeline Backers Dwarfed Opponents in Lobbying Efforts

Dubious Pipeline Assertions on Jobs

Posted by lbwoodgate in climate change, social security, aging, Climate Science/Global Warming, Energy Tags: Athabasca oil sands, Center for Strategic and International Studies, future climate change impacts, Gulf Coast of the United States, International Energy Agency, Keystone Pipeline, Keystone XL, sound U.S. energy policy, warmer world for our children

10 comments

The Real Costs Incurred by the American Public From Coal-Fired Power Plant Pollution.

December 21, 2011

The Obama Administration has finally gotten tough on polluting energy sources that emit mercury, arsenic and other toxins into the air, causing11,000 deaths a year by some estimates.

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Wednesday unveiled rules for coal-fired power plants that mean costly investments passed on to consumers, but also health benefits.

Hundreds of older plants — which together make up the largest remaining source of unchecked toxic air pollution in the United States — will have to cut emissions or shut down.

“By cutting emissions that are linked to developmental disorders and respiratory illnesses like asthma, these standards represent a major victory for clean air and public health,” Lisa Jackson, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, said in a statement. SOURCE

The coal industry lobbyists are crying foul, claiming that in some areas electricity prices could rise by as much as 19% and could result in the loss of 1.4 million jobs by 2020. Such estimates are questionable but they are also a smoke screen to conceal the critical issue families face through this country’s continued use of a dirty source of energy.

To listen to the one-sided arguments of industry lobbyists you might react as if there was no common sense used by the EPA in regulating an industry that has throughout their existence evaded responsibility for filling the air we breathe and water we drink with carcinogens and lung disease-causing elements that cause heart and asthma attacks as well as other serious health issues.

Earlier this year the Electric Reliability Coordinating Council (ERCC), the leading electric-power industry trade group, attacked the EPA saying “the new regulation on toxic pollution is too expensive and that there are no health benefits from reducing hazardous pollutants other than mercury. The question any sensible person ought to ask is how can there NOT be any health benefits by removing “386,000 tons of hazardous air pollutants that coal-fired plants put out each year.” Pollutants like toxic metals and metal-like substances such as arsenic and lead; mercury; dioxins; chemicals known or thought to cause cancer, including formaldehyde, benzene and radioisotopes; and acid gases such as hydrogen chloride.

American Academy of Pediatrics President O. Marion Burton scoffed at the ERCC’s declaration and stated simply that the long and short of it is that “dirty air makes children sick”. Some 130,000 children suffer asthma attacks each year as a result of the filth emitted from 400 coal-fired plants scattered across 46 states.

These health issues equate into monetary liabilities for families in the form of health costs. Health costs that will start to disappear as these power plants begin to install the “scrubbers” to their emission outputs that spew out tons of pollutants in communities near and far. “If you think it’s an expensive process to put a scrubber on a smokestack,” Burton said, “you should see how much it takes over a lifetime to treat a child with a preventable birth defect.”

A study done in 2010 by the non-profit Clean Air Task Force found “that fine particle pollution from existing coal plants is expected to cause nearly 13,200 deaths in 2010. Additional impacts include an estimated 9,700 hospitalizations and more than 20,000 heart attacks per year. The total monetized value of these adverse health impacts adds up to more than $100 billion per year.“ That is 10 times the estimate the EPA claims it would cost to implement the new standards. This factor seems to elude critics like the ERCC, a coal industry front group.

The insensitivity expressed by some in the energy industry to reduce emissions that kill many people and wreak havoc on the public health is reflective of a mentality that has been brought against wealthy corporate interests for years. Profits over people has always been the driving force behind those arguments that try to scare many people into believing that these needed changes are going to hurt us more than the companies that will now have to make these changes.

When did it ever become okay for people to make a living from doing what hurts our families and our children. There was a time when our knowledge of the threat from use of fossil fuels to heat our homes and power our businesses was lacking. The good life it created by distributing “cheap” energy to large amounts of people in this country over rode any early concerns there may have been for discharging the waste product of spent coal and oil into our ecosystem. But we know better now and to be mislead by the self-interests of for-profit businesses whose bottom line may suffer from correcting the causes of many ruined lives is the height of arrogance.

We can only hope now that the Obama administration will not back down from intimidation tactics and misleading information that has been and will continue to be coming from the special interests that oppose these new safeguards. Safeguards that will not only enhance the health of millions of people in the coming years but reduce our out of pocket expenses for health care caused by the past disregard of an industry that put profits before people.

Coal-Fired Power Plants: Understanding the Health Costs of a Dirty Energy Source

Springtime for Toxics (Paul Krugman NY Times)

Posted by lbwoodgate in Corporate Influence, Energy, Health Care Reform Tags: Air pollution, coal-fired power plants, dirty fossil fuels, Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, Fossil fuel power station, health care costs, Lisa Jackson, lung diseases, Obama administration, toxic emissions from coal plants, United States Environmental Protection Agency

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Yes, Nuclear Reactors Can Be a Part of Our Future Energy Supply

June 26, 2011

In light of the tragic effects of the Japanese tsunami earlier this year that, among other devastating consequences, damaged the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant that caused a melt down and released dangerous levels of radioactive material in the air and sea water there, should nuclear power be taken off of the table as a source of clean energy to meet future needs and reduce the impact that fossil fuels are having on climate change conditions around the globe?

“In the decade from 1984 to 1994, scientists at Argonne National Laboratory developed an advanced technology that promised safe nuclear power unlimited by fuel supplies, with a waste product sharply reduced both in radioactive lifetime and amount. The program, called the IFR, was cancelled suddenly in 1994, before the technology could be perfected in every detail. Its story is not widely known, nor are its implications widely appreciated. It is a story well worth telling, and this series of articles does precisely that.” – excerpt from Plentiful Energy and the IFR story by Charles Till, former Associate Director, Argonne National Laboratory

“That’s it”, I exclaimed to myself as I came across information in Dr. James Hansen‘s book “Storms of My Gandchildren”. The excitement was about the little known nuclear technology known as “fast reactors” or IFR’s (Integral Fast Reactor) that could solve one of the serious issues we need to contend with in reducing our carbon footprint. Our reliance on fossil fuels has left us precariously positioned to find a reliable substitute as a source of “base power” so we can transition to cleaner and greener fuels with minimal disruption to the economy where fossil fuels supply about 90% of our energy supplies. Of that 90%, over 50% is from the dirtiest and most toxic fossil fuel – COAL. “Base power” is a source of reliable energy, always there, unlike solar and wind that can be disrupted when the weather isn’t accommodating.

Dr. Hansen, in his book, had been building up to this awareness of the IFR to present a viable alternative to the coal issue. A conservative figure for deaths related to burning coal is around 200,000 lives each year. Since coal is the biggest fossil fuel source in use and climatologist like Dr. Hansen feel we need to drastically reduce man-made CO2′s in the next 2-3 decades, diminishing our use of coal in rapid succession would achieve this goal in great measure.

But to remove this large amount of base power from our economy would prove difficult and costly in terms of jobs and energy costs. A viable, CLEAN alternative needed to be discovered. In the case of the IFR, re-discovered. The optimism on this technology is expressed in Tom Brees book on the subject entitled “Prescription for the Planet”. In it Brees explains “how a trio of little-known yet profoundly revolutionary technologies, coupled with their judicious use in an atmosphere of global cooperation, can be the springboard that carries humanity to an era beyond scarcity.”

So what’s so great about the fast reactors that removes the earlier problems of nuclear power as an energy source? Everything! As an anti-nuclear advocate my biggest concern was what to do with the radioactive waste. Like I was, you may be surprised to learn that at best only 1% of the uranium used in nuclear fission (the method used to supply power at nuclear plants) is used up when employing light or heavy-water reactors. The rest is waste product. Particulate matter in nuclear waste known as transuranic actinides has a life span of 10,000 years. That’s a lot of waste that needs “babysitting”; stored safely to prevent leaks and theft from “dirty bomb” terrorist. With IFRs 99% of the uranium can be used up. This not only increases fuel efficiency a whopping 100% but removes potential future hazards that come from finding safe nuclear storage sites.

Here’s the disappointing part of this whole story. Because of anti-nuclear sentiment that’s resulted over the years from the problems at Three Mile Island in 1979 and later at Chernobyl in 1986, with a lot of help from the film classic “China Syndrome”, the Clinton administration, in 1994, decided to kill the IFR research program that began under President Nixon. The scientists involved in the program at Argonne were instructed by the DOE not to publicize this. The opportunity to have this technology available now was disrupted for what seems to be primarily political reasons along with the feeling of many of my anti-nuclear cohorts who still today feel that nuclear energy poses a serious threat to humans.

If many of these anti-nuclear supporters were to concede that IFRs will eliminate the radioactive threat from waste storage, a lot may still be resistant to this technology because nuclear power is still a national security threat. Many also feel that increased commercial nuclear fuel reprocessing, that accompanies the current third generation of nuclear power plants, would “increase the global risks of both nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism”. Some, like the Union of Concerned Scientist, who I support in the fight against global warming, feel this reprocessing is “dangerous, dirty and expensive,” I part company with them on this issue.

The concern about nuclear terrorism does not go unaddressed by Dr. Hansen. In his book the renowned scientist points out that the “possibility of weapons-grade nuclear material falling into the hands of terrorists and rogue nations” will not simply go away because we eliminate all nuclear weapons and technology. Sadly, as he points out, “the genie is out of the bottle”. The information is out there for anyone to create a dirty bomb or develop a nuclear program. The IFR technology diminishes the terrorist threat because it introduces advanced reactors that “minimizes proliferation risks”, especially if the U.S. takes the lead in this development.* How is this possible?

Third generation nuclear power plants currently in the approval stage have made great safety advances that were of concern with older, second generation plants now in existence since the Three Mile incident. IFRs are the 4th generation of nuclear power plants. The coup-de-gras as I see it with this new technology is its ability to not only use sea water uranium, which we have in abundance, but more importantly can eliminate our nuclear weapons stock piles – that ready source of radio-active material for terrorist to exploit with economically strapped nations like Russia and rogue nations like North Korea. The brilliance of IFR technology is that it really doesn’t even have to use new sources of uranium and the deadly plutonium extract from it.

As Hansen’s book points out, “fast reactors can be run such that they produce more nuclear fuel than they consume. They are not creating energy out of nothing; they are just converting ‘fertile’ elements – elements that are fissionable when hit by a slow (thermal) neutron. It is necessary to supply a fast reactor with ‘fertile’ material, but there is enough of that available in the nuclear waste piles that we are babysitting to last many centuries. (emphasis mine) Fertile material that can be burned in fast reactors is contained in by-products of past weapons development programs as well as in the waste piles from light-water reactors.” *

Lastly, there is the concern about high costs to build nuclear plants, not only to investors but to the public taxpayer as well. “[T]he free market long ago abandoned nuclear power.The right-wing think tank Heritage Foundation remarked, “Expansive loan guarantee programs … are wrought with problems. At a minimum, they create taxpayer liabilities, give recipients preferential treatment, and distort capital markets.” However, as I see it, these huge cost overruns and risks stem from the negative environment that surrounds nuclear plant construction, primarily from friends of mine in the prevailing anti-nuclear climate.

It seems apparent though that once the concerns of the anti-nuclear crowd are eliminated with the obvious benefits of the IFR technology, that animosity will fade away and the costs from delays that such people created will also disappear. To achieve this though we need to have an honest and open debate about these differences before we can proceed with 4th generation reactor development to insure that once we start this program it will not be sabotaged or blind-sided by a remnant rogue element within the anti-nuclear population. Developing IFRs, in unison with other clean energy sources of wind, solar, thermal and bio-fuels is a win-win prospect for all parties concerned about global warming

Climate denier, Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe

We must also convince the climate deniers that it is in their best interest to forgo their notions of conspiracy on the part of the climate science and their public support base. This skepticism has been fostered by the fossil fuel industries as a defensive measure to slow any efforts that will reduce the consumption of oil and coal and thus reduce company profits; some, like Exxon/Mobil, that increased to $9.25 billion alone by the end of the 4th quarter last year, a 55% increase from the same time in the previous year.

It can effectively be shown that any job loss in the oil and coal industry can be supplanted with equal amounts of jobs in the clean and green technologies field along with energy cost remaining constant and ultimately lower. I believe we can be on our way to a self-sufficient energy policy that enhances our national security as it removes the threat of global warming being unduly impacted through our use of fossil fuels.

SOURCES:
* Hansen, “Storms of My Grandchildren” pp201-202
* – Ibid p. 199

This is a re-print from an earlier post of mine on the AC Yahoo site under the title “A Light in the Darkness”

Posted by lbwoodgate in Climate Science/Global Warming, Corporate Influence, Energy Tags: 4th generation nuclear power plants, Argonne National Laboratory, Energy, Environment, Integral Fast Reactor, James Hansen, Japan, Nuclear, nuclearpower, safe nuclear power

8 comments

The State of Bubba

May 30, 2011

I have a member of my North Texas community who frequently writes to the Letters to the Editor column often accusing the President, the Democrats and liberals of every social and economic ill we come face to face with and many that are not so apparent. Such people are to be expected and suffered in Red State Texas and in a Country where Republicans tend to win victories by no less than 60% of the vote. It is some relief however to watch and read their positions on issues as they serve as comic relief and show what a bad education will produce.

This woman I refer to, Alice Gore, always uses an imaginary character she calls “Bubba” to describe her views as if it served to show that basic, down-to-earth folk can see simple truths to complex issues. She fails to understand that to many of us, Bubba comes across as a more simple-minded rube who limits his knowledge to the very small world of his/her making. In her letter to the editor today, Gore’s Bubba character tells us, as he has on more than one occasion, that high gas prices are the result of “super-strict environmental controls”. At the heart of all this is an agenda by people who align themselves with “rabid environmental groups” like the Sierra Club and of course, liberal Democrats.

I have learned that Ms. Gore, aka “Bubba”, lives on several acres in a relatively tranquil country environment just south of town and apparently doesn’t suffer as greatly from the failures of industries that pollute our air and water as some of her neighbors do, specifically those who chose to allow natural gas drilling on their large estates or are victim to wells near their property. I’m sure if she had, she would be the type who would be amongst those demanding that the government agencies responsible for oversight of these industries do something to correct this problem.

In a community less than 10 miles as the crow flies from Ms. Gore is Dish, Texas. Dish gained national notoriety in Josh Fox’s Oscar-nominated film “Gasland”. Dish has about 11 gas compression stations in close proximity to each other and equally close to the small number of people who live there. When the state’s Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ) failed to act aggressively on concerns with Dish citizens about potential health hazards related to these gas compression stations, the Mayor of Dish got authorization to spend 15 percent of its $70,000 annual budget on a private environmental consultant.

Their findings were dangerously startling as it showed extremely high levels of both carcinogens and neurotoxins. When this made the news state-wide the TCEQ finally did respond and they also found “the presence of benzene, a potentially cancer-causing toxin detected near the compressors”.

The effects of these toxins to their community, who had no history of serious health issues up until the time that these wells were drilled, impacted the residents of Dish in remarkable ways. One such family are the Collins.

“Megan Collins, a 32-year-old pediatric nurse, lived with her husband, a firefighter, and their two small children downwind from the compressors. She started having unexplainable symptoms: headaches, dizziness, blackouts, muscle contractions. She got test after test while her condition worsened, but she never really worried about the compression stations. ‘We just always constantly heard the noise and constantly smelled the fumes, Ms. Collins stated in a report by public radio NPR. But every time we would ask, they would always just say that it was normal’.” (Health Issues Follow natural Gas Drilling in Texas by Josh Burnett, NPR, 11/3/09)

But for Ms. Gore’s, this is not a concern because she and her family have not felt the ill effects of some of the gas wells and compression stations just a few miles south of them along U.S. Hwy. 377. This tends to be the case to where some areas, depending on their location and how often wind circulation shifts, are not as easily affected by leaks at compression stations and the well heads themselves. Ms. Gore would be more willing to buy into the claims of natural gas spokespeople like Terri Lawson with Enbridge Energy who says their company is “in compliance with state regulations. We are concerned about this issue, Ms. Enbridge declares. We are investigating it fully. We have been responsive. We’ll continue to be responsive to requests from Mayor Tillman and our neighbors.”

The key factor from Ms. Lawson’s claim is that they are “in compliance with state regulations”. This fact seems to presume that Texas and it’s oversight agency of oil and natural gas well, the TCEQ, have amply mandated and enforce rules that prevent problems of the nature found in Dish as well as other areas throughout the state.

In the NPR report it points out that “most of the concern in Texas is focused on air emissions more than noise, which is scarcely regulated in rural areas. The worry is that compression stations may individually meet state and federal regulations for air emissions, but what’s the cumulative effect of a complex like the one at Dish?”

Al Armendariz an environmental engineer at Southern Methodist University in Dallas says that “If you were to aggregate the emissions from all of these 11 compressor engines and all of the associated piping and meters and valves and everything else at these facilities, you can get a significant source of emissions, hundreds of tons per year.”

Mr. Armendariz wrote a widely circulated report earlier this year. “He estimated gas production, processing, and transmission in the Barnett Shale produces nearly as much air pollution as all the region’s vehicle traffic. State regulators validated his numbers.” And yet the state has taken no quantitative action to ameliorate the problem in a state where gas and oil industry lobbyists have tight connections with Republican majorities in both the state House and Senate along with a very industry-friendly Governor Rick Perry

To highlight this is the state’s attempt to prevent the Environmental Protection Agency to enforce rules that govern CO2 emissions in the state. Every other state has accepted the EPA’s authority on this but Rick Perry and Republicans legislators are trying to gain points with the extreme Tea Party elements in the state rather demonstrating a legitimate concern for its citizens.

Sharon Wilson who keeps Texans in the Barnett Shale updated about issues central to natural gas wells and their fracking practices on her Bluedaze website illustrates the inefficiencies of TCEQ. Last year Sharon studied records that showed complaints to the TCEQ from people within only 6 counties in the Barnett Shale; Tarrant, Denton, Wise, Johnson, Parker, Hood and Erath. Denton is my county as it is with Ms. Gore’s Bubba. Of some nearly 900 complaints between January through July 23rd Sharon could only find 3 violations cited by the TCEQ, or as she has stated, “the TCEQ found nothing wrong 99% of the time.

Ms. Gore and her demonstrable “Bubba” mentality reflects a mental block that wants to promote ideology over research and science. To express as she does that policies enacted by the Obama administration are responsible for high prices ignores the fact that higher gas prices were in place while George Bush was still in office in 2008 and the weight the financial crisis was creating havoc in all of the markets.

The higher gas prices, then as they are now, are in large part due to market forces the President and liberal Democrats have no power over and are unwilling to regulate. In a letter to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Better Markets, Inc., a nonprofit organization that promotes the public interest in the capital and commodity markets, including in particular the rule making process associated with the Dodd‐Frank Act, validated through extensive analysis and empirical data, the following facts:

speculation in commodity markets has dramatically increased and is excessive;

excessive speculation has caused increased volatility and increased prices in the future markets;

price increases in the futures markets directly affect physical market prices and, thereby, have increased prices in the underlying commodities;

while increased volatility and prices have increased the need for hedging by physical producers and purchases, the increased costs to such hedgers as a result of the above have caused physical producers and purchasers to hedge less. SOURCE

The goofy notion that we as a state or even as a nation can control global oil markets is as naive as it is absurd. To attempt to do so would also run against the “free market” values of people like Ms. Gore that takes a rigid hands-off approach of governments over private enterprises.

Ms. Gore wants to compel those who support serious enforcement of existing regulations and improve what is lacking to sufficiently do this to identify themselves with environmental groups in order to “give the readers an idea of what [their] real agenda is.” Surely she’s not suggesting that environmentalist and liberals seek to intentionally raise gas prices that they too must deal with? How would she connect such illogical conclusions with any reality based hypothesis? That of course would be the comic relief aspect of reading such people in the Letters column.

But I for one would gladly show my alliances with people like the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council. I would also ask that people like Ms. Gore who oppose such groups show their allegiance to the fossil fuels industry by revealing how much stock they hold in the Petrol Industry.

Posted by lbwoodgate in Energy, Texas/Local stories Tags: bubba mentality, environmental conspiracy, Gas compressor, high gas prices, NPR, Sierra Club, Southern Methodist University, Texas, Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, United States Environmental Protection Agency

6 comments

Bogus Anti-Tax Ad Opposes Big Oil Subsidy Elimination

May 9, 2011

There’s a new $1.25 million television, radio, and online advertising campaign making the rounds with misinformation intended to stave off efforts by grass-roots organizations and those in Congress who are trying to eliminate the billions in government give aways to big oil.

In their current ad, the National Taxpayers Union (NTU) is suggesting that energy companies are facing threats of “new taxes” and relying on “foreign oil” to address our energy crisis, a crisis that has become more apparent since higher gas prices at the pump have arrived. What struck me odd about this ad was it’s claim about new taxes being proposed in Congress for the oil industry. My suspicions were confirmed when I did a little back ground check on NTU and what their comments in this were based on.

To call these “new taxes” is laughable unless you use fantastic stretches of the imagination. The oil subsidies Congress allows for Big Oil have become more public recently. They are part of some 7 year-old legislation that was intended to provide tax breaks for many companies for use in building and strengthening their businesses.

It’s a tax break created in 2004 under the Bush White House that essentially was intended to help start-up companies and to keep existing companies competitive during tough economic times. Unfortunately, such government largesse can continue when businesses become highly profitable and no longer need them. Apparently there was no wording in the legislation this came from, section 199 of the American Jobs Creations Act of 2004, that would trigger a need to stop them at a certain point.

The claim by the NTU ad on this is woefully misleading. At a time when major oil companies are making historic profits and gas prices for consumers are also at historical highs, there is no longer a need to use taxpayer money to prop up this corporate special interest. Removing these subsidies for profitable oil companies is not likely to have any direct impact on lowering gas prices but it is money that can be redirected either to lower the deficit or be applied to other start-up businesses that do need it, such as clean, renewable energy systems like solar and wind turbines.

The NTU ad also makes the bogus argument that this “tax increase” will affect consumer prices and jobs. This is a typical scare tactic by the industry to affect people on what most concerns them – their job and their paycheck. Yet the only way this increases the costs of good and services for oil and oil-related products is if the industry refuses to pass this revenue adjustment on to their historically high profits rather than on to the consumer. If they are unwilling to help control costs for most Americans during these tough economic times by ensuring that their stock holders don’t suffer, it is disingenuous to blame this on efforts to remove a tax payer gift as a source of these cost increases.

When industries complain about losing their tax credits and how it will affect consumer prices they fail to mention that their tax credit was in effect a “cost increase”. When we lose Treasury revenue through tax cuts and tax credits, the bills and interest on the national debt still need to be paid and that means someone else has to shoulder that responsibility. That “someone else” is usually American working families

Many entrepreneurs benefit from this deduction as they produce products that create jobs. But there are other large profitable companies who, like the oil industry, no longer depend on it to stay competitive. Corporate profits from agribusiness are enhanced with this deduction to the tune of $4.9 billion each year. No doubt G.E used this tax write off that allowed them in all likelihood to pay little to no taxes and perhaps even get some back in the form of a “tax benefit”.

And lastly, perhaps the most blatant distortion/deception of the ad was NTU’s claim that the White House has “banned production on most American oil and gas, costing the U.S. billions, and making us more dependent on foreign oil”. The banned oil production myth was dispelled shortly after Michelle Bachman falsely claimed this at CPAC earlier this year.

At that convention Bachman said that only ONE new drilling permit had been allowed “under the Obama administration since they came into office.” The truth, as Politifact.com’s checkers found out, is that 39 shallow-water permits for new wells have been issued since June 8, 2010 and “six deepwater well permits issued since Oct. 12, 2010, when the gulf moratorium was lifted. Five of those were for projects that were under way prior to the moratorium.” If that claim is inaccurate, which it is, then that would most likely mean the claim that it was “costing the U.S. billions” is also not very credible.

The sad part is that we do have to buy foreign oil but not because our own oil production rates and capabilities are down or ineffective. It has more to do with the fact that we simply don’t own enough of the world’s oil reserves to meet our economic needs. We possess as a nation only 3% of global oil reserves yet use nearly 25% of that global total. Thus out of necessity we depend on oil from other “foreign sources”.

Some of those foreign sources are not on our “A” list of friends like Iran, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia. But people like Brazil and Canada are, so Obama’s claim in the ad about wanting “to be a major customer” of Brazil’s oil is a good thing, not one we should become irate over. If you want to get irate over something try getting mad about the support many in Congress continue to give the fossil fuel industry in comparison to the renewable energy sources that ultimately will carry us into the 21st century.

NTU has been around for about 40 years. It seeks to reduce taxes across the board but has often aligned itself with corporate interests like Big Tobacco’s Phillip Morris. According to Sourcewatch.org a “1991 Philip Morris Communications presentation indicates the company’s intent to utilize its corporate Contributions Program to develop NTU as a ‘strategic vehicle’ to advance PM’s corporate objectives”. Grover Norquist was also associated with NTU in its beginning years. Norquist is the head of his own tax reform organization, Americans for Tax Reform, that works religiously to eliminate social welfare programs like Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid as well as eliminating taxes that solely benefit the wealthiest 2% in this country.

NTU’s ad is only one example of corporate friendly political ads that get away with information intended solely to distort the reality and gain public support for wealthy self-interests. I would love to see a true grassroots ad campaign that would have rapid response ads to such distortions but the amount of money needed to fund such efforts often falls way short of the $1.25 million that corporate-funded organizations like the National Taxpayers Union collected for this recent misrepresentation.

Related Article:

Big Oil’s Good Deal

Posted by lbwoodgate in Budget Crisis, Business/Jobs, Energy Tags: Big Oil subsidies, Big Tobacco, energy costs, National Taxpayers Union, oil consumption vs. oil production, Petroleum industry, record oil profits, Subsidy, u.s. oil reserves, United States Congress

11 comments

Tidbits and Considerations – The Wealthy, Big Oil and the Truth About Guns

April 30, 2011

Pity the poor wealthy

It’s clear that if we raise the taxes on millionaires and billionaires their income will suffer and their incentive to create jobs will wane. If only the rest of us could suffer so wonderfully and as far as taking jobs away from us – news flash – current job status is the same today as it was twelve years ago.

According to the AFL-CIO, chief executives at some of the nation’s largest companies earned an average of $11.4 million in total pay — 343 times more than a typical American worker and non-farm jobs have not increased in 12 years according to former Reagan financial advisor David Stockman and the Bureau of Labor Statistics. SOURCE

No job growth but higher earnings for corporations and their CEOs means business profits have improved from using cheaper foreign labor and keeping wages stagnant for American workers as they struggle each month to make ends meet while trying to tuck some away for retirement and college fees for their children. This failure of real wage growth for workers has been linked to the economic failure of 2008 by Raghuram Rajan:

In a new book he is working on, entitled “Fault Lines,” Rajan argues that the initial causes of the breakdown were stagnant wages and rising inequality. With the purchasing power of many middle-class households lagging behind the cost of living, there was an urgent demand for credit. The financial industry, with encouragement from the government, responded by supplying home-equity loans, subprime mortgages, and auto loans….The side effects of unrestrained credit growth turned out to be devastating-a possibility that most economists had failed to consider. SOURCE

You can’t legitimately blame the jobless crisis on Obama and the Democrats when corporations are making larger than ever profits and Republicans are protecting them from efforts to remove corporate welfare payments like the $4 billion a year to the vastly profitable oil industry.

But then maybe our point is getting through

On that last note about subsidies to the oil industry, I think progressives have finally broken through that thick-skulled mindset of those on the right. The sky-rocketing price of gas has helped soften the position the GOP has traditionally held on this and the public is also aware that giving billions away to highly profitable oil companies while the cost of filling their gas tanks goes up is unacceptable, to say the least.

When Boehner broke ranks on this stance earlier this week indicating that oil companies should “pay their fair share”, the door swung open a bit further. In a town hall meeting in Waterford, Wisconsin yesterday morning Rep. Paul Ryan, who has already voted twice on extending oil company subsidies this year, responded to questions from constituents that declared his intent to “get rid of corporate welfare” including tax breaks that increase the major oil companies’ profit margin by nearly $4 billion each year. SOURCE

It’s hard to represent yourself as honoring the people’s wishes when you take money away from the budget for schools and essentially give it to wealthy corporations whose profits are again near record levels this quarter. The callous indifference to public worker’s rights to collectively bargain in Wisconsin and a “Path to Prosperity” budget reduction bill that mentions altering Medicare and Medicaid while Defense spending and tax cuts for the rich are off the table is hardly one that even the most ardent GOP supporter can get behind.

We’ll see though. We’ve already entered the 2012 election cycle so this may be nothing more than a head fake to distract the voter until after the elections are over with. It behooves them to make some concessions here because they have yet to follow through with any substantive effort to create jobs which recent polls show is now back in the number one spot of voter concerns.

and finally

A graphic that’s worth a thousand words. Thanks to jobsanger’s blog for this one.

It would be interesting to see data that reveals how many of these deaths were related to citizens defending themselves, a stance the NRA takes to justify its defense of hi-powered automatic weapons with extended magazines. I suspect that number would be very low and would be very difficult for the NRA to defend.

Related Article

Challenging the NRA’s 2nd Amendment Philosophy: The Fear of Tyranny

Posted by lbwoodgate in Budget Crisis, Business/Jobs, Economy, Energy Tags: Bureau of Labor Statistics, David Stockman, federal oil subsidies, guns and death rates, high gas prices, income gap widening, National Rifle Association, Raghuram Rajan, Rep. Paul Ryan

2 comments

Are Republicans Becoming the Real Over-Reaching Hand of Government?

April 29, 2011

Safeguarding corporate interests often entails depriving citizens of basic rights to safeguard themselves and their families.

Warren Darrel Chisum is no household name in the nation or even the state where he holds a seat in the Texas House of Representatives. But he does represent some of the simple-minded and dispassionate thinking of conservative politicians in my home state.

Rep. Chisum came to my attention in an e-mail alert from the Environment Defense Fund (EDF), a reputable organization I associate myself with. It turns out that the EDF is only one of many such groups to alert Texans about what Mr. Chisum is up to recently concerning the air we breathe and safe drinking water. It appears that this oil and natural gas producer in private life is trying to attach some amendments to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality operations bill (House Bill 2694) that “would make it virtually impossible for ordinary Texans to challenge the permit application for new pollution sources, like coal-fired power plants.” (SOURCE: EDF alert e-mail)

According to Annalisa Peace (you gotta love that name) with the Greater Edwards Aquifer Alliance (GEAA), Chisum’s amendments are “designed to give polluters yet another advantage in the contested case process. It would place the ‘burden of proof’ on those contesting a pollution control permit. Currently the burden of proof is where it should be - on polluters - to demonstrate that their discharges into the water or emissions into the air will be within legal limits and will not produce adverse impacts”.

It seems odd that someone with any common sense at all who lived in close proximity to a coal-fired power plant would be aware that there are serious health risks that don’t exist in areas say like the wide open ranges of the Texas panhandle, near Pampa, where Mr. Chisum is from. Perhaps therein lies the problem. “Out of sight, out of mind” may be where Warren is coming from. He doesn’t have enough experience living amongst toxic emissions from commercial industrial enterprises to fully grasp the threat they can pose.

He’s on record for attempting to build a nuclear waste site in sparsely populated Andrews county, which is close to 300 miles from his hometown. There’s perhaps more jack rabbits in Andrews than there are people but Chisum’s willingness to place this dump site in there tells me two things. One, he’s aware that nuclear waste is nasty and dangerous to human health and two, those nasty and dangerous toxins are nowhere near his ranch in Gray county. If he were not in a political position to effect whether or not a nuclear waste dump was moving near his ranch, do you think he would support the amendments he is now trying to foist on fellow Texans?

It seems like all that’s being asked of Mr. Chisum here is to preserve the right to challenge when industries who use toxic chemicals in their production process are attempting to move into or near areas where families socialize and raise their children. Now I understand that many safety precautions are presumed taken and that certain levels of toxic elements pose no serious health risk to the population. But extra measures are still required to ensure that chemicals like arsenic, mercury and formaldehyde do not exceed acceptable levels and that all efforts are being stringently adhered to in order to prevent accidents that could release unacceptable levels into our air and water supplies.

To ask citizens who may challenge permit authorization for nuclear waste sites and dirty coal-fired power plants to prove that these places pose a threat to their well-being is to simply deny the potential risk they pose. Highways are fundamental components of our economy that aid in transporting good and services across the state and the country but we don’t plan them near neighborhoods where air quality is affected and the potential from getting hit by a car is greater. It’s not done because it’s unsafe and people have a right to challenge such actions. Yet Mr. Chisum doesn’t think that right should extend to places where radioactive material like radium and uranium exists along with the carcinogens of benzene and toluene.

Mr. Chisum is the pro-business, anti-government type that fill our legislative halls who too readily accept donor money from the very industries citizens need to be on their guard about. The fringe element that make up a large portion of this group also have some odd notions about things that leave reasonable people wondering if they didn’t fall head first from a large rock. In Mr. Chisum’s case it was how he extended “a courtesy to a member of the Georgia legislature”, Georgia state Rep. Ben Bridges, by using House operations to deliver a memo connecting the theory of evolution to some ancient teachings of the Pharisees.

Pro-business, anti-government types are what conservatives in Texas like until they see that some businesses have thorns and no moral compass and are protected by a representative of the government they installed. People like Chisum dismiss their critics too easily with a wave of a hand and tell us they have put a cop on the corner during working hours to insure a crime-ridden ghetto is safe. Then they drive off to their secure, gated community where a patrol car is there, 24-7, to keep people from stealing their material wealth that our labor has helped create.

All we ask for Mr. Chisum is what your Tea Party sympathies offer – preventing government from depriving us of our rights. Working people in Texas and the rest of the nation do what it takes to help generate wealth for corporate stockholders and foreign investors. Is it too much to ask that you give your constituents a modicum of security from the thieves who steal their good health. Can you throw us bone and let us at least still be able to reasonably protest what normal people would consider blatant disregard for others?

RESOURCE:

Warren Chisum bio - wikipedia

URGENT: Chisum Amendments to Destroy Contested Case Hearing Process (texasgreenreport.wordpress.com)

Posted by lbwoodgate in Business/Jobs, Energy, Society and Politics, Texas/Local stories Tags: Ben Bridges, coal-fired power plants, Environment, nuclear waste, over-reaching government, Texas, Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, Texas House of Representatives, Warren Chisum

4 comments

Are Major Media Sources Deliberately Failing to Broaden the Narrative on Extreme Weather Causes?

April 26, 2011

Did you hear on the news where the extreme weather we’re seeing around the country and the planet may be related to global warming? Of course you didn’t. Why is that?

For about half of the United States there have been serious weather conditions that seem extreme. An historical look at some of these will show they are indeed unusual and could be the result of climate changes that result from an increasing warming planet.

The Department of Ecology in Washington State is but one scientific agency that lays this out for us:

Recent climate modeling results indicate that “extreme” weather events may become more common. Rising average temperatures produce a more variable climate system. What can we expect with weather changes? Localized events could include

windstorms

heat waves, droughts

storms with extreme rain or snow, and

dust storms.

What creates more extreme weather?
Carbon dioxide (CO₂) from cars, industries and power plants trap heat near the earth’s surface. More heat means more energy. Adding so much energy to the atmosphere creates the potential for more extremes.

Climatologists say extreme weather events will become more common as our climate heats up. SOURCE

NOAA Scientists tell us that:

Global Surface temperatures have increased about 0.74°C (plus or minus 0.18°C) since the late-19^th century, and the linear trend for the past 50 years of 0.13°C (plus or minus 0.03°C) per decade is nearly twice that for the past 100 years. The warming has not been globally uniform. Some areas (including parts of the southeastern U.S. and parts of the North Atlantic) have, in fact, cooled slightly over the last century. The recent warmth has been greatest over North America and Eurasia between 40 and 70°N. Lastly, seven of the eight warmest years on record have occurred since 2001 and the 10 warmest years have all occurred since 1995. SOURCE

In 2007 the IPCC declared:

“Warming of the climate system is unequivocal. Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic (human) greenhouse gas concentrations.”

Indonesia has been experiencing its most extreme weather conditions in recorded history

There is a trend in record heat events for Australia. More sites recorded highest daily maximum temperatures in 2009 than in any other year.

Closer to home -

Tennessee’s flooding broke all-time records, according to USGS measurements.
Record Droughts in Texas. The U.S. Seasonal Drought Outlook issued on April 7th and valid through June 2011 indicates that drought is likely to persist or intensify in Texas.
Wildfires in US break record

Just yesterday for the third day in a row, violent storms hit North Texas where I live with tornadoes touching down in some areas everyday. The number and velocity of these storms are above average as they have been in other regions of the midwest and the South. Yet these events are reported meteorologically without any indication of the records they set in relationship to the scientific data that strongly suggests they are related to warmer global temperatures: temperatures that are man-made though our increased use of fossil fuels.

We know the mainstream media are owned by corporate interests that tend to align themselves with portfolios filled with fossil fuel companies and their large profits each year. To top this off many in Congress have refused to eliminate the federal subsidies to big oil companies that are in the billions each year, encouraging further development of dirty energy sources emitting CO2 into the atmosphere rather than funding clean, renewable energy technology.

Some in Congress may be more serious about changing this though now that gas prices are hovering around $4.00 a gallon. According to a report from Rick Klein with The Note “Rep. Earl Blumenauer, sponsor of a bill that he says would strip $40 billion in subsidies from the largest oil companies over five years, said Congress should stop giving tax breaks to companies that don’t need them.

“Our $8 billion a year that is handed to the oil interests does not affect a $2 trillion global price for oil. What it does is it just goes to the bottom line, and you see those profits at record highs,” Blumenauer, D-Ore., told us.

Even Republican House Speaker John Boehner appears amenable “to ending some tax breaks for large oil-and-gas producers that Democrats have long sought to eliminate.” SOURCE

But even if these actions are taken there is still resistance by many conservatives in Congress which consists primarily of most Republicans and a handful of Democrats to allow the EPA to do their job of monitoring and regulating CO2 output from industrial sources like coal-fired power plants; sources that generate tons of CO2 and other toxic elements that go into our air and water supplies.

According to an article from the National Resources Defense Council “More than 100 new conventional coal-fired power plants are in various stages of development throughout the United States. By 2030, the Department of Energy projects that the equivalent of 450 new large (300 MW) coal-fired power plants will be completed. With a lifetime of more than 60 years, these plants will produce more than 60 billion tons of CO2 in total—10 times the current annual emissions from all sources— enough to effectively foreclose the option to prevent dangerous global warming.”

Why aren’t all these dots being connected and aired to the public at the level that the Royal Wedding is or the war in Libya? This information will have more far-ranging effects on more people than either one of these incidences. Who makes the decision at the corporate level that dismisses this vital information that can alter the future of our civilization? Why is this NOT news for consumption by the general public? The major news sources in this country owe it to it’s viewers , listeners and readers to open up this dialogue in the public interest.

Posted by lbwoodgate in Climate Science/Global Warming, Energy, Global politics, Journalism/Media, Society and Politics, Texas/Local stories Tags: Australia, Climate change, Drought, Environment, Extreme weather, flooding, Global warming, media disconnect on global warming and climate changes, Weather, wildfires

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Category Archives: Energy

What’s Behind the Pretty Face and Promises of the EnergyTomorrow Ads?

But learning more at the EnergyTomorrow website is like getting the news from FOX. It’s all heavily slanted with circumspective data and substantial omissions. And it doesn’t hurt when a smart, pretty woman is making the pitch for the likes of Exxon-Mobil, Conoco and Chevron.

Technically Ms. Alexander’s comments are correct but here’s what’s missing in her message:

Powers is the editor of Powers Energy Investor and according to his website has “devoted the last 15 years to studying and analyzing various aspects of the energy sector”.

America will never be energy independent because no matter how much we produce we will still consume more at current rates than we can produce. Friendly tar sands oil from Canada won’t change that picture either.

The Fossil Fuels Job Myth

Just Another Case of Corporate Profits Over Human and Social Needs

Resources:

Shale Gas Bubble About to Burst: Art Berman, Bill Powers (DeSmogblog.com)

Why Fracking for Oil and natural Gas is a False Solution

The Real Costs Incurred by the American Public From Coal-Fired Power Plant Pollution.

Yes, Nuclear Reactors Can Be a Part of Our Future Energy Supply

The State of Bubba

Bogus Anti-Tax Ad Opposes Big Oil Subsidy Elimination

Tidbits and Considerations – The Wealthy, Big Oil and the Truth About Guns

Are Republicans Becoming the Real Over-Reaching Hand of Government?

Are Major Media Sources Deliberately Failing to Broaden the Narrative on Extreme Weather Causes?

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Category Archives: Energy

But learning more at the EnergyTomorrow website is like getting the news from FOX. It’s all heavily slanted with circumspective data and substantial omissions. And it doesn’t hurt when a smart, pretty woman is making the pitch for the likes of Exxon-Mobil, Conoco and Chevron.

Technically Ms. Alexander’s comments are correct but here’s what’s missing in her message:

Powers is the editor of Powers Energy Investor and according to his website has “devoted the last 15 years to studying and analyzing various aspects of the energy sector”.

America will never be energy independent because no matter how much we produce we will still consume more at current rates than we can produce. Friendly tar sands oil from Canada won’t change that picture either.

The Fossil Fuels Job Myth

Just Another Case of Corporate Profits Over Human and Social Needs

Resources:

Shale Gas Bubble About to Burst: Art Berman, Bill Powers (DeSmogblog.com)

Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better. – Harry Truman

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Search Blog Content

America Honors Leaders, Not Politicians

Bet on solar power

What I have written recently

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