Weird Environmental Science

                                                                                    Dr. A. H. Krieg 07/14/06

The voice of millions cannot sustain

foundation in the cause of falsehood.

I am certain that you have also heard scores of brain dead environmentalists touting the use of renewable energy sources. A bumper stick I saw about twenty years ago always comes to mind; “Burn Wood Not Atoms”. I will not entertain a retort to that comment except to say that if we burned every tree in New England we might be able to produce as much energy as one nuclear reactor of which we have over 80. Then we have the solar energy crowd, who are unable to understand that in order to meet energy needs of just California we would have to cover the entire State of Arizona with solar panels, whose manufacture would consume more energy that the total lifetime production of those panels, and the required storage capability (Batteries) would bankrupt the entire west coast economy.  Needless to say wind energy is just as foolish and unproductive, none of these ideas have been subjected to any serious scientific peer review all are pipe dreams of people lacking in scientific education and political pandering.

The latest whacko idea is ethanol as an additive to gasoline so as to reduce the amount of fossil fuel energy used. A study by Cornell University of Ithaca NY and Berkley UC of Berkley California clearly demonstrates this to be yet another pipe dream. What they concluded was that turning corn, soybeans, and sunflower seeds into ethanol consumes about 30% more energy than it saves. Professor David Pimentel of the department of agriculture and ecology of Cornell makes the very clear statement “These strategies are not sustainable”. The study by Berkley is even more to the point. Professor Tad W. Patzek has determined that corn requires 29% more fossil fuel energy than the fuel produced and switch grass 45% more and wood biomass 57% more soybean plant 27% and sunflower plants 118%.  In different terms it takes 131,000 BTU’s of energy to make one gallon of ethanol, and each gallon of ethanol produces 77,000 BTU’s of energy, a 54,000 BTU energy loss. Unfortunately it is much worse because ethanol per gallon is less productive than gasoline your car gets worse mileage and further increases the cost of operating a motor vehicle.

On a recent trip from Tampa to Hartford we noticed that our MPG dropped by about 12% every time we put 10% ethanol into the tank.

Well one would think that this puts the case to rest. But not as far as our brain thrust in Sodom on the Potomac is concerned. The fools of the Department of Energy, an agency that should have been closed down years ago, are the principal supporters of ethanol production. Remember the gas shortage a few years ago? That was a DOE construct, then to add insult to injury they were the agency that through bad management wound up giving the PRC most of our atomic secrets.

To determine true energy use in production of ethanol studies by Cornell and UC Berkley they assessed all avenues of production, seeding, fertilizing, crop dusting, harvesting, irrigation reduction (grinding of the crop) transportation, fermentation, and finally distillation and all the various fuel consumption in all that production.

The real solution coal liquefaction of anthracite coal as was used by the Germans in WWII and as has been in use in South Africa for over 20 years (7 Sassol plants) is never spoken of by the environmentalist lobby or the media. The fact of the matter is that at present oil per barrel costs we can produce liquid fossil fuels out of anthracite coal at costs substantially below those we now pay to foreign producers for oil. America by the way has the largest known coal reserves in the entire world, sufficient coal to produce all anticipated fossil fuel needs for the next 500 years. Projected production costs of coal liquefaction are estimated at from $ 34. to $ 45 per barrel or about $ 25 less than we pay for imported oil.

At the present time our Department of Energy is wasting just over $ 3 billion annually subsidizing ethanol production. To top it off most of this money does not go to farmers but instead to large distillers of ethanol. One of these is at this time negotiation with Manatee county Florida for reduced tax rate at port Manatee because “they are so very environmentally sensitive”. Ethanol production is not environmentally friendly; it does not benefit our national energy policy, agrarian interests, or the environment. Then to add insult to injury the plants produce an order that can only be called the great stink.

Who is behind all this claptrap? We need go no further than the American Council on Renewable Energy (ACORE). If we delve a little deeper we can review who the primary financial supports of ACORE are. Its easy just search ACORE on your computer Internet search engine and everything will become crystal clear. Prominent government members are DOE and EPA; I wonder how much of my tax collection they contributed for their membership? Most of all of the rest of several pages of listings of members are all affiliated with the manufacture and or production of equipment use in renewable energy sources. Organizations like the American Wind Energy Association, Desert Research institute, and Atlantic Biomass.

At this time there is a large organized effort being put forth by all these organizations under the ACORE umbrella to make the public believe their lies so that they can all profit at our expense. ACORE states that;”[we].. are launching a major effort to steer federal and state policies towards far greater utilization of renewable technologies, [which] …decades of research and development have generated mature technologies poised for wider adoption”. Bull! If in fact that were a true statement then why does it require the force of government to implement it? The fact is that no act of government is required for any proven means of economic energy production. Only bad science requires government edicts and finances to see to their use.

At this time all of the renewable energy sources in America do not quite cover 3% of our total consumption of energy. That includes wind, biomass, ethanol, and solar. Over the last 30-years our nation has spent $ 14 billion on these boondoggles and has virtually nothing to show for it. For that amount of money we could have built two coal liquefaction refineries that would by this time be producing 8% of our fossil fuel requirements, The president of GE Wind Energy Steve Zwolinki bewails Americas lag of wind energy production vs. Europe. I have seen hundreds of these bird swatters in action in the north of England if 20% of them are ever running at the same time it is a sheer accident. It is important to understand that the European wind generators are the products of socialist governments who feel they know more about energy production than scientists or real energy producers. In America we let good technologies lead not government bureaucrats. All of these ‘renewable energy producers and manufacturers including GE and ACORE are requesting government intervention and or funding for renewable energy sources, along with tax-breaks for the industry. If as ACORE claims these are “mature technologies poised for wider adaptation” why do they need the force of government to make them viable. Why should we as American taxpayers be forced to fund a loosing technology?

Many of these renewable sources are in fact energy wasters. Most people do not understand how electric utility production plants work. No matter how many renewable electric plants we build at maximum they will never exceed 10% of the energy requirements. If we per example examine wind energy production we can learn something about the energy-producing sector. Electric generating plants cannot just be shut down when a wind blows and then turned on again when the wind stops to produce electricity. These large turbines must be kept at running speed because the startup from cold can take anywhere from a few hours to several days depending on the type of plant. Thus if they were shut down it might well be a week before your power comes back on line. While the wind blows and those wind turbines produce plans are turned down but not off, as a consequence the entire efficiency of the savings supposedly produced by the wind generating generators is nullified. In large integrated generation nets inconstant production is undesirable.

At the present time there is huge fight going on about putting windmills 13 miles off the Cape Cod coast. Teddy Kennedy has a house on the coast on cape cod and has proven to be one of the most active opponents of the project. What we see here is the NIMBY effect, (Not In My Backyard). In fact environmentalist even lie to each other on this issue the Kennedy clique has stated that these windmills would leak oil, kill whales, destroy fisheries, not one of which is true. Teddy simply does not want to see windmills on the horizon when he’s sipping his mint julep on the porch of his mansion.

The time is at hand to bring some modicum of common sense to our environmental as well as our energy production fields, and to forget the environmental whack’s that predominate this industry.