CapNTrade=EBAY?, Butanol v.Ethanol v. Franken? DirtyAlbertaOil for US? Krugman back on Track!

What is the absolute best job for which to be qualified today? (Well, maybe.)

Why is a "usual" week one in which there are more things I´d like to include in this column than I could possibly hope to touch upon, and yet most weeks I start with a dread that I will have nothing to say. It´s a "good thing" to be "catholic", but that doesn't make me "Catholic". I'll probably have something rambling and semi-incoherent to say about that a little later.

Here´s an amazing piece of a lecture from Stanford University´s Entrepreneurial Series, in which Steve Westly, former CFO of the state of California, and a key member of the group responsible for arranging the IPO for EBAY, talks about the worlds best standards (the toughest) for automobiles (that everyone should be imitating) and how Ebay, itself, is like a "cap and trade" system because cap and trade works rather like an online auction.








You CANNOT have it BOTH WAYS!


Another thing that is always driving me crazy is the blatant misuse of statistics. Now, I don´t even have any specific figures on it, but there are plenty of place that now claim the "steam" or "water vapor" or "evaportation" (in other words, the gaseous form of H2O) is a "greenhouse gas". But meanwhile a recent "publication"(as a web page) of the Seimens corporation says: "More than two-thirds of the greenhouse gases responsible for climate change are energy-induced. In other words, they are caused by human energy consumption –arising from the production of electric power and heat, or from the combustion of fuel in transportation." So pick one or the other, guys, if water vapor is a "greenhouse gas" then evaporation from the oceans dwarfs all other sources, and that might be a good idea to keep in mind about how trivial the contribution of human beings is to global warming. Please note, I am not denying that global warming is real, just how large a role humans have in affecting global warming. Another way of skewing the statistics seems to slant the blame in the direction of human habitats. That is, there are factions that insist that "buildings" are the largest source of greenhouse gases and a major contributor to global warming. I haven´t tried to analyze why they make such a claim, but on the other hand, when you add up all the forestry (and deforestation, possibly), steel making from mining to manufacture of nails and screws, sheetrock and cement production, plus the transportation of all of these elements, it might be true that the annual contributions from building could exceed the "energy" sector´s role. (Probably not, when you consider that supposedly we are outputting some 40 gigatons of carbon dioxide each year, but it is probably a good thing that this activity´s contributions are not so severely neglected as they used to be.)

So pick it, guys. Either evaporation that creates water vapor is a contributor to GHG, or not. If it is, then everything else is a trivial sized footnote, and if it is, then clearly the only significant source of "global warming" and "climate change" is the Sun, and it bears a lot more examination as to how and why.


Not All Alcohol is the Same


This week I stumbled upon a writer who says her "beat" is Washington Environmental Policy, which, these days, heavily overlaps Energy Policy. Joann Blake writes for the "Examiner.com" website. I suppose it comes with the territory that if you write about "the environment" that you more or less HAVE TO be on the side of the environment, so the idea of being an "unbiased" reporter kind of flies out the window. But despite my disagreeing with some of the points of view she expresses, I think she has a sharp and pointed style that gets to the heart of matters quickly (in a lot fewer words than I do). In particular, for example she ties a couple of her stories to the energy bill, including the settlement of the Minnesota Senatorial Race in which the Minnesota Supreme Court finally declared Al Franken the winner. She notes that Franken´s website is strongly pro-farm and farmers, and she expects him to be an advocate for retaining the favorable treatment of ethanol in the energy package. I would hope that both Ms. Blake and Mr. Franken would rapidly come to recognize that converting ethanol production capacity to butanol (specifically "biobutanol") should be a priority of both the Department of Energy and of the farmers and ethanol producers themselves. I suppose that´s a lot of enlightenment to dump on a rather large group of people in a short amount of time, but I think Al Franken is the kind of spokesperson who is well enough versed in using the media to communicate with a constituency that he could be a very positive force moving this technological advancement along.


BUCKet Passing


Another point of disagreement I have with Ms. Blake is on the issue of the "Alberta Clipper", a plan to build a pipeline for "heavy crude" from the Athabasca Tar Sands to Wisconsin ASAP. It could even be starting this weekend in Canada -- remember this IS a holiday weekend in Canada too, but the July 1st Holiday [Canada Day] interferes with working on the weekend a little less than the July 4th falling on Saturday this year. The Athabasca Tar Sands actually spread into the province of Saskatchewan too, and Saskatchewan is delighted to discover that they are going to be sharing in the wealth created from this vast natural resource. What dismays Ms. Blake, and the Sierra Club, and Greenpeace Canada is that the development spreads over an area the size of Florida, or better, and that it is an inefficient extraction and refining process that uses vast amounts of water and natural gas to extract the oil. Some of the tar sands are "strip mined" at the surface, and that is the kind of thing that gets Sierra Club members and Greenpeace activists steaming, but the main method of extraction is now shifting toward a steam-based extraction method which is a variation on the "enhanced recovery" methods used in traditional oil wells when the rate of production has fallen to an unacceptably low level. Steam is injected into the ground and the heated crude warms enough to flow to the "collection system". In a conventional deep-drilled oil well, this is normally a dome of impermeable rock above a layer of other impermeable rock where a combination of gravity and water-table pressure has created a vast reservoir of crude oil trapped in a [pressurized] pocket that gushes from underground when tapped into by a drill hole. In oil sands recovery, there are a series of collection pipes laid (usually below the steam injection pipes) to which oil drains and is pumped up to ground level for refining.

Okay, in my usual (excessive) concession to "fairness" I´m going to include their video here:







The original "permit" to allow the construction of the US portions of this pipeline was signed almost half a century ago by President Lyndon Johnson, but present day pressure is being put on Secretary of State Clinton to void the permit and prevent the pipeline from happening. I am afraid that both Secretary Clinton and President Obama are too well versed in the pragmatic realities of the current "energy crisis" to oppose the construction of this vital energy resource. Canada´s oil sands, alone, (not counting the conventional reserves) exceed the total reserves of Saudi Arabia (and perhaps that of the entire "Middle East" region)(at least before the discovery of the vast new oil reserves of the Caspian basic), and Canada has become THE largest source of oil imported into the United States (overtaking Saudi Arabia´s prior number one position).

It may well be that, like me, they are ideologically opposed to increasing use of "fossil carbon" energy sources, but the practical reality is that the entrenched financial interests of "big oil" and "big coal" are not going to suddenly become timid as church mice and retire silently to some tiny corner of economic obscurity. Both oil and coal are going to play a major role for many decades to come, and Secretary Clinton and President Obama and the entire Whitehouse administration (as well as most of Congress) is well aware of those facts. What I hope, and I wish those pressing for a "ban" on "the dirtiest oil on earth" should realize is that the steam extraction technique is hardly different than the old deep well steam extraction, except for the "tailings" ponds that mar the landscape. It is the fact that no "clean up" regulations have been created (or at least not enforced) on getting these messy and dangerous "400 Love Canals" (about 80 square miles, I understand), cleaned up and detoxified. We, unfortunately, still need the oil. What we don´t need is yet another situation that is going to be a hundred year blight on the landscape while we try to find the political will to finance the "superfund" (or more like "mega-giganti-superfund") cleanup that will be needed if we neglect these liquid toxic dumps. Alberta and Saskatchewan better get some anti-pollution regulations and give them some legislative enforcement "teeth" as well, before the situation gets any worse.

BTW, the "dirtyoilsands.org" guys are more than a little insulting when they say that Canada doesn´t have an "environmental policy" or an "energy policy". I assure you they have. My Canadian partner is a company owned by a former Minister of Energy where we have several projects in various stages of development from "bad idea, let´s not talk about that one anymore," to "these Canadians won´t fund research on tropical species. To which Caribbean island would you like to move?"

Did I ever mention that DARPA reportedly has a target of 50 million gallons per year of bio-based jet fuel (equivalent to JP-8) and they want it to happen in the next 2 years? I take that as very encouraging news. Meanwhile a Boeing employee has been quoted as saying that he expects us to need 85 billion gallons a year to replace all petroleum jet fuel usage with renewable fuels.

I almost forgot an item on the "entertainment front" (sorry, I didn't mean to make it sound like a battlefront although at this time of year, around the July 4th weekend, the film makers, studios and theatres do consider this a box office battle). My point, unfortunately, this week is that Away We Go is more than a bit of fizzle, which is sad for me because it is exactly the kind of movie I used to love best. I was, at one time, at least, a major fan of John Sayles-style movies, small, tiny budget things that really had something to say. Here's the official trailer:







There really is something about star Maya Rudolph that is very appealing in kind of a "favorite cousin" sort of familiarity, and a brief scene or two with the beautiful Carmen Ejogo is not hard to take, but overall, the film just doesn't quite hang together with very uneven performances from most of the other characters including Catherine Ohara (formerly of SCTV) and Jeff Daniels (neither of whom are usually favorites of mine), and Allison Janney (who usually is a favorite). I did, however, like the performance by Maggie Gyllenhaal as a consumately self-confident, but distinctly wacky college professor. Don't mistake my meaning. I am not saying I have passed my "phase" of fondness for small movies, indeed it is often this same kind of "small movie" feel that adds greatly to the appeal of some foreign language films for me. In this case, it is just that director Sam Mendes misses on too many notes, even though his (predictable) ending is a perfectly strummed and harmonious chord.

Ah, yes, that "best job" according to Steve Westly is to be a Chinese speaking Chief Financial Officer.

As for the "good" to be "catholic" part, the actual meaning of the word is "universal", and my interests are universal so that ultimately I never have trouble finding something that fascinates me to write about each week. Why is being "Catholic" (capitalized) a "bad thing"? Well, it is just my opinion, but in my opinion, my opinion is the one that counts, being a member (even a congregant) of the Roman Catholic Church is to elevate a particular set of superstitions above all else. That is a general indictment I would place at the feet of pretty much every official "religion". Like most social institutions religions generally exist to perpetuate themselves. Therefore it is a top priority not to be too tolerant of allowing your children to even so much as consider that other religions might have some validity or value. Indeed, most religions do have a certain amount of "value", but I object to the trumped up mythologies like seven layers of hell, or some certain number of "days" in limbo or purgatory for certain sins. How long is a "God's day" and who translated that timescale into human terms. These "God given laws" are nothing but the laws of men to control other men (and occasionally women, though more likely to oppress women). It might be a surprise to some of you that most of the worst "pagan" or "barbaric" practices of "other peoples´ religions" are actually rooted in "the old ways" of our own Judaio-Christian-Muslim faiths.

I think I am going to be lazy this week, because I want to use a long quote to end on a positive note. Now it may not seem like such a positive, uplifting quote when you read it, but I had a very good reaction, partly because I was frequently finding myself saying to myself, "Were the Nobel Prize committee DRUNK, or what? How could they have chosen the guy spouting this drivel? Why can´t he seem to see what is so obvious to everyone else if he´s so smart?" Those thoughts and a few well chosen epithets not suitable for family viewing characterized some of my reactions to recent comments by Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize Winning Economist, Princeton professor, and columnist for the New York Times. But, Paul, all is forgiven, your misguided folly with respect to some of the economy is forgotten, because recently you said: "The point is that we need to be clear about who are the realists and who are the fantasists here. The realists are actually the climate activists, who understand that if you give people in a market economy the right incentives they will make big changes in their energy use and environmental impact. The fantasists are the burn-baby-burn crowd who hate the idea of using government for good, and therefore insist that doing the right thing is economically impossible."

(--Paul Krugman, New York Times, June 22, 2009)

And just because he got his Nobel Prize before I got mine, and the fact that his column is in, "the Times" while mine is on the net does not mean he is smarter than I am, because I am pretty sure when he said, "burn-baby-burn crowd", he was really referring to those rabid Republicans from the last campaign who were chanting "drill-baby-drill". Oh, yeah, and Paul Krugman also writes an online blog for the NYT website, too.

Love and warm wishes,

Sincerely,

Stafford "Doc" Williamson

http://daochienergy.com