Looking Backwards

I know, I haven't been posting, but frankly, I'm trumped out. The "president" is a dangerous buffoon -- he doesn't seem to understand that others are going to react to his hysterical tweets and off-the-cuff bombast, and it's not going to be just Fox News: it's going to be people like Kim Jong-Un and whatever ayatollah is in charge in Iran this week.

And he can't seem to get past the election:

!!! Trump interrupted himself mid-discussion of China to give the reporters copies of the 2016 electoral map: https://t.co/VGVeDpLdVo pic.twitter.com/ndBlPRr0FH

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) April 28, 2017

There -- see all that red? That proves it.

And he thinks that issuing executive orders is governing. Here's one of the latest -- a give-away to the fossil fuel industry:

President Donald Trump painted a golden future of "great wealth" and "great jobs" powered by oil pumped from the ocean floor as he signed an executive order Friday to consider new offshore drilling around the country.

But his efforts could splash harmlessly against the hardened barricades that California has been fortifying for decades with regulation and legislation to prevent additional drilling along its treasured coast.

Even the faintest possibility of new oil operations prompted an immediate backlash in the state as environmentalists feared ecological disaster, surfers warned of soiled beaches and politicians promised new measures to block any development.

This is on top of trying to get waivers of Russian sanctions so the Secretary of State's old company can drill in the Russian Arctic.

We've heard so much all of our lives about America's forward-looking, entrepreneurial spirit that has made us the richest country the world has ever seen. (Pay no attention to those army veterans living on the streets.) And yet, when it comes to making ourselves energy independent, all we can come up with is drilling for oil. (Oh, and coal mining, which even the coal companies say is not going to happen.)

I've probably related this story before, but it remains timely: way back when, maybe the 1980s-90s, the Defense Department awarded a grant to Sony Corporation to develop a solar energy storage system compact enough to use on vehicles, which Sony did: they even built a factory to manufacture the prototypes, which were installed on a few cars and light trucks. Deal done, Sony packed up and went home, and, if I'm not mistaken, turned the patents over to DoD. Along comes one of those forward-thinking, entrepreneurial American "energy" companies -- Conoco, to be exact -- that bought the whole works. Conoco leveled the factory and no one has ever seen the patents again.

Let's just face it: the oligarchs running this country have a vision that sees as far as the next quarter's bottom line. And that's if they're really looking ahead.

Why in hell aren't these "energy" companies developing renewable energy -- solar, wind, tidal, whatever? I'm mean, it's not even a revolutionary idea at this point, and as it gets warmer and warmer, it's become critically important. Nope: because all they know how to do is use their muscle to open up new places to drill and new pipelines to run, for example, Canadian tar sands to Gulf Coast refineries to be refined and shipped overseas. Bottom line, remember?

Footnote: Interestingly enough, the Pentagon is going full steam ahead with converting to renewable energy sources.

Trump Tackles the Environment

Nice water supply you've got there. . . .:

President Donald Trump on Tuesday signed an order to undo Obama-era climate change regulations, keeping a campaign promise to support the coal industry and calling into question U.S. support for an international deal to fight global warming.

Flanked by coal miners and coal company executives, Trump proclaimed his "Energy Independence" executive order at the headquarters of the Environmental Protection Agency.

The move drew swift backlash from a coalition of 23 states and local governments, as well as environmental groups, which called the decree a threat to public health and vowed to fight it in court.

The order's main target is former President Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan, which required states to slash carbon emissions from power plants - a key factor in the United States' ability to meet its commitments under a climate change accord reached by nearly 200 countries in Paris in 2015.

Trump's decree also reverses a ban on coal leasing on federal lands, undoes rules to curb methane emissions from oil and gas production and reduces the weight of climate change and carbon emissions in policy and infrastructure permitting decisions. Carbon dioxide and methane are two of the main greenhouse gases blamed by scientists for heating the earth.

"I am taking historic steps to lift restrictions on American energy, to reverse government intrusion and to cancel job-killing regulations," Trump said at the EPA.

Energy independence? If we wanted energy independence, we'd be throwing major resources into developing wind and solar power. But Trump has just as much imagination as his pals in the oil and coal industries.

Oh, and about those "job-killing regulations":

Throughout the presidential campaign, Republican candidate Donald Trump courted miners and promised improved job prospects. He has continued to tout the future of the coal industry as president—but a top coal executive has slammed the brakes on the idea that mining jobs could come back.

Robert Murray, founder and chief executive of Murray Energy—the nation's largest privately held coal mining company—told the Guardian that many mining jobs were lost to technology and competition, rather than regulation.

Trump can't really change that, Murray said.

"I suggested that he temper his expectations. Those are my exact words," Murray said. "He can’t bring them back."

And if you're not familiar with Murray, there's this little tidbit:

"I would not say it's a good time in the coal industry. It's a better time," Murray told the Guardian. "Politically it's much better. Barack Obama and his Democrat supporters were the greatest destroyers the United States of America has ever seen in its history. He destroyed reliable electric power in America, he destroyed low-cost electric power in America, and he attempted to totally destroy the United States coal industry."

If that's not enough to clue you into his attitude, check out this article in the New York Times. Bottom line: if you've lost Robert Murray, there's no hope.

As for the consequences of Trump's attack on the environment -- he's just taking us back to the good old days:

"Energy Companies"? You're Joking, Right?

Via David Atkins at Hullabaloo, an interesting point on how Germany is leaving us in the dust -- again. This time, it's energy from renewable sources. From Motherboard:

Germany is now producing 28.5 percent of its energy—nearly a third—with solar, wind, hydro, and biomass. In 2000, renewables accounted for just 6 percent of its power consumption.

This is further proof that Germany is, essentially, the world leader in renewable energy. No other country has demonstrated such a dedicated, accelerated drive toward transitioning to clean power—in Germany's case, away from nuclear to solar and wind. It has done so by intensely incentivizing private and commercial solar, aggressively pursuing wind power contracts, and, yes, by raising, slightly, the cost of energy in the process.

One point: Portugal has gotten as much as 70% of its energy from renewable sources (the first quarter of 2013) and overall for 2013, derived nearly 60% of its energy from non-fossil fuel sources.

Could we do the same? Sure -- we get a lot more sun than Germany, and the Great Plains have a lot of wind to spare, all the time. Do we want to? No -- our "entrepreneurial job-creating class" is locked into oil and gas because they don't have a lot of imagination and they're all about easy, fast cash.

One Can Only Hope

That this idea spreads.

Most office buildings are divorced, in a way, from their surroundings. Each day in the mechanical trenches of heating, cooling and data processing is much the same as another but for the cost of paying for the energy used.

The energy lab’s Research Support Facility building is more like a mirror, or perhaps a sponge, to its surroundings. From the light-bending window louvers that cast rays up into the interior office spaces, to the giant concrete maze in the sub-basement for holding and storing radiant heat, every day is completely different.

It sounds like some sort of high-tech utopia, but get this:

The answer at the research energy laboratory, a unit of the federal Department of Energy, is not gee-whiz science. There is no giant, expensive solar array that could mask a multitude of traditional design sins, but rather a rethinking of everything, down to the smallest elements, all aligned in a watt-by-watt march toward a new kind of building.

Managers even pride themselves on the fact that hardly anything in their building, at least in its individual component pieces, is really new.

Off-the-shelf technology, cost-efficient as well as energy-efficient, was the mantra to finding what designers repeatedly call the sweet spot — zero energy that doesn’t break a sweat, or the bank.

I work in downtown Chicago, just north of the Loop, and over the past couple of years I've watched several new buildings go up -- the climate control systems are massive, and there's obviously no thought given to energy conservation, or very little: there's a new hotel across the street that claims "green friendliness," but it doesn't seem to be on any large scale.

One thing the article doesn't touch on that would be workable, I think, someplace like my work neighorhood: wind generators to take advantage of the updrafts and downdrafts created by these high-rises.

This, though, is the sort of thing that should be getting a massive boost from the government -- forget the damned subsidies for oil exploration.