Mid-West Pragmatists

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Comment by J Jay Pirko on November 15, 2009 at 1:57pm

This was sent to me by Kenneth Prendergast, Executive Director of All Aboard Ohio!

The Oil Situation Is Really Bad
by Dave Cohen

Published Nov 12 2009 by ASPO-USA, Archived Nov 12 2009


On the eve of the International Energy Agency’s release of its annual World Energy Outlook (WEO), a whistleblower at the IEA claims the agency “has been deliberately underplaying a looming [oil] shortage for fear of triggering panic buying” in the world markets. As the young fan said to “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, who was wrongly convicted of helping to throw the 1919 World Series, but knew the fix was in, say it ain’t so, Joe.

Ah, but apparently it is so. Another dose of disillusionment for the naive. A second Guardian informant went so far as to say the situation is really bad—

The senior official claims the US has played an influential role in encouraging the watchdog to underplay the rate of decline from existing oil fields while overplaying the chances of finding new reserves.

The allegations raise serious questions about the accuracy of the organization’s latest World Energy Outlook on oil demand and supply to be published tomorrow – which is used by the British and many other governments to help guide their wider energy and climate change policies…

A second senior IEA source, who has now left but was also unwilling to give his name, said a key rule at the organization was that it was “imperative not to anger the Americans” but the fact was that there was not as much oil in the world as had been admitted. “We have [already] entered the ‘peak oil’ zone. I think that the situation is really bad,” he added.

READ MORE AT:
http://www.energybulletin.net/node/50688

READ IEA'S WEO REPORT AT:
http://www.worldenergyoutlook.org/

READ THE GUARDIAN ARTICLE AT:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/09/peak-oil-international-energy-agency#history-byline

Comment by Greg Wortham on May 25, 2009 at 4:25pm

Great Plains Energy Summit -- Omaha -- June 17-18, 2009 -- Leaders from the states & provinces of the USA-Canada Wind Corridor are gathering in Omaha, Nebraska on June 17-18 to plan for action in 2010 & beyond. Through the Great Plains Energy Alliance, we are gathering community & regional leaders, state officials, component manufacturers, colleges & universities, wind energy leaders, ranchers, farmers & more. We will discuss transmission infrastructure, community benefits, workforce preparation, state & federal policies, environmental perspectives, The Pickens Plan, and more. There will be caucuses of the state/provincial delegations and learning of best practices from each other. Please join us!

Check out www.GreatPlainsEnergy.us for more info, including registration forms, sponsorship opportunities, and more.

Comment by J Jay Pirko on May 25, 2009 at 3:23pm

Join Green Energy Ohio for a Clean Energy Network Meeting in Trumbull County on Tue-26-May 7-8:30 pm, in Room 117 of the Kent State University Trumbull Campus Technology Building. The meeting is free and open to the public, especially those interested in sustainability, green building and renewable energy technologies.

Scot Loveland will explain how wind turbines work and what is involved in a typical installation. In addition, Loveland will provide examples of energy savings that can be expected and help attendees determine if small scale wind is appropriate for their situations.

Loveland is in charge of Renewable Energy Projects for Tri-County Tower Service Inc. of North Jackson, Ohio. He is a high school teacher, and developed classroom curriculum based around renewable energy and green building projects.

The company installed their first wind turbine in 2003 and now considers renewable energy projects to be a full-time division of the organization. They offer complete turnkey construction of wind projects and are authorized dealer/installers for several small wind turbine manufacturers. More information about Tri-County’s products and services is available at http://www.tricountytower.com .

A question/answer session will follow the presentation. Also, we will discuss topics for future Trumbull meetings.

For more information about the Clean Energy Network and the Trumbull County meeting, contact Dave Ambrose at 330-647-3666 or ambrose@infohio.org .
The GEO Web site is http://www.greenenergyohio.org .

-Jim Pirko
OH-17 District Leader

Comment by Mike Anthony Fernald Sr. on February 5, 2009 at 2:05am

Comment by Michael, Houston on November 1, 2008 at 7:14am

Thousands of new GREEN JOBS are now posted on GREEN JOBS NOW! group page. Join the group today and we will keep you informed. http://push.pickensplan.com/group/greenjobsnowcom
Tell your friends looking for a job to sign up on the PickensPlan and upload their resume FREE at: www.green-jobs-now.com
Melissa
coordinator@green-jobs-now.com/b>

Comment by Mike Anthony Fernald Sr. on October 23, 2008 at 11:14am

Comment by Doug on September 11, 2008 at 11:42am

Ronald and Tom make excellent points about solar electricity and point of use production. By the way I don't sell any solar or wind products.

When anybody installs solar electric generation on their home they are forced to calculate and prioritize their own energy usage. They immediately see the economic impact and learn to conserve. When a home owner pays 7cents per KWH from the utility they are never led into the same thought process.

Also consider this:

What if you purchased a solar electric system for your house instead of a BMW or a new convertible? Which pays you back?

What if all homes had solar electric generation? What would a power outage be like? Remember they use batteries.

What if all the laid off textile and car manufacturing employees began to build solar compatible refrigerators, freezers and solar cells ? Wouldn't this be economic growth for America and not the Middle East? or China?

We have the resources, the money, the time, we just need spend them on ourselves.

Comment by Larry M. Aden on September 5, 2008 at 1:12am

Hi Folks!
Just want everyone to understand the energy issues we are dealing with here.
Below is an in-depth Letter to the Editor I had published recently:
COMMON SENSE ON ENERGY, NOW!!!, Part II
I wanted to discuss how we should make use of wasted local energy resources like that biogas flame at the sewage plant and the algae from Storm Lake for bio-fuels, but the nitwits are attacking on other fronts, so I must rush to the ramparts.
This won’t be short, so if you would rather not learn anything today, or you don’t want your present world view to be confused by the facts, stop reading, now!
I am often fond of saying that God created every person with a special talent and their own little piece of the truth. The real trick is in finding each persons talent to employ them to their fullest, and to recognize their little piece of the truth, so that we can put it in its proper place in the jigsaw puzzle of life to recreate that picture of eternal bliss in the Garden of Eden. Sadly, not every living being is willing to lend their talent and their knowledge to this quest. For this reason, we all continue to suffer.
Texas oil man, T. Boone Pickens, whose talent seems to be making money for himself, made over $1Billion speculating in oil and gas in 2005, again in 2006, $1.5B in 2007, was earlier estimated to be worth $3 Billion, but has since been instrumental in pushing crude oil beyond reason with his very public pronouncements that “oil is going to $150”.
It is now hovering around $145 as he quietly sells the barrels he bought at $50, after all, he’s not greedy; he doesn’t have to have every penny of that $150!
Whenever you hear a speculator say one thing, you should run the other direction!
Just like when George Soros caused the devaluation of the US Dollar, when he announced to the world that he was getting out of Dollars and buying Euros. That should have been interpreted by all of us that Soros had already sold all of his Dollars and bought all the Euros he could buy. He went public, because he wanted everyone else to do the same, so he could get out of Euros near their high and buy Dollars cheap.
Because Soros is rich, every fool listens to him. All the lemmings bit on this one, and rushed to dump their Dollars, stressing our economy and raising the price of food, fuel and everything we buy in the process. George only wants money and a Dem elected President, and he doesn’t care who he has to hurt to get it!
Paraphrasing Josef Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, “If you mix a big lie in with a little truth, and tell it often enough, you can convince everyone it is the truth.”
That is what T. Boone is doing with his very expensive TV ad campaign touting PickensPlan.com to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
Everything he has to say about the harm buying foreign oil is doing to our economy is absolutely true. That we should use more of our own CNG (compressed natural gas) for our autos is also true, and absolutely achievable with technology we have had for decades. That we should make more use of wind and solar energy, of course, but, that we can take Natural Gas (NG) away from electrical generation and replace that with wind and solar power shows he is either extremely ignorant of the fundamental facts about electricity, or he is trying to pull the wool over our eyes for his own profit!
Call me cynical, but I am betting on the latter, as recently, Pickens has heavily invested the profits of his oil speculation into both wind and natural gas!
He has also invested heavily in water rights, what should that tell us about what ‘shortage’ might develop next?
I am all for anyone making money, just do it honestly, without hurting your fellow man in the process, always giving your trading partners equal fair market value.
To see why Pickens’ Plan is not perfectly honest and achievable, we need to understand our energy consuming habits and needs.
Electrical power providers categorize our energy demand as 3 types of “load” – base, intermediate, and peak.
“Base load” is the minimum level of electrical power consumption at any one moment throughout any hour of every day of the year. This is constant demand and requires constant generating capacity, as alternating current cannot be stored, it must be used at the moment it is generated. They use hydroelectric, nuclear, and coal-fired steam turbine generating plants to provide this power, as these are cheap, constant and dependable, but cannot be started and stopped quickly to meet new load.
Geothermal, ocean thermal, offshore wind, wave, and ocean current energy could also be used for this load, and these represent the only safe and inexhaustible supply of renewable energy available to us to address ‘base load’. Why does no one even mention them in this debate on what we should do about energy? Why should we build nuclear plants when we haven’t even sunk one turbine in the Gulf Stream, yet?
“Intermediate load” is the demand that increases from 6AM, when the world starts to stir, to 9PM, when it starts to wind down, getting ready for bed. This happens like clock work every day, regardless of the weather, it can be planned for, so they fire the boilers in those coal-fired plants, a little harder, a little ahead of time, to bring more steam turbine generators on-line, or open another gate on a hydroelectric dam, when you and I want to shower and go to work.
“Peak load” is different every day of every season, depending heavily upon the weather and variable human activity. It is normally between 12 Noon and 4PM, with space heating and air conditioning being the greatest variable in demand. This demand changes rapidly and requires instantaneous response in generating capacity from hot gas turbines, which burn NG. There is no alternative to this gas, except other more expensive gases. If we take this NG from electric companies, we will be constantly plagued with brownouts and blackouts, or see massive increases in the price of our power and fuel, or both.
Wind cannot replace this power, it almost never comes when we really need it. Most of the best wind comes at night, when we do not need it at all. The power companies really hate to be forced to buy wind power for 3.5cts/Kwh while shutting down coal-fired generation that costs them 1ct/Kwh. Who could blame them? Likewise, where the best wind comes, from West Texas to North Dakota, we do not have the necessary transmission lines, because there are few people living there to serve this power to.
High tension interstate transmission lines are very expensive, and very intrusive! Nobody wants these monstrosities built in their back yard!
What we could, and should, do is hook every alternative energy source we can find to a local load that matches it.
Solar photoelectric energy is a good match for air conditioning, refrigeration, and water pumping. Demand for these always increases when the sun shines, perfect match! It is expensive, inefficient, and nearly useless for anything else. Solar heating is little better, but should be passively designed into every new building.
Wind is a great match for space heating, water pumping, battery charging and other automated industrial processes that can be run when the wind blows, and shut off when it doesn’t, such as cryogenic distillation of air, hydrogen electrolysis, anhydrous ammonia (NH3) production, and other industrial gas production from these processes.
Huge quantities of our precious NG are spent senselessly in manufacturing NH3 for fertilizer, when it has long been cheaper to return to the original carbon-neutral, and infinitely renewable process of making it from water and air.
We must rewrite the REA charter to cover all forms of rural energy distribution, empower local REC’s to fund, sell and maintain distributed generation systems for their members, and to empower those members to sell all forms of energy directly back.
Then, we must erect wind and water current turbines everywhere we can possibly put them, thousands of big ones, and millions of smaller ones between them, that we manufacture here (not expensive imports). Each can be wired into our present electrical grid without building new transmission lines. Then, we must hook each to a water electrolyzer, and a booster pump, to store the off-peak energy as Hydrogen gas (H2), putting this, along with methane (CH4) from our every hog house, poultry house, cattle feedlot, and sewage plant, into the local low-pressure NG pipelines that serve our houses, farms and industries. Underground low-pressure NG pipelines are cheap and innocuous.
NG, mostly CH4, the very same biogas produced by every marsh, cow stomach, and manure pit, is compatible with both gasoline and diesel engines, and is perfectly interchangeable with propane, butane, and Hydrogen in low pressure gas systems (<300psi). These gases are extremely clean burning and can be used interchangeably in any gasoline motor with a truly flex-fuel system having an adjustable orifice.
H2 and CH4 are perfectly compatible, clean, safe and infinitely renewable; they also store well and liquefy under comparable conditions, but only at very high pressures (5400psi), or very low temperatures (-253C). CNG is normally packed at 3000psi for auto fuel, which is too high to be compatible with other gases, and too low to liquefy.
So, we should standardize compressed gas auto fuel storage pressure with liquid propane gas (LPG) at 300psi, then, use LPG, ethanol, or gasoline, only for long trips, and NG for our every day commutes.
With a small pump, we could all fill our cars and tractors at home from our own NG/H2 pipeline meter for about a Dollar per gallon gasoline equivalent!
When Pickens wants us to do that, I’ll support him, 100%!
Larry M. Aden
2694 180th Street
Nemaha, Iowa 50567
712-636-4490
lmaden@frontiernet.net

Comment by Kim on August 22, 2008 at 9:39am

Count me in to help!

~Kim

Comment by John Pederzolli on August 18, 2008 at 9:16pm

Is there anything else we can do other than over email/internet to help get word out? With the elections coming up, is there a list of candidates in the Central Ohio area that have a history in or honest interest in utilizing alternative energy to solve our energy problems?

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