Bush’s Sustainable Energy Plan is “Bulls–t”
Bush’s Sustainable Energy Plan is “Bulls–t”
Hey, we didn’t say it. House Resources chair Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA) did.
Yesterday, while Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA) was talking up the new energy bill’s hydrogen fuel subsidies at a crowded Capitol Hill news conference, Rep. Pombo turned to House Majority Whip Roy Blunt (R-MO) and whispered, “This is bulls–t.” (A CNN journalist happened to be within earshot.)
Pombo later explained his comment. President Bush’s plan to spend $2 billion developing hydrogen-fueled cars is “not a short-term solution because we just don’t have the technology to produce it,” he said, adding that the promised vehicles are “multimillion-dollar prototypes that nobody’s going to buy.”
And Pombo’s actually right. Sure, hydrogen will be an important energy source down the road. But making fuel-cell technology the focus of our sustainable energy policy “means having to wait 15 to 20 years to produce cleaner cars and wean the country off of oil,” according to the National Resources Defense Council.
Our environmental problems are serious and growing now. And while President Bush trumpets the long-term gains of hydrogen, he’s actually reducing investment in clean technologies that already exist, sopping the profit-flushed fossil fuel industries with billions in subsidies, and actively opposing efforts to make today’s cars and trucks cleaner and more fuel-efficient.
And does Rep. Pombo’s whispered aside suggest some hidden enviro sensibility? Nope. When he’s not cursing out other people’s non-solutions to today’s energy problems, Pombo acts as a “key proponent of drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.”
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I only wish the good people of Tracy, CA would vote that asshole out of office. Why they keep electing the guy is beyond me. I live in a more conservative district & we have a democrat. Well, he is a DLC Democrat, but I’ll take him over the likes of Pombo any day.
April 22nd, 2005 at 5:59 pmHydrogen is not an energy source. Hydrogen is energy storage. You use your energy source to produce the hydrogen. People need to understand that.
It’s not a terribly efficient energy storage medium, either.
Ask Bush about his rationale for gutting funds for alternative energy research. Ask him why Europe and Japan are building experimental fusion reactors and we are not.
Too bad Bush’s hick supporters were wailing about their “right” to guzzle gas and drive SUVs.
Fact: we do not have a substitute for fossil fuels right now.
Fact: the less fuel we burn today, the more time we have to find a substitute.
Fact: if demand outstrips supply before we find a substitute, our chance of devolving back to an agrarian society are very much greater.
What, think it couldn’t happen? Think again.
April 22nd, 2005 at 6:28 pmQuote of the Earth Day
April 22nd, 2005 at 6:36 pm“This is bulls-t.” Reportedly said by Rep. Richard Pombo (R-CA) with regard to President Bush’s plan to spend $2 billion developing hydrogen-fueled cars. Think Progressive has useful comments on the quote and hydrogen-fueled cars. A CNN reporter over…
What did Mother Nature ever do to George Bush? Was his best friend eaten by grizzlies when he was small? Does he actually like breathing contaminated air? I just don’t get it.
April 22nd, 2005 at 7:38 pmIf the Energy bill had been written to provide support for ethanol based fuels, and not horrendous subsidies for continued use of hundred plus year old technologies, there might be more available alternatives. The neo-cons realized in the mid 1990’s that the US would compete with the increasing oil demands of India and China while increasing its own use. The demand today is at an all time high, and climbing higher, while peak oil resources are already dropping behind us. The subsidies are the oil companies payoff for encouraging this status in the world, a status that enriches them further. US conservation through high costs of fuels keeps more oil available for sale, refining, processing, and marketing in China and India. Win-win for oil.
Pombo was being pissy with Doolittle because John is literally one of the truly stupid members of Congress, and rarely makes any sense whatsoever.
April 22nd, 2005 at 7:40 pmThe combination of Earth Day and the Bush Administration’s failure to comply with the Global Change Research Act in reporting the impact of climactic changes is shocking. Ok, maybe not that shocking.
In March, I debated Robert Balling–famous climate skeptic–on administration distortions. He agreed that the administration was playing dirty with climate science (a fairly astonishing agreement, honestly.) The text of my speech–with some more examples of climate science manipulation is here:
http://climatememo.blogspot.com/2005/03/public-debate-against-robert-balling.html
The debate sparked a follow on project that suggested ways for people interested in being more persuasive on the climate crisis. We have constructed a memo to counter Frank Luntz’s spin on the climate issue. Check it out at:
climatememo.blogspot.com
D & C
April 22nd, 2005 at 8:57 pmDamien, thank you for posting. I have a question regarding legitimate voices in the scientific community. Why are we not hearing the voices of outraged scientists in more prominent places, to refute and rebut the Bush Adminstrations bogus claims? Is the mainstream media not knocking….or are they refusing to to answer the door?
Smart and sensible scientists need to be out front on so many issues (global warming, renewable energy to name two) and I’m only hearing an occasional voice on Airamerica or NPR. What gives?
Thanks and keep up the good work.
April 22nd, 2005 at 9:11 pmJason,
First, we should note that there _are_ lots of scientists that are out front in public discussions. Here are some that have been inspirational to our work:
James Hansen, has a “common sense climate index” worth checking out:
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/data/update/csci/
Susanne Moser and Lisa Dilling have a fabulous article about “Making Climate Hot”:
http://www.isse.ucar.edu/communication/docs/Environ_32-46a%20.pdf
Plus, the IPCC has about 2500 scientists, currently working on the newest report.
There are also many scientists working in the government who have limited rein in this administration to comment on the climate crisis.
As for the media…well, sometimes the need for journalistic balance (under the guise of “objectivity”) gives climate skeptics more credibility than they deserve. Consequently, readers don’t get an accurate picture of the compelling overlap of scientific opinion.
The Boykoff and Boykoff study “Journalistic Balance as Global Warming Bias” is great on this point:
http://www.fair.org/extra/0411/global-warming.html
We wrote a bit on this in our countermemo (scroll down a bit to ‘We get to blame the media too’):
http://climatememo.blogspot.com/2005/04/part-4-argument-inventory-or-what-you.html
We know this was a bit long, but hopefully it was worth it. :-)
Damien and Carly
April 22nd, 2005 at 9:38 pmD & C, excellent, some light reading for the weekend :) Did check out the common sense climate index, it’s really quite clear.
Now if we can only manage a legitimate Presidential election in our “beacon of democracy” maybe we have a chance to force some change. I fear that too much sand may already be at the bottom of the hourglass though. Do you believe the more dire Peak Oil predictions (anywhere from 2001 to 2007)? Are you hopeful that we can make the transition to alternative sources of fuel?
Have a great weekend!
April 22nd, 2005 at 10:07 pmHere’s my take on peak oil: it matters, but not as much as the way in which demand is currently outstripping supply. China and India are building their own versions of Strategic Petroluem Reserves. Paired with their astonishing growth, they are pushing energy prices upwards. Read the stories about $3/ gallon gas this summer?
In other words, even if there were no such thing as peak oil, the companies “responsibly exploring for energy” (in Frank Luntz’s orwellian euphemism) _cannot_ get the oil out of the ground fast enough. Energy prices will keep rising because of this growing competition. And that (possibly _only_ that) will encourage the development of alternative fuel sources.
It’s a weird sort of cautious optimism that acknowledges the serious pinches that will happen throughout the economy (especially impacting poor people). It would be nice to have a forward-looking administration that could accelerate the process towards more sustainable energy.
If gas prices were this high back in November 2004, maybe we would have had that administration.
Btw, http://www.energybulletin.net/ is one of the best places to do peak oil reading. A little uneven as far as source quality goes sometimes, but all around a good site.
Damien
April 22nd, 2005 at 10:38 pmThis energybulletin site is just what I’ve been looking for. I’ve read a handful of stories about Peak Oil (The Long Emergency, Lagavulin, Michael C. Ruppert on From the Wilderness etc.) and I’m convinced that there are going to be major consequences (maybe not as severe as those that global warming pose…but at this point more measurable) and perhaps some of the predictions are more alarmist than grounded in science? Wasn’t sure if it was time to start reading by candlelight yet…….:)
April 22nd, 2005 at 11:16 pmMaybe scientists just need to try harder to create a media circus? It worked for the Intellijunt Dezine crowd. They even had an ID debate at Stanford this month. Judging from winners in recent news and election cycles, one might suspect you’re not doing enough name-calling :-)
As far as journalists go, I think you need to fight your way past the balance angle and appeal to the innate journalistic desire to save the world. Reporters love a story with a cause. The reporters you need to talk to, anyway.
April 23rd, 2005 at 12:03 amD&C, since you seem pretty well credentialed, are my three facts on the mark? I’d hate to think I was shooting from the hip on an Internet blog.
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April 23rd, 2005 at 12:06 amIt’s all about money…saving the planet costs too much and doesn’t have any short term profit. To that, I say that dollar bills don’t really taste that good once the food runs out.
April 23rd, 2005 at 2:32 amTom’s post near the top this thread is the real point. Hydrogen as a fuel is only a STORAGE of energy. Currently it takes more energy to make and transport it then we get from it (this could change in the future, but not by much). Please tell EVERYONE you know about this fact, it is key to understanding why oil is not an easily replaceable source of high bank for the buck energy.
April 23rd, 2005 at 11:23 amHenry and Tom I gotta challenge you guys. You are taking the “world is flat” approach to energy knowledge. do your homework and tell me what that big ball of fire the sky is made of. You will find that is is composed of Hydrogen and Helium and is in fact THE SOURCE of energy on this planet. Remember the “Experts” and Scientist are funded by “Big Oil” which is funded by our elected officials and their personal investment agenda. Beware the smoke and mirrors to keep the competition out. Yes it takes energy to get energy. You make it sound like you believe oil is cheap! Do the math and understand the true energy in energy out for fossil fuels. Just the name should give you a clue. Millions and Millions of years to form oil. I could not accurately calculate the amount of solar, and pressure energy it would take to duplicate this process. Then we need to forage for it, extract and refine it, burn it and then clean up the mess. This all takes huge amounts of fuel energy. What we have burned we have lost and cannot replace. Oil has more to offer us than fuel, carbon fiber, plastic, clothing products etc. yet we foolishly burn it. Hydrogen in contrast is abundant in water and plant life and is eaisly refined with comparitively little electrical energy that we can tap from solar, wind, wave and geothermal activity, making the process clean and available to everyone. Produced on site simplifies the distribution and storage and the clean burn renewable energy cycle is non toxic to human life.
April 23rd, 2005 at 12:32 pmBuilding a Hydrogen economy will create a surge in high paying jobs, distrubute wealth, free underdeveloped nations, rejuvinate American inginuity, rescue the environment, give our grandchildren somethig to be proud of.
Henry, please tell everyone you know about these facts, it is the key to understanding why we need to replace oil for fuel, now!
I hope you’re not suggesting we extract hydrogen from the sun. A miner’s life is hard enough as it is! :)
Here’s my take on the issues you raise.
Fossil fuels: energy in < < energy out. The equation is extraction only, the fossilization process is not on the oil companies' balance sheet in any way. If we had to fossilize organic matter into oil, then your point about the millions of years would be accurate, but we don't. We build relatively simple machines which are themselves powered by oil to pump out of the ground in a few decades what took the earth millions of years to store.
Hydrogen is energy in > energy out simply by the laws of physics that govern molecular structure. You should realize that molecular hydrogen does not exist on this planet because it can slip through any hole larger than a small molecule and escape the earth’s gravity. That brings up the the leaky storage problem. Currently, we extract hydrogen from fossil fuels because water electrolysis is so much more expensive (the molecular bonds of water being far stronger than hydrocarbons).
Solar will help, but consider this: current world energy consumption is about 1/400 of the energy we get from the sun. Now all of this energy we use came from the sun as you pointed out, but it was built up over millions of years. So when we burn fossil fuels, we are burning millions of years of collected sunshine. To replace all that with solar would require 1/400 of the earth’s sunny-side (cross-section area, mathematically speaking) covered in solar panels with 100% transference (adjust area accordingly, currently we top out at 30%), plus additional area to cover manufacture and maintenance. You would want to build that in space for many reasons, but it is still an awful lot of panels.
The fact is, we may not have the energy available to support current consumption level growth. That is why people have been pushing for tighter efficiency standards for decades, to 1) give us more time to find an alternative, and 2) ease the transition when supply hits its ceiling, especially if we don’t find an equal alternative.
It’s not the end of the world, or the end of civilization, but you can imagine what a sudden supply ceiling would do to an economy which has not already trained itself in conservation.
In an ideal future we won’t need to burn any fossil fuel and can use it for durable goods. But getting there from here requires moving in that direction now.
I hope I’ve demonstrated that I have done some homework. All your points have been addressed, and you can read about them in peer-reviewed science journals. If you want the opinion of science as it is practiced today, I would suggest starting with http://www.nature.com because we can exchange views but at the end of the day we have to rely on real science, not our own opinions.
April 23rd, 2005 at 1:35 pmOoops the server took my math symbols to be html tags. Let me replace the first sentence of the third paragraph with this:
Fossil fuels: energy in is much less than energy out. This equation is extraction only; the fossilization process is not on the energy companies’ balance sheets. If we had to fossilize organic matter into oil, then your statement about millions of years would be accurate, but we don’t. We build relatively simple machines to extract in a few decades what took the earth millions of years to store. With hydrogen, energy in is greater than energy out simply by the laws of physics that govern …
April 23rd, 2005 at 1:41 pmTom,
Again, “The world is flat” mentality. You speak as if current knowledge is the where all be all. Same mistake they made in the Dark Ages. I read National Geographic and like all scientific puplications they have a new take on an old thought every other issue. I think in my short life time I have seen the thinking on the universe change about 30 times, and the origin of Man gets a new twist every week.
Hydrogen storage is not a problem like you state. Yes it has challenges but those have been addressed and solved a hundred and fifty years ago. Lincoln Composites can provide you with a storage tank of any size that is made of light weight carbon fibre and plastic sequestured from fossil resources. They are now using these tanks in military applications along with Honda,Toyota, GM, Hyundai, Ford, Mazda, etc. etc. Your assesment of Solar technology is based on our limited experience with the potential of technologies yet discovered. We are Babies in knowledge of energy development. Get beyond your doubts to our ability to solve these simple issues and enjoy the possibilities of human inginuity.
April 24th, 2005 at 12:41 pmUh, hydrojim, I hate to tell you this but National Geographic is not a scientific publication.
Scientific publications are peer-reviewed and credentialed. Start with Nature Magazine, it has links to other scientific journals. Unlike National Geographic and the like, real scientific journals do not have a new take every other issue.
This is a common fundamental misunderstanding of what exactly the scientific process is.
I think you’re making the same mistake the dot-com bubble people made. You assume absolutely anything is possible and rest your assumptions on technology that does not yet exist. Yes, may people once thought it was impossible to fly, and a few forward-thinking people saw the possibility, but they did not gamble the future on flight. Hydrogen cars exist, but they cost millions of dollars. Large scale production and storage is far more problematic than ordering a tank from Lincoln Composits.
And my assessment of solar technology is based on the simple energy equation. You can verify for yourself how much energy per square meter we receive from the sun. Don’t count on extracting more energy than that.
I’ll enjoy the fruits of human ingenuity that actually exist, thank you very much. Simply put, we do not have a substitute for fossil fuels right now. We need more time to develop it. We won’t have much more time if people insist on their right to burn oil as fast as they possibly can. If my small sacrifice (driving an economy car instead of a Shelby Cobra) gives my descendants a higher standard of living, I think it’s worth it.
April 25th, 2005 at 12:53 pmI think it’s telling you pull out the “world is flat” analogy when you are the one directly contradicting scientific consensus.
April 25th, 2005 at 12:54 pmTom,
Too bad we are the only two interested in this discussion but what the heck.
No where is there more ego than in the scientific community. Why can’t you guys just admit you don’t have all the answers? You don’t. But what is more disturbing is you claim to have all the answers and poison the minds of the general public with your false statements.
We do have options for fossil fuel today. We have only to implement and provide convenient access to these options. Hydrogen cars do not cost millions of dollars, we can convert conventional internal combustion engines to burn whatever fuel you would like for less than a trip to Hawaii. As a matter of fact Carol Shelby’s Hydrogen Car Co. can set you up with a 500hp Hydrogen Cobra if you would like!
Stop saying “We can’t” and “We Don’t.
We can, and we will.
The dot com guys did what regular college pranksters do, they stimulated themselves and the economy along with it. If you got caught in the wrong fish net then shame on you. Next time do your homework. But please don’t even try to compare building an American energy infrastructure with make believe artists.
More Solar energy hits this planet in one minute than we can use in a year. We will figure out how to capture what we need. STOP THE INSANITY!
April 25th, 2005 at 8:10 pmjim: first, you repeatedly ignore and brush off points made by tom. secondly, your whole argument is “we’ll figure something out before it’s too late”. there are NO viable replacements to oil that are even close to to being ready anytime in the near future. oil will have peaked 5 years from now, there’s not a doubt in my mind. i agree with you that we need to be optimistic and have hope, but i think it’s really just too damned late.
April 25th, 2005 at 11:11 pm“Why can’t you guys just admit you don’t have all the answers? You don’t.”
Read a scientific journal. That kind of admission is made all the time. Detailing what we don’t know is the most important part of the scientific process. Too bad it gets ignored by the cable news argument shows and most of the public and policy makers.
I was an optimist until Bush made it clear that oil and coal are going to be burned as fast as we can pump it. And the dumb hicks laughed at Kerry’s proposal to create a new Manhattan Project for alternative energy. At this point that is our only hope to keep ourselves from devolving back to an agrarian society. The fact is, jim, you are talking about research vehicles as if they’re rolling off the production line. Meanwhile, we live as if oil will last forever.
That Cobra you mentioned? Costs $50,000 more than a gas powered Cobra and goes 80 miles on a full tank. That’s about average.
I’d like to see you sell that on commission.
April 26th, 2005 at 12:35 pmI sense you guys are in favor but frustrated by the lack of progress and commitment on the part of our elected officials. Ask yourself if it’s them or us. Bottom line is this Hydrogen Economy that we speak of and desire is motivated not by our wishful thinking and dreams of a better future but by our wallets.
We forget how much power the consumer has in shaping our economy and our policy, television shows, music, fashion, etc. Complacency plays into the hands of those in control and we are getting played big time.
Example: This nation of consumers burns through 190 million gallons of fuel per day. At $2.50 per gallon thats 475 million American dollars per day in which 65% goes over seas, robbing our economy of cash flow. Once burned this fuel is gone. A mere 10 cent swing in price nets 19 million. You’re going to try and convince me we don,t have the capital to invest in new technology for development of non-depletable resources!?
WAKE-UP!
May 3rd, 2005 at 10:29 amIf we keep denying these technologies and talking like they don’t exist, then we send a message of victory to those who are stealing our economy and our childrens future. The truth is we have the proven technologies to produce, transport, and safely utilize hydrogen from undepletable resources today. A rapid conversion of existing internal combustion engines and othe equipment will advance this technology and inspire a new wave of human knowledge and advance society.
When we make one, it cost $1,000. When we make a thousand, it costs $1.00. Simple economics of production scale.
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