President Bush acknowledged that his administration is sending “mixed signals” on alternative energy research. That’s putting it mildly. Bush was referring to how a renewable energy laboratory he toured Tuesday in Colorado laid off 32 employees earlier this month because of lack of federal funding. But then last weekend, the Energy Department transferred $5 million back into the laboratory’s budget so that it could quickly rehire the employees before Bush’s visit. After all, it isn’t much of a photo op when there aren’t workers.
Posted by Phillip Brownlee
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21 Comments
As if the american could expect anything else? g g g g g o o o o b.b.b.u.u.u.s.s.s.s.h.h.h.h.
Brother American JM,Too true! This incident is reminiscent of MacArthur’s landing on Leyte. Once he landed, he didn’t see any reporters around. So he went back to sea and re-did the landing with swarms of photographers and reporters to take his triumphant footsteps on Philippine soil.
Unhyphenated AmericanCX
As a person with close ties to people in the energy industry I know all too well of the elimination of research into alternate sources in favor of the fossil fuel industry. As for those re-hires – I figure their jobs will be secure until November. After the next election: GOODBYE!
Ah! A company that exist only because of Government. They can’t make it on their own?
Fundamental research often must be government sponsored. Especially in view of all the subsidies given to the fossil fuel industry.
Yeah! I understand that some research needs to be funded by government.
But I thought wind, solar, and ethonal was already around and been around for decades. Does that mean that government funded research should also go to oil and the combustion engine?
It’s cool. I see really no beef in it, with the exception of the emergency money so they could hire the workers back for a photo-op. That’s a waste of government money and very wrong, but not surprising.
I was talking to a friend last night who’s parents live in Boliva. A poor third world nation. And he tells me even there they use solar energy for most of their homes, many people have conversion kits on their vechile that they can run both Gasoline and Compress Natural Gas, and a lot other diverse energy uses. But in America, he tells me why we aren’t doing it. Besides the windmill farms that barely squeek through the farmers saying its ugly and the enviromentalist saying it kills birds.
He said the most wealthist nation on earth can’t diversafy their energy uses, while most everybody is poorer countries are.
Joe, you should visit out here if you want to see the fans of windpower. Farmers, townies, big biz, little biz, are all sure that wind farms will “save” western ks. So funny in that they generate about 1 job for every 2 turbines.
The only ones making money on windfarms are the FEW farmers who lease land for turbines. I dont know if the operators are even making money yet.
Wind farms are good for generating alternative energy, but they are not great for economic development. Kinda like chicken soup, they dont hurt anything out here, since tourist traffic is so slow….lololololol. But they dont hold much promise in the west for new money coming in or for job creation.
Since we are so willing to jump on even the tiniest spark of false hope out here, western ks may as well start recruiting lead smelters and toxic waste dumps. No humans no harm, right? Except to the water.
Western kansas could be the host for wind tubines, if we only had a market for the power and if we only had transmission lines. Sadly, we have neither in western ks.
But by all means, people out here should look to wind for economic development. BWHAHAHAHAAHA
Joe – solar needs a lot of work to get it where it needs to be. So does battery technology which is needed to harness many of these alternate energies.
Natural gas for cars etc is NOT the answer – that will create more problems than it will solve. Or have you not noticed the spike in natural gas prices?
ksgirl – while the wind farms won’t necessarily create all that many jobs it’s better than nothing. And, it also produces lease payments to the landowner helping him hold onto his land. He can then spend that money in the small towns out there. Wind power is a winner for west KS.
I agree with Ben on wind power being a winner for western KS. When I lived out there the winds were routinely so high, that I often had white-caps in my toilet bowl. Would be a shame to let that energy go to waste.
Ben, I dont disagree that wind power is a good thing. I think I said so. But if you were out here to hear the talk, they get one damn idea in their heads and they think that is the magic bullet.
Only a few landowners, not necessarily residents, get lease money. There is no incentive to spend the money locally. Of course they may spend it where they wish. The jobs created per dollar of investment are not as high as other types of e.d.
We have few of the appropriate transmission lines out here, and I wonder who will pay for the construction of the needed lines. And while I am not a scientist :) I think southwest ks has the “best” wind, not nw ks.
All that is not to say that wind power isnt a good thing. It should be pursued because it is good energy policy, not because of the jobs or investments it creates in rural ks. Those are minimal.
No one out here should get carried away and think all their economic development efforts should go to wind or ethanol. Unfortunately, that is what happens.
Too many people out here are like starving dogs. Throw ‘em a scrap, and they start howling and focusing on the scrap, and they stop looking for the steak that might lie elsewhere.
My post was really meant to shed some light on the foolish way e.d. is practiced in n.w. kansas, not to whiz on wind power as an alternative source of energy.
DD, it is my understanding that all wind is not created equal for the purposes of generating power. The fact that we have high winds is not as important as the consistancy, and some other factors.
I should have made a distinction between nw and sw ks. The current sw ks turbines were placed to take advantage of an accelerator ridge, and we dont seem to have many of those in nw ks. That is why I made the comment about “best” wind.
There are charts available to show the suitability of wind for power, and most of the good spots are not in nw ks. We may have some spots when the good ones are all taken, but despite our lack of population, we are not an ideal spot according to those placing the turbines.
“…I lived out there the winds were routinely so high, that I often had white-caps in my toilet bowl.”–DD
DD, I think you thought we said “breaking” when we were talking about taking. Wind, that is.
(Beano!)
:)
ks-girl – I agree that there is no magic bullet – that should be obvious from my posts. I favor wind as a piece of the solution to which I also add solar, efficiency, conservation, and “swords-to-plowshares” nuclear.
agreed ben!!
Solar has come a long way already. There is a New Mexico company that is in the final design stages of a solar thermal generator that when fully implemented and operational will be able to provide power for 750K homes (I believe that was the number). The story is in the December issue of Design. Here is a link to the company but I’m not able to find the link to the specific project. I’ll look for it tomorrow at work (that is where the magazine is).
http://www.stirlingenergy.com/default.asp
Brother American BH,I’ve been meaning to ask you this for awhile now: What is a cleaner fuel to be used in cars? EA5-Ethynol or Hydrogen fuel cells?
Ethanol actually takes more energy than it produces. Although I don’t think we should try or do more research to have it more viable a an energy source, but for right now, it’s a farm program for subsidized farmers.
Hydrogen is in the same boat. The production of hydrogen is still a bit expensive and it pollutes more than dino juice refining. The burning of hydrogen is clean, but the production is not.
More research and technology is still needed.
Hate to say it, but oil is just too cheap, even at speculative levels it is at now. But we must diversify our energy sources or we will be hurting.
The point of the blog was The bush Admininstartion hypocrisy as related to alternative fuels. Workers magically rehired to do a photo op with the pResident. You know, so it looks like he is all serious about this.
I bet those workers don’t keep their jobs past the end of a few weeks. The photo op being over, it’sback to biz as usual.
“…I lived out there the winds were routinely so high, that I often had white-caps in my toilet bowl.”–DD
“DD, I think you thought we said “breaking” when we were talking about taking. Wind, that is.
“(Beano!)
“:)”
Good one! LOL
I work in the Plant Science building here, and a few floors down some researchers are working on ways to harness the ethanol production of Anabaena, a cyanobacterium.Interesting stuff.If we could make that cost efficient, everyone wins (except for the poor cyanobacteria).
Boy, Bush sure looks like a dork in the hard hat and glasses.
You get the feeling this guy doesn’t know a hammer handle from his elbow . . .