Dear Editors:
There is truth to the fact we are seeking out high-polluting fossil fuels, as we face the world dilemmas. No argument from me on this score.
As an educator and librarian for some 40 years, my ideas are to learn from the history as to how we got to this point of feeling helpless due to fossil fuels and going to our supplies which are kept in reserve. Of those 40 years, I worked 11 years as a research librarian in an energy-related utility. This nation has gone to lawyers making money and gotten rid of the research librarians with whom I worked in the 1980s and 1990s. How sad when considering information about what is happening, as posted by the Energy Information Administration, an organization upon which we relied upon data in the period of time to which I refer, while doing energy research.
The downfall of what we were doing during that period of time was instigated by scientists at MIT who refuse to believe there is a problem with global warming. Their chickens are coming home to roost now, as we consider the dilemma today. What a shame.
The R&D efforts of the corporation for which I worked, along with scientists at universities such as University of Florida, were all destroyed. May I remind people that the word, “destroy,” is frequently used by the Hitler-type Nazi plutocratic supply-siders today.
I lost my job, while high-paid lawyers were not laid off at that corporation. The head of R&D was laid off, even as he promoted the ideas from the Electric Power Research Institute (and U. of Florida) for researching hydrogen as a power source, fuel cells, and something called cold fusion. All gone and funding for such research pulled out. Granted, cold fusion needed more research and ingenuity. Americans have proven to be able to “build the better mousetrap” in the past. But the funding to do it was blocked. There were those who proclaimed that cold fusion, opposite to nuclear power, could have had as an output, water. However, in those days, it yielded only about a thimble full of water from the vast amounts put into it. MIT claimed, as Einstein was attacked, “it goes against the laws of physics.” The detractors, like the 19th-Century NY Governor Clinton detractors of his “ditch,” scoffed at there being any chance of anything developing. The projects were abandoned.
More recently, President George W. Bush proclaimed that the use of switch grass could produce fuels which have lower pollution levels. Biomass production. Where is it? There were possibilities for such projects, but none developed. The fermentation of switch grass is a quicker process than many plant-based fermentation and could have been developed so as to improve the wastes released from burning the fuels. Where are they today? Do we see them? And let me say that there were a number of issues from George W. Bush which I did not agree. But that one stands out as having been more promising.
Instead, we have developed more solar and wind power for the benefit of electric utilities, not for the benefit of weaning the consumer of the utility umbilical cord, as promised by the lousy deregulation folks in the 1990s, so as to assuage the feelings of those of us being laid off. We have had a big effort to form supply-side economics with M&A of electric utilities into huge corporate conglomerates, as they moved to solar and wind power under the CONTROL of the deregulated M&A companies formed by deregulation. Thus, the EIA statistics and the Rice University Public Policy Institute statistics give us a grim reminder about our reliance on fossil fuels, as Russia invades Ukraine.
Is it too late to learn from the perversions I describe in the history of energy development? I believe there is. But it takes a village to insist we do it, not my voice alone. Has the “village” been lost or is it still ready to be tapped?
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Call it a carbon comeback? Really?
Dear Editors:
There is truth to the fact we are seeking out high-polluting fossil fuels, as we face the world dilemmas. No argument from me on this score.
As an educator and librarian for some 40 years, my ideas are to learn from the history as to how we got to this point of feeling helpless due to fossil fuels and going to our supplies which are kept in reserve. Of those 40 years, I worked 11 years as a research librarian in an energy-related utility. This nation has gone to lawyers making money and gotten rid of the research librarians with whom I worked in the 1980s and 1990s. How sad when considering information about what is happening, as posted by the Energy Information Administration, an organization upon which we relied upon data in the period of time to which I refer, while doing energy research.
The downfall of what we were doing during that period of time was instigated by scientists at MIT who refuse to believe there is a problem with global warming. Their chickens are coming home to roost now, as we consider the dilemma today. What a shame.
The R&D efforts of the corporation for which I worked, along with scientists at universities such as University of Florida, were all destroyed. May I remind people that the word, “destroy,” is frequently used by the Hitler-type Nazi plutocratic supply-siders today.
I lost my job, while high-paid lawyers were not laid off at that corporation. The head of R&D was laid off, even as he promoted the ideas from the Electric Power Research Institute (and U. of Florida) for researching hydrogen as a power source, fuel cells, and something called cold fusion. All gone and funding for such research pulled out. Granted, cold fusion needed more research and ingenuity. Americans have proven to be able to “build the better mousetrap” in the past. But the funding to do it was blocked. There were those who proclaimed that cold fusion, opposite to nuclear power, could have had as an output, water. However, in those days, it yielded only about a thimble full of water from the vast amounts put into it. MIT claimed, as Einstein was attacked, “it goes against the laws of physics.” The detractors, like the 19th-Century NY Governor Clinton detractors of his “ditch,” scoffed at there being any chance of anything developing. The projects were abandoned.
More recently, President George W. Bush proclaimed that the use of switch grass could produce fuels which have lower pollution levels. Biomass production. Where is it? There were possibilities for such projects, but none developed. The fermentation of switch grass is a quicker process than many plant-based fermentation and could have been developed so as to improve the wastes released from burning the fuels. Where are they today? Do we see them? And let me say that there were a number of issues from George W. Bush which I did not agree. But that one stands out as having been more promising.
Instead, we have developed more solar and wind power for the benefit of electric utilities, not for the benefit of weaning the consumer of the utility umbilical cord, as promised by the lousy deregulation folks in the 1990s, so as to assuage the feelings of those of us being laid off. We have had a big effort to form supply-side economics with M&A of electric utilities into huge corporate conglomerates, as they moved to solar and wind power under the CONTROL of the deregulated M&A companies formed by deregulation. Thus, the EIA statistics and the Rice University Public Policy Institute statistics give us a grim reminder about our reliance on fossil fuels, as Russia invades Ukraine.
Is it too late to learn from the perversions I describe in the history of energy development? I believe there is. But it takes a village to insist we do it, not my voice alone. Has the “village” been lost or is it still ready to be tapped?
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