New Alaska Coal Fired Power Plant

 Maybe it's only an example of how things work now but the Feds are giving the University of Alaska-Fairbanks $9 million to fund the research into the development of a coal-fired power house with an integrated CCS system and pipeline project to move the liquid CO2. 

Analyzing this sort of transaction reveals an interesting sequence of events in US technological progress. 

First of all, in defiance of the tenets of capitalism the federal government determines what research, from the many possible, are within its domain. Theoretically, if society was genuinely interested in "clean" energy production without the externality of the production of undesirable gases, that demand would be an incentive for private entities to finance and carry out the research, development and installation of the necessary facilities. Apparently this is not the case. Historically, the private national railroad system was financially encouraged by the federal government. It wasn't a given that the postal system should be a government monopoly but so it is, although now in an abbreviated form. The telephone network could have easily been a national project but it's not, even though both the post office and the telephone system were substantially designed by the same person, Theodore Newton Vail. The Interstate Highway System, encouraged by Eisenhower as a necessity for national defense, is a federal project carried out by private contractors. Electrical power and automobile production have been heavily regulated by the federal government but remain in the hands of corporations, although one could make the case that the tax and regulatory position of the government makes it a co-owner.

The federal government, through its bureaucracies, steers research that takes place in academia. In the case of CAGW the research financed by government and the population through taxes already assumes that climate change produced by fossil fuels is a fact. If this is true, what more research into its validity is needed? Of course, there isn't any. The only research needed now is in the most effective way to replace reliable fossil fuels with renewables. 

Perhaps one could make the case that showering funds on research into renewable energy among a host of academic institutions is most likely to produce the technology needed. This would be a new approach to previous efforts. An example would be the Manhattan Project, a concerted effort by the defense department itself to develop an atomic bomb. While sequestering CO2 is different than blowing people to smithereens, it seems to have a similar existential role. 

Since academia is to be the focus of the CAGW issue, what is its function? There are 2 divisions of the function. One is research into the physics of the problem itself, which is delineated in research from over 100 years ago by Swedish savant Svante Herrenius, who, among others, promoted the connection between CO2 and a warming climate. No further research seems to have changed anything in his analysis. The second function would be the design of the equipment needed to address the problem. This is an engineering task, using established physics,chemistry and materials science to create that equipment. Companies that make similar equipment hire educated engineers to design it, then they build it. It's no longer the role of academia. 

Portions of society may feel that awarding millions of dollars to research universities to solve engineering problems makes sense. It doesn't because that's not the role of universities, which is primarily education and secondarily research. It isn't applications engineering. An expensive mistake is being made in the attempted elimination of fossil fuels.    

2220 Megawatts of Reliable Power Going Away

Xcel Energy is shutting down one of its existing coal-fired generators at the Sherco Generating Station in Becker, MN on the last day of the year. According to the schedule, all three will be history by 2030, replaced in the future by 3250 acres covered with a million solar panels now under construction. They will feed power into an array of batteries capable of storing 10 megawatts of power every 100 hours on a 10 acre site.

The switch from coal-fired electricity to its solar replacement doesn't seem to have generated much controversy since the move is meant to arrest the by-product, increased atmospheric CO2, which is deemed to be the cause of the ongoing climate crisis.  

 

Missile Cancer

 

 

malmstrom.af.mil 

After over 70 years of maintaining the operational capability of the ICBMs on the northern plains of the US, the Air Force is investigating the possibility that personnel assigned to the task may have an increased incident of cancer. Thought to be due to their proximity to radioactive materials, the Air Force is surveying missile silos and related sights for fissile materials that could be the source. So far nothing has been discovered except PCB contamination. 

The investigation is taking place at the three sites where underground missile silos are located: near Malmstrom AFB in Montana, Minot AFB in North Dakota, and F. E. Warren AFB in Wyoming.

The procedures required in maintaining nuclear weapons are, of course, very detailed and rigorous. It seems unlikely that personnel would be exposed to a greater level of radioactivity than workers at civilian nuclear generating stations but who knows?  

More Discouragement For CO2 Pipeline Profiteers Update

 South Dakota is a place with a rural outlook on life. While one of the leading manufacturers of immense arena scoreboards, Daktronics, is located in small city Brookings and Ellsworth Air Force Base protects the country from its position northwest of Rapid City, most of the rest of the state is dedicated to agriculture. The people are hard-working and self-reliant by necessity. They are happy to adopt technological improvements that increase crop yields and make farming more successful. The corn they grow is not only feed for the premium beef enjoyed by Americans but also the feed stock for the ethanol plants fermenting the corn into a required gasoline additive.

Part of the ethanol production process also involves the production of gaseous CO2, as it does with any fermentation. Presently almost all of this benign gas is exhausted into the atmosphere. According to some researchers this CO2 is a major component of AGW, climate change, all  421 parts per million in the skies above. While there's controversy over the reality and importance of this belief, academic research says it is so and government implements and subsidizes programs advocated by academe and business as remedies.

Companies enthralled with the subsidized opportunity to obtain the CO2 from ethanol plants and moving it to a spot where it can be sequestered far beneath the surface are running into trouble because the thousands of miles of pipelines required to do this aren't permitted by South Dakota regulators and are unpopular with landowners. Navigator Heartland Greenway LLC's application for building CO2 pipelines in that state failed to get regulatory approval. The sane people in North Dakota have rejected the plans of Summit Carbon Solutions for a similar project. 

Don't expect these CO2 pirates to give up easily. There are ways to get things done when big bucks are involved. Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska are targets as well.

-----------------------------------------------

Summit Carbon Solutions has announced that they've acquired 80% of the needed North Dakota easements for their 2000 mile project tying 32 ethanol plants to an underground storage site northwest of Bismarck, ND.

 

 

Summit's project appears to be limited to the movement of the liquified C02 from the ethanol plant to its ultimate destination, the deep permanent storage site in North Dakota. Originally scheduled for operation in 2024 the legalities of the land easements might have caused a delay. There's also been no mention of the facilities needed at each plant for compressing the CO2 gas into a liquid form, if construction has already taken place, who was or is responsible for it and how the liquid CO2 will be staged through the pipeline system. 

Brightline West Won't Produce 400,000 Tons of CO2

 

applevalley.org

The machinery is in place for the construction of Brightline West, a high-speed train running down the right-of-way of I-15 between Rancho Cucamonga, CA and Las Vegas, NV. This article in the Orange County Register takes a skeptical view of the project from a variety of angles, particularly the financing, which is typical, private entities cash the checks initially, the public pays for failures later. 

Meant to replace the substantial automobile traffic between SoCal and Sin City, the electric-powered private railroad won't produce the 400,000 tons of CO2 annually that moving the same number of people by car would. This is because the juice used to propel the train would be generated by "renewable" fossil fuel free means. In addition to the required track infrastructure, that of the renewable energy sources will need to be built as well. Travel time one way is supposed to be a little over 2 hours but there's no guarantee that travelers will foresake their cars, even EVs, to ride the Brightline West.

There's already a privately owned Brightline train running between Orlando and Miami with 5 stops in between. Currently a round trip ticket between the 2 costs $208 for the economy version and $298 for the luxury voyage of about 7 hours both ways.  Unlike the planned California trains the Florida Brightlines are powered by Siemens Charger SCB-40 diesel electric engines.     

 

 

The University Man

". . .the truly individualist and entrepreneurial scene today is the university. Having long enjoyed a bureaucratic haven from the individualist anarchy of commerce, the university man is becoming aggressively non-conformist. His intense book training makes this easy for him. But he has previously held back out of an instinctive sense of his authentic role. Today sparked by private grants from the big collective foundations the professor is able to function as a figure of private initiative and as an employee of labor. Today, in a word, the professor is about to assume the individualist role relinquished by the business community. Private enterprise having whirled itself in a new collective way with long-term goals. It is prepared to use its vast funds to subsidize the very individualism which it has outgrown."

Marshall McLuhan, Explorations, 1967, Something Else Press, Inc. New York

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When he wrote these words McLuhan hadn't experienced the still growing feminism of academia, which has added another dimension to the changing relationship between the business community and higher education.   

Glauconite

 Sadly, glauconite is found in some of the areas where offshore wind turbine installations have been planned in the northeastern US. It turns out the substance makes it impossible to correctly install the pilings that support the giant wind turbines that are to eventually supply the renewable energy for portions of New England. The presence of the mineral has made some parts of existing leases unusable for that purpose. Three of the 19 leases, Empire Wind, Sunrise Wind and Beacon Wind. all contain areas of glauconite. Equinor, a state-owned international energy firm headquartered in Stavanger, Norway, holds the leases on Empire Wind and Beacon Wind. Sunrise Wind is a project of Ørsted, the world's largest developer of offshore wind turbine installations in terms of numbers. They are located in Denmark.

Fisherman's associations and government agencies have had reservations about turbine siting in the area for a number of reasons. The glauconite issue has led to a smaller number of proposed turbines in the known affected areas but the details of the investigations made by the companies themselves have not been released.

Originally, Empire Wind was to supply 2.1 GW of power from 130 turbines and supply electricity to a million homes. Beacon Wind's production was planned to be 1230 MW and Sunrise 924 MW. Of course that's when the wind is blowing with sufficient intensity.

German Greens Retreat Before Farmer Wrath

The German federal budget is in a pickle with farmers over €60 million earmarked for Covid purposes. Not having spent the funds for their original purpose the government had planned on using some of them for continuing the subsidies on farmers' diesel fuel and tax breaks for equipment purchases. The German constitutional court decreed that the government couldn't make this move, leaving them with an immense hole in their budget and an inability to continue the subsidies and tax breaks.

 yahoo.com 

Unhappy farmers have converged on Berlin, tying up the streets with farm equipment. 

There's been an attempt in Germany and many other places in Europe to tie agriculture to the existential climate crisis, including aspects of this example. There have been farmer protests in the Netherlands, Poland, Italy and other countries. In as much as food is the most basic and essential need of every  organism, that realization may have an impact on at least part of the multi-faceted existential climate crisis.  

How Smart Is Your Dog?

 

youtube.com 

The close bond between humans and canines is very much reinforced by the fact that dogs are considered to be more intelligent than other common domestic animals like cats, guinea pigs, canaries and betas. This is probably true but what does it mean?

Dogs seem to have a large range of intelligence across the specie. Some appear bright, others less so. How is this determined? Ordinarily, a dog that can be trained to follow commands is thought to be more intelligent than one that ignores instruction. A dog that delivers the paper or hunts down an escaped convict is more intelligent than one that spends most of its time on the couch. Of course, nowadays few dogs even have the opportunity to fetch a newspaper but if they did would it be evidence of intelligence? Most dog owners would think so. But they might be wrong.

Dogs that are easily trained to do simple tasks might not be as clever as dogs that refuse. Perhaps following the instructions of a master isn't indicative of the sophisticated thinking that humans see as intelligence. A dog that walks away and lays down after its owner throws a ball across the lawn has his own priorities that don't include chasing balls. He may know through experience that later there will be a strange substance in his dish that he's come to recognize as food even if he fails to retrieve the ball. Would that make him stupid?

If there's even a germ of reality in this analysis it could be extended to other common animals, humans for instance. Infant males and females are trained from birth to do some things and refrain from others. If they quickly adopt those standards they're considered more intelligent than others that need a longer toilet training regimen or take their time learning to read. While parents and neighbors are happy to see children adopt the routines of their culture, it might not mean all that much in the intelligence of later life, however it might be described. If it's described as being able to follow orders and conform to established standards then some bright people are being held to the same standards as pets. A case could be made that the educational system is just that, a mechanism for training rather than education. A production of uniformity rather than a development of the unique assets of each individual. 

Harvard Economics

  new york post 

COP 28, What Was The Result?

Today, Wednesday, December 13, 2023, is the last scheduled day of the COP 28 convention of climate Cassandras in Dubai. There is some dissatisfaction among the attendees that an immediate end to the use of fossil fuels and a transfer of wealth to the developing global south didn't take place.

UN Secretary General Antonio Gutteres said: "Many vulnerable countries are drowning in debt and at risk of drowning in rising seas. It is time for a surge in finance, including for adaptation, loss and damage and reform of the international financial architecture.”

 

 

 polityka.pl

While many financial numbers related to contributions were enumerated in the talks, there didn't seem to be any details on how these funds would be applied to the problem of climate change or how whatever success in preventing floods, droughts and wild fires was to be measured.

US government figures at the COP 28 included special climate guy John Kerry and Vice President Kamala Harris, as well as:

Alice Albright, CEO, Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC)

Rostin Behnam, Chairman, U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC)

Antony Blinken, Secretary of State, Department of State (DoS)

Deanne Criswell, Administrator, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)

Enoh Ebong, Director, United States Trade and Development Agency (USTDA)

Amos Hochstein, Senior Advisor for Energy and Investment, White House

Jennifer Klein, Assistant to the President and Director of the White House Gender Policy Council (GPC)

Reta Jo Lewis, Chair, Export-Import Bank (EXIM)

Brenda Mallory, Chair, White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ)

Scott Nathan, CEO, U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC)

C. William Nelson, Administrator, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)

John Podesta, Senior Advisor to the President for Clean Energy Innovation and Implementation, White House

Samantha Power, Administrator, U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)

Michael Regan, Administrator, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)

Richard Spinrad, Administrator, U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

Thomas James Vilsack, Secretary, Department of Agriculture (USDA)

Shalanda Young, Director, Office of Management and Budget (OMB)

Ali Zaidi, National Climate Advisor, White House

 

Many US universities sent delegations to the COP 28 meetings. The University of Minnesota was represented by 14 delegates. The University of Pennsylvania sent 24 delegates. Sixteen students and a faculty adviser from the University of Michigan attended the affair. Over a dozen Harvard faculty members made the trip to Dubai.

They, and many others, are committed to the abandonment of fossil fuels before the earth becomes uninhabitable.

The disappointment of the COP 28 representatives was probably inevitable in that it isn't possible for the confab to force the biggest users of fossil fuels to destroy their own economies on the basis of dubious science. 

Overlapping the COP 28 was the Egyptian Defense Expo outside of Cairo. It had roughly half the attendance of the Dubai celebration and the products exhibited were based on scientifically proven principles. 

 

World's First Generation 4 Nuclear Plant Goes On-line in China

Shidaowan, a new nuclear reactor over 20 years in development and construction has begun producing power in eastern China's Shandong province.

 

 

photo: Weibo/CPNN 

The significance of this event is that the design uses helium gas to cool the reactor rather than water and if the concept works it will enable similar reactors to be built in places without the water resources that have been required in previous designs. In addition, designers state that melt-downs can't occur in the Shidaowan plant.   

Using Averages To Predict The Future

The first paragraph in an article from physics.org:

 "Researchers from institutions including the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory have created a new method for statistically analyzing climate models that projects future conditions with more fidelity."

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 "We don't judge models individually," said Elias Massoud, a computational ecohydrologist at ORNL. "Instead, we see how they can be put together, using their combined information to get projections of the future." 

A federal agency combines predictions of the future to arrive at a more accurate prediction than that of any one individual prediction. This will increase the "fidelity" of their own predictions. Since no one can currently assure us of the details of the climate future, that fidelity can't be measured at this time, regardless of the methodology used.

Certainly if a very large number of predictions are included in the study, perhaps all possible outcomes, a small number of them may be accurate. Those can't be determined until future conditions become present, or even better, past conditions. The ORNL study is a Bayesian one, using posterior data in a statistical format to arrive at an outcome. If it was that simple we could all be rich.  

A Few Words From Marshall McLuhan

   Any innovation threatens the equilibrium of existing organization. In big industry new ideas are invited to rear their heads so that they can be clobbered at once. The idea department of a big firm is a sort of lab for isolating dangerous viruses. When one is found, it is assigned to a group for neutralizing and immunizing treatment. It is comical, therefore, when anybody applies to a big corporation with a new idea hat would result in a great "increase of production and sales." Such an increase would be disaster for the existing management. They would have to make way for new management. Therefore, no new idea ever starts from within a big operation. It must assail the organization from outside, through some small but competing organization. In the same way, the outering or extension of our bodies and senses in a "new invention" compels the whole of our bodies and senses to shift into new positions in order to maintain equilibrium. A new "closure" is effected in all our organs and senses, both private and public, by any new invention. Sight and sound assume new postures, as do all the other faculties. With the telegraph, the entire method, both of gathering and of presenting news, was revolutionized. Naturally, the effects on language and on literary style and subject matter were spectacular.

   In the same year, 1844, then, that men were playing chess and lotteries on the first American telegraph, Soren Kierkegaard published The Concept of Dread. The Age of Anxiety had begun. For with the telegraph, man had initiated that outering or extension of his central nervous system that is now approaching an extension of consciousness with satellite broadcasting. To put one's nerves outside, and one's physical organs inside the nervous system or the brain, is to initiate a situation-if not a concept-of dread.

Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, The Extensions of Man, 1998, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 251-252.    

What Plato Thought About Education

"Shall we simply allow our children to listen  to any stories that anyone happens to make up, and so to receive into their minds ideas often the very opposite of those we shall think they ought to have when they are grown up? No, certainly not. It seems, then, our first business will be to supervise the making of fables and legends, rejecting all which are unsatisfactory; and we shall induce nurses and mothers to tell their children only those which we have approved, and to think more of molding their souls with these stories  than they now do of rubbing their limbs to make them strong and shapely."

Plato, Republic, 377, English trans., by F. M. Cornford (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1941) p. 67 

Diplomacy

 

 

 

Reuters

Sustainable Aviation Fuels

Sustainable aviation fuel is made of used cooking oil, waste animal fat, and a small amount of synthetic kerosene made from waste corn. 

On November 28 a Virgin Atlantic Boeing 787 with two Rolls-Royce Trent 1000 engines flew from London to New York in about 8 hours powered entirely by SAF. While the SAF is three to five times more expensive than ordinary JP-4 the flight was apparently meant to prove a point, that it's possible to eliminate the 2-3% of atmospheric CO2 produced through commercial aviation by using the filtered grease that once cooked french fries and fish filets.

 

 aviationnewsource.com

One of the most important aspects of commercial jet engine design has been fuel economy, engines must use the minimum amount of fuel to get from point A to point B. This line of thinking has been suspended to mollify the climate paranoids until passenger aircraft are powered by batteries or some other revolutionary process. 

  

Far North Wind Turbines

 

                       adn.com

 

Doyon Drilling, an Alaska Northslope oil development company, has installed two wind turbines to augment the diesel generators that have supplied power to contractors at Prudhoe Bay since activity began there in the 1960s. 

" Based on historical wind data, the turbines have an estimated daily output of 1,440 kilowatt-hours. That’s equivalent to burning about 100 gallons of diesel fuel, Doyon said."

While that doesn't seem very significant, if there's any place where wind turbines might make a smidgen of economic sense it would be at Prudhoe Bay. The harsh elements of the area will put the equipment to the test and information gathered will be useful in later projects, should they be undertaken. 

The BBC And Sea Level Rise In Miami

The BBC, having an undeserved reputation for honesty and good sense in the US that it has never enjoyed in its own country, has published a story that is actually funny in its misperception.

The article is about the increase in rents in the Miami, Florida area due to sea level rise. It seems that developers are buying up property inland from lower lying Miami beach areas, raising the rents of the impoverished residents and destroying a unique culture in the Little Haiti area.

Miami, perhaps the financial capital of Latin America, is itself an interesting and exciting urban landscape on the sea that attracts people from all over the world. There is a demand for the property there. But the city is located on the Atlantic Ocean. If property is to be developed there, it will happen further inland rather than on the ocean. And, as is usually the case, the elevation further inland is higher than it is on the shore. Since the beach area is already developed with new high-rise condominiums and apartments, any further construction will take place to the west, regardless of elevation. 

The demand for this property means its price will increase, about as simple as economics can be. This is a fact everywhere, not just in locations that are supposedly scheduled to sink beneath the waves. If the current residents of Little Haiti are unable or unwilling to pay the rent or purchase the property they will, like others in similar circumstances, be forced to move to less desirable locations. Climate change and rising sea levels, even if true, have nothing to do with it. This is another example of the BBC, like other established media, promoting the existential threat of climate change through "climate pornography" rather than genuine science.  

What The Energy Transition Means For The Country

brookings.edu

The misguided effort to transition the US economy away from fossil fuels to renewable electricity generation via wind turbines, solar  panels and green hydrogen along with carbon capture and sequestration will, even if physically successful, cause an incredible drop in the US standard of living and a monstrous decline in economic activity.

This is because literally trillions of dollars in wealth will need to be transferred to those making changes in energy production to what will inevitably be more expensive on a daily basis. Everything will become more expensive and there will be less money available for consumer purchases because family discretionary budgets will be decimated by energy costs. Fewer clothes dryers, crock pots, football tickets, bottles of tequila, condoms, dental services, on-line newspaper subscriptions, flash lights and used cars will be sold because money will have been diverted to erecting offshore wind turbines and fields of solar panels. Such an event is known as a depression. 

The mystery here is how the guys that actually run things, the upper level of the business community, can allow this to take place, since it will be a catastrophe for them as well as the proles. In a consumer society there must be enthusiastic consumers whose purchases turn the gears of commerce. Money must have volatility, it must change hands on a daily basis. Borrowing and credit cards won't make up for acres of solar panels bought with more taxes and higher electric rates. It will be interesting to see if there are riots by local chambers of commerce in the months to come.      

The Growth of Science in Society

"...the principle of mutual authority. It consists in the fact that scientists keep watch over each other; each scientist is both subject to criticism by others and is encouraged by their appreciation. This is how scientific opinion is formed, both enforcing scientific standards and regulating the distribution of professional opportunities and research grants. Naturally, only fellow scientists working in closely related fields are competent to exercise authority over each other; but their restricted fields form chains of overlapping neighborhoods extending over the entire range of sciences.

Thus a an indirect consensus is formed between scientists so far apart  that they could not understand more than a small part of each other's subjects. It is enough that the standards of plausibility and worthwhileness be equal around every single point for this will keep them equal over all the sciences. Scientists from the most distant branches of science will rely then on each other's results and will blindly support each other against any laymen seriously challenging a scientist's professional authority.

This is the way the scientific community is organized. These are the grounds on which science rests. This is the way in which discoveries are made. Science is governed by common beliefs, by values and practices transmitted to succeeding generations. Each new independent member of the scientific community adheres to this tradition, assuming at the same time the responsibility shared by all members for re-interpreting the tradition and, possibly, revolutionizing its teachings."

Michael Polanyi, The Growth of Science in Society, Knowing and Being, pg 84-85, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637.

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The renowned Polanyi wrote those words in 1967. While there may have been an element of truth in his statement then perhaps there have been some changes in the 56 years that have elapsed since that simpler time. For instance, computer models intended to predict future conditions in complex, little understood systems, are evidently accepted across portions of the scientific community, the indirect consensus, and that acceptance has spread to the mass media and large elements of the population who are not members of the scientific community. While there is strong disagreement about a number of scientific conclusions within the pertinent scientific community engaged in a particular field, media, government and business seem to embrace the ones that appear to have the most potential for their own financial rewards without considering the economic ramifications for the rest of society. There's little  genuine risk-reward analysis of various scenarios. 

The mutual authority that Polanyi talked about is aware of the funding available for research and the competition among research institutions for those funds. In fact, they are among the competitors for that funding. It is in their financial interest to skew scientific debate in favor of continuing research in ephemeral problems for which there is no solution.  

      

Climate Change Propaganda

 

 

An interesting article from the BBC homepage tells us about the problems of climate change propaganda, why images of polar bears are no longer considered the best ones to illustrate how the earth is being consumed by heat. What's of interest is that a website for the enlightenment of the general public has exposed how the perceptions of that same public are manipulated by special interests. 

"On the one hand, polar bear images can be a compelling tool to inspire donations from sympathetic audiences, says Pritchard. Similar to the panda, which became a beloved symbol for nature conservation and the mascot for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in 1961, the polar bear became a hallmark for a world people wanted to protect."

Of course the people most interested in protecting the polar bear are the least likely to ever lay an eye on one. There are humans that have a reasonable chance of encountering a polar bear in their daily rounds. They sensibly try to avoid such a thing. If polar bears, or pandas, were wandering down suburban alleys, turning over waste bins and lunching on pet cockapoos there would be a bounty program on them. The reason that people are worried about their future is that they actually know little about them and never encounter them. Other wild animals that are occasionally seen in populated areas are regarded as a threat. 

So the climate change propagandists are changing their focus from bears above the Arctic Circle to people near the Equator. 

A company called Climate Visuals supplies the images needed in the new propaganda. The visuals may not exactly correspond to the issues presented but that isn't any more important than the graphics used to market soap or breakfest food. The operation is a sales job.

   "Telling new stories is also a key principle. "There's an issue with image fatigue. A lot of people will be familiar with polar bear images," says Johnstone. Moving away from tired images is a chance to offer hope. "If you marry emotionally powerful images with solutions-based photography, people have a more detailed connection to the image," he adds."

In other words, he's talking about "climate porn". 

Conspiracy Theories

Conspiracy

Merriam-Webster

1. The act of conspiring together

2. a. An agreement among conspirators

    b. A group of conspirators

  Conspiracy Theory

Merriam-Webster:  a theory that explains an event or set of circumstances as the result of a secret plot by usually powerful conspirators

 

The definitions of "conspiracy" aren't theories. Each is a noun indicating a fact. The definition of "conspiracy theory" would require a further definition of theory, per Merriam-Webster: 

3. a. a hypothesis assumed for the sake of argument or  investigation

   b. an unproved assumption

   c. a body of theorems presenting a concise,    systematic view of a subject

 

Conspirator

Merriam-Webster: one who conspires

 

The key word in these definitions is "secret". Conspirators are simply involved in a conspiracy, acting together to produce an event or set of circumstances. Putting conspiracy and secret together produces an undeserved negative connotation. Many activities in society are performed by groups with unclear agendas, in private and public. Does that make them conspiracies? Perhaps not in a semantic sense. Corporations jealously withhold tactics and goals, designs, recipes and procedures; demanding secrecy of all pertinent employees. Governments are especially fond of secrets, agencies keeping information from other parts of government as well their subjects and rivals. The CIA, NSA, FBI and other acronymical offices function on secrets. Are they conspiracies and is regarding them as such "conspiracy theory"? Not generally. The classification of information as to its accessibility is considered necessary and normal in those circumstances. Revealing them can be a life-changing experience. Ask Julian Assange or Edward Snowden.

What other groups hoard or conceal information or perhaps even alter it to suit their own purposes? Is it an unprovable theory that a group whose members are closely aligned in their goals may be selective or false in the information they advance as truth? Is the use of propaganda indicative of conspiracy? At what point do the actual theories, unproven, advanced by a group become conspiracies?

Considering the international fraud of anthropogenic climate change and its remedies as a conspiracy is generally regarded as preposterous. The situation itself has been advanced by elements of the academic scientific community, a group with enormous prestige and credibility. The media has used their findings to increase digital clicks. Government at every level has seen the opportunity to increase their power. Business has jumped on findings of academia to develop new and expensive approaches to AGW. For these groups the concept of death by CO2 is a license to print money, their conspiracy doesn't need to be secret, It just has to be believable, or maybe only possible.

The fact that the predictions of the climate alarmists have yet to be even remotely accurate hasn't deterred academics, government, the media and business from assuming the worst. At the same time, the informed elites are purchasing seaside property at incredible prices. Television news presenter Diane Sawyer has just sold her beach front property on Martha's Vineyard for $23.9 million to an individual that has spent more than $100 million acquiring properties on Nantucket Island and Martha's Vineyard. Condos near the beach in Miami are sold out before being built. 

People with the money to purchase property like this have access to any information they desire. That information hasn't deterred them from investing millions in beach property that's supposedly doomed to be submerged.

 

   

 

Punishing Wayward American Management

 

 

If we're paying attention we're aware that Asian business and government figures involved in crime or corruption can be in big trouble. In China there's a special department in their judicial system that looks for criminal behavior at the most elite levels. Nobody hears about one of their investigations or arrests until it's noticed that the offender hasn't been seen for a period of time.  Chen Shaojie, a boss at DouYu, and pharmaceutical executive Zhao Bingxian are both being held by authorities. A recent South Korean president was imprisoned for corruption and cronyism.

Americans realize that this practice is much different than what happens in similar circumstances on the fruited plain.

The Yankees settle debts to society with money. The latest case involves the makers of the celebrated I-Phone, Apple, current stock valuation $182.41 per share.

The US Dept. of Labor has established a PERM program,  a permanent labor certification issued by the Department of Labor (DOL)  that allows an employer to hire a foreign worker to work permanently in the United States. Typically, it's a complicated process. 

The Dept. of Justice says the company didn't adequately advertise openings and required applicants to submit hard copy applications and has charged them with a violation of anti-discrimination procedures. Apple admits to its failure and in an agreed settlement will pay $6.75 million in civil penalties and establish an $18.25 million fund to compensate discrimination victims. 

Of course this money will come from the account of Apple itself, not from the personal funds of Apple management, who seemed to be sorry for their lack of attention to the requirement. And in what's actually a violation of federal law so serious that $25 million is involved, no company executive is being fined, put on probation, incarcerated, ordered to attend classes or perform community service. The Department of Justice does get $6.75 million to use for something or other. 

 

Another Important Meeting

 

Beginning today business and media nabobs will gather in Singapore for the sixth annual Bloomberg New Economy Forum. 

 Built around the theme of “Embracing Instability”, the Forum will challenge and inspire global leaders to find common ground amid geopolitical stresses, economic obstacles, technological upheaval and climate change

Challenge and inspiration, that's all that's needed to pull the world out of stresses, obstacles, upheaval and change. The leaders will get together, talk it all over, and then instruct their followers on what they must do. That is, after all, the role of leaders, in their perennial role of overcoming the ignorance and ineptitude of the masses. 

No doubt a conversation between John Forbes Kerry or Henry Kissinger with their counterpart from some less blessed nation will go a long way toward remedying technological upheaval or arresting a climate change that spells the impoverishment and eventual extinction of homo sapiens. 

The real problem for these Bloomberg invitees isn't finding common ground. Instead, it's getting their own followers to believe in both the nature and dimension of the reputed problems and the proposed solutions. 

Academia identifies the problems and solutions; the media, including Bloomberg, distributes the information; governments at various levels administer and regulate the responses of businesses in eliminating the problem; the legal industry makes sure it's all done according to the rules-based order.

It has become increasingly apparent that the post-Enlightenment concept of democracy that assumes the population is capable of making meaningful and correct decisions about its future has been made obsolete by the growing complexity of the world. "Populism", allowing the whims of the miseducated masses to structure modern government and society, is so yesterday. Thus the elites of the world gather, as they now do on an almost monthly basis, in some oasis with adequate food and housing, to chatter with their contemporaries. The "first world" representatives advise changes that will have a minimal effect on their own status. The leaders of the rest make requests for funding that can be used to somehow propel them to economic equality. On return to their homelands, the leaders carry on much as they did before.    

  

 

 

Why Renewable Energy Is An Existential Crisis

 

foxnews.com

There have been apocalyptic predictions through all  of recorded history. In the past, they were generally based on offense to the gods or immoral behavior, also an offense to the gods. In the present age, when God is dead and the dominant atheists are in charge, the predictions of universal destruction are based on the violations of natural law, determined by science. 

It turns out that contemporary science is as much of a religion as Lutheranism or Hinduism. It's based on a similar mythology. But that's not actually the point. The focus isn't on a mythology, it's about money.

The energy business, the business that keeps the giant gears of commerce turning, is a very new one. The first commercial oil well was drilled near Titusville, PA, in 1859, only 164 years ago, its product being used to produce kerosene for home lighting. Shortly after that engines were developed that ultimately led to vehicles like the Chevrolet Corvette and Volkswagen Beetle. Despite some fits, starts and bankruptcies the world came to embrace fossil fuels for powering transportation, electrical generation, home and commercial heating and eventually the majority of energy used in the developed world.

In science, business and government nothing stands still for very long. Hydro power, one of the oldest forms of energy production, remains to this day a very minor one. Related to geographical and geological elements, there are no new sites usable for the necessary dams.

Nuclear fission power has been successful but the fear that it inspires imposes huge and expensive issues in siting, regulation, construction and maintenance. Many plants are being shut down. Even those operating under current licensing can only produce electrical power and don't make a meaningful contribution to transportation.

Fossil fuels, hydro power and nuclear power are mature industries. The players involved are very much involved. There are no openings for new operators. The multi-billion dollar major oil companies, while engaged in a certain amount of competition among themselves, have no fear of an entrepreneur setting up the exploration, development, refining and marketing that enables them to be profitable. People complain about "big oil" but that's the only kind there is. There's no such thing as "Mom and Pop oil".

Hydro power is a cooperation between utilities and the government. It is what it is.

Nuclear power is also a cooperative effort between utilities, the regulatory branch of government and the contractors able to build and maintain nuclear reactors. Its unlikely that any new companies will enter that field.

That's what makes the war on CO2, climate change and renewable power so important. It's an environment open to new players, just as the fossil fuel industry was a century and a half ago. However, in that era, fossil fuels only had to outdo wood, sperm oil, sails and water wheels. It was easy. Fossil fuels advantages were quite apparent and they became dominant except in the most isolated situations.

Those advantages still exist. All things being equal, renewables of whatever kind can't improve on the performance of fossil fuels at this time. The renewable advocates must develop a strategy that allows them to join and surpass their fossil fuel enemies. It's climate change.

The forces that have joined the renewable push and fossil fuel elimination are formidable. The leaders are academia, the government, media, business and legal industry. Academia, in an age of unquestioned scientific and technological wonder, may be the most trusted division of western culture. They are the researchers that discover the problems to be faced and construct the needed solutions. This means that they are showered with funding both public and private that enables them to build facilities and hire employees. They have discovered that the current level of CO2 in the atmosphere, 421 parts per million and rising, is likely to rapidly raise the global temperature to an extent that life on earth will disappear. Forcibly removing a portion of the current atmospheric CO2 and eliminating it as a by-product of fossil fuel combustion are necessary for survival of life.

Government, always on the alert for opportunities to expand its power has become closely involved in renewable resources. 

The media, using academia as a source for its apocalyptic predictions, feels a need to broadcast them in lieu of "It's another nicer day, today. The Kardashians are out getting some sun".

The entreprenurial spirit, constantly in search of new opportunities, has embraced renewable power with a vengeance. Solar power, on and offshore wind turbines, fusion power, battery-powered electrical vehicles and whatever comes next are relatively undeveloped fields that are receiving substantial research and funding. The American fetish with the "new" also plays a part in the rapid adoption of untested solutions to imaginary problems.

The legal industry, omnipresent in every aspect of American life, will, as always, extract its toll from each transaction or dispute.

The most interesting feature of the renewable craze is that those involved with the four components identified above move seamlessly from one to the other, back again, and to another, multiple times. Academics and institutional figures move to government, then to business, sometimes to media, and are often members of the bar. They are all taking advantage of the opportunity that academic researchers have given them by identifying an innocuous gas as the most dangerous thing on earth. This isn't about science, its about money.        

Is This The CIA?

 

thedailybeast.com

Using techniques probably a part of his training in  clandestine operations this slimeball  is looking at a prison sentence of up to 30 years for drugging, raping and taking over 500 videos of women in a number of countries around the world. He pleaded guilty to 4 of 25 charges. Brian Jeffrey Raymond won't be extradited to any of the countries where he did things that Jeffrey Epstein never dreamed of. In both Mexico and Peru he would be assured of a much shorter but fatal sentence.

Raymond would be in even hotter water if Justice Dept. and State Dept. investigators had followed required procedures in the investigation. But it's too much to expect from government employees to actually obey the rules.   

UK Artificial Intellligence

 

 

UK Research and Innovation has awarded £117 million to academic institutions and training centers in the country to implement artificial intelligence applications especially related to carbon emissions and renewable energy.

Perhaps there are no other bodies than academic available to perform this task. Or, maybe the recipients have created the platform. UKRI is a government agency of sorts whose goal is to finance important research efforts. In this particular instance some questions arise. 

Being that CO2 has been widely identified as the root problem of climate change, why is further research on the subject and its alleviation even necessary? Practical solutions, wind turbines, solar panels, hydrogen production, etc. are currently being adopted. Or have climate scientists been in error? Such has been the case in the past. Are there other possible causes as yet undiscovered? If there were, how would AI determine this? Is AI capable of truly original "thinking"?

Suppose that these AI investigations indicate that CO2 doesn't have any significant effect on world climate. What then? Or, on the basis of current thinking, isn't it likely that AI will sift through all internet traffic and reach that conclusion as well? Does AI operate as a sort of democratic science vote counter? Wouldn't it reject a correct hypotheses if it was only embraced by a few?

Will AI search into the economic aspects of a replacement of fossil fuels with renewables? Or will a potential disaster far into the future outweigh one that may or may not occur a generation ahead? Would AI be able to figure out the risk-reward ratio of continuing the use, at least for now, of fossil fuels vs. renewables?

The best future use of AI in Britain might be to retrieve England's reputation in cricket as their national team has been eliminated in the 2023 Cricket World Cup after going 1-6 in the preliminary rounds. 

 

The DUNE Project

Perhaps you've never heard of the DUNE project, or, maybe you just haven't seen its current acronym. DUNE stands for the Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment.

A facility in Batavia, IL, also the US headquarters of international grocer Aldi, Fermilab will accelerate protons through a converter that will then send neutrinos 800 miles underground to the Sanford Underground Research Facility in the depths of the now-closed Homestake Mine in Lead, South Dakota. The research conducted through this process is intended to provide evidence in regard to the actual birth of the universe. This is scientific reductionsim at its most intense level.

The project's ballooning price tag, now over $3 billion, and its construction problems and delays have led to reconsideration and modifications of the research. Some programs have been added.

The biggest issue is the practical value of the research results. Of what importance is it to gain possible knowledge of the mechanics of the development of the cosmos when other, more important things plague mankind? The scientists themselves welcome the financing that pays their salaries and others connected to the programs are its only real beneficiaries. 

This entire project could be seen as an extreme example of academic financial indulgence, where research institutions leverage their sterling reputations to expand their economics. It's questionable if its a luxury that society can really afford.

 "In a democracy scientific institutions, research programmes, and suggestions must therefore be subjected to public control, there must be a separation of state and science just as there is a separation between state and religious institutions, and science should be taught as one view among many and not as the one and only road to truth and reality.”

― Paul Karl Feyerabend, Against Method

 

 

Hydrogen Enthusiasm

An article in the Monday WSJ tells of an interest in the production of hydrogen by fossil fuel entities in the US gulf coast area who are in a good position to use one of the most developed methods, steam-gas reforming. This process uses natural gas as both a heat source and feed stock to separate hydrogen from natural gas with the consequent by-product of CO2, supposedly the big problem in climate change. Other techniques continue to be explored.

Exxon Mobil seems to be covering all the bases by both getting into hydrogen production and expanding their capabilities in fossil fuel, having recently purchased Pioneer Natural Resources and its assets in a $60 billion deal. Competitor Chevron then made a similar move, acquiring Hess. These companies propose to capture the CO2 and sequester it deep in the earth, perhaps for many centuries. They will continue to produce and market petroleum products.

The WSJ article points out that there's a belief that the US has an advantage over other countries which have gotten into solar and wind power more quickly in that the US already has a significant infrastructure advantage and processing capability in hydrogen, a competitive advantage in the world-wide fight against boiling seas. They're probably hoping that other governments will buy their product or processes rather than continue to destroy the atmosphere.

The economics of the hydrogen revolution remain unclear. According to stackexchange.com:

 "Combustion is a gaseous phase phenomenon. Oil and gasoline have a high enough vapor pressure at ambient temperatures to produce a gaseous phase of fuel above the liquid. In contrast, hold a lighter up to a piece of wood and try to get it to light. It won't—at least not for quite some time. This is because solid fuels must first undergo endothermic pyrolysis before real combustion can occur. This produces a slew of products which are what truly undergo combustion when solids are burned. Because combustion is exothermic, once a high enough temperature is reached the solid will autopyrolyze, making combustion a self-sustaining reaction."

This means that in general hydrocarbons are in a gaseous state during the combustion process, as is the oxygen with which they combine. Ordinarily both gases are only slightly above atmospheric pressure when combustion takes place. Unless some other process is used, a cubic foot of hydrogen at atmospheric pressure produces about one third the BTU of a similar volume and pressure of natural gas. Combustion of natural gas is likely to be much more energy efficient and economical than hydrogen, even if some CO2 is a by-product.

The moves made by oil producers are meant to protect their position in US and world industry regardless of the politics involved.

  

Bad News For Chinese EV Workers

Major Chinese electric automobile manufacturer Nio has announced that 10% of its 7000 member work force is being cut in an effort to lower costs and increase efficiency in the world's largest EV market. The Shanghai-based company has increased sales figures but still fails to meet its own goals.

 evmagz.com 

Nio has introduced a new model in Europe and plans for sales in the US and other countries. Its goal is to import premium EVs to the US by 2025.  

Traitor Charles McGonigal Update

Charles McGonigal, the high-ranking FBI agent that retired and went to work for the Russian oligarch he'd spent years investigating has reached a plea deal with prosecutors of the Southern District of New York. Pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy and money laundering, he faces the possibility of 5 years in prison at a sentencing hearing scheduled for Dec. 14.

 

thenewdaily.com.au 

He's also under federal indictment in Washington, DC, for receiving thousands of dollars from Albanian interests while he was still an FBI agent. That case is yet to be resolved. 

 

Arizona Hydrogen

Tall Grass Energy, an anti-CO2 company headquartered in the Denver area, is attempting to construct a hydrogen production facility and attached pipeline on the Navajo reservation in the Black Mesa region of northeastern Arizona. It's meeting some local opposition. Despite being offered money, the local natives, unseen and unheard in their near desert homeland, are worried about the water requirements of the proposed plant and piping. 

It isn't enough that the Navajos and other tribes have been forced to settle for marginal properties that the Anglo invaders once deemed worthless. Now that a potentially lucrative financial situation shimmers on the horizon, the capitalists want the use of even this barren and unforgiving landscape. 

Fortunately, some of the Navajos have taken advantage of educational opportunities that have enabled them to deal with these matters through the use of the arcane US legal system. Hopefully, they'll be able to come to their own conclusions and determine their own fate in this matter.  

Taking China Seriously

 

 internews.pk 

It's impossible to take the leaders, government, business and otherwise, of the world seriously when they insist on wearing clothing that is a remnant of the British elite tailoring of the late nineteenth century. US nabobs, being direct lineal descendants of their British predecessors, can be excused for extending the unimaginative reign of the suit and tie but not the Chinese and other Asians. 

The Chinese elite haven't extended the Anglo haberdashery, they've enthusiastically adopted it. That fact indicates that the fizzling British empire continues to exist, at least in men's fashions and perhaps other things.

Art serves as the most reliable indicator of world hegemony. When Dutch sea power made them the arbiters of not only world trade but men's costumes, others followed their lead.

 

 

 theculturetrip.com

Ruffs, like ties now, indicated elite status since no one in the seventeenth century could do manual labor while wearing one. 

Later, as the British superceded the Dutch on the world stage, and up until today, hundreds of years later, the world's honchos are wearing clothes that wouldn't look unusual in pre-Victorian England.

 

inzak.com

Until the twentieth century, the Chinese, the dominant society and culture in Asia, kept their own style of dress.

 

 

invaluable.com

Does the Asian adoption of western clothing styles indicate that they're moving toward western ways of thinking? Does it mean that the clothes they wear show subservience or domination in the future?   

The Data Center Explosion

 

gettyimages

No, the data centers aren't blowing up. The growth of AI has increased the need for places to keep the servers that store the data that record everything that passes through the world-wide web. Tremendous investments are being made in them.  Amazon is building $87 billion worth of data centers. 

Chances are that these huge digital libraries won't involve the employment of thousands of digital librarians but they will have other effects on the neighborhoods where they are built. The most significant are the demand that will be made for electrical, water and other municipal services.

At the same time that the country is attempting an irrational move away from fossil fuels in electrical generation by adopting "renewable" sources such as untested and unreliable solar and wind power, it will face a dramatically increased power requirement. The current giants of AI have already leased over 2.3 gigawatts of power in North America this year. In the planning stages are data centers that will consume another 15 gigawatts of power that could supply four million homes.

Perhaps these data centers could be supplied exclusively with power produced by solar panels and wind turbines. Maybe they should be required to do so.   

 

instituteforenergyresearch.com

The average nameplate capacity of newly installed wind turbines has risen to 2.75 MW. Supplying the currently leased data center demand would require at least 836 turbines operating at maximum capacity 24/7/365, an impossible situation. In the case of solar panels, typical powerhouse additions will produce 5 kw from 500 square feet, or so they say. The currently leased data centers would need an array of 460,000 solar panels covering well over 5300 acres or about 8 1/2 square miles that would produce power during only a portion of the day.

 

 

greencitysolar.net

The variability of renewable power supply means that sufficient power must be available from dedicated sources in amounts available not only to the data centers but also to the surrounding areas. According to plans this demand will increase quickly. No doubt messages are being passed back and forth by management about the subject at this very moment. 

Making Hydrogen

Yes, the feds have written checks adding up to about $7 billion to various research institutes to delve into the mechanics of producing pure hydrogen that can be used to power transportation and processes.  There's lots of combat over who is going to get a fortune in government subsidies and tax breaks for efficient hydrogen production. Combustion of hydrogen doesn't release the dreaded CO2 that's causing the earth to overheat.

The hydrogen can be produced in a number of different ways one of which is demonstrated below: 

 

 

technologystudent.com 

 

An electric current is passed through water and the molecules are divided into their respective atoms. Since electricity isn't free, even if it comes from wind turbines, this makes the hydrogen more expensive than fossil fuels.

This is all very interesting but it turns out that the heating value of hydrogen is far less than that of natural gas, its main competitor.

The net heating value in BTUs per cubic foot of hydrogen at atmospheric pressure is 275. In the case of natural gas in the same conditions the BTUs are 850. Ergo natural gas is not only cheaper than hydrogen, it produces 3 times as much of the real goal, heat, and also more safely.

As an example of insanity, the energy used to produce hydrogen gas comes from fossil fuel powered electrical  generators, which could be and are fueled by natural gas itself.

 

 

The Iron-Air Battery

It's obvious that "renewable" electricity isn't completely reliable. Solar panels don't supply juice at night or in very cloudy conditions. Wind turbines don't turn when the breezes fail. In order to provide electricity at times like those, when using renewables there must be a method of storing a portion of the electricity produced should conditions deteriorate. One way now in development is the iron-air battery. 

 

Form Energy's 2023 iron-air battery module prototype. Image courtesy of Form Energy

Xcel Energy intends to use these batteries to store renewable energy at its power plants at Becker, MN and Pueblo, CO. These batteries, yet to be built, will be expected to store solar and wind power electricity for 100 hrs, in the case of the Sherco Generating Station in Becker to the extent of 40 mw from 4 iron-air batteries being built and supplied by Form Energy in Somerville, MA. The plant being replaced in Becker now produces 680 mw on a continuous basis. A solar panel array currently under construction on the site is designed to put out 480 mw. In other words, the battery storage capacity will be less than 10% of the power supplied by the new renewable system.

The International Maritime Organization

What could the International Maritime Organization be? Is it the governing body of yacht racing like FIFA is the boss of international football? 

No, it's a UN subsidiary that makes the rules for international commercial transport by sea. Its primary concern is safety but every aspect of marine activity falls under its domain. Pollution by oil tanker spills is a major topic. 

In 2015 the IMO took part in the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris, advocating that they be the "appropriate international body to address greenhouse gas emissions from ships engaged in international trade". They made no rules on the subject until 2018 and were criticized for ignoring the GHG problem.

International shipping is said to produce 3% of the CO2 released into the world's atmosphere and the IMO and responsible parties aim to remedy this calamity. Carbon capture and storage of CO2 produced by ships' engines is now felt to be quite feasible, technically and economically, though its never been installed on a ship. An even bigger issue, however, is that no infrastructure exists to offload and dispose of the CCS held by ships when they arrive in port. These two factors indicate that a long and expensive route lies ahead in bringing oceanic CO2 to heel.

 

shipsandports.com,ng

"The CCS system uses an organic solution to extract the carbon dioxide, which is then cooled, liquefied and stored in a tank.

Laboratory tests have confirmed that the system can capture 85 per cent of the greenhouse gas from a ship engine’s exhaust gas flow, enabling the vessels to comply with the IMO’s carbon intensity reduction requirements...."

We don't know the details of this system but one thing we do know is that exhaust gases produced by the marine engines are very hot and cooling them will require much additional energy, probably adding significantly to the cost of transportation.

A Finnish company and the world's largest producer of ethanol are working to add the sugar cane product to the fuel of ocean-going ships as a means of reducing CO2 in engine exhausts.