Innovation, Solyndra, and political nonsense

The sad reality of life is that not all good ideas end up easily implemented, and sometimes ideas you thought were good turn out to be not so good once they reach the light of day. The sad reality is that over 90% of companies started to produce something innovative here in the Silicon Valley fail. That's just how it works, not every idea works out. Even when ideas do work out, it may not be possible to sell the result for enough money to keep you in business -- I have, alas, worked for several companies that had great products but couldn't figure out how to make enough money from them to cover costs thus went out of business.

In the case of Solyndra, they thought they had an innovative way to increase the amount of energy obtained from solar panels. They found a bunch of backers, created product, and sold thousands of their solar modules. Unfortunately two things happened that utterly destroyed their business model: 1) New silicon wafer foundries came online, making flat solar panels ridiculously cheap even when built in America (and most solar panels sold here in America *are* built here in America, for the same reason that most cars sold here in America are built here -- because they're bulky and fragile and breakage on the long overseas voyage would kill you thus it's not cost-effective to ship them from overseas), and 2) scientists figured out ways to make silicon solar panels produce almost as much power as Solyndra's more expensive copper-gallium panels, thus eliminating most of their power advantage. Solyndra tried making their product cheaper and couldn't, the technology they used is inherently labor intensive to produce (unlike silicon wafers, the production of which is largely automated). So in the end, they had a good idea, but it didn't work out in practice, like so many other ideas, and they went out of business.

Just a normal business failure, in other words. Well, except for the fact that the loans they used to build their factory and buy their equipment were government-guaranteed loans, just like the mortgages of many millions of Americans. Solyndra applied for these "green energy" loans during the Bush Administration, and they were awarded early in the Obama administration, long before Obama had any of his appointees in place at the Department of Energy. Which means, of course, that it's all Obama's fault, and the government shouldn't be in the business of encouraging renewable energy anyhow, even though the vast majority of these "green energy" loans have performed well and Obama didn't have anything to do with the "green energy" program, that was a Bush-era program.

All of which is just utter nonsense. This nation's government has been involved in fostering critical industries since its beginning, when the Federalist government of George Washington imposed tariffs on British cloth in order to encourage the development of an American textile industry. And given that we have reached peak oil and will be transitioning to a mostly-electric infrastructure in the future, we need all the energy sources we can get -- and solar is one of the more cost-effective ones in the southern half of the country where solar panel output corresponds with daytime peak usage of electricity. So not every potential technology we look at turns out to be viable. So what. Thomas Edison made dozens of tries at a viable light bulb before he got one that worked, and the "green energy" program has a much better track record than that, indeed, has a much better track record than any private venture fund in the Silicon Valley. Using it as a political football is just playing chicken with the future of the nation, and regardless of your political affiliation should be viewed as utter nonsense.

-- Badtux the Technology Penguin

Politically incorrect

So a roaring fire is bad for the environment, and doesn't really warm up your house much if any. So what. On a cold and rainy day, tossing on some scrap wood (pieces of wooden pallet from work) and then sitting in front of it just feels right.

-- Badtux the Warm Penguin

BP and U.S. government colluding to protect BP?

Naw, it must be just a coincidence that independent researchers are being blocked from evaluating the effects of the Gulf blowout. Because the Obama administration is an eeeevil soshalist government thingy that hates big business, which is why they're making sure that nobody can independently refute BP and the U.S. government's claims about how peachy-keen everything in the Gulf is now that the well is capped...

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

BP burning sea turtles

And in other news, apparently BP employees have been spotted stealing lollipops from toddlers.

Well, not yet. Just waitin' for it.

BTW, yes, a) the top hat is back, for whatever good it's going to do -- the blowout preventer is now leaning significantly, and if it breaks off the casing entirely, we have an oil volcano at the bottom of the sea, and b) the relief well is within 1,000 feet of being where it needs to be to shut down the gusher. Let's hope that the casing of the gusher is intact enough that it'll hold the mud and not let the mud ooze out into the surrounding rock formations, otherwise the only thing that'll stop the gusher is the final bleedout of the reservoir -- which BP at one time estimated to hold 2 billion barrels of oil.

- Badtux the Oily Penguin

I am the Walrus

Obama administration still approving drilling plans that promise to protect walruses in the Gulf of Mexico -- despite the fact that there hasn't been any walrus in the Gulf in over 2 million years.

If we had a President, rather than an empty suit making speeches, maybe there'd be a real moratorium on Gulf drilling until the industry could provide real response capabilities for dealing with blowouts -- the most important of which is the drilling of a relief well to bottom-kill depth *before* it's needed, rather than requiring 6 months to do the job *after* a blowout. Oh wait, that would cost money and be bad for business, thus can't be done, despite the fact that the Canadians and Norwegians require exactly that. So I guess we have to be satisfied with protecting the rare Gulf of Mexico walrus. Koo koo kachoo.

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

True, true

If BP was responsible for cleaning up a coffee spill:

Siiiiiiiiigh!

Has someone else like, say, Halliburton or Schlumberger, been given a contract by the government to be prime contractor yet to clean up the Deepwater Horizon spill, with BP being handed the bill? No?

Leadership. It's more than just giving good speech, President Obama. Just sayin'. SIIIIIIIIIGH!

-- Badtux the Bumfuddled Penguin

Mission Accomplished!

From a 1999 BP advertisement.

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Working the numbers on the Toyota Prius

Okay, the Toyota Prius costs around $25K and gets around 45mpg in real-world driving on California freeways. The Toyota Yaris costs around $15K and gets around 35mpg in real-world driving on California freeways. So how many hundreds of thousands of miles at $4 per gallon would you have to drive the Prius in order to make that $10K worthwhile? What price would gasoline have to be to make a Prius more cost-effective than a Yaris over the typical 150,000 mile timespan that most people have a car?

First of all: let's look at the fundamental equation. C=G*M/E+P That is, total costs is number of miles divided by mpg, multiplied times the cost per gallon, plus the purchase cost.

So for the first question at 4mpg, we can model it as a 2x2 linear equation and for simplicity set the purchase cost at 10k for the Prius and 0 for the Yaris.

Prius: C1=4*M/45+10000
Yaris: C2=4*M/35
C1=C2 at: 4*m/45+10000=4*m/35... 10000=4*m/35-4*m/45... 2500=m/35-m/45... 2500=45m/1575-35m/1575 ... 2500=10m/1575 ... 3937500 = 10m ... 393750 = m.

So, working the math, at $4 per gallon you would have to drive the Prius for 393,750 miles over the course of its lifetime to make up the $10K cost difference over a Yaris.

So now let's find out what the cost of gas would need to be in order to make the Prius pay off at 150,000 miles:

Prius: C1=G*150000/45+10000
Yaris: C2=G*150000/35
C1=C2 at: G*150000/45+10000=G*150000/35 ... G*150000/35 - G*1500000/45 = 10000 ... 45 * G * 150000 / 1575 - 35 * G * 150000 / 1575 = 10000 ... 10 * G * 150000 / 1575 = 10000 ... 10 * 150000 * G = 15750000 ... G = $10.50.

In other words, gasoline would need to sell for $10.50 per gallon to make the Prius pay off over the Yaris over the typical 150K miles that most people keep a new car after buying it.

The Prius has some slight advantages over the Yaris. It's roomier, and much quieter inside under typical city driving conditions. On the other hand it also has some significant disadvantages. I'm fairly tall for a penguin, so I get a good view of the top of the windshield bezel if I have the seat fairly upright so I can see well around me (darn those beady little penguin eyes!). The performance is absolutely awful in mountains, once you exhaust the batteries while heading uphill you're basically limited to 45mph or slower. The handling is reminiscent of an old Volkswagen Beetle, in that the weight of all those batteries in the ass end make it want to trade places with the front end and the skinny tires have all the traction of black ice. All in all, once you get pass the gee-whiz factor, there just isn't any compelling reason for a single penguin (who doesn't care about the back seat kneeroom) to buy a Toyota Prius rather than one of the small 3 or 5 door hatchbacks now available for $10K less on the U.S. market. Assuming that the numbers on the cost sheet are similar to the amount of energy needed to create the vehicle, even the environmental argument doesn't work -- if it cost $10K more in energy to build the freepin' thingy at current energy prices, you'll be over 400,000 miles before you'll recapture that energy due to lower fuel use, and who the hell keeps a car for that long anyhow? It'll be at the crushers long before then... well, except the battery pack, which will be at a toxic waste dump (huh!).

-- Badtux the Numbers Penguin

Could wind and wave energy generation hurt the planet?

The problem with all technologies that harness wind, waves, currents is that they disrupt the normal flow of air or water. You are transferring energy from the air or water into electrical generators. What effect will that have on the weather, if there are wind farms all over slowing down the winds (for that is what wind farms do)? What effect will tidal generators have on ocean currents? Will these river current generators slow down the river so much that it increases salt intrusion into the oh-so-vital wetlands at the mouth of the river, thus causing environmental damage? I don't think people have thought this through enough, or even understand one of the fundamental laws of physics involved, the Law of Conservation of Energy (which applies to all non-nuclear energy transactions). Sure, the current small-scale experiments haven't done much bad other than kill a bunch of birds (eep!), but they're *small*...

One of the things I like about direct photovoltaics is that the only side effect they have during operation, assuming they're placed on rooftops and such rather than in giant farms out in the middle of usable land, is to reduce solar heating of the Earth's surface. This is is a Good Thing(tm) given that so many of man's modifications to the Earth increase solar heating of the Earth, such as all that black pavement in cities and all the CO2 we've belched into the atmosphere. The energy density is low, but the current energy usage of the average American is unsustainable anyhow so we're just going to have to learn to live with a lower energy usage. But some of these other technologies, my suspicion is that we'd have fewer effects on the environment from building nuclear power plants (eep!). Things that are "green" on the micro level aren't necessarily "green" on the macro level, and vice-versa...

-- Badtux the Energy Penguin

A real scientist in the White House!

Well, at the White House briefing table, anyhow. Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steve Chu is Obama's pick for Department of Energy, the first scientist ever to be appointed to a Cabinet position. His pet project these past few years has been ARPA-E, a federal program to develop new alternative-energy technologies. He got it passed through Congress, but Bush never appointed a head for the new program nor spent the money allocated on it for energy research. Next month, though...

For more, see Eli Kintisch over at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's science blog...

-- Badtux the Science-lovin' Penguin

Of tire gauges and idiots

The Center for Strategic and International Studies says that Americans could save around 800,000 barrels of oil per day by doing the things that Obama mentioned that individual Americans could do to help the oil situation -- inflate their tires, tune up their engines, change their air filters. The Bush Administration estimates that expanded offshore drilling could increase oil production by 200,000 bbl. per day by 2030.

In short, Obama was right that opening the coasts of Florida and California to drilling doesn't produce enough oil to drill us out of the hole, and while he has now said he's not opposed to doing this drilling as part of a larger energy solution, he is correct to state that we cannot drill our way out of this oil crisis. The United States uses 20 million barrels per day of oil, of which 70% is imported, so that makes it pretty much obvious that 200,000 barrels of oil are not going to solve the U.S. oil addiction problem without some serious conservation measures -- the simplest of which is the one that Obama suggested.

You don't have to ask me, just ask any mechanic. Or NASCAR. But I forget, that can't be true, because these are liberals, and anything a liberal says is by definition a lie. If, for example, a liberal said that the sky is blue, that's when we'd all know that it's actually purple, because by definition a liberal is a liar. Haven't you learned anything by listening to Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity?! Yeppers, those liberals like those anti-American NASCAR fellers or George H.W. Bush (thanks Rook!) is just lyin' to us about tire pressure, yessiree!

-- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

John McCain's renewable energy plan

100 years in Iraq, woot!

-- Badtux the Outsnarked Penguin

Who will drive 55?

Answer: People will drive 55mph only if it is in their financial best-interests to do that. Otherwise, they'll continue to drive whatever speed they're driving.

Look, we've been through this before, folks. 55mph didn't work the first time -- people just ignored it, other than to make the creators of radar detectors rich and create an entire movie industry around truckers using CB radios to pinpoint where cops were running radar traps. There's a saying in the military that they teach to fresh NCO's and junior officers, "never give an order that you know will be ignored." It just makes you look stupid. Same deal with laws. If you pass a law that you know will be ignored by the majority of people, it makes you look even more stupid, as well as undemocratic -- such a law, by definition, by ignoring the will of the majority of the people, makes the place look like some kinda Commie hellhole rather than a free nation. Hmm...

Anywho... folks will drive 55mph when the gas they save costs more than the time they save from driving faster. Right now, we're not there yet. Maybe when gas is $10 a gallon, we will be. That's just how it works in the real world, rather than in the fantasy land of lawmakers who think passing a law is the end of the job. A law which cannot be enforced is a law that is useless, and our lawmakers should feel ashamed of themselves for even proposing such nonsense.

-- Badtux the Law Penguin

The world's dumbest raisin farmer does it again

The mad raisin farmer of Modesto strikes again! Victor Davis Hanson calls himself a conservative? His latest column bemoans the fact that Americans aren't building gigantic government projects much anymore.

Wait. Let me get this straight. V.D. Hanson calls himself a "conservative". Traditionally conservatives were the small government party, right? So why is V.D. bemoaning the fact that, well, big government isn't doing much big governmentin' nowdays?

For other stupidity in that same article, V.D. Hanson bemoans the fact that the last oil refinery was built 30 years ago. Never mind that today's oil refineries don't have a single component on site that was on site 30 years ago -- they've basically been rebuilt in-place with vastly greater capacity than the refineries of 30 years ago, we have more refining capacity today than we've ever had -- facts are not necessary for V.D. to operate.

About the only thing he really strikes home with is his criticism of the fact that the U.S. hasn't built a new nuclear power plant in the past 30 years. River Bend in Louisiana, started in April 1977, was the last nuclear reactor to start construction in the United States. That's over thirty years ago. As I've noted in the past, nuclear energy is the only energy source we have left with the energy density to maintain technological society once the oil runs out. We could burn more coal, I suppose, but that has serious environmental effects both in its extraction and in its effects upon global warming, and the coal won't last forever either. There are enough radioactive isotopes on this planet to fulfill our energy needs for tens of thousands of years, and by that time hopefully we will have figured out some way of doing nuclear fusion -- or we won't exist anymore (most likely, alas).

So anyhow, out of a gigantic three-column article, V.D. Hanson gets exactly *one* thing right. Which is 100% better than he's done in the past, but still. Why do people keep paying this hack to write this drivel?

-- Badtux the

Another reminder

Less than 5% of the area of the United States and associated continental shelf remains to be explored and exploited for any underlying oil. At most only 5% of the oil that we extracted from the rest of the United States over the past 100 years can be pumped out from under there -- i.e., a 5 year supply of oil, at best. We cannot drill our way out of this oil crisis by drilling more oil wells in the United States, regardless of whether you open up ANWR and the Pacific and Florida coasts or not. Any significant finds remaining to be made are in foreign countries that haven't been explored and exploited to a fare-the-well the way that the United States has been. And most of those places either hate us or they're inaccessible (the Amazon basis) or they're a political nightmare (the Congo basin).

In short, we ain't drillin' our way out of this one, folks.

-- Badtux the Oil Penguin

The stupidest prune farmer on the planet

I'm talking about V.D. Hanson, the mad prune farmer of Modesto, and his latest editorial saying we can drill and mine our way out of the current oil crisis.

Uhm, no. We already drilled everywhere on the continental U.S. that's drillable. There's still offshore off the West Coast and East Coast but that's less than 5% of the area of the United States and at most we'll get 5% of the oil out of'em that we got out of the rest of the United States. Sorry, that's just the facts. There's more oil out there, but it's in places that are currently pretty inhospitable politically speaking, or just damned remote (e.g. the Amazon basin, the Congo River basin).

But V.D. Hanson whines that "salt of the earth" types in the "heartland" are hurtin' because of the fuel prices. Oh waaah! I have no sympathy. *NONE*. Jimmy Carter had the solution for that problem back in 1976 -- fund alternative energy so that when the oil ran out, we'd already have a solution ready to go, rather than leaving it to some future generation, plus fund real mass transit that could eliminate the need for most folks living in cities and large towns to have a car. Guess what. These "salt of the earth" fucking dumbasses voted for Ronald fucking REAGAN because he promised to end "alternative energy" and cut their taxes. So now they're gathering what they fucking reaped, and they're going to whine about it? Oh waaahhh! Stupid motherfuckers, nobody wants to take responsibility for their own actions anymore. The stupid motherfuckers voted against alternative energy for the past forty years, and now they wanna go wah, wah, wah because their own stupidity resulted in high oil prices? Fuck'em.

Yeah, not bloody well diplomatic. But I just get fucking sick of all these goddamned crybabies out here whining that they don't like the consequences of their own actions. These are the stupid motherfuckers who voted for Ronald Reagan and ended alternative energy research in the United States for a generation. And they don't like what they voted for? Well fuck them. Fuck them good and hard. Well, OPEC is doing that for us, but so it goes.

-- Badtux the Unsympathetic Penguin

My next 4x4

My Jeep is getting too expensive. So here I am with my new offroad vehicle: -- Badtux the Snarky Penguin

Clinton Derangement Syndrome

I've had to stop reading a couple of my favorite blogs for the time being because they have simply gone completely nuts. Obama has won the Democratic nomination for President. Even if you include both Michigan and Florida (respecting the will of the voters in Michigan, where the "uncommitted" votes were clearly for Obama rather than Clinton since Obama wasn't on the ballot there), Obama still wins. That's just the facts.

But the sufferers of Clinton Derangement Syndrome trot out one excuse after another as to why Obama didn't "really" win. It's like play day at the paranoics conference when it comes to the sufferer. Just as the paranoic "really" knows that he lost his job because "the CIA is beaming mind control rays into my brain", the CDS sufferer "really" knows that Hillary "really" won because "caucauses disenfranchise handicapped people" and thus aren't representative of the will of the majority of the Democrats in caucus states (just one example, CDS sufferers have plenty of other excuses for why Clinton "really" won). Nevermind that they haven't found a single handicapped person disenfranchised by caucus states or a single bit of evidence that indicated that handicapped persons would vote any differently than any other voters in caucus states. Evidence is not required for the CDS sufferer, just as it is not required for the paranoic who "knows" that the CIA is beaming mind control rays into his brain.

The funny part is that I voted for Clinton (gasp!). When Edwards dropped out, she had the best health care plan of the remaining candidates. Obama's health care plan is little more than pandering and hot air, and his criticisms of Hillary's health care plan were dishonest. But then after Super Duper Tuesday, Hillary started running John McCain's attack ads against Obama, and has run a dirty Republican-style campaign ever since pandering to the worst parts of the Democratic coalition, including the appeals to racism that are a hallmark of modern Republican politics. And her recent comments claiming victory despite the fact that, uhm, she lost, strike me as being as deranged as John McCain's continued assertions that we're "winning" in Iraq. Just completely divorced from reality. Like a Republican, that. But if I want to vote for a Republican, I'll vote for a Republican, not for a Republican Lite like Joe Lieberman or (apparently) Hillary Clinton. Needless to say, I (and many other Californians) would not vote for Hillary if the California primary were today instead on Super Tuesday. Luckily, since Obama won, I won't have to hold my nose and pull the lever for her in the fall. Saved by reality!

Hopefully the CDS sufferers will return to reality shortly. If not, well... (shrug). Say hello to President McCain. And say hello to a depression that will make the depression of 1929 look like child's play. If less than 50% of Americans die of starvation after the strongmen seize power amidst the ruins of the American economy and all oil imports are cut off, I will be extremely surprised. Well, I'll be dead so I won't be extremely surprised, but you get the point.

-- Badtux the Reality-based Penguin

The End is Near

Bush Administration makes deal to sell nuclear reactors to Saudi Arabia. While some commentators make hasty conclusions about Saudi Arabia wanting to develop nuclear weapons, there is a much, much simpler explanation: The end is near.

The problem is that Saudi Arabia's oil fields are on their last legs, and what little oil hasn't been pumped yet has to be sold in order to finance whatever is going to replace oil as Saudi Arabia's energy source. While much of Saudi Arabia is desert and thus well suited for solar power, the problem is that deserts lack, well, water (duh!). So Saudi Arabia has been building desalination plants in order to provide water for their growing and thirsty population. And desalination plants require a *lot* of energy -- paving all of Saudi Arabia with solar panels would provide enough energy to maybe desalinate enough water for a million people. And in case you haven't noticed, Saudi Arabia has a population of over TWENTY-SEVEN MILLION PEOPLE. All of whom require water in order to live.

So clearly solar lacks the energy density to provide for Saudi Arabia's water needs. Given that, the Saudis have few options for replacing their current gas-fired power plants as the natural gas runs out (which is already happening -- the Saudis are pumping salt water at full speed into their oil reservoirs in order to increase the pressure in order to force the remaining oil to the surface, which means that the natural gas pressure which used to be providing that force is now *gone*). Saudi Arabia has no coal, so that isn't going to do the job. So nuclear energy is the logical next step for them -- and indeed they've been talking for years about building a gigantic nuclear desalination plant. And if it is a light water reactor properly designed and properly monitored by the IAEA (so that rods cannot be short-cycled -- you must short-cycle rods in order to extract Pu-239 for bombs, otherwise it picks up more neutrons and becomes isotopes not usable for bombs), it is not a particularly large proliferation threat.

All of these arguments also apply to Iran, of course. But oooh, I forget, Eye-ran EEEEvilll. Saudi Arabia GOOOOOOOD. Even though women are slaves in Saudi Arabia who aren't allowed any advanced education and aren't even allowed to fuckin' *drive*, while 50% of Iranian university enrollment is women as are 40% of their doctors. Tells ya just how much our ruling elite values women's rights... first they overthrew the only regime in the region which guaranteed full rights to women (Saddam's secular Baathist regime), and then they target the regime that is the next-most-congenial place for women in the region? Pathetic. Simply pathetic.

- Badtux the Energy Penguin

On energy density and nuclear power

Two words: Energy density. Nuclear power is currently the only technology which has the energy density to replace oil, gas, coal and so forth. We could put solar panels on every patch of barren ground, windmills in every windy pass in America, biofuel rapeseed on every piece of marginal ground not needed to raise timber or food, and still fall woefully short even of the energy requirements of modern agriculture, which is a very energy-intensive process that requires hauling enormous amounts of food long distances over a transportation infrastructure that requires enormous sums of energy to operate even if we transition it all to electrical or hydrogen operation. And without modern agriculture, we have a great die-off, because we now have far more people on this planet than can be supported by primitive agriculture.

Frankly, I prefer being alive to being dead. I've looked at some of the modern nuclear reactor designs, and they're far safer than Three Mile Island (which itself was far safer than Chernobyl, a weapons reactor converted to civilian use which would have never been permitted to operate in the United States). Note that the so-called "hydrogen economy" is basically a mechanism for storing nuclear power in an energy-dense manner for individual transportation, rather than a method of generating energy... the only method for generating energy is nuclear power, whether it is the nuclear power of the sun (which also powers the wind as well as solar cells and plants), or nuclear power from man-made reactors. Even oil, gas, or coal is just nuclear power in the end, since it is just stored nuclear energy from the sun, energy stored in hydrocarbon bonds rather than in batteries...

- Badtux the Energy Penguin