Climategate and Climate Change: We Urgently Need an Energy Plan That is Not Deferential to the Climate Change Agenda

By making solutions to known energy problems submissive to an unattainable global CO2 agenda we have created a terrible misapplication of valuable time and technical resources.

Climategate highlights the lack of engineering and science basics in our private, political, and government leadership that allows glaring errors to happen. It is bad that climate change activists broke rules of science to mislead us. The larger disgrace is that we are just discovering the deception and impracticality of a CO2 control focus after spending billions of dollars and wasting years of valuable time. The various review committees responsible for overview on the program failed us.

In retrospect, giving climate change alarmists the popular lead on energy policy was preordained to fail. The climate change support came from academics in a soft and immature science, advising government and political leaders who were largely attorneys. financial specialists and economists. Add to this a cheering section made up of an undereducated press, Wall Street licking its chops to be brokering carbon credits, and emotionally driven environmentalists. It seems inevitable that such a lineup would come up with an impractical program that lacked good engineering and science.

The country has the technology and innovative spirit right now to support an environmentally sound energy plan. A knowledgeable and objective leadership could at this stage initiate a plan that would return us to world industrial leadership. The engineering, hard science, and willing workers are available. The technologies are at a ready state to be engineered for national application.

Unlike climate change research, energy technology has a backbone of traditional engineering and hard science combined with practical experience. New technology has given us vast reserves of natural gas. We are the world leader in agriculture and biotechnology. The country has the land resources for wind, solar, and biofuels from numerous sources while our biotechnology is increasing both the food and fuel supply. Nuclear electrical technology has been on standby in the US for over 25 years for no legitimate reason.

With these vast resources, why in the world are we not moving forward with a solid energy plan supported by the entire nation? The enemies are internal.

A major reason is the lobbying and public relation efforts by many oil and coal companies who have outdone climate gate with half truths and misleading data. There is also plenty of evidence that Congress is in the control of lobbying by those corporations that are highly vested in the current system, no matter how it harms the nation Finally, we have fallen for the fantasy requirement to control CO2 on an emergency basis.

Where is the knowledgeable and objective national leadership that will sort out the lies and exaggerations that are coming from dishonest sources? We disparately need a community that can put together a level-headed energy package for the nation. A plan that will really be for the common good.

I suggest that the professional engineering and science societies are the only candidates. They must rise to put partisan politics aside. They are qualified and generally free from special interests. The could organize the independent and objective technical guidance the national leadership so desperately needs. An important part of this contribution would be to honestly educate the general public so they could make informed decisions.

Your members have the knowledge. Let them be heard!

Teddy Roosevelt’s Advice, Our Energy Disaster, and Parallel Universes

When asked the basic rule behind accomplishing an important task Teddy Roosevelt gave the following advice.

“Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

If only we had applied this advice in the early nineteen eighties, when the clouds of the forthcoming energy disaster first gathered. Can you imagine how it would have changed history if we had not placed the responsibility of our energy future into the hands of the oil companies? However, bad decisions that do not consider the future almost always lead to serious consequences. In this case, the United States is now suffering the consequences in spades.

The possibility of parallel universes is under consideration by many scientists. If so, perhaps there is a universe where we did push forward with an aggressive energy program and a mind to the future. The people living in that universe now enjoy a balanced energy program where there are multiple biotech and petroleum derived blends of fuels available. The transportation vehicles can run on any blend so the fuels are all competing with each other in a free market. The infrastructure to support this flexibility has long been in place. The disaster of a single fuel type and a few large companies completely controlling the market and prices ended years ago. The mergers that led to a few very large companies dedicated only to petroleum fuels never occurred. OPEC must now work very hard to sell their products in competition with the other sources of fuels.

The crippling transfer of dollars from the US economy to unfriendly companies also never happened. The United States, as a leader in biotechnology and agriculture, is enjoying a boom period that could not be imagined in 1981.

Unfortunately, we do not have a way of moving into that parallel universe at this time. However, let us apply Teddy Roosevelt’s advice right now and maybe 25 years from now we can pull alongside.