This week MIT's Technology Review reported in an article titled Solar's Great Leap Forward how a Chinese company became a major power in solar energy.  Sun Tech Power has become the world's largest manufacturer of silicon solar panels. It did so by using the power of China's huge labor supply, not automation which costs more than Chinese labor. They are closing in on producing solar energy at parity with coal fired plants.

Also this week President Obama announced the construction of three new plants, one for producing electricity from the sun and two new plants for making the solar panels. The company constructing the Solar farm in Arizona, Abengoa, is a Spanish firm. It will be one of the largest solar farms in the world. The panel manufacturing company, Abound Solar Manufacturing, is American, as near as I can tell from their website. One will be in Colorado and one in Indiana. It is worth noting that both the Chinese  and the Spanish companies are eating our lunch in renewable energy, even though they are generating jobs in the United States.

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In today's Arizona daily Star, I couldn't find a single word about the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. We're in day 77 of oil gushing into Gulf waters. I guess they figure the public is tired of hearing about it and want to focus on more interesting subjects like a pit spitting contest or the voice of Disney's Cinderella dieing. There was, however, an interesting article in the online version of the New York Times by David Kocienniewski. It told of how oil companies like Transocean and Deep Water Horizon have "moved" their company's mail boxes to foreign countries to avoid paying taxes in the United States, this on top of millions in tax breaks. The owners of Transocean, whose headquarters were in Houston, moved to the Cayman Islands in 1999, a traditional haven for tax dodgers, then to Switzerland in 2008. BP was at this time reaping a tax break of $225,000 a day for rental of Transocean's drilling rig. Spend money on safety? Not a chance.

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Question: What do the State of Kansas and Nantucket Sound have in common? Answer: They're both NIMBYs. In Kansas the county in which the rolling Flint Hills are located recently voted to ban wind turbines. Nantucket sound has just followed suit with a law suit, citing danger to endangered birds and whales. Let's face it. In either of these cases people are not that concerned about birds or whales. If you want to protect whales, stop Japan from killing them for "Research." Want to protect birds? Stop building tall glass facade buildings, get rid of your cat, and buy a dog. Objections to wind turbines are usually visual.

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I have seldom heard of such an unbelievably obstructionist act by a group of politically motivated deniers as the recent ruling of the Maryland "Public" Service Commission killing a plan to install "smart" electric meters. The program was to be funded in part by the Department of Energy. It would have created many jobs as well as allowing home owners to reduce their energy use and save money. Part of the Commission's rationale for turning down this program was their belief that it would cost low income families more money but a study by the Brattle Group, a consultant to the Baltimore Gas & Electric Company, refuted this concern.

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For those of you who are disbelievers or deniers of anthropomorphic warming of the atmosphere here is a couple of lists. The first one is believers and the second id disbelievers. To see it go to http://www.worldforallpeople.com/node/21. If that doesn't convince you then you are hopeless.

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Mother Jones, the magazine that specializes in watching the watchdogs, in answer to the question, "Is the climate really warming up?" has explored the world of business with regard to their response to the idea of Global Warming. The affect of warming is directly impacting some businesses like the skiing industry. Warmer winters can seriously affect the bottom line. Rising seas can directly affect resorts and even real estate. Recently violent storms in the Gulf destroyed the beaches in Cancun causing the resorts there to lose business and requiring the replacement of their beaches at great expense. I experienced a storm in Jamaica that wiped out a beach, whereupon workers shoveled by hand new sand to replace the wash-out, After a week another storm took it all away again.

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Comments on Jonah Goldberg's column of June 19, 2010, in which he states that oil is the "True green fuel."

His rationale for this outlandish statement: If you remove the argument over climate change from the equasion...fossil fuels have been one of the great boons to humanity and the environment.

First, you cannot remove climate change from the equation. Admittedly the age of oil has afforded many technological advancements, growing more food to allow more people to thrive and population to soar. Industry would not have been possible on the scale to which it has risen without oil. It has given us leisure time and given some of us great wealth, although not to major parts of the world's population. While It has raised the standard of living of those with oil, it has not raised the quality of life for a very large portion of the world's population to whom these benefits are denied.  That which allows population to grow unfettered is not a great boon to mankind. Oil is a finite commodity and the population growth permitted by oil is unsustainable. Relying on oil to the exclusion of that which can become sustainable is folly.

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Comments on Jonah Goldberg's column of June 19, 2010, in which he states that oil is the "True green fuel."

His rationale for this outlandish statement: 4. Goldberg states we'll simply have to buy most of our oil from foreigners.

We already buy a major portion of our oil from foreigners. Ramping up domestic production enough to make a significant difference will take many years, Waiting for alternatives to be able to replace oil until it is either all gone or far too expensive for our transportation needs is short term thinking. The cost of drilling in deep water will mean that oil gets more expensive over time.

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His rational for this outlandish statement: 3. Banning off-shore oil drilling will cause us to lose $1 trillion in economic benefits. Mr. Goldberg fails to enumerate these $1 trillion benefits we stand to lose. He makes no effort to factor in the economic benefits like job creation from new true green industries. He does not take into account that business has finally come to realize that being green has financial benefits due to climate change. Ask a farmer if he thinks the climate is changing and why.

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Comments on Jonah Goldberg's column of June 19, 2010, in which he states that oil is the "True green fuel."

Goldberg's rationale for this outlandish statement: 2. Growing ethanol to fuel transportation takes land and water from growing food.

Mr. Goldberg's argument is a smoke screen which attempts to divert attention from the real problem. I don't think any serious energy company would propose corn ethanol as a replacement for oil. At this time in the development of alternative fuels most experts acknowledge that ethanol does not have the energy density to fuel over-the-road trucks, which accounts for the major use of fuel for internal combustion engines. Corn produces less energy than it requires to make the ethanol. Only subsidies by the government and tariffs on foreign ethanol keep producers viable.

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Jonah Goldberg in his infinite wisdom posted a column Saturday, June 19, stating that oil is the true "green" fuel. Why in the world would he make such a statement? Is he on drugs? His rationale is that  the BP spill is not as bad as the pollution from farm fertilizer run-off in the gulf that creates dead zones.

He goes on to say that growing corn to produce ethanol as a substitute for oil takes water and land from the production of food. Furthermore he states that we will lose $1 trillion in economic benefits, which he fails to enumerate. Next he states we will have to buy most of our oil from foreign producers. Finally he says that bio fuels are inefficient and costly and would require 30% more land to replace oil for transportation and would encourage the destruction of rain forests in countries like Brazil.

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Got a mirror? Take a squint at it. There's your culprit. As Pogo was wont to say, "We have met the enemy and he is us." There is very little in our modern world that is not either made from oil or doesn't depend on it to produce. Virtually all plastics have oil and gas in them. Even deodorant is made from oil. Think tooth paste. No kidding. It is derived from petroleum. Lipstick is too. We have petroleum in our bodies from all of the oil based chemical we consume. Taking vitamin capsules? Made from petroleum. The United States is the far and away largest consumer of petroleum in the world. A bottle of shampoo is typically 100% petrochemicals. The Center for Disease Control tested humans for environmental chemicals and found 212 chemical compounds and metals in human blood.

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T. Boone Pickens in his Pickens plan advocates replacing gasoline and diesel fuel with natural gas which we have in abundance. Cars can be converted to natural gas too. My college roommate drove a Pontiac which ran on natural gas back in the early 1950s. There was little infrastructure for natural gas in those days but he seemed to get along fine. This conversion wouldn't be cheap but it would replace a lot of imported oil and oil from deep off-shore wells. Bye Bye BP

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Keith Kohl, Editor of Energy and Capital, reports that wind generated electricity is bringing the cost of electric power down to the point where power companies, most of which love coal as an energy source, are generating propaganda dissing wind energy. Consumers are paying less for wind generated energy than for pollution belching coal fired power. It's the same sad story that happens in the energy producing business time and again. The oil, gas, and electric generating companies claim that their systems are more cost efficient, and consumers will go where the costs are less. But when it turns out that an alternative source is actually cheaper and cleaner than their systems they begin to spin and lie to the public to protect their profits. When the cost of pollution is entered into the formula I suspect that wind is far more cost efficient that coal. Don't let the coal and power generating plants that use it snow you. Wind energy, after the initial construction cost is free and non-polluting. Now we have a history that proves it is also cheap.

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We're at Day fifty of the worst environmental disaster in history and there is some hope. BP has put a cap on the runaway well that captures between 25-75% of the oil spewing out a mile below the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. That's quite a spread. Should we believe these numbers? Even if it is capturing half of the flow, it's about the amount originally estimated right after the giant deep water drilling rig blew up. They claim to be working on a new cap which could capture more. All of the vents on the current cap haven't been closed for fear that it will freeze up and prevent the cap from working properly.

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