Matthew Simmons, major investment banker to the oil business for decades, on peak oil and the need for alt energy.

“Many alternative energy sources are energy intensive,” he said. “Corn-based energy is a scam; it’s very energy-intensive.” Simmons also pointed out that nuclear power plants must run for 15 years before they can produce enough energy to replace the energy used to build the plant itself.

“New supply sources are important, but they cannot fill the energy gap,” Simmons added.

His views on corn-based energy and nuclear are, too put it mildly, enlightening.

He says the oil industry got blindsided by peak oil because they refused to believe it could happen.

“It was a religion that was faith-based, not fact based,” Simmons said. “We’re flying blind. Since we don’t have the data we stay in the dark.”

Simmons says the US has been living in an “energy dream,” that we face “a real crisis,” and “have no Plan B.” This from one of the heaviest hitters in energy investment and banking. Too bad Congress and the White House are still sleep walking in the dream world.

1 Comment »

Two senators, one Republican, one Democrat, have proposed a plan to divide Iraq into three parts, no doubt still controlled by the United States.

Except, the plan is a hallucination and can’t work. The US is not in control there and hasn’t been for quite some time. Not that this matters to congress members in whose view the US must always be supreme, even if reality clearly contradicts this.

It’s important to note this imperialist plan to divide Iraq didn’t even bother to make a pretense of consulting Iraqis to get their view and is bipartisan.

2 Comments »

Apparently so.

this pitiful excuse for socialist politics held by the SEP is exactly the kind you would expect from a… CEO’s revolutionary consciousness.

4 Comments »

The AWS wave energy converter is a cylinder shaped buoy, moored to the seabed. Passing waves move an air-filled upper casing against a lower fixed cylinder, with up and down movement converted into electricity.

The concept has been proven at full-scale in 2004 via a pilot plant that was installed off the coast of Portugal. Engineering for a pre-commercial demonstrator is now ongoing.

The converters are at least 18 feet underwater, can survive violent storms, and produce more power in less space than other wave generation methods. Unlike solar or wind, wave power is steady and reliable, the waves are always there. In the coming world, we’ll generate power any number of ways, and wave power sure looks promising.

Alternative-energy-news.info has detailed information and there’s more on the company website, AWS Ocean Energy.

6 Comments »

Iggy Pop has reunited with the Asheton Brothers, and they brought in Mike Watt on bass for this, the first new Stooges album in decades. For those of you who know who the Stooges and Mike Watt are, nothing else needs be said. Except, of course, is it good?

One word. Yes.

(Photo is back cover from Amazon)

No Comments »