BERKELEY, Calif., May 30, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ — Presidents Bush and Obama both supported wind power development by publicly referencing a Department of Energy (DOE) study that contains serious flaws, according to a new environmental book by UC Berkeley visiting scholar Ozzie Zehner. GREEN ILLUSIONS (University of Nebraska Press, June 2012) draws upon previously unpublished interviews with the DOE. According to Green Illusions, the DOE report renders a picture of wind energy that is up to six times more impressive than the department’s own field experience would indicate.
Fifty environmental groups and research organizations formally backed the report, including the Sierra Club and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. However, during his investigation, Zehner found that an appendix in the DOE report contains projections that are incongruent with DOE field data. The report therefore greatly underestimates wind turbine costs and overestimates wind power yields.
The DOE report, 20% Wind Energy by 2030, concludes that the U.S. could fill 20 percent of its electrical grid with wind power at “modest” cost. However, Zehner contends that, “the federal report extrapolates a select few years of data into the future without acknowledging the industry’s maturation. It’s as problematic as extrapolating the growth of high school students to show that by college they will stand taller than giraffes.”
So now we have tens of thousands of twenty story bird Cuisinarts and the most astonishing visual pollution smeared across the fruited plain. In a truly Federal nation many states would have checked the math and adopted a 'wait and see' attitude towards what we now know is an almost useless and environmentally destructive technology. But in the bizarre Bluto Blutarsky world of the Feds ("wanna beer, don't cost nuthin'") every state had the incentive to shut up and help its rent seekers take the cash. "After all, if we don't take our share it'll just go to Iowa"....The rest here.The DOE commissioned Black and Veatch to create the wind energy datasets. The consultancy assumed that experience from installing wind turbines would improve yields and decrease costs well into the future. “While it is well accepted that this occurred through the 1980s and 1990s, the learning curve has since flattened,” explains Zehner, “as the DOE itself documented in other reports.”Zehner does not stand against wind energy, but insists there are better options to reduce fossil fuel use. “Hype surrounding wind energy might even shield the fossil-fuel establishment — if clean and abundant energy is just over the horizon, then there is less motivation to clean up existing energy production or use energy more wisely,” says Zehner.
In a speech two weeks ago, Senator John McCain delivered a blistering assessment of President Barack Obama’s trade policy.
“The United States has been sitting on the sidelines, and Asia is sprinting forward without us,” he said. “After four years, this administration still has not concluded or ratified a single free-trade agreement of its own making.”McCain conceded that on Obama’s watch Congress passed three free-trade agreements made under President George W. Bush. But, he said, “Since 2003, China has secured nine FTAs in Asia and Latin America alone. It is negotiating five more, and it has four others under consideration.” Japan and India are seeking trade agreements, as well. “As of last year, one report found that Asian countries had concluded or were negotiating nearly 300 trade agreements — none of which included the United States of America.” He concluded that we, too, should pursue “an ambitious trade strategy in Asia.”
Volusia County School officials stand by a Deltona High School nurse's decision to refuse a student his inhaler during an asthma attack, citing a lack of a parent's signature on a medical release form."It's like something out of a horror film. The person just sits there and watches you die," said Michael Rudi, 17. "She sat there, looked at me and she did nothing."
He said the school dean found his inhaler during a search of his locker last Friday. The inhaler was still in its original packaging -- complete with his name and directions for its use; however, the school took it away because his mother hadn't signed the proper form for him to have it.
School leaders called Sue Rudi when her son started having trouble breathing. She rushed to the office and was taken back to the nurse's office by school administrators and they discovered the teen on the floor.
"As soon as we opened up the door, we saw my son collapsing against the wall on the floor of the nurse's office while she was standing in the window of the locked door looking down at my son, who was in full-blown asthma attack," Rudi said.
Michael Rudi said when he started to pass out from his attack, the nurse locked the door.
"I believe that when I closed my eyes I wasn't going to wake up," he said.
The Director of Student Health Services, Cheryl Selesky, said that parents must sign the medical release form each year, which allows students to carry their prescribed drugs with them in school.
In experiments at six public universities, students assigned randomly to statistics courses that relied heavily on “machine-guided learning” software — with reduced face time with instructors — did just as well, in less time, as their counterparts in traditional, instructor-centric versions of the courses. This largely held true regardless of the race, gender, age, enrollment status and family background of the students.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, a division of the Interior Department, is considering loosening regulations on the killing of bald eagles, the national bird of the United States, to accommodate the development of wind energy sources.
A draft regulation first filed in April would allow businesses to apply for 30-year permits allowing them to kill bald eagles in the course of other legal activities. The length of those permits would be a six-fold increase over the five-year window allowed under current law.
Advocating the [National Transportation Safety Board]’s preferred ban, its chairman Deborah Hersman noted that 3,092 people had died in distracted-driving incidents in 2010. The Transportation Department estimates that Americans drove 3 trillion miles that year. That works out to 970 million miles driven for each distracted-driving fatality.I go on to argue that federal efforts to ban the use of cell phones in cars, and even GPS systems, would be a mistake.
To put these numbers in further perspective: Drunken driving caused more than three times as many fatalities. And mobile phones were not the main cause of distractions, either, even if Hersman implied that they were. In 2009, the Transportation Department found that phones were either being used by or “in the presence of” a driver in 18 percent of distracted-driving fatalities. Another department report concluded that “conversing with a passenger was the most common source of distraction” from inside cars.
Lots of telephone calls were flying between politicians on election night.
Treasurer Richard Mourdock said he has received numerous calls congratulating him on his win in the Republican primary election over Sen. Richard Lugar.
Among them was former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, the party’s presumptive presidential nominee.
Mourdock said he missed Romney’s Tuesday night call, tried to call him back Wednesday and had to settle for Romney’s voice mail.
Also calling were former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum and businessman Herman Cain, both former GOP presidential candidates; former Vice President Dan Quayle; Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and a slew of other senators.
One senator, though, had not called as of late Thursday: Lugar.
