The officials expect the ‘proposed’ new labels to be finalized early next year and used in 2012 model year cars. The published labels will be available for public comment for 60 days starting last week.

The new label is mandated by the 2007 energy law and includes the same old information on city and highway miles per gallon and estimated driving costs based on 15,000 miles a year.

This writer has thought about the offer to comment over for a week, and concluded its best to share the over riding thoughts with the loyal readers.  In a few days the thoughts ran to a posting maybe 10,000 words long – so this is a very truncated version.

Here is a link to the 19-page pdf with the labels proposed as seen in the Federal Register.

EPA DOT Label 1 Duel Fuel Type 2. Click image for the largest view.

For one label proposal, the bureaucrats would add a letter grade summing up a vehicle’s energy efficiency and greenhouse gas emissions. Under the second label proposal, current stickers would be expanded to include comparison of various vehicles’ fuel economy and emissions. There is a third proposal as discussed below.

What stands out is the gallons of fuel per 100 miles measure on the first proposed label (Starts on pdf  page 2).  Mathematical reasoning has finally hit D.C.   The full electric vehicle version has a spot for kWhrs per 100 miles.  The savings claims are going to vary hugely across the price of gas, ethanol blends and electric rates. But it’s a start.

The consideration for leveling the measure across a diverse range of vehicles is a concept of “MPGequivalent” at 33.7 kWhrs per gallon of gasoline.  The gasoline value is set at $2.80 per gallon.  That’s where the math simplifies.  One can run one’s own numbers with the data provided and adjust for local market prices.

Lots of comment has been made over the past week over the letter grades such a children’s school grades of ‘A’ down to ’D’. This writer has no particular argument about using up paper and window space for a very quick rating – everything sold will be subjected to the same assumptions – simply because most people aren’t going to get into the fine details.

But the outstanding thing is there are different labels for different power unit types.  From pure electric recharged by the grid to hybrids and on more to straight gasoline and diesel engines the big main groups are singled out for fairness.  And fair it has to be as the needs of buyers are going to be every bit and more diverse than the range of labels.  If we’re not careful a bit of admiration might show for a set of labels that actually include useful information designed by government personnel.

EPA DOT Label 2 Duel Fuel Type 2. Click image for the largest view.

The second label proposal (Starts on pdf page 10) is going to look more familiar.  It emblazons the familiar miles per gallon combined with breakouts for city and highway mileage with the annual fuel cost for fueled vehicles.  The electric vehicle will again get the MPGequivalent thing with a quite useful notation of time to full battery charge and anticipated range.

The hybrids get a much more busy label with the all electric and the gas or diesel only information.  The proposed label understandably skips over the longer trips with say 75% electric and 25% fueled propulsion, but does outline the values when running only electric and only fuel.

The second label doesn’t get a letter grade space – to much relief.

EPA DOT Label 3 Duel Fuel Type 2. Click image for the largest view.

The government’s pdf file of the proposed labels includes a third option at pdf page 16 that most writers seem to overlook.  The third option uses a third of the space to point out the environmental rating with a star field with’ better’ getting more colored in stars.

The third label for electric vehicles offers a larger charge information space with full charge time and an anticipated range. A very busy hybrid label set covers the hybrids.

Some pretty calm and thoughtful folks thought all this through.  If this writer were deciding, the second label choice would be the prime candidate for despoiling the gorgeous model’s window on the showroom floor.

But factually this writer and most of you are the cerebral types looking for more complete information.  Label choice one, the thinnest and desultory one fails us and might positively affect the average disinterested buyer.

Label three is marginally better, but wastes space and is a silly exercise in making an environmental point.  Everyone gets the fact that better efficiency is going to consume fewer resources and dump less waste.  It’s a genuine political statement, no one wants to dump into the air, so whipping on buyers seems to be seizing a forced opportunity and cheating buyers out of useful data.

That would make label 2 the best choice and even better if a spot for gallons or kWhrs per 100 miles and the five year savings compared to the average from label one substitutes the space for the environmental junk.

That’s this writer’s take on the label that will come proposed or not.  It could be a straight information piece with great data and a convenient means to make comparisons.  Lose the environment greenhouse gas and pollutants political statement, stay on course and do the public service and the label change might be worth our time for a close inspection and thought.

You’re free to use any thoughts here for yourself if you choose to comment.

This writer can count among family and friends those who have benefited from love of country, and those who have sacrificed to keep the country safe, free and filled with hope, choice and the prospect of happiness.  For the purpose here country is your own turf, the community in close proximity and the rest of us spread far and wide to each border.  The love is for the people, the scenery, the resources, and the blessings of each place and its occupants.  The country is all of us and the environment around us, a situation uniquely seen from every eye, but in every positive view a joy to behold well worth its defense, protection and considered use.

Americans, so far at least, are still free to hate the government.  It’s a tradition well earned and earning more emotional regard with each passed law.  The past months have seen more law, regulations, compulsory programs and other bits forced on the citizenry with near elitist élan never before seen in American history.  It’s also a show of contempt on the productive, self-sustaining and self-reliant people who occupy this country.  Government knows better than you what’s good for you, and you have to pass the law to find out what’s in it.  Somehow the government world got turned upside down, or more likely ripped apart such that keeping track of what its up to is beyond any citizen.

Labor built this country, digging foundations, setting bricks, pounding nails, wiring in the electricity, and doing all the things from a concept to a finished structure and the lives and production that takes place within.  It goes to responsible conduct, taking risks, working hard and smart and gathering the consequences both good and bad.  America is blessed as the consequences are in the main much more good for everyone than the bad for a few.

Along the way the 20th century saw more and more of the fruits of taking responsibility and the risks and rewards siphoned off with taxes and errors in judgment of a few answered with regulations for all.  Not all of that is bad, but there comes a turning point – which seems to be upon us – and gathering force as a nasty storm.

The eerie thing is the situation was foretold, in a plan set forth by two professors, Richard Cloward and Frances Fox Piven, both sociologists and political activists at the Columbia University School of Social Work and educators of one Barack Obama.  Make of that what you will.

The plan simply put is to gain control of American society and its economy by overwhelming the system with government spending and entitlement demands.  It’s a crude but brilliant Machiavellian plan to turn the United States into centrally controlled state with a permanent majority that desperately needs government for economic survival that can be counted on to always vote for bigger government.

The evidence is vivid, from the health plans 16,000 new IRS agents to join the already unionized Internal Revenue Service, from the stimulus plan a staggering $125 billion went to teachers protecting their union affiliation, billions more to save or create jobs of government employees across the country. The stimulus plans also saved GM and Chrysler so that their employees could keep their unions intact outside of a bankruptcy.

Meanwhile the public employee is said to enjoy a 30% higher income than the private sector employee.  That puts the public servant in a better economic situation than the citizen.  And the number of public employees continues to grow – most as union members.

There was a time just decades ago that irresponsible management bled laboring people who alone had no bargaining power.  A union of people brought some equality to the bargaining of what labor’s share of the production pie was paid for the work to get goods made.  It was an effort worth doing and made the nation richer and stronger as well as building a nation of consumers for a much-expanded economy with vastly larger opportunities.

But as with all good things union efforts went too far and handed manufacturing to people in other countries with labor costs soaking up capital investment that could have keep manufacturing jobs and made them better paying.

Union growth has nearly abandoned the private sector as opportunities have evaporated.  Instead the union leadership focused on government personnel, an exploitation too easy to miss with votes and money measured in millions to buy their way.  Labor leadership has never been so fat, so happy and so rich in opportunity, influence and power.

It can’t last.  This summer saw government employees riot to protect their privileged jobs in Greece. When the private sector cash flow shrinks the bloated government has to borrow or suck out even more cash from the economy.  Greece failed and the EU and the U.S. poured in money to keep the rioters off the streets.

One can justifiably hate a government that loses its way.  Sides have been set, those who produce wealth for an economy to function and those who live off the wealth.  Certainly some and likely many government jobs are worth getting done – but not at a 30% premium.  But backing up the situation looks to be a serious and dangerous effort.

This writer doesn’t spend time on the emotion, the hate – better to plot a means to survive, preserve one’s assets, and help the family and friends likely to get caught up in the adjustment.  One can learn a lot from the Greeks again. As the Romans learned to their destruction, democracy is fine until people learn to vote good things for themselves.

Does anyone believe America can vote itself out of this mess?  This writer certainly hopes so.

Have a happy holiday.

Now that its over this writer can recoil from the anger felt as the catastrophe unfolded.  Yes, the well getting away is cause No. 1 – something that has happened before and will happen again – hopefully with more and more infrequency.  The lessons keep coming – from drilling into the earth since Drake’s day; the pressures down there can surprise you.

But the sorrow of the lives lost was quickly overcome by the shear idiocy of the media and political response.  There has been essentially no worthy information making the mainstream press or incorporated into political activity.  The reverse is the fact – misinformation is rampant and the consequences, not counting the loss of life itself is simply incredible.

The President’s behavior has been an utter failure – doing far more damage than the oil itself.  The offshore drilling ban is keeping 50,000 jobs without paychecks topping $2 billion in payroll losses alone, not counting the effect throughout the local economy in the situation where the major economic engine, tourism, disappeared.  The President’s action wasn’t just foolish, but cruelly focused on a few innocents, thoughtless and without any kind of leadership or sense of responsibility to the local area or the nation as a whole.  The reaction actually fed the media hysteria – a fault beyond forgiving in a leader.  No gulf beach trips and minigolf photoshoots will take away the realization the President is out of his league.

In the meantime property values are gong to be hit with incomes going down.  From Texas to Florida the tourism business is in shambles and may take years to recover.

There are many reports that no one is buying Gulf seafood, even in areas unaffected by the spill. Gulf Coast shrimpers and fishermen are in a tough spot: On the one hand, as more areas of the Gulf are declared safe, they presumably won’t be able to collect compensation from BP or the government and will have to get back to work; on the other hand, no one’s buying their catch. Given the public fear of toxins in food, this problem could last a long time.  But this writer is buying – Gulf seafood – if you can find it, hasn’t been so reasonably priced in decades.

For the future perhaps the most important lesson is the current administration can’t be trusted to act in the national interest.  Bans, moratoriums and other fear based knee-jerk reactions have spoiled regulatory certainty, which will exact a huge cost from oil firms, their shareholders, management and employees and in particular we consumers. Some insider reports suggest that oil assets in the Gulf are already being disposed of at fire-sale prices.  Fear leading fear, just what an economic recovery can not stand.

The most damning realization is the most liberal administration in American history is composed of people who lack the reflexive skepticism that intelligence and science apply to the mainstream media and those left-wing blogs. Spend some time following the reporting and blogging on Deepwater Horizon, and you come to realize that the administration’s behavior in the crisis likely wasn’t based on a cynical progressive master plan.  The administration was overwhelmed by sheer emotional panic about the magnitude of the potential disaster it faced as outlined by its most loyal supporters.  Embarrassing to thoughtful knowledgeable citizens.

Here is why.  What President Obama called the “worst environmental disaster America has ever faced” – the oil has pretty much already disappeared into the environment.  The disaster was a man made broad-based failure on the part of the media, the science establishment, and the federal bureaucracy. With the nation and its leaders looking for facts, information was replaced with a massive plume of apocalyptic disinformation and threats of losing a significant part of the coastline to the goo.

While the leaking oil was terrible in many resects the magnitude was vastly over wrought.  In June a slick computer-modeled animated video showed a gigantic part of the spill making its way around the southern tip of Florida and up the East Coast. Oil covered everything from the Gulf to the Grand Banks.  The New York Daily News said, “BP Oil Slick Could Hit East Coast In Weeks: Government Scientists.”  CBS, MSNBC and many others followed on.  The video was a huge YouTube hit.  It was one of history’s most successful news frauds from the National Center for Atmospheric Research – paid for by taxpayers.  Then the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) disavowed the scenario.  Too late, who ever hears about the recantations when the media screws up?

Watson Technical Consulting of Savannah, Ga. a firm specializing in computer modeling of the effects of hurricanes, seismic events, geophysical hazards, and weapons of mass destruction asserts the simulation was bogus from the very beginning, because it ignored important conditions in the Gulf. Furthermore, says Chuck Watson, the media never took account of how diluted the oil would be once it got around Florida, through the Gulf Stream and finally got to the Atlantic: The bulk of the theoretically massive spill the video shows amounts to roughly a quart of oil per square mile. Watson claims flat-out that NOAA was “gold digging” for grants as there’s probably more federal research money floating around the Gulf than there is oil. “There is a feeding frenzy with people trying to get funding for their specialty,” he said.  Never let a disaster go wasted or some such cleverness from the administration – does that sound like people that can be trusted?

The coffin for this writer was the “Giant Plumes” of oil.  Here the lying got very creative and flunked high school general science class.  Halfway into May coming up with oil on the surface was getting problematic so some marine researchers were drafted to provide the answer.  Water tests were showing oil in small quantities under the water’s surface from wave action, but how much no one could say nor, obviously, was there any peer reviewed literature to check on the known facts.

Media reports implied and even tried to assert that “enormous oil plumes” were waiting, like nuclear submarines, to rise and attack unsuspecting beaches and wetlands. The New York Times summed up the media consensus on May 15: “Scientists are finding enormous oil plumes in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, including one as large as 10 miles long, 3 miles wide, and 300 feet thick in spots. The discovery is fresh evidence that the leak from the broken undersea well could be substantially worse than estimates that the government and BP have given.” The article quoted Samantha Joye, a marine-sciences professor at the University of Georgia, as saying that this oil was mixed with water in the consistency of “thin salad dressing.”  Except there weren’t any plumes at all, let alone any ‘salad dressing’ type stuff.

By the end of May NOAA, where some grownups still have responsibility, released a study finding weak concentrations of oil in the area surrounding the Deepwater Horizon site at only 0.5 parts per million, maximum. The median was a little over 0.2 parts per million.

Again as the “giant” spill that threatened the East Coast, that’s barely above the threshold of detection.  By late July and early August, BP, the Federal Government, and some independent researchers were saying they couldn’t find any plumes at all. “We’re finding hydrocarbons around the well, but as we move away from the well, they move to almost background traces in the water column,” said Admiral Thad Allen, the administration’s point man on the spill. By then some 75 percent of the oil released is gone – and that’s based on new estimates that put the spill rate at the high end of earlier projections.

The giant-plume threat was greatly overstated by scientists and further blown out of proportion by the media. This writer believes those ‘scientists’ are not scientists at all.  As everyone who passed high school general science knows, oil is lighter than water and rises above it in all known situations on this planet. The idea of underwater plumes defies everything that we know about the physical laws on earth.  It’s been a great source of irritation and anger for weeks.  It’s a very good thing the notion is so incredibly dumb that its funny – but watching people report it is to see a stunning display of ignorance.  Are there no fact checkers left in the mass media?

The Gulf of Mexico and some of the coast of California are warm ecological systems where oil seeps are part of the food chain.  The leak was a bonanza for oil eating bacteria and the bacteria bonanza will work its way up the food chain with its abundance.  While the leak was perhaps a four-fold increase in the annual oil supply to the Gulf, the natural ecosystem adjusted quite well and as seen decades ago in the Mexican leak – it’s a very short-term matter. Truly it’s a disaster not to be left unused – by bacteria.

Dispersants turn thick, ugly slicks into widely distributed droplets, minimizing damage to beaches and sensitive wetlands.  When slicks are broken up the light oil parts evaporate, and the bacteria more easily eat the heavier parts.  Corexit is thought to be the major dispersant used in the treatment – something you shouldn’t spray directly on coral, marshlands or other living things as it’s a detergent like chemical.  Corexit has made lots of disinformation news too, even being a subject for a Congressional hearing.  But the EPA who recently started proceedings to make milk spills hazardous material type events has approved Corexit in supervised use.  In a reality check using dispersants is to break up oil before it gets to shore, piles up and gets out of the water – where the oil breakdown slows down and gets quite messy for wildlife and the flora.  It’s a very good thing the EPA kept its act together and the disbursements flowing – an issue of debate that did have some suspense.

Finally, this writer has a question for everyone – where is the link to the reputable gulf shrimp supplier – I’d like a five gallon bucket full, packed in dry ice for a 3 day UPS ground trip. A shrimp feast might make the anger recede a little more.

In closing, people lost their lives and condolences are due their families and herewith are heartfelt given.  Jobs are lost, suffering and troubles are mounting, so this writer is speaking out for you and will be your customer again.

The disaster isn’t about oil anymore, it’s the impact of media and politics – something that should and could be fixed in just a few words by just one man.  Do you think it will happen?

It is an arena fraught with special interests of every stripe including the environment itself to the consumers ranging from wealthy to dirt poor.  The principle is here and always will be to get the most abundant supplies at the lowest possible cost.  Competitive Capitalism, not just capitalism that’s in bed with government doing the business on the sly, but out in the open, everyone gets the same deal from government – competition.

Which leads back to the principle of patents.  Now admittedly the law as dictated by special interests has diluted the value of a patent unless your situation matches well with the special interests that have hooked the law to their advantage, but the concept of exclusivity has a parallel for incentives.

So here is this writer’s take on incentives.  For new products, not services please note and mind carefully on this point; just products get a period, such as with a patent’s exclusivity that would be tax-free.  Consumers might even get an income tax deduction for buying such stuff. Put progress in high gear with high power.

Say two decades, or twenty years for no income tax, employee matching FICA, excise or other taxes for the new product’s business.  For everything, energy, widgets, you name it.  New products in new companies get two decades of freedom from taxation.  It’s time for a “tax patent policy”.

Ready to fight, got a better idea, or want to poke holes in the concept?  That’s what comments are for.  Change, modify, reject, everyone except spammers gets to have their say.  No cussin’ or you’ll get deleted.  No personal affronts either. Be nice.

Some will notice straight off that some products like software have product lives of just a few years.  That’s OK.  Just cut the averaged tax in half for say 10 year, or 25% for 5-year product life cycles.  So long as everyone gets the prize for the risk.  That’s the whole point – put an incentive on taking risk.

What has everything on slow or stop isn’t the quality of ideas.  It’s the potential between the loss of the time and money against the payoff from a risk.  Take out 35%  tax of profiting and the payoff picture looks very different indeed.

Moreover, wanting to get or losing an earned tax-free product puts intense focus on new better and cheaper products – a boon to research. Humans tend to want to be safe, but put an economy on safe with growth and better products plus lower costs and the need for innovation will explode.  It supports the emotional side of the mind as well.  New, better, faster, cheaper, has great appeal – the intellect needs stimulation to do better – not crawl into a hole and pull over a rock with a weapon poking out to fight off anyone with an advantage.

Maybe you’re thinking ‘that writer is a perverse bugger’ and maybe so, we’re talking incentives here, trying to get people to do things they would otherwise postpone or pass over.  What matters is to get human energy moving and making contributions.  That ‘Hu’ thing noticeable in some TV ads doesn’t have legs to travel.  But a product with a twenty-year tax-free status, maybe reaching to the employees, management and consumers surely will.

Lastly, one might kick in a special deal for everyone instead of a special interest set.  Let’s say your product at the tenth year costs half as much – give that product an extra ten years!  Better faster cheaper, right.

That’s enough, past 600 words.  A seed is set; ‘tax patent policy’ is out now.  This writer’s snowball has just been pitched into hell.  Lets see what the devils can do with it.

When this writer hears the cry calling for American to “begin” the transition to cleaner energy, even from the president’s office – an inward groan forms.  Actually with the ethanol example much credit is due to the Bush and Clinton administrations.  Ethanol when limited to 10% of the gasoline market is mature – no thanks to the current leadership.  Even more can be said for polices, research and development, investment and in some places long strings of red aircraft warning lights atop great fields of wind turbines. If anything – Congress has failed to keep the tax matters and accounting stabilized when the incentives come and go.

That points to the Bio Diesel industry which can’t get seem to get stability from Congress. Plants are closing up, vegetable oil prices are in free fall, and new ways of ‘disposal’ are being examined for the oils.  No one with any sense will trust the tax, accounting and finance area for Bio Diesel.  Its no wonder bio diesel things are floundering.

Incentives are critical.  Here is why.  Energy and fuel markets are entrenched, fundamental for the modern economy and essential for standards of living.  The current markets have decades of incentives, investments and dividends of their own in place, often forgotten and overlooked.  An example can be seen in the fission nuclear energy market where the regulatory field is built up to give the best (really only) consideration to existing technology that just gets bigger when the reality is the market needs designs to get smaller, use other fuels, and be much less expensive for both the certifying a reactor design, but the costs of running a reactor as well.  Government regulation has the entirety of nuclear potential fully barriered from use in the U.S.

All is not lost.  Biofuels have uncounted possibilities from research to development and pilot plants busily getting closer to displacing more petroleum.   Wind is getting more mature, wind turbines are getting better and just how to use combined wind resources is getting more attention and testing might be coming soon.  Solar thermal and photovoltaic are gaining ground with solar thermal getting stronger and photovoltaic technology getting better and cheaper.  Solar is coming.

Geothermal at the small level is doing OK and could use better incentives.  Large geothermal numbers look better with each passing year. Technology is closing the gaps for deep heat extraction.  Deep hot geothermal is looking very good, still a way out there, but very good.

On the consumption side a weak economy is having its way keeping energy and fuel use in low demand – the situation won’t last – but most new equipment buyers with a bit of clean green in mind are choosing more responsible cars, furnaces and other tools.

With the biggest and most widespread market of decision makers, the light transport market looks to be the place for the most improvement.  The Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf cars should sell late this year.  These are truly worthwhile choices for leading adopter buyers.  The Tesla stock sale went very well indeed.

But ‘fuel economy’ as expressed in miles per gallon can be tricky.  Going from 20 mpg to 27 as the old mandate forced brought a 35% improvement.  The new 34 mpg mandate from 27 is only 21%.  The suggestion of 44 mpg – so far unobtainable for designs most people would want to buy – would net 22% from 34 mpg.  The easy savings are already in the market – pushing more could seriously backfire.

Government, private investors and big companies like ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell, and BP from big oil and GE, Panasonic, Hitachi, and venture capital are throwing plenty of R&D dollars at the bio fuels and electrical storage challenges. Within a few years we might be at the point where billions of incentives for advanced biofuels and electrical storage would result in hundreds of such facilities actually being built.  Why wait?  Why sunset the incentives on short leashes?

The utter ignorance of saying “begin” seems insulting across the whole of the energy and fuels market place.  Getting serious at the public mass media and political discourse level would be more worthy.  The target needs to be something along the lines of reaching the point at which the alternatives are unambiguously better/faster/cheaper than fossil oil and coal, or can at least match their cost and convenience in primary transportation and electrical power generation.  Only then could a phase out of incentives begin – for every source of energy and fuel.

This leads to the call for you to answer the insult by contacting your president, senator and congressperson and voting for some sensible discussion.

Begin?  Bah, we’re in the second quarter of the game.  The opposition is getting pretty clearly visible and it not the human genius, technology or risk money or capital – it’s the public policy mired in political maneuvering for the lowest common denominator.  It’s enough to drive the well informed to anger.  Speak up; let the media and politicians know there’s one less dope out there than they think.

Just to add self insult to the reputability self destruction Russia is leading the Gas Exporting Countries Forum (GECF), which includes Russia and Algeria, the two major gas exporters to Europe, that aspires one day become a “gas OPEC”, able to set quotas and prices as the oil cartel does. Iran and Venezuela, while not particularly large gas exporters, are also members.  This caliber of partners in an association does nothing good for Russia’s reputation and influence where it matters.

News reports have it that vast reserves of shale gas lie under Poland that could in the future free Western Europe from its dependence on Russian natural gas with the help of recent advances in American reserve fracturing and extraction technology.

Energy consultant Wood Mackenzie estimates up to 1.36 trillion cubic meters of unconventional shale gas could be lying under northern and central Poland. If the find is confirmed at that number it will increase the EU’s reserves by 47 per cent and offer a more reliable alternative to Russia’s vast natural gas supplies. ConocoPhillips is planning to start drilling near Gdansk next month and will be followed by ExxonMobil.

The notion to make GECF a cartel was first suggested in 2002 by then President Vladimir Putin. In 2006, Aleksandr Medvedev, Gazprom’s deputy chairman, threatened to create “an alliance of gas suppliers more influential than OPEC” if Europe did not play ball in energy negotiations.  Such great fellows to have to make a deal with.

If the exploratory drilling by the Americans with their technology and experience works out as well or better than the consultant’s estimates, then a new battle for markets will begin.  And a misinformation and/or disinformation campaign can be expected.  The American technology called hydraulic fracturing, with several decades of ecological accident and damage free practice and the same amount of time in development and improvement is under assault from the “media, press and politicians” with little regard for facts.  The mis and dis information effort is already well underway. No KGB type influence has yet been announced as detected.

Oddly, or perhaps even amazingly, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the utter bane of many industrial developments has already studied hydraulic fracturing without finding cause for alarm or concern.  Yet again the left in the U.S. Congress expects another study to be done as the science didn’t meet their expectations.  That puts the Russian leadership, their Gazprom Company, the American political left, much of the media and press all in the very same bed – trying to undo or change history – using an American government agency. How’s that for a recipe for corruption?

The Americans, the Poles, plus Germany, India, South Africa, and Australia all have huge gas reserves.  They all will need the time tested and proven American technology to serve the consumers from those reserves.

It seems that Gazprom set itself up by bullying the Ukraine and over charging the European Union for gas.  Its newest friend(s) are the leftists in America and if a little lucky – a government agency.  Don’t think for a second that the U.S. EPA’s effort won’t be followed with even more hysterics in Europe. The left in Europe is even less responsible than the Americans.

So get ready – one can fairly expect the old KGB techniques of dis information and mis information to get lots of new sounding out.  It won’t matter much that some five decades have seen fracking in the U.S. with no known human impact other than a low cost steady supply of natural gas.

What’s with America?  Develop a great thing and let extremists and alarmists wreck it?  How does a country get so that one of its government agency’s most closely allied friends is a foreign national petroleum company?

. . . Its little wonder foreign nationals have little respect for Americans . . .

Meanwhile, Poland lost its President in a horrific plane crash Saturday April 10th 2010 in Russia.  For which this writer sends along his condolences.  The crash cut a swath through Poland’s leadership. The 97 dead included the army chief of staff, the head of the National Security Office, the national bank president, the deputy foreign minister, the deputy parliament speaker, the civil rights commissioner and other members of parliament.

“A shiver of repulsion ran through a shocked Poland,” might say it best.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was careful to emphasize recent improvements in relations between Russia and Poland in an address shortly after the crash.

Polish President Lech Kaczynski said in 2005, “Poland needs to reconsider its mistakes. But more than that, it needs a consensus based on truth.”

If Poland can hold that thought on truth it can best honor President Kaczynski and save both Americans and Europeans from themselves and help persuade Russia that relations based in the truth will be better for her as well.

That’s scary just to start, but when thinking through the various configurations, which number easily into tens of thousands, with uncounted one off purpose built trucks, the regulatory concept seems to be an invitation to a wall of regulatory books.  For the credit of the new study’s authors, they know this and warn early in the narrative that much should be considered before diving into the regulatory labor.  Japan has already gotten to regulating trucks, the European Union is hot on it and California is working up its own hubristic regulations.  All are racing to the “Oh my (insert your expression of choice here)” salvation of government knowing better than truck owners and operators.

The idea isn’t bad, rather the implementation may well be, or probably will be as we’re talking about government mandates here.  The facts that can be gleaned about what’s available are quite the eye opener.  But the government, instead of optimizing the market to integrate the known working and good coming prospects, is going to regulate.

The study authors seem to have some sense.  The press release says, “any regulation of medium- and heavy-duty vehicles should use a metric that reflects the efficiency with which a vehicle moves goods or passengers, such as gallons per ton-mile, a unit that reflects the amount of fuel a vehicle would use to carry a ton of goods one mile. This is called load-specific fuel consumption (LSFC).

The report does not recommend a specific numerical standard because the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) will need to establish standards tied to the task associated with a particular type of vehicle; garbage trucks might be held to a different standard than transit buses, for example.”

If the study author’s take would become the guideline, then a buyer would find more fuel economy choices and supporting information at purchase.  That would be worthwhile.  But the problem is the Congress in its infinite wisdom is seeking to mandate fuel economy standards.  Going that route is going to simply increase costs with perhaps a benefit in less fuel use or just as likely – require more.

This is because the performance of moving mass will always be in the conditions of operations.  A bucket truck may well go down a highway only to head off into a swamp or up a mountainside or any imaginable conditions in between.  Optimized for fuel economy may well force a truck design that can meet lawful sale but cannot get to the job.  Well-traveled readers will know that the level road isn’t everywhere.  It takes power to take loads up hill.  Imagine using a jack to lift 80,000 pounds up say 100 feet – twice per mile.  If that doesn’t set one back, some trucks like garbage trucks go a few yards, stop and repeat dozens of time until loaded and then will drive at highway speeds only to get to unloading which might be done in a quagmire.

With infinite conditions the mandate will inevitably seek to force standards and categories so limiting applications for trucks.  While it might seem sensible to compel an improvement in fuel economy, the study authors realize that fuel efficiency is much more realistic and less complex.

Here are some of the leading ideas available to improve fuel efficiency:

Truck Fuel Ecomony Potential. Click image for the largest view.

Now imagine the truck operator’s point of view.  Moving to a diesel fleet looks quite motivating, hybrid power trains where practical would be very interesting as well.  Aerodynamics has great potential, as do reducing rolling resistance and adding computer assistance for intelligent engine and transmission operation.  Lots of hope here.

It would seem that these options should be offered with information describing the cost to fuel saved and when an operator would get” into the money.”  Incentives for the van, be it the box on a straight truck or the semi trailer could also have incentives.   An extra vehicle fee for not being aerodynamic might do the trick.  Good aero dynamics may need some other regulatory work as adding un cargoed length for saving fuel allowed being one important point.

The National Research Council report is thorough – running better than 400 pages with addendums.  The work itself is quite good and the recommendations sensible in the main. There is little point in personal attention for the National Research Council or the National Academy of Sciences in an effort to influence the regulatory course that’s coming.

But if you use or drive the bigger pickup or van up to the over the road semi tractor trailer, your attention needs pointed to the Congressmen and Senators.   There is a lot available in saving fuel in about a quarter of the transport fuel market.  Some incentives right away in the best of the technologies might well preclude the need for regulation and another bureaucracy with a wall of books filled with regulations.

It’s hard to imagine a country voluntarily joining the Armageddon Club willingly.  This writer and many of the site’s readers remember air raid drills, bomb shelter construction booms, mutually assured destruction – about 40 years of underlying terror and fear with a military industrial complex bleeding the nation the whole way.  Nuclear weapons do little; they frighten others making the owner a target. History shows now, it’s not a real smart choice.

The energy supplies of the world are changing.  Much more is yet to come.  The value of Iranian economic threats is meaningful but have little contemporary importance.  Yet somehow having a nuclear weapon seems to be a means to move the fulcrum of power away from the Iranian leaders so their lever has more length.

It really doesn’t, rather the threatened will likely move to destroy the fulcrum itself.  One can fairly expect Israel to blast the nuclear fulcrum up pretty thoroughly someday soon.  One can hardly blame them, the Iranian leaders painted targets on their chests as well as pushing out the fulcrum.  Not real smart guys, they might wind up with a shattered stick held in cold dead hands.

Meanwhile, history can misguide.  Many Islamic fundamentalists and extremists are in love with Germany’s failed National Socialist Party views.  One might think they’d get to the end point; the ‘Thousand year Reich’ didn’t make it two decades. Instead it ended in burning rubble and deaths not just of millions, but the theological premise itself.  That was followed by the Stalinist period in the old Soviet Union, which itself later fell apart, Yugoslavia, and even communist China realized that some freedoms must be answered, at least in part.  Theocratic nationhood and suzerainty over others is a failed dream that seems to end in disaster – falling at the end on the innocents being lead more than anyone else.

Some say that the U.S. is to blame, which is in part a truth, yet the facts are the Nazis and its Axis allies were busily working towards a nuclear weapon. At that point in history, the ‘soft west’ had recovered from its weak character, and simply used the atomic bomb not just once, but twice.  The evil of the dream, a thousand year reich, lording over all it could survey, was answered by a rising western character, delivering total destruction.

The election in the U.S. of the most leftist President possible is now marking a low point in western character.  If it weren’t for the race matter of President Obama being of African American ancestry, the polls would be worse.  He’s still getting a lot of charitable and guilty support.  But the election itself, whether the race point is included or not is marking a western low point, how far it will bounce back is the matter that has meaning.

For Iranians that should mean the noteworthy threats such as closing the Strait of Hormuz will be answered.  The answer will mean many more Iranians will suffer than anyone else, perhaps by an order of magnitude or more.  The Strait may well close, but it won’t stay closed and the price to Iran will be grave, indeed.

For all the landmass of the planet, Iran is a really small place.  On the scale of nuclear weapons, including both fission and fusion types, a few short minutes can see the whole nation paved in fresh radioactive glass, with everything alive vaporized or carbonized.  The power exists in single ships at sea, a couple of missiles, or a few planes.  It’s something to be thinking about in Iran.

But at the core of our humanity, the thoughts of our consciousness and our intellectual sensibility, it’s the people of Iran that we must concern ourselves with.  The people of Iran would be the main collateral damage.  Its up to them to get the brakes on the leadership, and it may not be possible.  No outside support can do it or even make much difference.

From outside Iran the view looking in, there doesn’t seem to be much hope, the Israeli answer seems most probable.  If Israel does move, and succeed, the people of Iran might have a short, but much better and new chance to recreate a nation.  If Israel doesn’t or fails . . .

We must consider the safety of the rest of humanity, so putting the people of Iran at extreme risk.  We can hope the infective pus of the Iranian leadership can be broken out from within, or perhaps pricked out by an Israeli move, that the friends of Iran can help treat it and clean it up.  But we must prepare our own character for the worst, the people of Iran fail and the danger grows for spreading the infection, forcing an answer to destruction with destruction.

The other lesson from the past century overlooked by Islamic leaders is that during the First and Second Great Wars of the twentieth century in Europe it was Christian vs. Christian with a death toll numbering tens of millions taking up about a decade in all and having spread world wide.  The noteworthy result is even more devastation and death can take place now in just minutes – and we are vividly aware of that fact.  It’s not just about weakness or softness in character.  Social character is very malleable, it can change very fast indeed, after all, we are free to think what we like here – a fact that should tremble the knees of any intelligently thinking aggressor.

Life is a like a skin enveloping the Planet Earth.  There is but an infective pimple growing in Iran, it will break out somehow or another posing the question – will it be healed from within, helped along by a pricking, or need a cauterization by fire?

However it goes, oil prices will spike, for a little while or longer and almost everyone in the west will survive and prosper.  One wonders if things go on long enough, badly enough will there even be an Iran or anyone there left alive?

Lets all try to focus; it’s the infection that deserves attention. Comments are encouraged.

Just remember you exhale CO2 with every breath, which in turn is inhaled by plants as their food.  Could a dumber idea be regulated?  Probably not, but idiocy knows no boundaries in politics and the hysterical press.

Left to regulators, we may die of CO2 poisoning, but it won’t be from inhaling, it would more likely be from prohibited or restricted exhaling.  If hysteria weren’t so saturated into the media and the ill educated and informed it would be high comedy.

But its not – its a man made disaster ignited, and we’re going to see it burn ravenously unless we stop it.  That ‘we’ means people not ill informed and educated – en mass.

It’s worse than people realize.  The media and press, the beauracracy, and the Congress are triangulating the economy.  As one deplorable excuse for ‘public servant’ Sen. John Kerry put it, “”The message to Congress is crystal clear: get moving.”

Maybe it could even be quadangulating.  Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, told The Associated Press on the eve of the U.N. climate conference in Copenhagen that by executive action, the Obama administration can boost the U.S. target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions beyond levels envisioned in legislation working its way through Congress.

Or is it pentangulation?  U.N., the administration, the media, the bureaucrats, and the Congress, yes that’s five fuses for an economy bomb, none with any sense.

However it’s being seen now, history will show the leadership and self proclaimed  “intelligentsia” of the human race as lemmings diving over the cliff.

If it wasn’t something to destruct an economy growing to provide decent standards of living of 6 plus billion human souls where most are still left out, it would be war, but the reasoned folks don’t seem to grasp how vicious the power and money grab is in this event.

They are out to destroy lifestyles, deconstruct the free economy for one of their design, and imprison you into their new economy.  Just how do people, plants, and the animals on the earth plan to adapt?  It’s a frightening unknown, but we do know that CO2, the food of plants, which are our food, is coming under direct attack.

So here is this writer’s comeback.  Humanity doesn’t know the optimal CO2 concentration in the atmosphere.  We don’t the too low or too high – at all.  We’re not even asking the question or the right questions.  But instinctively this writer’s response is – it’s probably not high enough yet.

We might want to take the position to keep going higher until those above noted questions have reliable answers.

Oh, lets not let anyone in the current climatology game play – their objectiveness is known to be biased, their honesty a fraud.  Start in new with the right questions and the right people; we are after all talking about the feeding of virtually everything.

It’s an important thing to worry about.  So where is the responsible science?  I guess they’re out there wondering what to do about the climatologists, and they’re getting another great big helping of science scheming dumped on them now.

Being in science leadership might get to be less than desirable as an career  – and that’s cause for grave worry as well.

Science has dragons to slay – lets try to help them out.

Angry yet?

It’s further along than we knew.  The U.S. Export-Import Bank told the Wall Street Journal it has issued a “preliminary commitment” letter to Petrobras in the amount of $2 billion dollars, which was fine.  Now the discussion has advanced at the presidential level to the possibility of increasing the amount.  Its not decided yet if the funds will come in the form of a direct loan or loan guarantees.

Meanwhile the U.S Treasury seems to need cash by the trillions of dollars.  Petrobras is one of the largest corporations in the western hemisphere. It’s also a pseudo national oil company or not depending on the circumstances.  Brazil is also in discussions with OPEC for becoming a new member.

On the other hand the guaranteed money for foreigner’s to drill for oil could well be a lever.  The disloyalty to America in the game to lease oil reserves could come back to haunt Obama.  It’s the simplest question – a favorite of children, dreaded by parents, if its OK for them why not the U.S.?  The offshore drilling ban lapsed last year in the midst of $4 gasoline.  Financing for those who would join OPEC seems the most completely wrong action possible.  Imagine if American oil companies lined up for loans, the hue and the cry would be deafening.

The Bush administration, (Miss them yet?) had a five year plan, no loans, by the way, to open the continental shelf for exploration plus getting on with leases in the Gulf of Mexico.  The environmentalists got a court to block drilling off Alaska.  Obama’s man Interior Secretary Salazar checked with an appeals court to see if that Alaska limit might be applied everywhere.  No, so for now the Gulf leases are back on.

It’s enough to drive a fuel consumer a little past crazy.  Spending money, other peoples’ money by the way, like stupefied drunks seems to be Congress’ main claim of accomplishments. Giving money to drill on another continent, to a prospective OPEC member with some yet to be seen sleight of the rules has to be the height of unimaginable stupidity.  No jobs, no taxes, no profits, nothing American in that, little or nothing to or for Americans in that.

Somehow I think Brazil can come up with financing or partners to get their deal done.  It’s certainly not in the interests of the American Public to be providing the capital.  Its things like this that cast serious doubt on the intentions of the White House.  Is it an American citizen there, or a “world citizen?”  One has the sense there is a certain “to hell with them” attitude about Americans in the White House now.

The contempt of Americans coming from the actions of the White House is adding up.  For all the super cool oratory, the facts of what’s happening are canceling it.

In still another hand . . .

Fred P. Hochberg, Chairman and President of the Export-Import Bank is saying, “Obama Underwrites U.S. Jobs.” All well and good, but his language belies the facts in his response.  The loan would “help,” it “increases the likelihood that American—not foreign— workers will be employed.”   Money isn’t something that can be simply not co-mingled; it’s the ultimate fungible item.

Until the Ex-Im Bank gets a deal that’s a guarantee vs. a direct loan, has a commitment from Brazil not to join OPEC and other smaller things like the money is used to buy American products the deal needs to be dead.

On the large scale this writer isn’t looking for a contest with Brazil.  But with the strange events in Ecuador vs. Chevron, the near total default by Argentina on its governmental obligations, the continuing trouble making by Chavez of Venezuela, exposure for an arm of the American people to engage so blindly seems to be a continuation of the same financial myopia that triggered the current recession.

Some alarming questions are on tap with the seemingly disconnected events.  If the Ex-Im Bank has already seen fit to guarantee business loans, a paltry $2 billion of a $175 billion five-year investment, just what does Adviser James Jones meeting with Brazilian officials have to do with the loan?  Are Mr. Hochberg and his bank about to be co-opted?  And just how is it that the custom of guarantees has become changed to a prospective direct loan?

It’s getting all very messy.  One wonders whom to trust. The obvious answer is trust no one, because when it comes to money in a foreign country, verification is not possible.  So Mr. Hochberg needs to buck it up, and get as far from this deal as possible.  When presidential advisors are talking with the government officials of your customer, you’re not doing what you think you are doing.  Or you’re going to be doing something you hadn’t expected.