The Climate Reality Project

The market has finally realized that every commodity has an energy value, we should to! The value of every crop is directly proportional to the energy it has stored in it.
Yet, we need to understand that markets don't create capital.
The only new capital created is the daily product of sunlight striking the Earth's surface, and, by some thermodynamic or thermo-chemical process, converting and storing that solar energy into a form useful for maintaining life, or accomplishing some productive work. So capital is stored energy!
Here in Iowa, we have always grown energy, we have always controlled the capital at its point of creation. It is time we recognize that we hold all the Aces, and stop letting the market manipulators steal the fruits of our labors with their fraudulent wealth creation schemes.
I recently had a heated discussion with two local farm-raised classmates, both dear friends, both of above-average intelligence, and both were opposed, as I am, to regulation of .futures markets, but neither seems to recognize the harm that speculation in these markets can do.
Any willing buyer should be able contract with any willing seller to buy whatever they need on whatever terms that both can agree upon.
That does not mean that you should be able sell what you do not have, nor have any means to produce; that we would call fraud in any other trade!
Likewise, in a market of finite resources necessary to life, you do not have a right to more than you need, no matter how much richer you are than the other mouth that you wish to take it from, that is hoarding!
That is exactly what speculators do, they sell what they do not have, and buy what they have no need of. They never intend to create, or even provide, any energy useful as capital to their trading partner, nor take possession of anything they buy to add value to it, nor move it from where it is, to where it is needed. It is all false market supply and demand, tending mainly to drive prices up with trading only on paper. Speculators serve no useful purpose to the market, nor to Society!
Yet, Society treats speculative earnings as normal 'Capital Gains', and favors these parasites with a preferable tax rate less than half that of those who earn their income producing useful energy, work, and capital.
Some say we need speculators to add "liquidity" to the market (liquidity is always having a willing buyer available to every willing seller), but when every person on the planet needs food and fuel, you cannot get any more liquid market than that! Period!
When everyone has enough, that is enough! Any further buying, can only distort the market, and stimulate overproduction. There never was, nor never will be, any need for speculators in the marketplace!
Normally, those who defend this practice are either totally ignorant of how a market works, or are themselves committed to living by these fraudulent and parasitic practices. However, both my friends defended commodities speculators, and opposed increasing taxes on speculative earnings.
I asked why speculators deserve a tax break, and the best they could come up with was that many are retirement fund managers just making our 401k's grow for us.
Now, if I had a 401k, and I was really stupid, I might think that is a good idea to hire someone to use my money to bid against myself in the market for everything I need to live, today.
But, why not just keep switching my money from one pocket to the next, and every time I do, just give a portion of it to some bum on the street, because he thought it would be a good idea. The effect on my pocketbook would be the same, and the bum would appreciate my small contribution more than that fatcat fund manager!
The Dems have finally awakened (tho' months after their arch-nemesis, GW Bush, did) to who the villains in this market are, but if these nitwits are successful in increasing margin regulation of the futures markets, then only the extremely wealthy will be able to buy their livestock feed, or anything, on the futures - just one more case of their hatred of capitalism blinding them to the harm they work against the little guy they claim to be for.
In addition, further regulation of this market, here, would only drive the speculators to do more of their trading in foreign markets.
In 2003, there was $13 Billion in the commodities futures markets; in 2007, there was $260 B, 20 times the market manipulation.
Now, does that give you any clue as to why the price of a barrel of crude is $145, when industry analysts say that according to supply and demand it should now be $55?
Just face it, folks, speculation is a crime against all of us!
High prices may be the cure for high prices, but we pay the piper for these parasites, in the meantime, and we never get that money back. It is legalized theft!
Whatever earned income pays for taxes, speculative earnings should pay double, regardless of their origin!
It is the only way to completely stop this madness without government regulating the marketplace, and it would stop it, the very next trading day!

COMMON SENSE ON ENERGY, NOW!!!, Part II
I wanted to discuss how we should make use of wasted local energy resources like that biogas flame at the sewage plant and the algae from Storm Lake for bio-fuels, but the nitwits are attacking on other fronts, so I must rush to the ramparts.
This won't be short, so if you would rather not learn anything today, or you don't want your present world view to be confused by the facts, stop reading, now!
I am often fond of saying that God created every person with a special talent and their own little piece of the truth. The real trick is in finding each persons talent to employ them to their fullest, and to recognize their little piece of the truth, so that we can put it in its proper place in the jigsaw puzzle of life to recreate that picture of eternal bliss in the Garden of Eden. Sadly, not every living being is willing to lend their talent and their knowledge to this quest. For this reason, we all continue to suffer.
Texas oil man, T. Boone Pickens, whose talent seems to be making money for himself, made over $1Billion speculating in oil and gas in 2005, again in 2006, $1.5B in 2007, was earlier estimated to be worth $3 Billion, but has since been instrumental in pushing crude oil beyond reason with his very public pronouncements that "oil is going to $150".
It is now hovering around $145 as he quietly sells the barrels he bought at $50, after all, he's not greedy; he doesn't have to have every penny of that $150!
Whenever you hear a speculator say one thing, you should run the other direction!
Just like when George Soros caused the devaluation of the US Dollar, when he announced to the world that he was getting out of Dollars and buying Euros. That should have been interpreted by all of us that Soros had already sold all of his Dollars and bought all the Euros he could buy. He went public, because he wanted everyone else to do the same, so he could get out of Euros near their high and buy Dollars cheap.
Because Soros is rich, every fool listens to him. All the lemmings bit on this one, and rushed to dump their Dollars, stressing our economy and raising the price of food, fuel and everything we buy in the process. George only wants money and a Dem elected President, and he doesn't care who he has to hurt to get it!
Paraphrasing Josef Goebbels, Hitler's Minister of Propaganda, "If you mix a big lie in with a little truth, and tell it often enough, you can convince everyone it is the truth."
That is what T. Boone is doing with his very expensive TV ad campaign touting PickensPlan.com to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
Everything he has to say about the harm buying foreign oil is doing to our economy is absolutely true. That we should use more of our own CNG (compressed natural gas) for our autos is also true, and absolutely achievable with technology we have had for decades. That we should make more use of wind and solar energy, of course, but, that we can take Natural Gas (NG) away from electrical generation and replace that with wind and solar power shows he is either extremely ignorant of the fundamental facts about electricity, or he is trying to pull the wool over our eyes for his own profit!
Call me cynical, but I am betting on the latter, as recently, Pickens has heavily invested the profits of his oil speculation into both wind and natural gas!
He has also invested heavily in water rights, what should that tell us about what 'shortage' might develop next?
I am all for anyone making money, just do it honestly, without hurting your fellow man in the process, always giving your trading partners equal fair market value.
To see why Pickens' Plan is not perfectly honest and achievable, we need to understand our energy consuming habits and needs.
Electrical power providers categorize our energy demand as 3 types of "load" - base, intermediate, and peak.
"Base load" is the minimum level of electrical power consumption at any one moment throughout any hour of every day of the year. This is constant demand and requires constant generating capacity, as alternating current cannot be stored, it must be used at the moment it is generated. They use hydroelectric, nuclear, and coal-fired steam turbine generating plants to provide this power, as these are cheap, constant and dependable, but cannot be started and stopped quickly to meet new load.
Geothermal, ocean thermal, offshore wind, wave, and ocean current energy could also be used for this load, and these represent the only safe and inexhaustible supply of renewable energy available to us. Why does no one even mention them in this debate on what we should do about energy? Why should we build nuclear plants when we haven't even sank one turbine in the Gulf Stream, yet?
"Intermediate load" is the demand that increases from 6AM, when the world starts to stir, to 9PM, when it starts to wind down, getting ready for bed. This happens like clock work every day, regardless of the weather, it can be planned for, so they fire the boilers in those coal-fired plants, a little harder, a little ahead of time, to bring more steam turbine generators on-line when you and I want to shower and go to work.
"Peak load" is different every day of every season, depending heavily upon the weather and variable human activity. It is normally between 12 Noon and 4PM, with space heating and air conditioning being the greatest variable in demand. This demand changes rapidly and requires instantaneous response in generating capacity from hot gas turbines, which burn NG. There is no alternative to this gas, except other more expensive gases. If we take this NG from electric companies, we will be constantly plagued with brownouts and blackouts, or see massive increases in the price of our power and fuel.
Wind cannot replace this power, it almost never comes when we really need it. Most of the best wind comes at night, when we do not need it at all. The power companies really hate to be forced to buy wind power for 3.5cts/Kwh while shutting down coal-fired generation that costs them 1ct/Kwh. Who could blame them? Likewise, where the best wind comes, from West Texas to North Dakota, we do not have the necessary transmission lines, because there are few people living there to serve this power to.
High tension interstate transmission lines are very expensive, and very intrusive! Nobody wants these monstrosities built in their back yard!
What we could, and should, do is hook every alternative energy source we can find to a local load that matches it.
Solar photoelectric energy is a good match for air conditioning, refrigeration, and water pumping. Demand for these always increase when the sun shines, perfect match! It is expensive, inefficient, and nearly useless for anything else. Solar heating is little better, but should be passively designed into every new building.
Wind is a great match for space heating, water pumping, battery charging and other automated industrial processes that can be run when the wind blows, and shut off when it doesn't, such as cryogenic distillation of air, hydrogen electrolysis, anhydrous ammonia (NH3) production, and other industrial gas production from these processes.
Huge quantities of our precious NG are spent senselessly in manufacturing NH3 for fertilizer, when it has long been cheaper to return to the original carbon-neutral, and infinitely renewable process of making it from water and air.
We must rewrite the REA charter to cover all forms of rural energy distribution, empower local REC's to fund, sell and maintain distributed generation systems for their members, and to empower those members to sell all forms of energy directly back.
Then, we must erect wind and water current turbines everywhere we can possibly put them, thousands of big ones, and millions of smaller ones between them, that we manufacture here (not expensive imports). Each can be wired into our present electrical grid without building new transmission lines. Then, we must hook each to a water electrolyzer, and a booster pump, to store the off-peak energy as Hydrogen gas (H2), putting this, along with methane (CH4) from our every hog house, poultry house, cattle feedlot, and sewage plant, into the local low-pressure NG pipelines that serve our houses, farms and industries. Underground low-pressure NG pipelines are cheap and innocuous.
NG, mostly CH4, the very same biogas produced by every marsh, cow stomach, and manure pit, is compatible with both gasoline and diesel engines, and is perfectly interchangeable with propane, butane, and Hydrogen in low pressure gas systems (