One Year With My Chevy Volt

So why isn’t my Prius or other cars getting $7500 of “free money” from the government? Son you feel that the government should decide the market?

You must be one of hose logic challenged Libertarian Looneys that never needed water pipe infrastructure, utilities, roads, schools hospitals, 911 rescue, fire departments, a telephone, GPS, etc. You know, all that “totally unnecessary” stuff that composes the commons and, “shudder”, collectivist thinking that you abhor.
How’s that cave workin’ fer ya? Man, you must be such a bright industrious “self made man” “job creator” to have gotten those right-of- ways tol ay the fiber optic cable so you could grace us with your wisdom on the internet.

Have a nice day.
[img]http://www.pic4ever.com/images/ugly004.gif[/img]

You first. We live on a planet afflicted with toxins from burning hydrocarbons. We have no choice but to stop using the internal combustion engine. Governments must help in doing this. If you cannot get that through your head you are in denial and are a danger to human society.
Have a nice day.

Don’t you realize natural gas is a hydrocarbon and is also subsidized? It is also found when drilling for (gasp) oil.

What a childish response, but it is what I expected of you.

Hell hath no fury like a vested interest masquerading as a moral principle
Representative Barber Conable

No, Al Gore did all that for us.

So how much do you have invested in “renewable energy” companies? Too bad.

Yes you did-in some of the solar and battery manufacturers that bellied up after taking our money. And we still own GM stock.

You mean those that succeed because they are propped up by the government with subsidies, grants and mandates requiring use of their non-competitive products like ethanol solar and wind power?

It was investors who risked their capital who made these things possible. The government has no money to risk. They risk yours and take your money from and “invest” it without your permission. Where private capital is too smart to risk their money, the government will risk yours.

So you feel the government is smarter than you are? Or are you a dependent/employee of the government? The grid is a conglomeration of connections between public and investor owned utilities and is controlled and operated by them for their and our mutual benefit. They make no money if they can’t sell power. I have no doubt you are a Socialist and a believer that Big Government is the answer to our problems rather than the cause of them. It is because of Big Government and people who think like you that we pass huge debt onto our children, grandchildren, great grandkids etc. I see no end to debt when a government as reckless as the Obama administration keeps printing money and financing losing propositions in the name of our children-just like they are trying to capitalize on the shootings of children etc.

The internet was devised so that communications could be conducted in the event of an attack on the United States, not invented by Al Jazeera Gore so we could post on the internet. If you want to talk about power distribution or Nuclear Power, have at me. I was in that field for 30 years.

We still own 211 million shares. GM’s price right now is $33/share and it has been rising. We’re likely to sell the remainder of our holdings by the end of 2013.

The cost of the GM bailout will probably be under $10 billion. Considering that approximately 1 million jobs were saved that comes down to $10,000 per job.

Care to calculate how much per person we would have spent in unemployment, welfare, etc. had we let Detroit go bust? (And, remember, Ford would have likely gone down with GM and Chrysler. That’s according to Ford executives.)

“Wind and solar power are not competitive even with the subsidies, and government mandates that utilities buy a certain percentage of their power from alt energy sources”

I have successfully and step by laborious step, with historical references and scientific, peer reviewed papers, studies and other nuts and bolts EMPIRICAL tests and research done by U.S. Government agencies, Columbia University, Edison Laboratories, The U.S. Navy and several other goldmines of objective scientific data, showed conclusive proof the above assumption by you about wind and solar power versus fossil fuels is, not simply incorrect, but exactly backwards.

It’s a long article. After the article there are over 40 pages of comments and subsequent articles explaining various types of renewable energy devices as well as a debate of every false assumption (like the idea that fossil fuels are now or ever were “cheap”) in the public eye. You are welcome to come and read the article and debate any part of it. I didn’t write a snow job; I went into excruciating detail of EROEI and the methodology used in the formula to produce happy numbers for fossil fuels and the opposite for biofuels and other renewable energy sources. I also discuss the Marshal Institute (a propaganda think tank) in more recent follow up articles. Why? Because propaganda has been instrumental in perpetuating pseudo-scientific half truths to slant the energy market playing field in favor of fossil fuels. This particular think tank specializes(since 1989) in denying global warming science is “settled” by falsely claiming there is “still a debate” (The Tobacco Strategy”) to keep liability away from the fossil fuel industry and avoid the total banning of this fossil fuel technology that is poisoning our planet. It’s really quite clever and has been, to the detriment of Homo sapiens, quite successful.

The science is settled. Even if we stop all fossil fuel burning today, we are still stuck with about 1,000 years (this is not hyperbole – graphs are available from atmospheric inertia studies). We are in for horrendous weather thanks to fossil fuels and the industry is in total denial about it and determined to avoid liability. This is a cost that they have always dodged to come up with the false claim that fossil fuels are “cheap”.

I don’t ask that you agree with a thing I say. I simply ask that you debate the merits, case, by case at the Doomstead Diner. Why there? Because we are accustomed to long, detailed posts and debates with multiple references using video and other graphics in the posts. The threads never go away due to the format and you can pick up where you left off a debate a day or a week later in the forum area. You can also write your own articles and post them. You do not have to be an approved writer to do so.

As a small example of what I have researched, I can prove to you with hard scientific data that ethanol is more economical than gasoline and has always been a superior fuel requiring absolutely no mixing with gasoline to avoid engine harm, does not require a catalytic converter and only requires a slightly higher compression combustion chamber. I repeat: I have the hard data. Now this is not what you have assumed, is it?

One more example and then I’ll give the article and the link (you can post as a guest or sign in and get a password – there is no censorship whatsoever). 100% of the concrete well casings in fracked gas wells crack within 5 years guaranteeing aquifer contamination by methane and heavy metals. I don’t think the gas companies are planning to pay for this cost. That’s criminal. Buffalo University did a study to prove fracking aquifer contamination with heavy metals even before the well casings crack. By the way, the data on the well casings is from the gas fracking companies themselves so they cannot pretend it isn’t so.

Renewables, why they work and fossil fuels NEVER DID.

http://www.doomsteaddiner.org/blog/2012/07/17/hope-for-a-viable-biosphere-of-renewables/
Let’s see if you walk the objective scientific data talk. I will not resort to ridicule as long as you avoid sweeping, data free assumptions based on pro-fossil fuel propaganda.

Last try. Those articles are stored there but the links are to government and scholarly university scientific studies. Here’s the last bit I’ll give you on ethanol. Believe the propaganda if it makes you feel better but you are only fooling yourself:

Scientific Investigations of Alcohol Fuels 1890 – 1920

Studies of alcohol as an internal combustion engine fuel began in the U.S. with the Edison Electric Testing Laboratory and Columbia University in 1906. Elihu Thomson reported that despite a smaller heat or B.T.U. value, “a gallon of alcohol will develop substantially the same power in an internal combustion engine as a gallon of gasoline. This is owing to the superior efficiency of operation…”62 Other researchers confirmed the same phenomena around the same time.

USDA tests in 1906 also demonstrated the efficiency of alcohol in engines and described how gasoline engines could be modified for higher power with pure alcohol fuel or for equivalent fuel consumption, depending on the need.63

The U.S. Geological Service and the U.S. Navy performed 2000 tests on alcohol and gasoline engines in 1907 and 1908 in Norfolk, Va. and St. Louis, Mo. They found that much higher engine compression ratios could be achieved with alcohol than with gasoline. When the compression ratios were adjusted for each fuel, fuel economy was virtually equal despite the greater B.T.U. value of gasoline. “In regard to general cleanliness, such as absence of smoke and disagreeable odors, alcohol has many advantages over gasoline or kerosene as a fuel,” .[/b]the report said. “The exhaust from an alcohol engine is never clouded with a black or grayish smoke.”64

USGS continued the comparative tests and later noted that alcohol was “a more ideal fuel than gasoline” with better efficiency despite the high cost.65

The French War Office tested gasoline, benzene and an alcohol-benzene blend in road tests in 1909, and the results showed that benzene gave higher mileage than gasoline or the alcohol blend in existing French trucks.66

The British Fuel Research Board also tested alcohol and benzene mixtures around the turn of the century and just before World War I, finding that alcohol blends had better thermal efficiency than gasoline but that engines developed less brake horsepower at low rpm.67

On the other hand, a British researcher named Watson found that thermal efficiencies for alcohol, benzene and gasoline were very nearly equal.68

These experiments are representative of work underway before and during World War I. The conclusions were so definitive that Scientific American concluded in 1918: “It is now definitely established that alcohol can be blended with gasoline to produce a suitable motor fuel …”69 By 1920, the consensus, Scientific American said, was “a universal assumption that [ethyl] alcohol in some form will be a constituent of the motor fuel of the future.” Alcohol met all possible technical objections, and although it was more expensive than gasoline, it was not prohibitively expensive in blends with gasoline. “Every chemist knows [alcohol and gasoline] will mix, and every engineer knows [they] will drive an internal combustion engine.”70

And then Prohibition saved the day for gasoline. How convenient.

Quote
Alcohol from grain and potatoes, at about 25 to 30 cents per gallon, was far too expensive to compete with petroleum, but alcohol from Cuban molasses, at 10 cents per gallon, was thought to be competitive.

Some observers suspected a conspiracy in the fact that Standard Oil of New Jersey had financial ties to the Caribbean alcohol market. The influence of an oil company over the alcohol industry was “a combination which many will regard as sinister,” said Tweedy.59

In 1942, Senate committees began looking into the extent to which the oil industry had controlled other industries, including the alcohol industry and the rubber industry. Attorney General Thurmond Arnold testified that anti-trust investigations had taken place into the oil industry’s influence in the alcohol industry in the 1913-1920 period, in the early 1920s, and between 1927 and 1936. “Renewed complaints in 1939 were brought to the anti-trust division but because of funds no action was taken,” Arnold said.60

Then the investigation of 1941 which exposed a “marriage” between Standard Oil Co. and the German chemical company I.G. Farben also brought new evidence concerning complex price and marketing agreements between du Pont Corp., a major investor in and producer of leaded gasoline, U.S. Industrial Alcohol Co. and their subsidiary, Cuba Distilling Co.

The investigation was eventually dropped, like dozens of others in many different kinds of industries, due to the need to enlist industry support in the war effort. However, the top directors of many oil companies agreed to resign and oil industry stocks in molasses companies were sold off as part of a compromise worked out with Arnold.

http://www.environmentalhistory.org/billkovarik/research/henry-ford-charles-kettering-and-the-fuel-of-the-future/

Ethanol WAS ALWAYS a superior fuel to gasoline even WITHOUT the horrendous pollutants that an ICE burning gasoline produces. And ethanol requires NO CATALYTIC CONVERTER.

Every nasty, negative naysaying thing you have heard about ethanol from it using up food crops to having a “low” EROEI to corroding engines from increased water vapor to it being less economical than gasoline is DISINFORMATION and I can prove it point by point.

Quote

**”The gasoline engine became the preferred engine for the automobile because gasoline was cheaper than alcohol, not because it was a better fuel. And, because alcohol was not available at any price from 1920 to 1933, a period during which the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol was banned nationally as mandated in the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The amendment was repealed by the Twenty-First Amendment on December 5, 1933. In time to produce alcohol fuels during World War II.

By the time World War II ended, the gasoline engine had become “entrenched” because gasoline remained cheaper than Alcohol, and widely distributed – gas stations were everywhere.”
Hang on to your fairy tales of you wish but the history is clear. You have been, and continue to be used by the fossil fuel industry.
Have a nice day..

You are welcome. Full and detailed breakdown of EROEI formula flaws here along with proposed Renewable energy Transition scenario here:

Hope for a Viable Biosphere of Renewables

Why They Work and Fossil & Nuclear Fuels Never Did
http://www.doomsteaddiner.net/blog/2012/07/17/hope-for-a-viable-biosphere-of-renewables/

Thanks for that. I hope you hang around and re-post those comments at appropriate times.

You’re relying on tests performed in the early 1900’s? The U. S. was largely rural and gasoline then was not the same as the gasoline now. Neither was the test equipment and methods. Goodbye, and say hi to your fellow scammers in the alternative energy industry.

I’m saying that the 21 century physicist are better educated and have better equipment. The scientists of the time probably thought they had all the answers too and declared their scientific closed.
Since you are such a scientific expert, maybe you can school me on the “equal and opposite reactions” of wind, solar, ethanol etc. Surely there are some.

So there are no adverse consequences to solar or wind power, right? Tell me, where does the needed power come from when the sun isn’t shing and the wind isn’t blowing? Battery backup? For how long. Doe batterys require replacement. Are toxic materials used in the manufacture of them etc.?

Perhaps you should brush up on entropy. It’s a fascinating subject.

Well, entropy means all energetic processes go from order to disorder (a lower energy level). When you can avoid thermal inefficiencies in energy transfer processes you avoid losses of over 80%. That is not a trifling amount. For example, gasoline energy density, once converted to mechanical energy, loses over 80% of it’s energy to the entropy of the combustion process so you get about 18% mechanical energy per gallon. Ethanol goes through the same inefficient process BUT it doesn’t need a catalytic converter so, given it is oxidized in a high compression chamber, you get more mechanical energy (maybe 1%) from not having the additional entropic energy process called a catalytic converter involved.

Now, consider that ethanol was grown in a plant, not drilled for, extracted as crude or refined and you begin to see that the entropy (order to disorder) that involves the various stages to obtain crude and refine it in cracking towers is far more energy intensive (and wasteful) than just processing a plant to extract ethanol. Then there are the ocean going tankers with crude as opposed to a farmer getting ethanol from a farm near where he lives. That’s more entropy involved with fossil fuels. It all adds up to a horrendously wasteful energy source.

Now, consider what happens in a wind turbine or PV. There are NO high temperature thermal processes involved so much less disorder (entropy) is involved in extracting energy. Before industrialization, the west was settled with renewable energy from windmills for milling crops and pumping water (as well as other functions). These windmills lasted upwards of fifty years and, in Texas, they are still being manufactured and maintained. Wind turbines and PV are more efficient than internal combustion machines at converting the energy they harvest into electrical or mechanical energy. That simply means less entropy and more durability. Everyone knows the main cause of engine failure is friction from combustion and moving parts at high temperatures.

That is why humans are designed to operate at a strict temperature range. Our enzymes are catalysts that only function if the temperature stays in a certain range for the millions of biochemical reactions we undergo to keep us alive and our muscles moving. Yes, we oxidize sugars just like an engine burns fuel BUT we don’t undergo explosive oxidation. That’s why we are so efficient in comparison to the internal combustion engine. The future lies in energy transfer processes that have low entropy. That is why the internal combustion engine will eventually give way totally to the electric motor.

[embed=640,380]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_PDoAvOA18E#[/embed]

Electric motors, already over 70% efficient, are now being made with cast copper rotors (instead of Aluminum) using a new process. Billions of electric motors in thousands of applications from EVs to household appliances to manufacturing will now benefit from a radical INCREASE in efficiency accompanied by a DECREASE in thermal waste. This means, for a given amount of energy output, the motors will last more than twice as long and weigh less as well as previous electric motors. This amounts to massive energy savings worldwide and another step in eliminating the internal combustion engine (ICE) pollution and heat scourge from civilization.
Moving things with explosive rapid oxidation introduces ruinous entropy. We need to be much more efficient in every energy capture process we use to run our civilization. Global climate change requires that we do this or perish. we can’t be piggies anymore. It’s just that simple.

With our weather becoming more extreme and more variable we can’t afford to use food-producing land for fuel. We’re going to suffer far too many crop failures from flood, drought, late frosts and heat waves going forward.

Probably the best solution is to move as much transportation as possible to electricity. We can do at least 90% of our personal driving with electricity and we can move our moderate air travel to electrified high speed rail.

We don’t use oil to generate electricity and we’ve cut coal from 57% of our electricity generation to 37%. We can take it to zero. And then we’ll have to start cutting out natural gas. That is doable.

We will need some liquid fuel. There are multiple feedstocks. Wood waste. Plantation grown wood – the places we used to grow wood for pulp back when we used a lot of paper. Perennial grasses such as switchgrass which grows on marginal land and without irrigation once established. Growing oil seed crops like canola in between wheat crops. Algae.

I suspect we can grow enough fuel to take care of our cross-ocean flights and farming/industrial needs that can’t be met by electricity.

Duckweed! I was trying to remember the name of that while writing that last post… Thanks for that. Google is fairly useless these days for some reason– bloated and full of cheesey ads.

On other fronts… I was recently riding through eastern Oregon– naturally noticed all the wind turbines around there. Got curious regarding whether and how much of a net benefit wind power really is– i.e., since it begins life with a carbon deficit from the manufacturing, construction and other processes. Found one older study from Europe:

http://www.infra.kth.se/fms/utbildning/lca/projects%202006/Group%2007%20(Wind%20turbine).pdf

The good news, it does pay for itself over its life cycle. The other interesting info was the source of power used in construction– fossil fuels used lessen the overall efficacy, but hydro-power tends to maximize it… Your previous outline of EV’s charged even from FF sources having less of an impact than straight ICE’s was interesting.

Thanks for the LCA article on wind turbines. The EROEI on them goes up, according to Charles Hall, no friend of renewables, with MW size. They are now making 6 MW monsters so they must have an EPBT of a couple of a years or less. Also, remember that every country that makes wind turbines ALREADY has at least 15% and up to 100% renewable energy penetration of the electric grid. Electric arc furnaces can handle ALL the high temperature industrial steel processes, no fossil fuel run furnaces needed, thank you very much. So a percentage of the juice to make the turbine is already renewable energy.

Check out this eye opening chart!

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/assets/images/story/2013/5/16/1-large-penetration-of-renewable-energy-in-selected-markets.jpg

I wrote an article about how we really do have the ability to switch to 100% renewables even though it will involve some pain. Saving the climate for our descendants is worth it. My industrial model for this massive enterprise is the first mass produced ship, the Liberty Ships of WWII.

I posted it as a comment to an article on humanity’s dismal future at the Automatic Earth web site:

You will have to scroll down the comments to find it. It involves with a critique of a fossil fuel energy expert’s talking points after discussing her successful farming and 90% reduction in energy use:

Link here:

Open letter to Nicole Foss
http://www.theautomaticearth.com/Energy/widely-visible-symbols-of-human-folly.html
I discuss energy pay back time (EPBT) of wind turbines and PV as well. It’s long but it is well researched. If you like it, pass any part of it along with or without attribution. The main thing is to tell people the truth. All these critiques of wind turbines and PV leave out the massive amount of fossil fuels used each year to build and maintain internal combustion machines. It’s A LOT MORE ENERGY to build those high temperature alloy pigs than renewable energy machines. It torques me off that the ICE, which is 100% carbon in the hole when it is built, then proceeds to use more fossil fuels for 20 years or so. That’s horribly wasteful when you can build something that uses ZERO fossil fuel to generate electricity once it is manufactured. We just need to mass produce renewable energy machines like we did with the internal combustion engine and they will be cheap as dirt! Goodbye fossil fuel dependency!

And Thomas Edison was a crackpot too, right?
And Einstein was wrong about the Photovoltaic effect he discovered then, right?
And modern physics and the discovery of relativity, the laws of thermodynamics and ALL the principles of the internal combustion engine that were developed then were wrong, right?
Now I understand perfectly! The laws of thermodynamics have changed since 1900 and fossil fuels and the biosphere don’t have to deal with entropy any more.

[img]http://www.pic4ever.com/images/ugly004.gif[/img]

Gasoline is still the 90 to 95 octane long chain hydrocarbon it was a hundred years ago. They added that horror, tetra-ethyl lead when ethanol was outlawed because they needed high octane (like ethanol) fuel for aircraft and truck high compression engines. Ford’s model T was 70 hp and got 26 mpg. The tweaking with fuel injection and electronic ignition is an advance but they haven’t made ANY progress in modifying the enthalpy of gasoline with some additive. Of course dragsters use alcohol injection for some strange reason. LOL! Actually, fuel economy after the model T just got worse until the 1950s 8 mpg finned land yachts. My Camry gets about 23 mpg. It’s a 1997 car. That’s about 90 years since the model T. You’ve got air bags, disc brakes, abs, gps, better suspension, lighter metals, etc. but combustion is still the same poisonous and inefficient process. That’s why it has to go!
As to private industry and competition, I suggest you read about the patent process here for the past century and how our tax dollars for research on thousands of innovations got handed off free or very cheap to “connected” people in corporate America.
The computer industry is one of the few industries where that dynamic of completion actually functioned. The auto industry became ossified in the 1930s when planned obsolescence and yearly model changes were introduced. Reliability and parts were de-engineered so they would wear out sooner to keep the factories running. In durability and hardiness, very few cars have ever topped the model T.
Your idea of progress being a linear thing in our country is wrong. Overall, things move forward in spite of the status quo corporate structure in private enterprise, not because of it.
The modus operandi is to crush new competition by buying and burying patents on innovations.
If you research this stuff your hairs will stand on end when you find out why suspension systems and safety features like disk brakes took decades to come to passenger cars when race cars routinely used them.
The corporate world hates progress while it claims the reverse. I could go on but suffice to say that the lead acid battery for cars was the cheapy choice. Thomas Edison, a friend of Ford’s had a better one (nickel iron)but it cost a little more. Do you honestly think they could not have improved upon that battery in a hundred years? Of course they could.
They can radically improve our transportation and living conditions now if they wanted to. They don’t. So it goes.
Only people like Elon Musk can be trusted to force genuine innovation and not that silly new model year pig lipstick that was started by General Motors.

Actually it doesn’t at all.

Today’s conservatives are not the conservatives who were interested in keeping the country and planet in good shape.

Today’s conservatives actually seem to care nothing about the planet and care nothing for how generations that follow us will suffer from what we pass on to them.

Today’s conservatives seem to be concerned only about their dollars. They seem to care about no one else, not even their grandchildren.

If they can hang on to a couple of bucks by cutting education, food aid for poor children, medical research, etc. they are all for it.

“Fracking makes me money? Frack, baby, frack!!!”

Fracking heats your house, fuels your car, provides fuel for the farm equipment and trucks that deliver the food for those poor children etc. You are truly a pitiful individual. Highly idealistic-but also highly misinformed-or maybe just high.

“Fracking has been in use since the 40’s.”

Yeah, and quite a few aquifers when fracking is done for Uranium mining have been permanenantly poisoned.

” Used in Michigan for over 50 years.”

Not horizontal fracking and not with the same toxic chemical mix.

“Doesn’t it seem odd that the only ones that have a problem with it are liberals?”

Now that really takes the prize for gross generalizations. And you claim I’M childish.

I suppose all these scientists from this Columbia University paper are “librels’ duh too.

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/TargetCO2_20080407.pdf

Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim?

James Hansen,1,2* Makiko Sato,1,2 Pushker Kharecha,1,2 David Beerling,3

Valerie Masson-Delmotte,4 Mark Pagani,5 Maureen Raymo,6 Dana L. Royer,7 James C. Zachos8

None so blind as those who refuse to see.
Have a nice life and remember me when you stop enjoying the weather, pal. Just ignore it. The biosphere must be a librel, duh.

It’s possible that you encountered an incidence of researcher misconduct. It’s quite rare at the university level, people lose their careers over stuff like this.

With corporate research things are different.

Well, he fed you a line of bull.

A research scientist’s greatest accomplishment is publishing a piece of groundbreaking research. Grants are what one needs to get the funding to do the research.

Yes, it is true that some leave most, or even all, of the work up to their grad students. The person you know seems to be a real slacker.

I had a major professor who left the research up to his students while he wrote textbooks. I’ve also had professors who busted their butts in the lab and teaching. I’ve spent time in multiple universities and I’ve never seen anyone attempt to get away with playing their time away.

I know blowhards like the guy who spoke to you.

People who make outrageous statements devoid of the truth or such exaggerations that they make Pinocchio’s nose seem wee.

I’ve either been a student at or on the faculty of seven different universities. I’ve spent time at several others on research/teaching projects.

I can assure you that your source was full of crap.
—-

Now, how about we talk a bit about why you are here.

This is a site about finding solutions for climate change and getting us off fossil fuels. It’s not a site for doughnut shop babble.

How about you try to find something constructive to add to the conversation.

Amazingly wrong you are.

Sure, there’s LOTS of corruption and bribery out there. So?
What proves that your argument is one sided and biased is your inability to see that dynamic of gaming the energy resources market by the fossil fuel industry to destroy the renewable energy competition by hook or by crook (but not by actual, objective laws of thermodynamics).
It is laughable to believe that a prestigious University like Columbia would engage in subterfuge although I’m sure many second tier universities or fossil fuel funded propaganda mills like Rockefeller University are certainly guilty of it.

Why don’t you write to Columbia University and this scientist if you are so sure of your “facts” and challenge him on PV competitiveness with fossil fuels? Put your money where your mouth is.

Vasilis Fthenakis is a senior chemical engineer and director of the Photovoltaics Environmental Research Center at Brookhaven National Laboratory.

He also holds a joint appointment with Columbia University as professor of earth and environmental engineering and the founder and director of the Center for Life Cycle Analysis.
He is the author of 300 publications, member of the Editorial Boards of Progress in Photovoltaics and the Journal of Loss Prevention. He is a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and a Fellow of the International Energy Foundation.

He can be reached at vmf@bnl.gov.
If you think HE is a bought and paid for shill, you are in denial.