Governor Cow Manure
You can always count on the San Jose Mercury News to lighten the national mood via its regular descent into politically correct self-parody. Today's front page brings the latest belly laugh from the alternative energy sector.
During his first two terms nearly four decades ago, Jerry Brown became famously known as Governor Moonbeam. Now he seems destined to become Governor Sunbeam.
It seems that Brown, in his "first major policy initiative", has decreed that our bankrupt state produce an additional 20,000 megawatts of renewable electricity by 2020--triple the current total--with 12,000 megawatts to be generated at or near the point of consumption.
"The future of energy is not Texas oil," Brown said last month at the groundbreaking for the Blythe Solar Power Project, a massive solar power plant under construction in Riverside County. "It's California sun."
Ah, but something more fragrant than sunshine is in the mix.
Michael Picker, one of Brown's top energy advisers, stresses that the 12,000 megawatt goal won't rely only on solar. Dairy farmers in the Central Valley, for example, could install so-called anaerobic digesters to turn cow manure into biogas.
No kidding! Something for everyone, especially the 28.5 percent of rural Imperial County residents searching for work.
The nation's average unemployment rate is 9.2 percent. In California, where public servants smarter than you are midwifing the Green Economy of the Future, 11.8 percent are officially unemployed. Meanwhile, the oil-burning rubes in Texas have only 8.2 percent of the population looking for work. Didn't those clowns get the memo?
USA Today puts it this way: "Need a job? Move to Texas." It so happens that one-half of the nation's net new jobs in the last two years--262,000--have been created in Texas. Meanwhile, idle Californians are reduced to soaking up the sunshine and enjoying the sweet smell of cow manure.
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Comments :
Mar '11
Re: Governor Cow Manure
Do "anaerobic digesters" turn real jobs into so-called "green Jobs." This whole thing would be knee-slapping funny if it wasn't so tragic.
May '11
Re: Governor Cow Manure
Governor Sunbeam or Governor B.... Cow Manure?
BTW, Chinese were producing methane from manure years ago. Only problem was that the methane often exploded.
Jul '11
Re: Governor Cow Manure
Master Blaster runs Bartertown. A quote from the methane gas from pigs owner in Mad Max 3. Really, has the man stooped to post apocalyptic visions?
Jul '10
Re: Governor Cow Manure
Wow, 8.2%. By Obamanation standards that is full employment.
Mar '11
Re: Governor Cow Manure
Brown energy? <<snicker>>
Edited on Jul 25, 2011 at 11:59pmApr '11
Re: Governor Cow Manure
Mixed with the cow manure is some bull manure. As everyone knows for every kilowatt of alternative generating capacity you must have an equal amount of conventional generating capacity online and running to compensate for the wide variation in output of alternative energy sources. You get one for the price of two.
Dec '10
Re: Governor Cow Manure
It's BRILLIANT! Judging from numerous drives down I-5 through Kettleman City, that "town" alone should be able to produce enough energy for the whole state. After all, you can smell it about the time you leave Sacramento. Or was that Sacramento I was smelling?
Dec '10
Re: Governor Cow Manure
Sorry, but this is one of the alternative energy schemes that actually has potential. The guy in Mad Maxx was right; pig (expletive) (or cow (expletive) or horse (expletive)) really does generate high-energy methane gas. Methane is an excellent fuel for internal combustion engines; it works well for external combustion too. There is a problem with high sulfur content, but there are strategies to deal with this.
Dec '10
Re: Governor Cow Manure
B-b-b-b-but, isn't methane a greenhouse gas, like CO2?
Doesn't methane have serious climate forcing effects, like CO2?
Weren't we told to eat vegetarian so as to reduce the surplus population of cows and pigs by reducing demand for their flesh?
Governor Gasbag is a climate change heretic!
Edited on Jul 26, 2011 at 6:02amApr '11
Re: Governor Cow Manure
Western Chauvinist: B-b-b-b-but, isn't methane a greenhouse gas, like CO2?
Doesn't methane have serious climate forcing effects, like CO2?
Weren't we told to eat vegetarian so as to reduce the surplus population of cows and pigs by reducing demand for their flesh?
Governor Gasbag is a climate change heretic! · Jul 26 at 6:01am
Edited on Jul 26 at 06:02 am
Silly you! How can one be bothered with unimportant things like facts when you're in hot pursuit of liberal Nirvana?
Dec '10
Re: Governor Cow Manure
Western Chauvinist: Jul 26 at 6:01am
Edited on Jul 26 at 06:02 am
Dec '10
Re: Governor Cow Manure
Western Chauvinist
Edited on Jul 26 at 06:02 am
Feb '11
Re: Governor Cow Manure
Viator..."for every kilowatt of alternative generating capacity you must have an equal amount of conventional generating capacity online and running to compensate for the wide variation in output of alternative energy sources"
If you're a manufacturer of power-generation equipment, like GE or Siemens, this is a feature not a bug. You get to sell the same kilowatt's worth of capacity twice!...kind of like the real estate agent in the Ozarks where the hills were so steep he sold both sides of the same acre.
If you're a person or company paying the power bills, of course, it looks a bit different.
Feb '11
Re: Governor Cow Manure
Solar energy has come down to $1/watt, the basic rule-of-thumb used in pricing power plants. So solar energy in California will be highly viable, particularly if new materials can be found that will not cause a bottle neck in production as the current materials will. More importantly, the cost is being halved every five years according to McKenzie. So solar will be highly competitive.
As for methane from cattle and other livestock, it will never be on a scale that it will make much of a dent in our energy demand. It's like biodiesel from spent cooking oil, it will never be more than a small niche because people don't eat that much fried food relative to energy consumption.
The problem with you're analysis is that you're mixing up long-term and short-term. Unemployment is 16+% today. Do you really think it's going to stay that way? And you're solution is to kill long-term initiatives as a result? How short sighted.
Edited on Jul 26, 2011 at 8:37amDec '10
Re: Governor Cow Manure
Hang On: . More importantly, the cost is being halved every five years according to McKenzie. So solar will be highly competitive.
Edited on Jul 26 at 08:37 am
Who's McKenzie?
Sep '10
Re: Governor Cow Manure
I have worked on several digester gas to energy projects in CA. I can say from personal experience that the technology works OK, but there is simply not enough digester gas to consistently fuel even a modest 1 MW generator set. This is true even at large sewage treatment plants in the bay area that serve hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses. When the digester supply runs out of pressure the unit must switch to natural gas or turn off. The constant switching from 600 BTU/cubic foot digester gas to 1000 BTU/cubic foot natural gas is a problem with respect to emissions etc. If anything, that is the challenge to this technology. Like solar or wind it is not reliable in a way that allows you to take advantage of economies of scale.
Re: Governor Cow Manure
Hang on, Hang On. Photovoltaic panels only develop power while the sun is shining. Even in mainly cloud-free California we only average about 4 hours of rated output per day.
So in exchange for putting every home and business owner into the power generating business--wash those panels and maintain those grid inter-ties--we will have power whenever it happens to be available rather than when individuals wish to use it.
And last time I checked, even with the marginal kilowatt-hour of residential power artificially priced at four times the national average and a 50 percent government subsidy, the payback time on a California rooftop solar installation is still 8-10 years. Such a deal. Better hope you don't need any sort of roof maintenance next decade.
Edited on Jul 26, 2011 at 10:38amMar '11
Re: Governor Cow Manure
This is liberal-logic at its best, we must switch from reliable energy sources that meet demands, even when they're growing, to unreliable sources of energy that will guarantee a limit to our growing productivity, which I have long suspected is the goal of the greenies i.e. leftists. Hey kids, I hear there is this thing called an atom that is just chocked full of energy and produces no CO2!