Muenchhausen: MUENCHHAUSEN, Sept. 2, 2011

MUENCHHAUSEN

AN ELECTRONIC NEWSLETTER ABOUT ENVIRONMENT,

RENEWABLE RESOURCE TECHNOLOGY,

AND RELATED TOPICS

By BOOTSTRAP PRESS, INC.

BETHESDA, MD

JJGREENBARON(at)VERIZON.NET

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SEPTEMBER 2, 2011

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WELCOME!

The Green Baron (TGB) welcomes one and all who take the time to read Muenchhausen. He aims to “tell it like it is” as much as possible, and avoid advocacy and ideological positions. There are enough of those to go around in other publications.

The Green Baron also welcomes comments from anyone who may read Muenchhausen. Please send comments to the e-mail address above.

JAPANESE PM LOSES JOB
On Aug. 26, 2011, Naoto Kan, Prime Minister (PM) of Japan, resigned, and his party the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) elected his finance miister,Yoshihiko Noda, to the exalted post of Prime Minister. After the catastrophic events of March 11, 2011, in northern Japan--a great earthquake and towering tsunami that wiped out many towns and farms and essentially wrecked the nuclear power plants in Fukushima-ken--now-former Prime Minister Kan rapidly lost popularity. His continued stay in office had become increasingly untenable, and so he had to leave. Emperor Akihito of Japan formally accepted the election of Noda as Prime Minister, effective Sept. 2, 2011. Noda has claimed not to be opposed to a nuclear-powered Japan. By contrast, Kan had said--perhaps to try to boost his sagging popularity--that Japan essentially should look to abandoning nuclear power. This declaration perhaps was--please excuse the use of a hackneyed cliché--a day late and a dollar short. Perhaps it could be said that the earthquake and tsunami of March 11 at least indirectly cost PM Naoto Kan his job.

Yoshihiko Noda: Not abandoning nuclear power?

GREEN JOBS: WILL O' THE WISP?

Much has been said lately about so-called "green jobs". Please do not misconstrue TGB: In principle, he is in favor of such efforts if they will produce beneficial results, which, again in principle, and TGB once more emphasizes "in principle", they might one day. The long-term incentives for trying to create such jobs certainly are there. These include a cleaner environment, less dependence on fossil fuel from friendly as well as unfriendly countries, and a whole host of other potential benefits. Again, to repeat a cliché from as far back as the early 1970s: Using fossil fuels is equivalent to living on the principal of one's invested capital, whereas using renewable energy is tantamount to living on the income that this capital, not drawn down, generates. Currently, however, humanity has no firm knowledge of how, in an economically viable manner, to accumulate, concentrate, store, and distribute energy from renewable sources.

It is possible for small local communities to subsist on renewable resources; for example, some villages in US desert regions, or in many parts of the Middle East and tropics, could meet their energy needs in this manner. But these systems would work only on a small scale. In these instances, and in such limited areas, "green jobs" could offer employment. With wind energy, TGB saw for himself the provision of essentially all the power a community in Denmark, on the Island of Samsø, needs. Nevertheless, the system requires a whole panoply of wind turbines, and sometimes these turbines do provide 100% of Samsø's electricity needs, so the Samsø municipality must purchase power from other parts of Denmark, and even from Sweden and Norway. To be fair, at other times, Samsø's wind turbines generate power in excess of the community's needs, and this power may be sold in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway. Danish Prof. Søren Hermansen, who is the main person behind the construction and operation of the Samsø wind energy installation, did create "green jobs" through this enterprise (1).

Nonetheless, when it comes to "green jobs" on a broad nationwide or worldwide scale, it seems to TGB that the engineering and technology for such projects is not "there" yet. The large-scale "green jobs" of which we hear so much may well be regarded as a will o' the wisp at this juncture. TGB hopes this will not long be the case. He cannot, however, predict the path "green energy" development will take. Scientists and engineers need to overcome the accumulation-concentration-storage-distribution problems that currently are posed. In other words, we need to surmount the basic problem of renewable-energy diffusivity.