Greenpeace Co-Founder: "My bad. I likes the nuclear power."

Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace now co-chairs the "Clean and Safe Energy Coalition"--a nuke industry association. Money quote:

As a co-founder of Greenpeace, even though I was a scientist, I made the same mistake in those days as all the rest of my colleagues did. We kind of lumped nuclear energy in with nuclear weapons as if all things nuclear were evil. It was an honest mistake.

An honest mistake? Doh. "My bad."

An interesting interview, although I am suspicious of his motives, since he is currently serving as a nuclear industry spokesman of sorts. His interesting take on solar:

Solar photovoltaic simply has no place on the grid. All the money that's going into subsiding solar is a waste of money because it could be being used on more effective technologies that we already have that are not unreliable and intermittent.

His statement rings true concerning the reliability of solar, but I have to, again, question his motives in stating that solar has absolutely no role in supplying our energy needs. Still, it would seem there is hope reasonable people will come around.

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Presidential Primary

Well I have to vote tonight so my absentee ballot will be received by Tuesday for the California primary.

Before he dropped out, I was leaning towards Fred Thompson and had still wanted to vote for him afterwards because I wanted to vote FOR someone rather then against someone.

Now with McCain gaining strength, and I want to stop him, I guess I will have to change my vote for Romney. I'm not excited about him, but I really do not want McCain to win the nomination.

Victor Davis Hanson says McCain is conservative enough and can win against the democrats if the republicans don't destroy him first. I don't agree because too many of the conservative base dislike him and may stay home (like in 2006 or 1996). They would rather have a real liberal (a democrat) win then a pretend one.

Mark Steyn and Red County, an OC Blog have comments on the debate last night and can't say the write ups are making me consider McCain.

Ethanol

Cellulose ethanol is the goal for wide spread ethanol use.

Forbes has an article saying it will also be the destruction of plants and nature if it really works as advertised.

I don't think cellulose ethanol will ever be that effective or cost efficient but I also don't think ethanol is a cure all for our energy needs. However, some of the arguments against ethanol are just wrong. One is that ethanol can only be transported by tanker and not by pipelines. That is NOT correct. We can send ethanol through pipelines that are dedicated for ethanol, just like we have pipelines dedicated for oil and others dedicated for natural gas. We can't send ethanol through oil pipelines so we will have to build new ones, but if the product will replace gasoline then it will be economical to build the new pipelines.

California Prop 91

Prop 91 is basically another version of Prop 1A which the voters passed back in 2006. It may be a little stronger, per this article but don't know if it is needed. It won't hurt to vote for it or against it.

WWGD?

Another half point today? After a three quarters point cut less than a month ago? 125 basis points in less than a month makes it sound like somebody hit the panic button. It almost seems as if the Fed was asleep at the switch when the economic train thundered by with the words "Recession Express" stamped on the side. Seriously, did the FOMC wake up and just realize this? And just how does one "fix" an economy perceived to be ailing because of credit problems? Allow consumers to borrow more? As I remarked to Kalvin today:

"As a dog returns to its vomit...so will a fool return to sub-prime, securitized mortgages."

The signals are mixed right now, GDP grew a bit last quarter, not much, but it was still growing--despite expectations of worse for high energy prices and a slumping housing market. But is there enough there to justify such an adjustment?

Part of me wonders what would Greenspan have done (WWGD!), his reign as Fed chair seemed to be more measured, more thoughtful. Greenspan led. Bernanke (so far) has come across as a market appeaser at best, un-observant at the worst. He follows. One has to believe there is a better way to influence markets than this; in fact, one might make the case economies must contract every so often and macroeconomic factors are just out of our influence. We might be able to ease the pain, but the pain must be felt.

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Animal Population Control

Animals will increase until they run out of food and disease and starvation thins them out if there are no predators to keep their numbers in check.

In New Jersey a small wilderness park has too many deer and so they finally hired hunters to thin the herds. The park is near expensive homes so introducing wolves is not an option. Of course many of the comments are condemning the thinning because shooting animals is bad and deer are cute. Of course no one who is writing to oppose the culling has offered any alternative to prevent the deer population from destroying the park habitat, nor would they be happy to see the deer starve to death.

Many of the commentators would most likely be the same who would be paralyzed if their Starbucks couldn't sell them their latte or their grocery store ran out of food.

Scary but not surprising

Hand Gels Alone May Not Curb Infections, goes the headline of the story.

Even washing with soap and water is not enough, if the equipment, tables, door knobs, furniture and anything else is also not cleaned.

And even if the surfaces are clean, a lot of stuff still can travel by air. So, hand gels cannot prevent hospital infections, but neither can soap and water. It can be scary for patients but its not surprising. Put a lot of sick people together and germs will be spread, all we can do is try to prevent it as much as practical.