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Original Content at https://www.opednews.com/articles/Sellout-On-The-Great-Lakes-by-Paul-from-Potomac-091101-704.html (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). |
November 4, 2009
Sellout On The Great Lakes
By Paul from Potomac
EPA is being conned to allow heavy ships to burn heavy crude without controls. There are great forces at work on the Great Lakes to save jobs today at the expense of the environment and deal a crushing blow to the green jobs industries nascent in the Midwest.
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Last week, some very disturbing events took place regarding 52 very large freighters (1000 foot-long class with 40,000 to 70,000 ton cargo holds) based in and on the Great Lakes. These ships, which carry millions of tons of heavy cargoes across the Lakes through the locks of St. Lawrence Seaway to the world, burn the dirtiest dregs of refinery scum in the world -- bunker C oil. This stuff is so sludgy it has to be heated to flow into the old diesels that burn it. 13 of the 52 "Lakers" as they are called have no pollution controls whatsoever. Each puts out enough pollution to equate to over 100,000 cars and trucks. All 52 produce as much CO2 as all the cars in Michigan, and they run these engines 24/7/365.Designed first all-solar home for Ryland Homes in 1974. At MITRE, led a group of 35 of the best minds in the world (including Dr. Edward Teller, among others) who performed detailed engineering, scientific, socio-economic, and political analyses of all alternative energy choices for ERDA/DOE, NSF, and MITRE in 1975-80, and designed solar power plants at Gibbs & Hill in '80-'83. These included closed cycle gas turbines driven by a power tower, solar cogeneration 100MWe plant to power the Hidalgo, NM Phelps Dodge copper smelter using the Outokumpu Oy oxygen flash smelting process, the Ridgecrest Project with the Consortium of Alternate Energies, a seven-field power tower complex with 560 MWe peak power output with 100 hours of thermal storage for a 100 MWe base load system (China Lake/Ridgecrest, CA), and a 400 million gallon per year solar-powered ethanol plant. Known as world leader in alternative energy until the collapse of the field over the Reagan years.
Worked as a utility consultant for 8 years, and later at NASA for 16 years as a scientist and engineer, as Chief Technologist, reviewing all of NASA's R&D in every field of endeavor for the NASA Inventions and Contributions Board and the NASA Administrator.
20 invention disclosures, 5 patents, 87 scientific and technical peer-reviewed papers, 51 years in the profession, and successfully completed 15 projects on time, on budget, and meeting or exceeding specifications.
Listed in Who's Who In America and Who's Who In The World for the past several years and again in 2017.