Kevin Costner, Actor and Environmentalist Entrepreneur

British Petroleum has been largely "stymied" for 52 days with a oil spill disaster of immense proportions. Some estimate that the amount of crude oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico may actually be 100,000 barrels, or five and one-half million gallons per day.  I think this is a highly pessimistic value, but even one-tenth of that is far too much.

While BP has spent nearly two months either trying to stifle, plug or siphon the gusher results appear to be disappointing. On June 5 they claimed to capture 640,000 gallons and yet the "spill cam" looked like most of the oil was escaping into the ocean.  BP is also employing clean-up crews to begin the labor-intensive process of cleaning decaying crude oil from the coast line of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Arkansas and Florida. CNN reporters have caught video images of many of their workers spending most of their time sipping water under pop-up tents instead of actually cleaning, so this effort is questionaable.

It may not be too facetious to say that God is doing his part. So far, the weather has kept the oil slick away from the dreaded "loop" current that would whisk the oil out of the Gulf around the Florida peninsula and north along the U.S. eastern seaboard.  But we can't count on that forever, especially with hurricane season's official start on June 1st. 

It's hard to tell what the hell the federal government has been doing. There is no question that Vice-admiral "Thad" Allen of the U.S. Coast Guard has been working hard monitoring the situation and coordinating efforts. In fact, he officially retired in May but he's still the operational commander. Kudos to him.

Congress, on the other hand, wants to criminally investigate BP. Good timing. BP's stock prices plummeted on that news. That removes money from BP's liquid assets that are going to be needed to pay for the repairs to the wellhead, cleanup effort as well as the loss of income from tens of thousands of Gulf residents who directly make their living from the sea.

President Obama is looking for whose "ass" to kick. Good for him.

With all this... up steps Kevin Costner, the star of the much-maligned movie "Waterwold", a forgettable movie.  In the wake of the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989 it occurred to his research scientist brother Dan Costner that there must be a way to separate oil and other fluids from water, as long as their specific gravity is different.  What they developed was a high-speed high-capacity centrifuge.  Since oil is lighter than water, when spun rapidly in a cylinder the water will pool around the outside off the cylinder while the oil will collect in the center of the fluid column. The oil is then pulled from the center while the water "spills" out of vents at the top of the center. Testing has shown that water heavily contaminated with Alaska crude was extracted with a better than 99% purity level.

He applied for a federal license from the U.S. Department of Energy in 1993 and the devices have been shown to work for nearly two-decades. Kevin Costner is a partner in the two companies that manufacture and sell these devices: Ocean Therapy Solutions (http://www.ots.org) and Costner Industries Nevada Corp (http://www.cincmfg.com). While these devices were designed with oil-spill cleanup in mind, they can be used for other purposes, such as water-contaminant removal.  Considering the magnitude of the Prince William Sound contamination, you would have thought that these things would be purchased by the federal government and/or the oil companies by the dozens. Mr. Costner has to date sunk nearly $26 million of his own money into this idea, and was quoted by the London Mail in 2007 as having lost $40 million in all the technologies that his companies have invented.  But for some reason, neither the U.S. federal government (especially MMS or DOE) or the oil industry seemed to be very interested in this technology.

Until now.


Mr. Costner is reported to have said that the ideal use would have been to immediately collect the oil/water from the gusher and process it. The largest unit that his company makes, a 2 1/2 ton stainless steel monster called the "V-20", can process 200 gallons per minute, or 12,000 gallons per hour. The other beautiful thing about his centrifuges is that they are chemical-free. That's right. No dispersants of any kind. Additionally, they are relatively mobile and easily installed on barges, sea platforms or ships.  Ten of these devices theoretically can process 2.8 million gallons of fluid per day.

Why the hell aren't these devices on every drilling rig and oil platform? Why is there no stockpile of these devices?

Having reviewed the information from the literature on their websites, I'm comfortable in stating that had these devices been in place, the Gulf Coast would have seen little to no contamination.

If one assumes that these centrifuges work as advertised and the video shown on OTS.org is not doctored, then the fact that the MMS did not insist that there be a stockpile of these devices, purchased by the oil industry and stored by the federal government as a hedge against disasters such as this should be the real criminal investigation.

Mr. Costner and his companies are the proof of what people like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and other so-called "right-wing wackos" have been braying: Private entrepreneurs will always be the provider of solutions to our problems.  Kevin Costner can apparently do what neither BP or the U.S. federal government cannot; turn oil back into water.

Harvard Researchers Say Fuel Taxes Must Rise

Read the NY Times article here.

Most of my friends have heard about "Cap and Trade" legislation as well as "Carbon Tax". But many have no idea what a "Carbon Tax" does. It would be a legitimate question to ask. Here's another. How does a tax on carbon emissions reduce tax emissions? Well, after doing very little research, I found a reasonable answer to my question.

All fossil-based fuels such as petroleum (gasoline, diesel, kerosene and jet fuel), coal and natural gas release carbon dioxide (CO₂) when burnt. Science tells us (and this part is not disputed) that CO₂ traps solar radiation in the atmosphere. The more CO₂ that is present in the atmosphere, the more solar radiation remains as heat, thereby increasing temperature globally. The disputed part of the science is whether the amount of CO₂ being released into Earth's atmosphere by man's activities (factories, vehicles, power generation, etc.) is significant enough to accelerate a warming trend far beyond it's normal rate of progression.

A "Carbon Tax" would authorize the US federal government to charge companies that use fossil-based fuels based on the amount of CO₂ that they release into the atmosphere. This would provide real economic incentive for companies to stop using fossil fuels and instead use carbon free technologies, also known a "green" energy. The reason? No green energy technology has yet been able to produce one unit of energy (such as a BTU, or a joule, take your pick) as inexpensively as carbon-based fuels. The tax on carbon would then make green energy more competitive. This is similar to protectionist import tariffs on some goods (like Asian steel sold in the US) in order to keep American made steel competitive.

I told you all of that so that you can decide whether or not a recent Harvard research press release is worth it to you or not, because according to them: To meet the Obama administration's targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions Americans may have to experience a sobering reality: gas at $7 a gallon."

Our entire economy is based on inexpensive energy. Here are some predictions if these fuel taxes were to be implemented at this level, which sounds like Harvard is advocating a three and one-half dollar tax on every gallon of fuel sold.

While it would force many commuters to park their cars and start taking the bus, the operating costs for those same public transportation companies would literally double overnight, and they would at the same time find that they could not handle the demand, which would require the purchase of yet more buses/light rail. This is a cost almost no major US city can currently afford.

Airlines would park a significant fraction of their fleets because fuel is near the top of costs. Air travel would once again become the province of only the wealthy.

Food costs would increase because of the doubling of the cost of fuel to not only run the farm equipment to produce the food, but the cost to transport it to market and the cost to package, process or preserve it.

Even railroads and merchant shipping, which move product at amazingly small amounts of fuel per ton, would find their profit margins shrink or even disappear.


In May of 2008, the US Dept. of Transportation reported that miles traveled dropped by 3.7% from the previous year (May, 2007). Further, May was the seventh straight month that miles driven for current were less than previous year. That was when fuel cost had increased from roughly three dollars a gallon in 2007 to over four dollars in 2008.

So try to imagine what would happen if gas were to increase from three dollars (where it currently is in March 2010) to seven.

Even if man-made global warming is a real problem, how can we solve it when the fix will bankrupt our nation? Let's get our financial house in order and then come back to this... PLEASE!

Wind Power and the Threat of Eminent Domain

Wind Power and the Threat of Eminent Domain

No American citizen who turns on a TV, radio or reads the news can be unaware of the current push by the Obama Administration to fast track “green” energy projects. Further, in light of the questions raised by the possibility of man-caused global warming, it is prudent that we continue to develop these technologies. But a news item that I recently scanned causes me to be even more deeply concerned over the continued loss of individual freedom and abuse of government power for the “greater good”.

Most Americans are somewhat familiar with property rights. In rural areas, landowners not only own the surface of the land, but they also own the air above it and whatever is below it, all the way to the core of the earth (although for obvious practical reasons, nobody really enforces that ownership beyond man’s ability to reach downward into the earth’s crust). Simply put, if water, oil, natural gas are found under private land it belongs to the landowner and any company or city wanting to develop that resource must either buy the land or buy the rights to the resource from the landowner.

Similarly, if somebody were to build a structure near the property line that overhung private property, the landowner could force the owner of the structure to modify it so that it does not extend over his property.

Enter the city of New Ulm, Minnesota, which has proposed to construct a 237 acre, 8 megawatt wind farm. The city has already acquired the easements for the installation of the wind turbines. However, the State of Minnesota compels wind farm operators to obtain the “wind” rights from the landowners of a nearly equal amount of acreage in the direction of the prevailing winds. These landowners have so far refused to grant the easement, which has stalled the $16-18 million project.

The city of New Ulm has applied for a variance in order to proceed with the project without getting the easement from these recalcitrant landowners. If we were talking about water, this would be unthinkable. Instead, the developers of the project would be forced to buy the water rights from those that lived upstream to their project.

The New Ulm city attorney, Hugh Nierengarten, stated that “it will be necessary for the City of New Ulm to exercise its powers of eminent domain to secure such rights and move this vital project forward.”

The sticky wicket in this whole situation is the fact that the wind farm site isn’t located in the same county. This means that the objecting landowners have no way to hold the politicians and their legal representatives at bay. Jeff Franta, one of the farmers refusing to sign the easement and chief organizer of the opposition stated that it is within their right to refuse to grant easements to a project that could have a potential negative effect on the value of their property. He further stated “Wind rights are property rights like oil, water or a gravel pit. Wind is like oil in the sky so to speak. How can you use eminent domain to get something that can produce profit?”

The use of eminent domain is an important but volatile concept in American politics. Eminent domain gives a municipality the right to seize privately held land if the land will be used for "public use", and even then the landowner must be compensated fairly. This concept is based primarily on the following clause of the fifth amendment to the Constitution of the United States, which says: “…nor be deprived of life, liberty or property without the due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

The most prominent recent case of eminent domain was Kelo vs. the City of New London, which was decided by the United State Supreme Court in June of 2005. The majority opinion, which decided in favor of the City of New London, chose to interpret the fifth amendment term “public use” to mean “public purpose”, citing the 1984 case of Hawaii Housing Authority v. Midkiff.

The dissenting opinion held that by using the “public purpose” interpretation this would enable a sort of reverse Robin Hood scheme whereby wealthy developers with political influence would be able to take property from the poor and middle-classes at below-market values. Further the distinction between private and public use of property would be so blurred as to effectively render inconsequential any protection provided by the fifth amendment with regards to usurpation by the government of private land rights.

To illustrate the difference, public use would imply the construction of a facility that would be run by the municipality that would be actually USED by the public. Examples include public schools and libraries, court buildings, city halls, and roadways. Public purpose has a much broader definition and implies any project that could benefit the public, usually financially. An example would be condemning a depressed urban area (homeowners) in order to develop an economic project (like a shopping mall or a factory) because it would bring increased tax revenues or provide new jobs, which would benefit the community (public purpose).

In conclusion, were the City of New Ulm to successfully either a) execute eminent domain on the farmers or b) get a waiver on the requirement to get the wind rights easement from the farmers, the City of New Ulm would then stand to profit from the new wind power farm while the farmers would derive no benefit as they do not live in the same county as the City of New Ulm.

Which leads me to ask two closing questions, the first of which is “Have you tried offering the farmers royalties or subsidies for the use of the wind that flows over their private property?” The second question would only need to be asked if the farmers lose their fight. “Will the Kennedy’s then be forced to accept the wind farm proposal on the Massachusetts coastline that they fought because it would ‘lower property values’?”

HR 2454 - Taxing American Business to Oblivion

HR 2454 (ACES - American Clean Energy and Security Act) is purported to potentially save every American household, on average, $750 by year 2020 and $3,900 by year 2030. This declaration came from the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE).

An important claim is that the energy efficiency provisions in the bill will reduce the transitional costs of capping carbon pollution, with the saving from reduced energy usage to be reinvested locally. This reinvestment purports to generate both economic activity and jobs. These claims were made by Steven Nadel, the Executive Director of ACEEE.

"Cap and Trade" is an important provision in this legislation, and is similar to the Clean Air Act provisions of 1990.

The idea behind Cap and Trade is that every business will be limited to the amount of greenhouse gases that can be emitted into the environment, and which will be regulated by "emissions permits" for every ton of CO2 released into the atmosphere. The "cap" is the enforceable maximum limit that the company can emit. The "trade" is that some companies will be able to comply or transition with less expense than others. For those companies that emit less than their "cap", they can "trade" that deficit with other companies (probably for a fee). This theoretically results in an overall reduction in "greenhouse gas" emissions while reducing the risk for some companies that cannot quickly transition without incurring huge penalties levied by the Federal Government.

Over a LONG period of time, the theoretical goal is to reduce U.S. generated "greenhouse gas" emissions by 80 percent by 2050 (42 years from today). Here's the kicker though. It is estimated by organizations friendly to this legislation (like The Center for American Progress) that the taxes (or fines) have the potential to generate $50 billion to $300 billion annually! This is above and beyond all of the new taxes that are being contemplated at both the federal and state level to cope with the current tax revenue shortages being experienced by ever level of government. This is also not to mention an aggressive new implementation for an nationalized health-care option or system that will cost $1.1 trillion over ten years.

The problems are manifold. Cap and Trade has been used in Europe for years and what happened was that relatively "green" West European manufacturers happily sold carbon "credits" to their really dirty East European counterparts who then happily went on polluting to their heart's content. Net result, it wasn't until the recession kicked everybody in the teeth in 2007 that carbon emissions in Europe finally started to drop. But the reason was because fewer people were purchasing products manufactured in Europe, not because their industries were any more "green".

I am not against green technologies. I am very much for them. But make no mistake, the vast majority of so-called "green" energy production schemes (fuel-cell, wind power, geo-thermal, solar, etc) are still immature or implemented on such a small scale as to barely make a dent in the overall power demands of the American consumer. Consider this information: According to the U.S. Department of Energy the breakdown of energy production was: Petroleum (39%), Natural Gas (23%), Coal (22%), Nuclear Electric Power (8%) and "Renewable" (7%). If we break down the "Renewable" category, we find that Solar represents 1%, Hydroelectric 36%, Geothermal 5%, Biomass 53% and Wind 5%.

Think about that for just a minute... Solar energy production in the U.S. in 2007 generated .07% of our total energy production. Wind produced .35%, or 1/3 of one percent of our total energy needs.

So, here's the grind... Even though I agree with Pres. Obama that there is MUCH potential in the creation of green energy sector jobs I do not see how green technology can possibly replace traditional, well-developed and mature energy sources such as petroleum, coal and natural gas. And during that LONG period of time, the American manufacturer is going to be heavily penalized for failing to cap their CO2 emissions. And since only Europe really makes any effort to enforce CO2 emissions, you can be sure that we will continue to lose jobs to Asian manufacturers.

I personally think this whole thing is just a g-d tax scheme anyway.