Industry to sponsor Stanford's research

Stanford -- In an unusual alliance between one of the nation's top research campuses and some of the country's most polluting industries, Stanford University will receive a huge donation for research on energy, climate and environmental problems.

The grant -- which could reach nearly a quarter of a billion dollars -- will come from oil, gas and other energy companies such as ExxonMobil and General Electric.

The money will create the Stanford-based Global Climate and Energy Project (G-CEP) and bankroll its study of technologies needed for resolving energy and environmental problems, it was learned Tuesday.
At least $175 million is already guaranteed for the 10-year project, and the total may reach $225 million, according to a Stanford official who insisted on anonymity. Of the $175 million already promised, $100 million will be given by ExxonMobil.

The new energy technologies could include devices fueled by hydrogen gas that would lessen the emission of carbon dioxide gases, which worsen global warming.

Here come the pros!

Besides ExxonMobil and General Electric, contributors include the New York- based Schlumberger Ltd., an oil services and technology firm, and the German power company E.On AG.

The pros are the usual globalist suspects.

Here come the “con” artists!

Bill Ahern, energy analyst for Consumer Union's West Coast office in San Francisco.

"This just drives me crazy," he added. "If real innovations are developed (by G-CEP) that replace fossil fuels -- like the 'hydrogen economy' or 'solar economy' -- it could create competition these companies don't want."

Hehehe. After this kind of money Billy Boy, you can bet they don’t want the competition. Buying the universities is the preferred means of controlling the scientific buzz.

Mindy Spatt (appropriate name), spokeswoman for The Utility Reform Network (TURN), a California nonprofit consumer advocate group (that specializes in minimizing the installed base of regulated industries so that they can’t charge against it for their fixed return), warned that oil and gas firms "are not known for having stellar environmental records. (as if she knows and as if that was TURN’s purpose (it isn’t, their job is to help hold down power plant construction by any means)).

Bruce Hamilton, national conservation director for the Sierra Club:

"This is pretty standard, that most large research institutes get money from a broad variety of sources including polluters, energy companies and other (sources)," he said. "It's how they fund a lot of their research. The question is always: How independent will the research be?

ROTFLMAO! How long has it been since you cared about that Brucie?

"I'm actually hopeful that in fact this is a sincere attempt to find real objective answers," Hamilton said. "It's better (for the oil firms to fund a distinguished scientific institution such as Stanford) than feeding it to a conservative think tank that gives them the answers that they want in the first place."

Peter Altman, national coordinator of Campaign Exxon Mobil, told the Associated Press that the grants were "an extremely cheap attempt by ExxonMobil to buy a shield from criticism."

Dots connected; no problem. Why does it have to be so repetitive?

Here’s my speculation on the deal: Methane from these crystal blobs regularly bubbles to the surface of the oceand and into the atmosphere. Methane is a greenhouse gas and these clowns are have bought enough "science" that they either believe in Global Warming!!! themselves, or don't care. In addition to the methane, they can get carbon credits for mining it. My guess is that there are also minerals to get in the deal. The problem is that the seabed is a pretty touchy place for widespread mining, but their buddies at the UN already have a lock on that one. Gotta calm the GreenieWeenies and make sure they stay bought.

It’s cheap all righty.

BP and XOM plan to be the biggies in this market and are BIG funders of the environmental move-mint in order to get the "order" they need to make it happen with minimal risk. BP especially is working to push the world toward fuel cells, in part to get a fat return on their rare earth and platinum mines in Africa (more of which will get a lot cheaper when Zimbabwe finally crumbles). GE and E On want to sell motors, plastics, controls… I don’t know if they own a chunk of Ballard or whether they are working on it in-house. The Schlumberger connection is obvious. They have a lot of experience in hybridized undersea electronics. I’m surprised I don’t see Ford in this list, but they’ve been hurting lately (something to do with pissing off their customers).

As far as Orr is concerned, he wants to be one of the big boys, and daddy-in-law bought MBARI and connections at Stanford, so my take is that he gets to come along as long as he keeps the lid on the deal and maybe make some money.

None of this will work as long as oil and continental gas is plentiful (which it is). So I guess they’ll keep up with the land grabs.

I have no problem with fuel cells per se, but I do have a problem with using regulations and Elmer Gantry smoke and mirrors (Kyoto) in order to make it a slam-dunk. It’s big corporations screwing property owners, skewing scientific research, flushing capital destroying their more efficient competition, and risking doing a lot of damage to seabed habitat while charging taxpayers to make sure they don’t lose money all in the name of a bogus concern about climate change (fuel cells do make distilled water, a big market spinoff but only if they can grab the riparian and underground resources).

Sounds expensive. Better pump up the value of those carbon credits!

Yuck.

Were I them BTW, instead of cars, I would be developing fuel cells for remote fixed installations so that they can get rid of overhead power lines. It makes a nice intermediate step toward cars if that’s what they want to do, reduces line losses and the cost of tree maintenance, reduces the risk of catastrophic fires, and there is already a fuel storage and delivery infrastructure.

Oh well.

From the MBARI website:

This project on the deep ocean geochemistry of the greenhouse gases
will make innovative use of MBARI’s unique deep sea vehicle assets to
design and carry out important experiments. Last year, we developed
techniques to include the first deep sea Nuclear Magnetic Resonance
(NMR)-hydrate experiment, and the ability to deploy and observe the
behavior, biological impacts, and environmental consequences of deep
sea carbon dioxide disposal. In the next three-year cycle we propose to
continue these themes.

In 2002 we propose to carry out a series of essential experiments in local
waters.

1.We will extend work on carbon dioxide
disposal/chemistry/biology (jointly with Jim Barry),
with partial Department of Energy support. We
carefully move beyond pure CO2 to study of an
(impure) sample taken from the Weyburn project
pipeline. We will also extend water column release
studies to the dynamics and phase behavior of
N2/carbon dioxide mixtures.
2.We will very actively seek to take advantage of the
newly developed Laser Raman spectrometer for
obtaining biogeochemical data on a variety of targets,
including CH4 and carbon dioxide hydrates.
Technical development and hardware acquisition and
testing will proceed under a separate project.
3.We will extend the effort to deploy and test novel in
situ acoustic, and IR-based, deep-ocean gas sensors
with Schlumberger colleagues. We will develop a
new single phase “hydrate maker” based upon
chilling methane-saturated sea water, and use this to
create novel targets for experiment.
4.We will collaborate with external scientists on
accurate measurement of in situ properties of
hydrates. We will investigate the fate of mid-water
carbon dioxide hydrate releases. And we will extend
work with external colleagues to deploy
laboratory-synthesized hydrates in the deep sea for
fundamental measurements.

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