guess the MSM will be all over this..........
Barky holds the record for worst venture capitalist of all time. The schooled Marxist should stop trying to play capitalist with our money. Although Mittens politically is not much of an improvement, at least he’d put in 40 hours and run the numbers.
Looks like all those jobs added in Ottawa County, Michigan to make batteries for electric/hybrid cars won’t be far behind.
Too bad there won't be any batteries for these cars.
Leni
I bet it was highly likely the impracticality could be seen from the start — it wasn’t just a glitch.
Obama has rathe much proven that his backing of a company with oru tax dollars is almost a guranteed of that company’s route to demise with their executive officers(Obama cronies) absconding with massive amounts of money.
Indiana huh? Anyone know where in Indiana it is?
Green energy, a technology whose time has not yet come.
And probably never will, so long as it cannot be done in a competitive manner with existing forms of “fossil fuel” energy, without massive subsidies.
We have had vast hydroelectric power generation plants, and what happened? The environmentalists have smashed them and claim they have done so for the protection of various endangered species of fish or other aquatic wildlife. Even now, in the background, there are grumblings that the huge wind turbines knock down and kill numbers of migrating birds, and that disposal of the battery materials themselves contributes to groundwater pollution and soil contamination for generations.
Photovoltaic power is still dependent on vast arrays, and relatively unobstructed presentation directly at the sun’s rays, which makes for complicated architecture in cities, and pretty much allows for only one land use in dedicated “sun farms”.
Nothing much satisfies the wacko environmentalists, so why not go ahead with the release of natural gas and petroleum from deep deposits by the process of “fracking”? They are going to be angry no matter what new technology is introduced, and they think they hold a high card with the declaration of carbon dioxide as a pollutant.
News flash. Carbon dioxide is key to our very survival as carbon-based entities, from the smallest of microbes to the entire palette of life, up to and including humanity. The REAL “pollutant” in the atmosphere is free oxygen, which only came to exist in the first place because carbon dioxide and dihydrogen oxide are combined by a sophisticated process involving external energy (usually the sun’s rays, but practically any heat source may be adapted for this purpose) into various forms of carbohydrates and free oxygen.
Free oxygen is highly reactive, combining with practically every element, and is also extremely corrosive, because of that very property. Of all the elements, only fluorine is more highly reactive. It is a fact that nobody has ever detected the odor of fluorine, because it is so highly destructive, the very nerve endings that would sense its presence are obliterated even before they could send an impulse to the higher nerve centers that could interpret and identify its presence.
Not to say what further collateral damage the presence of free fluorine does to any living organism. And oxygen, O2, is a close second, particulary in its triatomic form, ozone, O3, and in monoatomic oxygen (which does not exist in that form for very long in any instance).
Carbon dioxide acts as a BUFFER against the destructive nature of oxygen, as evidenced by its capability to choke out a flame, perhaps much more efficiently than even water.
Carbon dioxide has also been (wrongly) accused to causing global warming, because of its characteristics as a “greenhouse gas”. Very bad science, if the persons making this assertion even know the basic facts. As an atmospheric component, carbon dioxide does not absorb heat to any greater degree per unit of volume, than the widely available (and highly variable) “greenhouse gas”, water vapor. At any given moment, the atmospheric content of water vapor is from thirty to well over a hundred times the concentration of carbon dioxide (measured in parts per million), so the role of carbon dioxide becomes really insignificant in comparison to the presence of water vapor.
Water, in all its forms, is the means by which earth’s overall store of heat energy is regulated, both from the radiation received from solar sources, and heat leaking up from earth’s molten core. Water has the peculiar and almost singular capability to absorb, store, and release vast amounts of heat energy, as it passes through solid phase (ice) to liquid, to water vapor. Lose enough of the latent heat in a given quantity of water, and it becomes a solid (ice). Liquid water may only exist, at normal atmospheric pressure, between the range of 0 degrees Centigrade, and 100 degrees Centrigrade. Above that temperature, still under normal atmospheric pressure, all water becomes water vapor, commonly known as steam or mist.
But water vapor may exist all through the range from very hard-frozen ice, up to the point where heat causes the water molecule to dissociate into free hydrogen and oxygen, around 1,000 degrees Centigrade. Below 0 degrees Centigrade, water vapor will sublimate directly from ice, without passing through the liquid phase.
Water has one other pecularity, in that as it becomes solid, it has LOWER density than liquid water, which results in ice floating on top of water. There is a point, as water becomes colder, at which it is most dense, about 4 degrees Centigrade, and sinks to the bottom of any quantity of water. Just before freezing, water molecules begin to realign, assuming a greater volume, and the even colder water, at 0 degrees Centigrade actually is the top layer of water in a still vessel. The actual phase change means giving up considerable heat energy defined as calories, at which point the crystalline structure of ice is formed.
While in the atmosphere, water vapor, which is much lighter that any of the other components of the atmosphere, tends to rise, and in doing so, low-lying layers of mist or fog become clouds. There are a number of varieties of clouds, and as they are higher and higher, the water vapor cools more and more, finally at extreme altitudes the visible clouds are actually very fine ice crystals. The water vapor molecules become ice crystals because their heat energy was radiated off to space, mostly while that side of the earth was turned away from the sun. This serves to regulate the earth’s atmospheric temperature, which makes the scenario of “runaway” heat accumulation pretty much of a myth, and not possible, as the atmospheric temperature shall NEVER rise that high so long as there is liquid water on the face of the earth to continue this cycle.
The ice crystals, now heavier than the surrounding atmosphere, fall back to earth, sometimes as snow, if the atmosphere remains sufficiently cold, or as drops of rain if falling through warm atmosphere, and by their passage, cool down that portion of the atmosphere.
Back on ground level, the water covering some three-quarters of the earth’s surface arranges itself into distinct layers, with the densest, that water at 4 degrees Centigrade, at the bottom. Above this level, in areas subject to the direct exposure to solar radiation at some time during the day, the water will warm, while still mixing, to some degree, with the colder water in the lower depths. There is a vast volume of this colder, denser water on the ocean bottom, which is a major factor in moderating the temperature of the ocean as a whole, so we shall not see the spectacle of the surface waters of the earth boiling merrily away. There is just too much heat that would have to be applied for this to occur, and probably nothing short of the sun going nova, and including the earth in the newly expanded corona of the sun, could provide enough heat for this possibility to occur. At that point, loss of the planetary supply of water would be among the least of our worries.
If there would be anybody left to worry.
If there were any good reporters around, they might want to look into the political contributions (dollars) of the folks running the company before it went belly up.
Well, if we want to paint him as a failed pres-ent then we can point to shear numbers of companies this administration has invested in that failed.
“This President has been out picking winners and losers with Taxpayer money.
Sadly, though, it seems like he picks more losers than anything else.
That’s a thin record at best and a fireable offense in the coporate world.
Let’s fire Barack Obama on November and make America the winner for once”.
First lesson of capitalism: Markets eventually end inefficient processes.
Biden when he visited them called it ‘Enron1’. Please, I don’t want the government in the venture capital business just as I would not want Bain running the government.
RE: Ener1, an electric car battery company that the Obama administration awarded a $118 million stimulus grant to expand its operations, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection
___________________
It’s OK, Obama said the government has to spend tax dollars to EXPERIMENT. And experiments can of course fail. Give him time and he’ll pick a winner.
I wonder how much of this “Give Giant Grants of Government money to “Green Companies” is nothing more than “Money Laundering for the RNC” and how much if it was investigation would end with perp walks from most of Obama’s cabinet. “
Yup ..... Turns out a company actually needs customers to buy their products to stay afloat!!!
Maybe next time they should draw up something called a business plan.
Somebody got rich off the American taxpayer and then close up shop. Typical of what is going on now.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2838903/posts
Taxpayers Take Hit as Layoffs, Bankruptcies Plague Green Firms
National Legal & Policy Center ^ | January 27, 2012 | Paul Chesser
Posted on Friday, January 27, 2012 11:27:57 AM by jazusamo
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2838903/posts
Federal tax credits, loan and grant programs that expired at the end of last year have plugged the financial flow that made so-called renewables and electric vehicles viable, so they are now shedding employees and going bankrupt, illustrating that the clean industry owed its existence solely to government.
Even with the government money, they are failing. Yesterday Indiana-based Ener1, an energy storage company thatreceived $118.5 million from DOE, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Despite plans to have 1,400 employees in Indiana by 2015, the company had downsized in the state from 380 to approximately 250 since March. Ener1s stock price fell from more than $4 a share to under a dollar, and the company was booted from the NASDAQ stock exchange in October, when its stock was trading for less than 20 cents.
The Department of Energy seems to have no limit in its willingness to subsidize electric cars, electric trucks, electric school buses, electric delivery vans, batteries for electric vehicles, and charging stations for EVs. Its safe to say that without taxpayer support, these companies or at least the EV-related projects of larger companies like Nissan and GM dont exist.
Excerpted, go to the FR link to read entire article: