Smoking gun – Russia’s plan to dominate energy markets
I came across an article on RosBusinessConsulting titled Russia floods global markets with O&G that supports my theory that at least some of more crafty segments of the world’s oil…
A good friend sent me a link to an interesting diary on Daily Kos titled “Clean Coal”‘s Dirty Hands?. That diary entry used an article written by Peter Montague, titled INSIGHTS: Carbon Sequestration that provides some very interesting documentation of grants provided by The Joyce Foundation to a number of mainstream environmental organizations.
The essential thrust of the article was that carbon sequestration was an untested and potentially risky endeavor that was being supported by a surprising coalition of groups that shared some of the same funding sources. I personally think that Mr. Montague was a little off in his analysis – in my opinion carbon sequestration will never be implemented on a major scale – but he has done a great job in contributing valuable information to an important discussion.
I recommend that you go visit “Clean Coal”‘s Dirty Hands? and participate. It should be an interesting source of opinions and information about how fossil fuel interests use their extensive financial resources and those of long established foundations with huge investment portfolios.
For example, the article talks about the activities of The Joyce Foundation. I did a little poking around and found out that Joyce was originally endowed with a $100 million bequest from a lumber industry heiress in 1972. It now controls an unrestricted portfolio of nearly $900 million. After giving away about $40-50 million each year, they have still grown that endowment by about $35 million per year for the last few years. It can do a lot of very good charitable work and still enable some nefarious and sneaky anti-nuclear activities to protect its interests and those of its donors and leaders.
PS – I had to grin about the magic of Google Adsense when I posted this comment. The link that showed up was titled Energy From Coal. It leads to an interestingly titled organization called Americans for Balanced Energy Choices. Its main point is that coal is essential, affordable and increasing clean. Note: I did not put a hyperlink in this postscript – go ahead and click on the ad link. That is more advantageous to Atomic Insights.
Rod Adams is Managing Partner of Nucleation Capital, a venture fund that invests in advanced nuclear, which provides affordable access to this clean energy sector to pronuclear and impact investors. Rod, a former submarine Engineer Officer and founder of Adams Atomic Engines, Inc., which was one of the earliest advanced nuclear ventures, is an atomic energy expert with small nuclear plant operating and design experience. He has engaged in technical, strategic, political, historic and financial analysis of the nuclear industry, its technology, regulation, and policies for several decades through Atomic Insights, both as its primary blogger and as host of The Atomic Show Podcast. Please click here to subscribe to the Atomic Show RSS feed. To join Rod's pronuclear network and receive his occasional newsletter, click here.
The old “smoking” industries are not the only ones who have a direct financial incentive in shutting out the nuclear competition. Here is a quote from a March 6, 2009 article on Energy Daily titled Analysis: Nuclear vs. renewable in Germany: In 2020 renewables are to satisfy 47 percent of Germany’s power mix — more…
On April 9, 2010, Jerry Taylor of the Cato Institute paid me the compliment of responding to a post that I labeled as a “smoking gun”. I gave the post that label since it provided an example of a man with evident ties to the fossil fuel industry working to discourage the use of nuclear…
Many observers of the nuclear industry will point to the disestablishment of the Atomic Energy Commission as one of the major turning points in the development of nuclear power as growing alternative energy source. For nearly 30 years from 1946-1974, the AEC was a focused agency responsible for all aspects of nuclear power research, development…
It’s been a while since my last ‘smoking gun’ report so it might be worth a brief reminder of what that categorization means. For Atomic Insights, the tag ‘smoking gun’ means a story that includes evidence of fossil fuel related interests working to oppose nuclear energy development, usually at a specific project. Some of the…
Conventional wisdom tells us that “Environmentalists” worried about one or more of the below complaints have influenced world opinion and encouraged the current negative investment perception that surrounds new nuclear power plants: Nuclear plants are not completely safe Nuclear energy technology leads to dispersal of nuclear weapons capability Nuclear energy plants are massive and lead…
A couple of days ago, I wrote about my discovery that Robert O. Anderson, a long time leader in the global petroleum business, had provided the seed money that David Brower used to fund Friends of the Earth, an organization that has been fighting against nuclear energy for more than 40 years. I pointed out…