Thoughts At 75000 Pageviews

Today the pageview counter at SLB turned over 75,000 pageviews, another milestone of sorts.   These views are from a bit more than 39,000 unique visitors from 143 countries. As always, it is amazing to see such numbers.  

Lately, the pace of pageviews has sharply increased.  That is most likely due to the 30-part series on Truth About Nuclear Power, TANP beginning in March and concluding in August.  Cumulatively, the TANP articles have almost 9,000 views to date, with the Summary article (part 30) and US Nuclear Plants are Heavily Subsidized (part 13) sharing the most views with just over 1,200 views each.   Nuclear plants typically are lauded by the industry and supporters as being cheap, safe, long-lasting, and reliable.  TANP articles shows the truth, that none of those claims are accurate.   New technologies under development are also touted by supporters (small reactors, fusion, thorium, and high temperature gas reactors), and these are shown in TANP to be hopelessly uneconomic or unsafe, or both.  see link to Article One of TANP. Links to all 30 articles are provided there. 

As my readers know very well, my views on man-made climate change are that the science does not support an alarmist view.  see link  That is based on a critical examination of the available data.  What is disappointing is that so many skeptics of climate alarmism are also nuclear power supporters.  How nice it would be if they applied the same scrutiny of climate data to the nuclear plant data.  It appears to me that the nuclear power supporters are being led by smooth-talking dis-informers.  An article on this appeared here:  see link. 

Also, another series is underway, this one on wind energy.  see link  There is much mis-information spread by the anti-wind group.  Truth About Wind Energy will dispel those myths and show why and how wind energy presently is providing valuable energy, and will in a few years be supplying reliable, low-cost, low environmental impact energy via grid-scale storage.  See link for additional SLB articles on wind energy. 

A few articles discussed coal as an energy source, (see link) concluding that coal is being used up much faster than in the past.  The grim consequence of this is that an economic and reliable replacement for forty percent of the world's electricity production must be found, tested, and proven long before the coal runs out.   The best candidates for coal replacement are renewable energy with grid-scale storage.  Candidates in this area include solar thermal, and offshore wind with submersible pumped storage.  Ocean current energy needs no storage, nor does energy from river mouth osmosis.  

A trio of legal-oriented articles from SLB were republished on other blogs, those being Are Climate Skeptics Legally Liable for Criminal Negligence (see link), Climate Science, Free Speech and Legal Liability (see link), and Prosecuting Those Who Force a Scientist to Resign (see link).  

It was also very interesting to rebut the false claims of the US President in his recent commencement speech to UC-Irvine (2014).  The President spoke on the urgency to combat dangerous man-made climate change.  see link   There is no man-made climate change, and therefore there is no urgency to combat it. 

Finally, it is is gratifying that several groups continue to request me to speak to them on various topics.   In the past three years, I have made formal speeches to Southern California Section of AIChE, to the student chapter of AIChE at University of California at Irvine, and the student chapter of AIChE at UCLA (University of California at Los Angeles).    I am very pleased that UCLA students have asked me to present a four-part series of lectures on approaches to the national student design competition.   See link for a list of recent speeches. 

Roger E. Sowell, Esq.
Marina del Rey, California