Energy News Articles
Excerpts of Key Energy News Articles in Major Media
Below are many highly revealing excerpts of important energy news articles from the mainstream media suggesting a cover-up. Links are provided to the full articles on major media websites. If any link fails to function,
click here. These energy news articles are listed by order of importance. For the same articles by date posted,
click here. For the list by date of news article
click here. By choosing to educate ourselves on these important issues and to
spread the word, we can and will
build a brighter future.
Note: For an index to revealing excerpts of news articles on several dozen engaging topics,
click here.
Solar Industry: No Breakthroughs Needed
2009-08-03, MIT Technology Review
http://www.technologyreview.com/energy/23108
The federal government is behind the times when it comes to making decisions about advancing the solar industry, according to several solar-industry experts. This has led, they argue, to a misplaced emphasis on research into futuristic new technologies, rather than support for scaling up existing ones. That was the prevailing opinion at a symposium last week put together by the National Academies in Washington, DC, on the topic of scaling up the solar industry. The meeting was attended by numerous experts from the photovoltaic industry and academia. And many complained that the emphasis on finding new technologies is misplaced. "This is such a fast-moving field," said Ken Zweibel, director of the Solar Institute at George Washington University. "To some degree, we're fighting the last war. We're answering the questions from 5, 10, 15 years ago in a world where things have really changed." Industry experts at the Washington symposium argued that new technologies will take decades to come to market, judging from how long commercialization of other solar technologies has taken. Meanwhile, says Zweibel, conventional technologies "have made the kind of progress that we were hoping futuristic technologies could make." For example, researchers have sought to bring the cost of solar power to under $1 per watt, and as of the first quarter of this year one company, First Solar, has done this. These cost reductions have made solar power cheaper than the natural-gas-powered plants used to produce extra electricity to meet demand on hot summer days.
Note: Interesting that MIT has reported this story, but none of the major media picked it up. Solar energy will very likely be cheaper than oil-generated energy in under 10 years. For more on the current state of solar, click here.
Portugal opens pioneer commercial wave power plant
2008-09-23, Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/marketsNews/idUSLN48037420080923
The world's first commercial power plant converting the energy of sea waves into electricity [has] started working off Portugal's coast ... in a project that should be expanded nearly 10-fold over the next few years. Three articulated steel "sea-snakes" moored to the seabed three miles off Portugal's northern coast, each about the length of a nuclear submarine, generate a total of 2.25 megawatts, enough to supply 1,500 households with electricity. "It's logged into the national grid, which makes it the world's first commercial wave power project," said Anthony Kennaway, a spokesman for Babcock and Brown investment firm which runs the Agucadoura project in northern Portugal. "We hope that in 15 years wave power will be where wind is now, that is extremely competitive. Portugal could be for wave power what Denmark was for wind," Kennaway said. Renewable energy, including water dams, accounts for 40 percent of power consumption in Portugal. Some experts say wave energy could meet up to 20 percent of the country's needs in the future. A total of 25 semi-submerged "sea-snakes" should be installed in the next few years, boosting the ... capacity to 21 MW, Kennaway said. The machines, each 140 meters (yards) long and 3.5 meters in diameter, are positioned head-on towards the waves so that its sections move with the waves. Each joint ... contains a hydraulic pump, which pumps high-pressure liquid through motors that in their turn drive power generators. The energy is then transmitted to a substation on shore via subsea cables.
Note: For lots more on new energy inventions from reliable sources, click here.
Intel gets into the wireless electricity game
2008-08-22, Scientific American
http://www.sciam.com/blog/60-second-science/post.cfm?id=intel-gets-into-the-w...
Are we closing in on laptops that can recharge without those annoying power cords? Yesterday Intel, the world's largest chip manufacturer, demonstrated a form of wireless energy transfer by lighting a 60-watt bulb from a power source three feet away, in an effect they referred to as WREL (wireless resonant energy link). If the trick sounds familiar, that's because researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) reported the same thing last year under the moniker WiTricity. Two years ago, MIT researcher Marin Soljacic figured out a way to transmit electricity via the magnetic field surrounding a charged loop of wire. A similar loop wired up to a light bulb or another electrical device would draw power from that magnetic field—no wires attached. Soljacic and his colleagues reported a year later in Science they could transfer energy to a 60-watt bulb with 50 percent efficiency from six feet away and 90 percent efficiency from three feet. Intel announced they had achieved 75 percent efficiency from two to three feet away. An Intel researcher contacted the MIT group with some technical questions after the study came out, says Andre Kurs, an MIT PhD candidate and first author on the Science paper.
Note: Yet no mention is made of the fact that genius inventor Nikola Tesla may have developed wireless electricity over a century ago. Click here for information on this. Some claim Tesla was largely written out of history books because he threatened the establishment with the possibility of nearly free electricity for all people. For more on this, click here.
Deals With Iraq Are Set to Bring Oil Giants Back
2008-06-19, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/world/middleeast/19iraq.html?partner=rssuse...
Four Western oil companies are in the final stages of negotiations this month on contracts that will return them to Iraq, 36 years after losing their oil concessions to nationalization as Saddam Hussein rose to power. Exxon Mobil, Shell, Total and BP — the original partners in the Iraq Petroleum Company — along with Chevron and a number of smaller oil companies, are in talks with Iraq’s Oil Ministry for no-bid contracts to service Iraq’s largest fields. The deals, expected to be announced on June 30, will lay the foundation for the first commercial work for the major companies in Iraq since the American invasion, and open a new and potentially lucrative country for their operations. The no-bid contracts are unusual for the industry, and the offers prevailed over others by more than 40 companies, including companies in Russia, China and India. The contracts [would] give the companies an advantage in bidding on future contracts. There was suspicion among many in the Arab world and among parts of the American public that the United States had gone to war in Iraq precisely to secure the oil wealth these contracts seek to extract. The Bush administration has said that the war was necessary to combat terrorism. Sensitive to the appearance that they were profiting from the war and already under pressure because of record high oil prices, senior officials of two of the companies, speaking only on the condition that they not be identified, said they were helping Iraq rebuild its decrepit oil industry.
Note: For many revealing reports from reliable sources on the real reasons behind the war in Iraq, click here.
Israel backs Palo Alto man's electric car plan
2008-06-17, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/06/17/MN1F112F1P.DTL
Shai Agassi, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, pledges that he can beat the spiraling cost of gasoline with the world's first mass-produced electric car. In January, Israel's government endorsed the Palo Alto businessman's ambitious joint venture between his startup company - Project Better Place - and Renault-Nissan. Agassi says he raised $200 million to get the $500 million dollar project, which will include a network of charging and battery-exchange stations by 2010, off the ground. Project Better Place also has signed an agreement with Denmark to begin a similar operation by 2011. In Denmark, a pioneer in developing wind power, batteries are expected to be recharged using wind-powered turbines. Agassi is banking on his electric-powered sedan revolutionizing life on the roads, cleaning up the environment and reducing dependence on oil. The cars are expected to have a range of up to 140 miles per charge and a top speed of 68 mph - the speed limit in Israel. Last month, he invited reporters to test-drive a prototype that looks a lot like the Renault Megane, a four-door sedan. The car is noticeably quiet and has no exhaust pipe, an electric socket in place of a gas cap and a dashboard gauge that measures the charge of the vehicle's 450-pound lithium-ion battery. In the United States, Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle has said she is interested in her state becoming the first to embrace the electric-car network. Mayor Gavin Newsom also has reportedly expressed interest in making San Francisco the first U.S. metropolis to place electric cars on city roads.
Note: For reports of many exciting breakthroughs in energy development and automotive design, click here.
Scientists unlock frozen natural gas
2008-04-16, Toronto Star
http://www.thestar.com/sciencetech/article/415215
A remote drilling rig high in the Mackenzie Delta has become the site of a breakthrough that could one day revolutionize the world's energy supply. For the first time, Canadian and Japanese researchers have managed to efficiently produce a constant stream of natural gas from ice-like gas hydrates that, worldwide, dwarf all known fossil fuel deposits combined. "We were able to sustain flow," said Scott Dallimore, the Geological Survey of Canada researcher in charge of the remote Mallik drilling program. "It worked." For a decade now, Dallimore and scientists from a half-dozen other countries have been returning to a site on Richards Island on the very northwestern tip of the Northwest Territories to study methane gas hydrates. A hydrate is created when a molecule of gas – in this case, methane or natural gas – is trapped by high pressures and low temperatures inside a cage of water molecules. The result is almost – but not quite – ice. It's more like a dry, white slush suffusing the sand and gravel 1,000 metres beneath the Mallik rig. Heat or unsqueeze the hydrate and gas is released. Hold a core sample to your ear and it hisses. More significant is the fact that gas hydrates concentrate 164 times the energy of the same amount of natural gas. And gas hydrate fields are found in abundance under the coastal waters of every continent. Calculations suggest there's more energy in gas hydrates than in coal, oil and conventional gas combined. Last month, the Mallik team became the first to use that method to get a steady, consistent flow. "That went really well," said Dallimore. "We definitely demonstrated that these hydrates are responsive enough that you can sustain flow. We were able to take conventional technologies, modify them, and produce. That's a big step forward."
Note: For lots more information on new energy developments, click here.
'Eco-towns' target doubled by PM
2007-09-24, BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/7010888.stm
Gordon Brown has promised to double the number of "eco-towns" to be built across the UK from five to ten. The prime minister told the Labour conference in Bournemouth that a positive response to the project had encouraged him to expand it. This showed "imagination", he said, adding that eco-towns would help the government meet housebuilding targets.
In May, Mr Brown promised [that] communities of up to 100,000 low-carbon and carbon-neutral homes would be built. Mr Brown told the Labour conference: "For the first time in nearly half a century we will show the imagination to build new towns - eco-towns with low and zero-carbon homes. And today, because of the responses we have received, we are announcing that instead of just five new eco-towns we will now aim for ten - building thousands of new homes in every region of the country." This would help boost housebuilding to 240,000 homes a year, he said. The eco-town idea was the first major policy announcement made by Mr Brown as he began his campaign to succeed Tony Blair as prime minister earlier this year. Constructed on old industrial sites, they will be powered by locally generated energy from sustainable sources. The government said that, with a month to go until the deadline, there had been about 30 expressions of interest in building eco-towns from councils, developers and others.
Practical Fusion, or Just a Bubble?
2007-02-27, New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/27/science/27fusion.html
A few small companies and maverick university laboratories, including ... one at U.C.L.A. run by Seth Putterman, a professor of physics, are pursuing quixotic solutions for future energy, trying to tap the power of the Sun — hot nuclear fusion — in devices that fit on a tabletop. Dr. Putterman’s approach is to use sound waves, called sonofusion or bubble fusion, to expand and collapse tiny bubbles, generating ultrahot temperatures. At temperatures hot enough, atoms can literally fuse and release even more energy than when they split in nuclear fission, now used in nuclear power plants and weapons. Furthermore, fusion is clean in that it does not produce long-lived nuclear waste. Dr. Putterman has not achieved fusion in his experiments. He and other scientists form a small but devoted cadre interested in turning small-scale desktop fusion into usable systems. Although success is far away, the principles seem sound. Achieving nuclear fusion, even in a desktop device, is not particularly difficult. But building a fusion reactor that generates more energy than it consumes is far more challenging. Impulse Devices, a small company in the small town of Grass Valley, Calif., is exploring the same sound-driven fusion as Dr. Putterman, pushing forward with venture capital financing. Its president, Ross Tessien, concedes that Impulse is a high-risk investment, but the potential payoffs would be many. “You solve the world’s pollution problems,” Mr. Tessien said. “You eliminate the need for wars. You eliminate scarcity of fuel. And it happens to be a very valuable market. So from a commercial point of view, there’s every incentive. From a moral point of view, there’s every incentive. And it’s fun and it’s exciting work.”
Note: To read about a wide array of revolutionary energy technologies, click here.
Oil refiners' golden age of profits
2006-04-27, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/04/27/MNG52IG4LV1.DTL
High crude oil prices aren't the only reason you're paying $3.15 for a gallon of regular. For America's giant gasoline refiners...this is a golden age. By California state estimates, refinery profit margins have more than doubled in 2006, though that figure doesn't take into account some key expenses. Meanwhile, oil prices have risen by 14 percent. Oil industry critics hunting for proof of price gouging point to refineries' expanding profit margins as evidence. Critics say the companies deliberately closed many U.S. refineries years ago as a way to drive up their margins. The country now has 144 refineries, down from 324 in 1981. "The refining business used to be pretty lousy, but they took very aggressive actions to correct that," said Tyson Slocum, director of the energy program at the Public Citizen watchdog group. "They're choosing not to build new refineries because it's not in their economic interest." Exact profit margins for the industry are difficult to track, because the companies involved don't reveal financial details. The California Energy Commission publishes a loose weekly estimate, measuring the difference between what the state's 21 refineries pay for crude oil and what they charge for their products. Since the start of the year, that figure has jumped 130 percent, from 30 cents for each gallon of finished gasoline to 69 cents last week. During the same time, the price refiners pay for crude oil has increased 14 percent.
The Oil Sands Of Alberta
2006-01-22, CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/01/20/60minutes/main1225184.shtml
There’s an oil boom going on right now. Not in Saudi Arabia or Kuwait or any of those places, but...in Alberta, Canada. The oilmen up there are...digging up dirt -- dirt that is saturated with oil. They’re called oil sands, and if you’ve never heard of them then you’re in for a big surprise because the reserves are so vast in the province of Alberta that they will help solve America’s energy needs for the next century. Within a few years, the oil sands are likely to become more important to the United States than all the oil that comes to us from Saudi Arabia. There are 175 billion barrels of proven oil reserves here. That’s second to Saudi Arabia’s 260 billion but it’s only what companies can get with today’s technology. The estimate of how many more barrels of oil are buried deeper underground is staggering. "We know there’s much, much more there. The total estimates could be two trillion or even higher," says Clive Mather, Shell's Canada chief. "This is a very, very big resource." Very big? That’s eight times the amount of reserves in Saudi Arabia.
Note: For those who fear oil shortages and an energy crisis, here's yet another example of huge, untapped energy reserves. For many other, cleaner options, see http://www.WantToKnow.info/newenergyinformation
Forecaster leaves job to pursue weather theories
2005-09-23, Idaho State Journal
http://www.journalnet.com/articles/2005/09/23/news/local/news05.txt
Scott Stevens is...the face of the weather at KPVI News Channel 6. The Pocatello native made his final Channel 6 forecast Thursday night, leaving a job he's held for nine years in order to pursue his weather theories on a full-time basis. Since Katrina, Stevens has been in newspapers across the country. On Wednesday, Stevens was interviewed by Fox News firebrand Bill O'Reilly. Stevens said he received 30 requests to do radio interviews on Thursday alone. Although the theories espoused by Stevens - scalar weapons, global dimming - are definitely on the scientific fringe today, there are thousands of Web sites that mention such phenomena. "The Soviets boasted of their geoengineering capabilities; these impressive accomplishments must be taken at face value simply because we are observing weather events that simply have never occurred before, never!" Stevens wrote on his Web site. To learn more about Stevens and his thoughts on manipulated weather, check out his Web site at www.weatherwars.info, or go to www.journalnet.com/articles/2005/03/06/opinion/opinion04.txt.
Cold-war device used to cause Katrina?
2005-09-20, USA Today/Associated Press
http://www.usatoday.com/weather/climate/2005-09-20-wacky-weatherman_x.htm
An Idaho weatherman says Japan's Yakuza mafia used a Russian-made electromagnetic generator to cause Hurricane Katrina in a bid to avenge itself for the Hiroshima atom bomb attack. Meteorologist Scott Stevens, a nine-year veteran of KPVI-TV in Pocatello, said he was struggling to forecast weather patterns starting in 1998 when he discovered the theory on the Internet. It's now detailed on Stevens' website, www.weatherwars.info. Stevens...says a little-known oversight in physical laws makes it possible to create and control storms -- especially if you're armed with the Cold War-era weapon said to have been made by the Russians in 1976. Stevens' bosses at KPVI-TV say their employee can think and say what he wants as long as he keeps the station out of the debate and acknowledges that his views are his own opinion. Bill Fouch, KPVI's general manager, said. "He's very knowledgeable about weather, and he's very popular."
Note: Former
U.S. Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen in a 1997 news briefing stated:
"Others are engaging even in an eco-type of terrorism whereby they can
alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use
of electromagnetic waves." To verify this quote on the U.S. Department of Defense website, click here.
If terrorist organizations have the capability to set off earthquakes
and other major natural disasters, do you think huge military research
laboratories might have some of the same capabilities? For more,
click here and
here.
Freezing gas prices
2005-05-25, NBC Oklahoma City
http://www.kfor.com/Global/story.asp?s=3390503
There is a
man who fills up his tank once every two months. One tank of gas, literally,
lasts him two months. He is freezing the price of gas by freezing something
else. David Hutchison is a Cryogenics expert. He built this Cryo-Process himself.
A few years ago he began an experiment on his hybrid Honda, freezing the engine
components. The results were a fuel-efficiency dream. A hybrid Honda typically
gets really great gas mileage anyway, around 50 miles to the gallon, but David
Hutchison's cryogenically tempered engine has been known to get close to 120
miles a gallon. Racers have picked up on David's trick of cryogenically
freezing car parts. It is now widely accepted among NASCAR and Indy-car racers.
Note: Why isn't this front-page headlines with rapid development for use by us all?
100 MPG Car Heralded by London Times in 2002 - Where is it now?
2004-12-02, WantToKnow.info/London Times
http://www.WantToKnow.info/carmileage
Note: The Toyota
Eco Spirit was the talk of the fuel economy car industry in 2002. At over
100 MPG and with the lowest exhaust emissions and a very reasonable sticker
price, the Eco Spirit's debut was widely anticipated (see London Times
article). Now, over two years later, what happened to it? If you do an Internet
search, you will find that Toyota decided not to be move forward with it. Why
in these times of soaring oil prices would they not rush this car into mass
production?
Midwest Oil fined for selling gas too cheaply
2006-02-24, Star Tribune (Leading newspaper of Minneapolis-St. Paul)
http://www.startribune.com/535/story/267143.html
The Minnesota Commerce Department on Thursday announced plans to fine a gas station chain $140,000 for repeatedly selling gas below the state's legal minimum price. The fine against Midwest Oil of Minnesota is twice as large as any imposed on a company since 2001, when the state established a formula based on wholesale prices, fees and taxes to determine a daily floor for gas prices. The price law was intended to prevent large oil companies from driving smaller competitors out of business, but some critics argue it fails to protect consumers. According to the Commerce Department, the Midwest-owned stations in Anoka, Oakdale and Albert Lea sold gas below the minimum price on 293 days in 2005. Kevin Murphy, deputy commissioner of the department, called the violations "willful, continuing, and egregious and warrant a substantial penalty."
Zenn and the art of small, electric vehicles
2008-08-15, MSNBC/Forbes Autos
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26140663
It might sound surprising, but all-electric vehicles are already on American roads. They just haven't quite made it to the highway yet. A growing cottage industry of Neighborhood Electric Vehicle [NEV] manufacturers is spurring the development of cars like the Zenn, which has reached a state of vehicular enlightenment so advanced it doesn't even need a tail pipe. "We saw this car in May of '06, and all of us were just freaking out: 'Finally, a car!'" said Steve Mayeda, sales manager at Seattle-based MC Electric Vehicles, which sells 30 percent of Zenn's U.S. inventory, in addition to electric vehicles made by Columbia, Canadian EV, E-Ride and Miles. "Zenn was the first neighborhood electric car that actually looked and felt and drove like a real car. Everything else before that was either a converted golf cart or a car that was built from the ground up." NEVs are silent, have no tailpipe emissions (or tailpipes, for that matter) and plug into electrical outlets like vacuum cleaners. They come in two varieties: Low-Speed Electric Vehicles, which have a top speed of about 25 miles per hour and are restricted to roads where the speed limit is 35 miles per hour or less; and Medium-Speed Electric Vehicles, which reach 35 mph and are allowed on roads with a posted speed of up to 45 mph. They're exempt from federal safety regulations that mandate impact-absorbing bumpers and airbags. But to be street legal, NEVs must have three-point seat belts, windshields with wipers, headlights, brake lights, rearview mirrors and turn signals.
Note: Note: For a fun, six-minute video demonstration of the Zenn, click here.
Dealer ... says tactics used by Shell are unfair to operators
2007-05-10, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2007/05/10/MNGUKPOGKJ1.DTL
At Bob Oyster's Shell station ... putting the price way up over $4 a gallon isn't about making a profit. It's about making a statement to a multinational corporation. After Shell forced him to pay higher prices for gas in San Francisco and jacked up his rent, Oyster says, he decided to fight back. Far from making a huge profit, Oyster is going out of business. He has operated the Shell station at Sixth and Harrison for 22 years, but he's walking away from it at the end of the month. "I'm getting nothing for the station,'' he says. At a time when the oil companies are posting record profits, the little guys are struggling to stay in business. And many, like Oyster, are giving up the fight. "The dealer can no longer be competitive,'' says Dennis DeCota, executive director of the California Service Station and Automotive Repair Association. "The companies are squeezing these guys out. It's just wrong.'' Oyster says his rent has gone up exponentially. Fifteen years ago it was $1,000 a month. Then it went to $6,000, then $8,000. This year Shell came back with a demand of $13,000. DeCota and Oyster see [a] sinister motive: If the dealers like them leave, a company like Shell can run its stations with its own employees and set its own pump prices. "That way they really are controlling it from the well head to the gas pump,'' says DeCota. While the price per gallon gets all the attention, Oyster says the little secret of independent dealers is that, like movie theater operators, they make their profit on the extras -- snacks, drinks and other items.
Note: When the big oil boys supposedly believe in the "trickle down" theory, why are they not sharing any of their huge profits with their dealers? And why is there so little reporting on the arbitrary raising of gas prices?
Fastest Train in the World Hits France
2007-04-03, ABC News
http://abcnews.go.com/International/story?id=3004116
France's famous high-speed train, the TGV, broke its 17-year-old world speed record today when it hit a top speed of 357.2 mph. Another French train held the previous rail train record, set in 1990, of 320.2 mph. Normal TGV trains have a cruising speed of 186 mph. Japan holds the absolute speed record for a train, with its magnetically levitated Maglev train that floats over a guideway on a magnetic field without ever touching the track. The Maglev set a record of 361 mph in 2003.
Note: A CNN report states that the fastest train in the U.S. is the Acela, with a top speed of 150 mph. The same report notes "the top speed for most passenger trains outside the Northeast Corridor ... is 79 mph." Another CNN article comments "Japan's Shinkansen trains, introduced just before the 1964 Tokyo Olympics, regularly hit 186 mph." Why are American trains so backward compared to the rest of the world? Could it have anything to do with oil? For more, click here.
Exxon Mobil Posts New Record for Profit
2005-10-27, ABC/Associated Press
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=1255549
Exxon Mobil Corp. had a quarter for the record books. The world's largest publicly traded oil company said Thursday high oil and natural-gas prices helped its third-quarter profit surge almost 75 percent to $9.92 billion, the largest quarterly profit for a U.S. company ever, and it was the first to ring up more than $100 billion in quarterly sales. The hurricanes slashed Exxon Mobil's U.S. production volumes by 50,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, down nearly 5 percent year-over-year, costing the company $45 million before taxes. The company said total daily production slipped to 2.45 million barrels of oil equivalent from 2.51 million barrels.
Note: Isn't it amazing that though oil production fell, and though we all are paying much higher gas prices, Exxon Mobil earned the largest profits ever in the same quarter as Hurricane Katrina? Wouldn't it be nice if during a national catastrophe the oil companies were willing to drop their prices and suffer a little with the rest of us?
Livermore Lab - perception versus reality
2011-06-28, San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/06/28/EDRD1K37RR.DTL
Look at the Department of Energy's 2012 budget request for the Livermore Lab and it becomes apparent that PR has an inverse relationship to budget. Some 89 percent of the funds are for nuclear weapons activities. Yet, more than 89 percent of the press releases showcase programs like renewable energy and science that receive less than 3 percent of the spending. This has caused many to believe that Livermore Lab is converting from nuclear weapons to civilian science. A major consequence of the chasm between public perception and where the money actually goes is that science at Livermore continues to exist on the margins - underfunded, understaffed and at the mercy of the 800-pound gorilla of the nuclear weapons budget. Consider the many benefits of transitioning Livermore from nuclear-weapons design to a "green lab," focused on nonpolluting energy development, climate research, basic sciences, nonproliferation and environmental cleanup. Livermore Lab is uniquely qualified to contribute in these areas. The lab already employs the right mix of physicists, other scientists, engineers, materials specialists, and support personnel for these undertakings.
Note: To learn more about how the public is being massively deceived around war and weapons spending, read what a top U.S. general had to say about this at this link.
Key Energy News Articles in Major Media