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Journey to Energy Independence
AmericanEnergyIndependence.com
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Beyond Fossil Fools:
Roadmap to Energy Independence
by 2040
by Joe Shuster
Book Preface
Energy is destined to be the single most important
issue of this century.
War and economic prosperity will always loom large as they do today, but
both of these concerns are inextricably entwined with energy matters. Energy
issues will determine the kind of life future generations will live, will
probably cause more wars, and, as unthinkable as it is, could become a matter
of life or death for many.
 I intend this book to illustrate that the problem is very serious and much
closer than you likely realize. You will realize an energy storm is brewing – looks
like the classic perfect storm and it is closer than you think. I don’t
intend this book to be another bleak description of dire events to come.
This book proposes a quantified plan and a timetable for moving beyond
fossil foolishness to a future of clean, eternal, affordable energy. This is a
book of hopeful optimism.
This book is a wake-up call, a call to action, a plea. The solution solves
many problems beyond affordable energy: It blunts global warming, reduces
acid rain, limits ocean acidification, restricts mercury pollution, improves
balance of payments, strengthens the value of the dollar, relieves transportation
woes, and improves many health issues associated with fossil fuels.
Between the covers of this book you will find a broad, unblinking perspective
on the energy problems of the United States and the world, including
depletion and all aspects of pollution. Best of all, you will find a
solution — there
really is only one — and the steps to achieve the solution. The problems
and solution steps are quantified and include ideas about paying for
the bright, clean future. It is surprisingly affordable. There are no
technological show stoppers to hinder progress. Also, if we all put our
support behind
the solution, I believe even the formidable political and legal barriers
will fall.
The story is simple: We are running out of energy resources. The world
is using up available energy sources at an alarming rate. As the world
burns up and burns through energy resources, energy consumption creates
untold damage to people and the environment.
There is no silver bullet, no magic pill, no one-size-fits-all solution;
we must try to dovetail many changes immediately and at the same time.
There is a second problem. The transition to new energy sources must begin
immediately if the inevitable transition to alternative forms of energy
is to be manageable and timely rather than chaotic, destructive, and violent.
Read more...
YouTube video:
Beyond Fossil Fools —Joe
Shuster talks about the energy crisis and why we must act now! (July 4,
2008)
About the Author Joe
Shuster is a chemical engineer who has spent his entire business career
in engineering and management roles in diverse technically oriented companies.
He co-founded Minnesota Valley Engineering (MVE), which, under his guidance,
became the world’s leading manufacturer of high-technology, low-temperature
(cryogenic) equipment used in industry, medicine, agriculture, and transportation.
MVE designed and manufactured hydrogen equipment, enhanced oil recovery
systems, and hydrogen and LNG transportation fuel systems. He was also the
founder of Teltech, a National science and engineering consulting firm that
produced hundreds of technical dossiers on many technical subjects including
gas turbines, photovoltaic manufacturing processes, natural gas purification,
fuels cells and many other energy related topics. In addition, he founded
or co-founded seven other technology based companies and has served on the
Board of Directors of over twenty businesses, organizations, and international
firms. He has received numerous professional and civic awards.
His energy alert paper for the U.S. congress accurately predicted the oil
embargo in 1973. He has also testified before congress in support of a National
Technology Transfer program.
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America: The Oil Hostage
By Paul Bures
Most Americans do not realize that the United States imports two-thirds of its
oil from other countries. Hence, when some turmoil brews where the U.S. oil supply
must be protected, the result is often a costly and bloody war. The oil is not
under U.S. control and many countries that are hostile to the U.S. control both
the supply and the price. As long as the U.S. continues to need this oil, it
will remain at the mercy of such countries. Thus “The Oil Hostage.” The
U.S. Government has illusively promised oil independence since the 1973 Arab
embargo, but still we are entangled in oil wars to guard the available supply.
Without such wars, the prices of gas could skyrocket in a matter of days, sending
the U.S. into an economic depression. Thousands of U.S. soldiers are being sacrificed
in the name of oil. Numerous solutions are available to the U.S. government to
bring us back on a path of freedom from oil-rich countries. With just a few steps
we could be self-sufficient in less than a generation, with plentiful and much
cheaper sources of energy at our disposal. Just a few simple steps and global
warming would be a thing of the past. Just a few simple steps and these bloody
oil wars can end, allowing America to move into a bright and energy abundant
future.
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Energy Victory: Winning the War on Terror by Breaking Free of
Oil
In this compelling argument for a new direction in US energy policy,
world-renowned engineer and best-selling author Robert Zubrin lays
out a bold plan for breaking the economic stranglehold that the OPEC
oil cartel has on our country and the world. Zubrin presents persuasive
evidence that our decades-long relationship with OPEC has resulted
in the looting of our economy, the corruption of our political system,
and now the funding and protection of terrorist regimes and movements
that are committed to our destruction. Debunking the false solutions
and myths that have deterred us from taking necessary action, Zubrin
exposes the fakery that has allowed many politicians — including
current US president George W. Bush — to posture that they are
acting to resolve
this problem while actually doing nothing significant toward that goal.
Zubrin's plan is straightforward and practical. He argues that if Congress
passed a law requiring that all new cars sold in the USA be flex-fueled
— that is, able to run on any combination of gasoline or alcohol
fuels — this one action would destroy the monopoly that the oil
cartel has
maintained on the globe's transportation fuel supply, opening it up
to competition from alcohol fuels produced by farmers worldwide. According
to Zubrin's estimates, within three years of enactment, such a regulation
would put 50 million cars on the road in the USA capable of running
on high-alcohol fuels, and at least an equal number overseas.
YouTube video:
Energy
Victory: Winning the War on Terror by Breaking Free of Oil
—Robert Zubrin's speech at the Google Forum (March 10,
2008).
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Sleeping With the Devil: How Washington Sold Our Soul for Saudi Crude
By former CIA officer Robert Baer
According to Robert Baer, the center of the global economy is a “kingdom
built on thievery, one that nurtures terrorism, destroys any possibility
of a middle class based on property rights, and promotes slavery and prostitution.”
This kingdom also sits on one quarter of the world's oil reserves, thus ensuring
that it receives the full support and protection of the U.S. government. Sleeping
With the Devil details the hypocritical and corrupt relationship between the
U.S. and Saudi Arabia and the potentially calamitous economic consequences
of maintaining this Faustian bargain.
As Baer makes clear, the U.S. has been aware of problems within the bitterly
divided Al Sa'ud family for years, but has ignored the facts in order
to keep lucrative business deals afloat. (The amount of money the royal
family spends
to influence powerful American politicians and lobbyists is staggering.)
Particularly damning are his details regarding Saudi Arabia's support
of militant Islamic
groups, including al Qaeda. The ruling family funnels millions of dollars
to such groups in order to dissuade them from overthrowing the monarchy. |
Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependency on Imported Petroleum
By Michael Klare
From the author of Resource Wars, a landmark assessment of the critical
role of petroleum in America's actions abroad
In his pathbreaking Resource Wars, world security expert Michael T. Klare alerted us to the role of resources in conflicts in the post-Cold War world. Now, in Blood
and Oil, he concentrates on a single precious commodity, petroleum, while issuing a warning to the United States-its most powerful, and most dependent, global consumer.
Since September 11th and the commencement of the “war on terror,” the
world's attention has been focused on the relationship between U.S. foreign
policy in the Middle East and the oceans of crude
oil that lie
beneath the
region's
soil. Klare traces oil's impact on international affairs since
World War II, revealing its influence on the Truman, Eisenhower,
Nixon, and Carter
doctrines. He shows how America's own wells are drying up as our
demand increases; by 2010, the United States will need to import
60 percent of
its oil. And since most of this supply will have to come from chronically
unstable, often violently anti-American zones—the Persian Gulf,
the Caspian Sea, Latin America, and Africa—our dependency is bound
to lead to recurrent
military involvement.
With clarity and urgency, Blood and Oil delineates the United States' predicament and cautions that it is time to change our energy policies, before we spend the next decades paying for oil with blood.
About the Author
Michael T. Klare is director of the Five
Colleges Program in Peace and World Security Studies at Hampshire College in Amherst. Defense analyst for The
Nation and National Public Radio, he is the author of Resource Wars (0-8050-5576-2), Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws, and Low Intensity Warfare. He lives in Northampton, Massachusetts.
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Beyond Oil and Gas: The Methanol Economy
This book discusses a new approach
based on what we call the “Methanol Economy”.
The production of methanol directly from still-available fossil
fuel sources,
and the recycling of carbon dioxide via hydrogenative reductions,
are—we believe—feasible and convenient
ways to store energy generated from all possible
sources including, alternative energy sources (solar, hydro, wind,
geothermal, etc.) and atomic energy. In the short
term, new efficient production of methanol not only
from still-available natural gas resources (without going
through the syn-gas route) but also by the hydrogenative conversion
of
carbon dioxide
from industrial exhausts, offer feasible new routes. In
the long term, recycling of carbon dioxide captured from
the air itself will be possible. Air, in contrast
to oil and gas resources, is available to everybody on Earth,
and
its CO2 content represent an inexhaustible recyclable
carbon resource. Methanol produced from this CO2
(using any energy source to produce the required hydrogen
from water), is an excellent fuel on its own for internal combustion
engines or fuel cells of the future. It can be also
readily converted, via its dehydration to ethylene
and
propylene, into synthetic hydrocarbons and their products. Consequently,
it can free mankind’s dependence on our diminishing oil
and natural gas (even coal) resources.
—
Nobel
Laureate George
Olah
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Energy Storage A Nontechnical Guide by Richard Baxter is a complete resource on the operation of energy
storage technologies and how they interact in the marketplace today.
Richard Baxter explains
new opportunities for these technologies, detailed descriptions of the
technologies and their market applications, and business opportunities
energy storage technologies can expect throughout the industry. The book
explains how, and under what conditions, energy storage technologies
can become a vital component of the electric power industry.
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A brighter tomorrow—fulfilling the promise of nuclear energy
—Written by U.S. Senator Pete Domenici
Senator
Domenici has written a compelling story, one that will give you an insider's
view of the politics and history of nuclear energy in America.
A brighter tomorrow—fulfilling the promise of nuclear energy is
a must read for anyone who cares about energy independence.
The book is also a good read if you just want to know what happened
to nuclear energy development in the USA.
Pete Domenici has written more than just a history of nuclear
energy — he also tells us about the current efforts in Congress
to revitalize the nuclear industry. The need for nuclear energy
today cannot be overstated, because it is the only proven
emission free energy source that can provide reliable baseload
electricity, 7 days a week, 24 hours
a day, 365 days a year, under all weather conditions.
Imagine if you could fill the gas tank in you car once, and
then drive continuously for a full year without needing to
fill up again. That is what nuclear fuel does for a nuclear
power plant. This means that nuclear energy is not vulnerable
to the problems of short term price swings created by spikes
in demand for fuel.
Nuclear energy will never suffer the fuel shortages and price
swings that threaten power plants that are dependent on natural
gas.
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Radiation And Modern Life: Fulfilling Marie Curie's Dream
—Written by Alan E. Waltar
Introduction by Dr. Hélène Langevin-Joliot, granddaughter of Marie Curie
“Radiation has existed since the very beginning of the
universe...”
In this overview of radiation's many great benefits and as yet untapped potential, Dr. Alan E. Waltar, past president of the American Nuclear Society, explains how this important energy source has been harnessed to serve a plethora of humanitarian functions. Through the use of anecdotes, Waltar provides numerous examples of radiation's many uses in agriculture, medicine, electricity generation, modern industry, transportation, public safety, environmental protection, space exploration, and even archeology and the arts. Estimating the total financial contribution of all these varied uses, Waltar comes to the revelation that radiation technology now contributes more than $420 billion to the US economy and provides over 4.4 million jobs. In the future, Dr. Waltar foresees continuous improvement in many areas of science, industry, and medicine through tapping the incredible potential of Marie Curie's initial insights.
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Power to Save the World—The Truth About Nuclear Energy
—
by Gwyneth Cravens
Introduction by Richard Rhodes
In this timely book, Gwyneth Cravens takes an informed and clarifying
look at the myths, the fears, and the truth about nuclear energy.
With concerns about catastrophic global warming mounting,
it is vital that we examine all our energy options. Power
to Save the World describes the efforts of one determined
woman, Gwyneth Cravens, initially a skeptic about nuclear
power, as she spends nearly a decade immersing herself in
the subject. She teams up with a leading expert in risk assessment
and nuclear safety who is also a committed environmentalist
to trace the path of uranium—the source of nuclear fuel—from
start to finish. As we accompany them on visits to mines as
well as to experimental reactor laboratories, fortress-like
power plants, and remote waste sites normally off-limits to
the public, we come to see that we already have a feasible
way to address the causes of global warming on a large scale.
On the nuclear tour, Cravens converses with scientists from
many disciplines, public health and counterterrorism experts,
engineers, and researchers who study both the harmful and
benign effects of radiation; she watches remote-controlled
robotic manipulators unbolt a canister of spent uranium fuel
inside a “hot cell” bathed in eerie orange light;
observes the dark haze from fossil-fuel combustion obscuring
once-pristine New Mexico skies and the leaky, rusted pipes
and sooty puddles in a coal-fired plant; glimpses rainbows
made by salt dust in the deep subterranean corridors of a
working nuclear waste repository.
She refutes the major arguments against nuclear power one
by one, making clear, for example, that a stroll through Grand
Central Terminal exposes a person to more radiation than a
walk of equal length through a uranium mine; that average
background radiation around Chernobyl and in Hiroshima is
lower than in Denver; that there are no “cancer clusters” near
nuclear facilities; that terrorists could neither penetrate
the security at an American nuclear plant nor make an atomic
bomb from its fuel; that nuclear waste can be—and already
is—safely stored; that wind and solar power, while important,
can meet only a fraction of the demand for electricity; that
a coal-fired plant releases more radiation than a nuclear
plant and also emits deadly toxic waste that kills thousands
of Americans a month; that in its fifty-year history American
nuclear power has not caused a single death. And she demonstrates
how, time and again, political fearmongering and misperceptions
about risk have trumped science in the dialogue about the
feasibility of nuclear energy.
In the end, we see how nuclear power has been successfully
and economically harnessed here and around the globe to become
the single largest displacer of greenhouse gases, and how
its overall risks and benefits compare with those of other
energy sources.
Power to Save the World is an eloquent, convincing argument
for nuclear power as a safe energy source and an essential
deterrent to global warming.
About the Author
Gwyneth Cravens has published five novels. Her fiction and
nonfiction have appeared in The New Yorker, where she also
worked as a fiction editor, and in Harper’s Magazine,
where she was an associate editor. She has contributed articles
and op-eds on science and other topics to Harper’s Magazine,
The New York Times, and The Washington Post. She grew up in
New Mexico and now lives on eastern Long Island, where she
was part of the opposition to the Shoreham Nuclear Power
Plant. In her book Power to Save the World—The Truth
About Nuclear Energy,
Gwyneth Cravens tells us how she became convinced that her
anti-nuclear beliefs were wrong and Nuclear energy is
safe.
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