Irony In The Gulf; George Bush Heads Toward The Gulf

President Obama is in trouble in the Mideast.

I posted earlier -- I cannot make this up -- that he ruled out "boots on the ground," and he ruled out air strikes when originally requested by the democratically-elected and US ally, the Maliki/Iraq government.

Having ruled out the US Army and US Marines ("boots on the ground") and the US Air Force ("air strikes") I suggested, tongue-in-cheek, that President Obama was probably talking to his admirals over at the US Navy.

It turns out I wasn't wrong. LOL.

Yes, President Obama is calling on the US Navy.

Reuters is reporting:

U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel ordered an aircraft carrier moved into the Gulf on Saturday, readying it in case Washington decides to pursue a military option after insurgents overwhelmed a string of Iraqi cities this week and threatened Baghdad.

"The order will provide the Commander-in-Chief additional flexibility should military options be required to protect American lives, citizens and interests in Iraq," the Pentagon said in a statement.

It is NOT in the headline and it is not until the third paragraph that we learn that the aircraft carrier the president is calling upon is the USS George H. W. Bush: 

The carrier USS George H.W. Bush, moving from the North Arabian Sea, will be accompanied by the guided-missile cruiser USS Philippine Sea and the guided-missile destroyer USS Truxtun, the statement said. It added the ships were expected to complete their transit into the Gulf later on Saturday.

Such sweet irony.

Meanwhile, the USS Barack Obama is moving towards Hawaii.

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On The Weekend That Iraq Implodes

President Obama:

• visits an Indian reservation in North Dakota;
• gives a speech on global warming in California; and,
• vacations, as gift to himself (Father's Day), at the southern California home of Mike Smith and his partner James Costos.

And that, folks, is not humorous. But it is accurate. It is clear his itinerary is planned six months in advance and he will not let world events change his course.

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Global Warming

This week's cover story, Time Magazine: "Scientists Said Butter Was They Enemy. They Were Wrong."

Time's cover story two years from now: "Scientists Said Global Warming Was Not Debatable. They Were Wrong."

This is probably one of the best articles I've read recently on Germany, global warming, and renewable energy. Unfortunately, I'm preaching to the choir. Unfortunately the congregation won't read the article. The Hindu is reporting: "Germany: the travails of renewable power."

Germany is indeed avoiding blackouts-by opening new coal and gas fired plants. Renewable electricity is proving so unreliable and chaotic that it is starting to undermine the stability of the European grid and provoke international incidents.

The spiraling cost of the renewables surge has sparked a backlash, including government proposals to slash subsidies and deployment rates” (DISSENT, 2013).

According to Financial Times (FT, January 7, 2014), “the brown coal electricity production in Germany rose last year to its highest level since 1990, despite the country's campaign to shift to green sources of energy.”

Bloomberg, the influential U.S. daily discovered that German Utilities are replacing lost nuclear power with “lignite, a cheap, soft, muddy- brown... form of sedimentary rock that spews more greenhouse gases than any other fossil fuel.” Greens are not amused by the energy shift to a lignite shift.

For all modes of power generation, capacity factor — CF (the amount of electricity, a generator produces in a year divided by the amount it will produce if it ran at full capacity for all 8,760 hrs a year) — is important. Typically during 2012, CFs (per cent) in Germany were, for solar: 11; wind: 17; fossil fuel: 80 and for nuclear: 94. 

This is a must-read, must-keep article.