Ed Ring

The ideals of unions are noble and pure.  The rights of the ordinary worker are indeed worth fighting for.  But there are unions and there are unions. In the competitive private arena, unions that ask for too much will eventually derail their company's financial success.  For example, unions negotiated defined retirement benefits decades ago with America's major automakers, that, especially as these companies started to face global competition, became fiscally unsustainable.  The phenomenon was self accelerating as well, because as these companies struggled to meet their pension obligations, they became less competitive, which caused them to shrink in size, which made them even...

ONE-THIRD OF THE WAY FROM ANNOUNCING THE CONCEPT TO HAVING CARS IN SHOWROOMS, GM IS ON SCHEDULE TO DELIVER AN EXTENDED RANGE ELECTRIC VEHICLE BY NOVEMBER 2010 The Chevy Volt is an integral part of GM's strategy to "take the car out of the environmental equation," according to GM Vice Chairman Bob Lutz. Only 67 weeks ago GM announced the Volt concept car, and if all goes according to plan, in only 138 weeks this revolutionary vehicle will be in dealer showrooms. Is this for real? Will they be ready? Last week, GM hosted about 80 journalists from around the world to provide an on-site update on the progress of the Volt, guiding us through several venues at their...

If you want to make money, you better have a contingency for a future where there's global cooling, and brokers populate the streetcorners with signs that say "will trade carbon credits for food."  No rational investor fails to prepare for likely eventualities - and the precautionary principle that informs global warming alarm will not help your portfolio when global temperature trends are on the downside of even.  The true believers will rejoice that Polar Bears lived, and you will paper walls with green stocks, pasted right on top of the internet stocks, and the membership units in the condo complex that flipped ten times and crashed before it was...

In 2004, in mid-career, already having grown and sold two companies, and after an extensive investigation into the energy-related applications of nanotechnology, Matt Trevithick joined the Venrock team.  Venrock was started in the 1930's by Laurance Rockefeller, with their first big hit being an investment in McDonnell Aircraft Company.  Since then, Venrock has scored again and again, making early investments in Apple, 3Com, and Intel, to name just a few.  Venrock recently announced Venrock V, a $600M fund, and they have over 2.0 billion under management. Matthew Trevithick. (Photo: Venrock) Trevithick has a personal heritage of innovation, being a descendant of Richard Trevithick, who in 1799 was the...

The latest satellite data could suggest that CO2-driven increases in water vapor actually cool the earth, not magnify warming, and equally interesting, the lastest float buoy data could suggest the ocean is cooling - at least since 2003 when they became operational. It is almost impossible to find any of this in the mainstream media, but given how quickly they dropped their favorite green hobbyhorse, biofuel, there is reason to hope. Media is fickle, and that is perhaps a strength as much as it is a weakness. Here's the data: Aquabirds: In a report (click "view transcript") posted on Australia's ABC National on March 17th entitled "Climate Change," Jennifer Marohasy of the Australian Environment Foundation comments on the possibility, based on data from NASA's Aqua satellite, that increased water vapor actually lowers global temperatures, which is exactly opposite to what current climate models predict: "The satellite was...

In the March 27th issue of Time Magazine, an in-depth article entitled "The Clean Energy Scam" by Michael Grunwald is indicative of how rapid the descent has been for biofuel in the eyes of environmentalists and mainstream media.  One isn't sure whether to cheer or be derisive - after several years of relentless molding of public opinion and public policy to encourage biofuels, the environmentalists and media are now trying to tear it all down as abruptly as they built it all up. About one year ago we posted "Biofuel or Biohazard," where we listed eight criteria that - ideally - ought to be considered when encouraging a market for biofuel: (1)  Biofuel cannot displace food crops. (2)  Biofuel cannot displace rainforest. (3)  Biofuel cannot displace critical wildlife habitat. (4)  Production of biofuel must be decisively energy positive. (5)  Biofuel must not exacerbate water scarcity, either in the...

Too many environmentalists assume if you want to be an environmentalist, you have to disagree with Senator Inhofe's positions on the environment, if not consider him nuts, and you should rejoice and support his being targeted by environmental organizations to "eliminate" him in November 2008.  James Inhofe An American who can still speak his mind. These same environmentalist forces eliminated the unbowed California Congressman Richard Pombo in the 2006 election, and now they're taking their war to Oklahoma; to the American heartland. The problem with environmentalists targeting Inhofe is that nothing is necessarily wrong with Senator Inhofe's positions on the...

On March 17th the Tesla Roadster went into mass production - of sorts - on that day production model "#2" was placed onto the assembly line at Tesla's Lotus factory in Hethel England (Tesla press release).  According to a report in AutoblogGreen by Sam Abuelsamid "Tesla Roadster starts production today," the rate of production will be one car per week, meaning by now production unit #4 is starting to take shape. If you want to know what's really going on with the Tesla, unless you work there, AutoblogGreen is a pretty good source of information.  And what they've had to say about the difficulties Tesla is encountering speaks to the challenges EV manufacturers in general have to confront.  As Abuelsamid reported on 1-23 in "Tesla has a solution for their transmission woes," "The primary issue that has been preventing Tesla Motors from getting their electric Roadster into full production for the last several months has been the unfortunate tendency for the transmission to...

Earlier in March we attracted the attention of a professional PR firm dedicated to exposing "deniers," and felt personally what it's like to have your integrity questioned by people with no idea who you are, or what you truly believe.  As we stated in our response, we are not going to descend into hyperbole or personal attacks, and we are going to respect the opinions of anyone who presents a credible argument - no matter whether they agree with us or disagree with everything we write.  The truth matters, and often only ongoing debate can reveal the truth. We would much prefer to report on clean technology and the companies and entrepreneurs who are delivering it - as well as report on the status of species and ecosystems.  But there is an urgent need to maintain a dialogue as to the nature of environmentalism, especially since it has suddenly acquired momentum orders of magnitude...

The Northern Fur Seals will hang around all day in one spot, unlike the Harbor Seals, which is a good way to identify a possible sighting of one.  You see lots of Harbor Seals in the Monterey Bay, and at Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco Bay, but in most of these places Northern Fur Seals have been gone for a long time. Northern Fur Seals have returned to Seabright Beach. Now the nurseries in the Farallon Islands have been protecting the breeding fur seals, and they're making a comeback.  They can now be seen in the northern Monterey Bay around Santa Cruz.  Two pair were sighted off Seabright Beach there recently - they are bigger than harbor seals and have longer faces, and they...