.
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From: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
To: The Thorium Working Group Members Listed Below
Subject: Update and SOS
Date: Wed, May 22, 2019 – 10:19 am MDT
Attachments:
RL-f522-Moderator Cover Letter + Attachment.pdf
RL-f508-BillGatesNuclearInvestment
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To: The Thorium Working Group Members –
Fern Lovett Baird
Calvin Burgart
Jay Hansen
Eric Kaufman
George Kunath
Yours Truly
Dear Friends,
Thank you, everyone, for all of your efforts so far.
**********
Democrat Debate Moderator Questions & Draft Letter
The suggested questions for the Debate Moderators to ask are contained in the attached Draft Letter.
The questions were revised IAW Jay’s comments, my reaction to Jay’s comments, and comments received from the rest of you by yesterday’s deadline.
Essentially, the revised questions reflect pulling apart Jay’s absolutely-wonderful Question 4 into its two component parts to create New Question 4 and New Question 5 with more info in the latter about the Oak Ridge thorium demonstration project. And putting some teeth (“If not, why not?”) into the final Q.
Barring a disaster, the Q’s should now be regarded as final.
Though the remainder of the COVER letter is subject to revision.
However, the sample candidate letter which is attached to the moderator letter is a historical document and, as such, is not subject to change.
[It is included to provide an appreciation of how everything fits together.]
Comments about the remainder of the COVER letter –
1. The June 10 date is a guess at the optimal time for sending the letters, which I think should be timed for arrival about 2 weeks before the June 26/27 debates to obtain proper consideration from the candidates and the moderators.
2. The subject (“Re:”) is retained from the candidate letter for its provocativeness.
3. The sub-heading (second line of the “Re:”) is intended to prod the moderators into asking our questions.
4. The first 4 paragraphs are intended to introduce our group, and to emphasize both the importance of our group and some key aspects of our issue. They are a boiled-down and edited version of the introductory paragraphs of the candidate letter. As such, they need to be inserted here rather than rely on the moderators to flip the page from a letter that fails to capture their attention.
**********
The Letters to CEO’s/Key Decision Makers at Silicon-Valley Companies (and Other Large Energy Users)
My 5/9/2019 e-mail (the third following e-mail for your convenience) which contained the original draft questions for the debate moderators also provided a progress report on the CEO letters.
From among nearly 2 dozen large energy users, it identified the following companies for which the $5 billion to produce the first commercial-prototype of a liquid-fluoride-thorium reactor would be “a drop in the bucket” –
Google/Alphabet
Microsoft
Adobe
IBM
Oracle
SAP
Verizon
Berkshire Hathaway
The 5/9/2019 e-mail posited that –
1. Google/Alphabet were already taken care of by my correspondence with their 5 key decision makers following the 4/17/2019 NYC Harvard Club meeting (details available at http://discussingliberally-saltlake.org ... 24f4#p2415).
2. The key decision maker at Microsoft would still be Bill Gates, whom Cal Burgart has already demonstrated to be a keen nuclear-energy supporter.
3. The key decision maker at Berkshire Hathaway, of course, is Bill Gates’ BFF, Warren Buffet.
The 5/9/2019 e-mail then contained an SOS while George Kunath is focused on other issues, for everyone else to try to try to ascertain who the key decision maker(s) are in the remaining companies, and whether s/he or they have a known position on nuclear energy.
Nobody responded to the SOS re the remaining 5 companies. However, to “move the ball down the field” a bit, their CEO’s (and other salient info) were identified during the last 3-4 hours (Proxy Statements, where applicable, via SEC’s Edgar service) -
Adobe – (per 3/1/2019 Proxy Statement)
Chairman, President & CEO = Narayen Shantanu
Largest shareholders = FMR LLC (7.77%); The Vanguard Group (7.64%); BlackRock Inc (6.67%)
IBM – (per Wikipedia)
Chairman, President and CEO = Virginia Marie (“Ginni”) Rometty
Oracle – (per 3/26/2018 Proxy Statement)
Chairman and CTO = Lawrence J. Ellison
CEO = Safra A. Catz
CEO = Mark V. Hurd
Largest shareholders = Larry Ellison (30.6%); The Vanguard Group (5.6%); BlackRock Inc (5.6%)
JSK Notes = (1) “CTO” in Ellison’s official title means Chief Technology Officer; (2) I’ve heard of Co-CEO’s before for other companies, but never a CTO and 2 plain CEO’s – isn’t having 2 CHIEF Executive Officers an oxymoron???; (3) I have a zillion America’s Cup sailing stories about Larry Ellison, including why the America’s Cup was held 2010-2017 by the mom-and-pop San Francisco Yacht Club (since re-named the Golden Gate Yacht Club) rather than the aristocratic St. Francis Yacht Club (Ellison is a member of both).
SAP SE - (per Wikipedia)
SAP is an acronym for the German equivalent of Systems Applications and Products
SAP is a German multi-national company headquartered in Waldorf Germany
Founders = Dieter Hopp, Hans-Werner Hector, Hasso Plattner, Klaus Tschira, Claus Wellenreuther
Chairman = Hasso Plattner
CEO = Bill McDernott
Verizon – (per Verizon.com > about > our company > verizon’s executive leadership)
Chairman and CEO = Hans Vestberg
Accordingly, it is respectfully suggested that the recipients of our letters should be –
Google/Alphabet – already taken care of last month
Microsoft – Bill Gates
Adobe – Narayen Shantanu
IBM – Virginia Marie Rometty
Oracle - Lawrence J. Ellison
SAP – Hasso Plattner
Verizon – Hans Vestberg
Berkshire Hathaway – Warren Buffet
Next step???
SOS to everyone to try to ascertain any attitudes of Shantanu/Rometty/Ellison/Plattner/Vestberg/Buffet toward nuclear energy in general and thorium in particular.
Your friend,
John K.
-----------------------------------------------------
From: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
To: The Thorium Working Group Members Listed Below
Subject: Jay’s Edited Questions For Democrat Debate Moderators – Comments Requested By Tomorrow
Date: Mon, May 20, 2019 - 5:11 am MDT
Attachment: RL-f405-Certified Mail Letter To Democrat Presidential Candidates.pdf
-----------------------------------------------------
To: The Thorium Working Group Members –
Fern Lovett Baird
Calvin Burgart
Lisa Corsetti -- (Please see PS)
Jay Hansen
Eric Kaufman
George Kunath
Yours Truly
Dear Friends,
Jay e-mailed 81 minutes before sending the following e-mail to say he had been on “an out-of-state junket” but would look at the questions “shortly.”
For the sake of good order, please provide any comments on the following by tomorrow (Tues) evening.
For the sake of comparison (although Jay appears to have started virtually de novo), and since Jay appears not to have seen the two e-mail exchanges with Lisa Corsetti which resulted in a revision of the original questions, the revised questions were --
1. Do you believe solving global warming is important?
2. Do you believe that solar and wind will ever become economic?
3. Do you believe that solar and wind will ever be practical because of only intermittent
availability?
4. Do you believe that it is possible to make a dent in the problem without using nuclear energy?
5. Do you believe that the best way to solve global warming 100% in the near future would be developing a cheap and safe source such as thorium fission?
Keeping in mind that we have already agreed at our May 8 meeting --
(A) that the Democrat Candidate Debate Moderators will be provided a copy of the certified-mail letters that were provided to each of the candidates which contain quite a bit of information (a sample copy of those letters is attached for your convenience); and
(B) that the moderators would be provided a short cover letter containing 4-5 questions, each 25 words or fewer --
the following observations are respectfully submitted vis-à-vis Jay’s questions --
(1) I believe U.S. environmentalists will bristle at Jay’s first question for two reasons -- first, it implies that the impact on the economy should be the only consideration whereas environmentalists believe that the impact on the environment is paramount, and secondly, it is bound to offend U.S. environmentalists who will interpret the question as America failing to take any responsibility for global warming (however much I agree with Jay that he is intending to call attention to the Paris-Climate-Accord problem of getting India and China to do anything other than promise to do something in the distant future in return for the U.S. promising to do something immediately).
(2) Jay’s revision to Q-2, which is now only a possible follow-up, seems to have lost its essence which is whether solar and wind will ever become economic.
(3) No quarrel with Jay’s Q-3, which is essentially equivalent to the original.
(4) Re Jay’s Q-4, he appears to be asking the candidates whether they have read our certified-mail letter to each of them (a copy of which is attached to this e-mail for your convenience). So the purpose of the Q is unclear unless the information it contains is intended for the debate audience rather than the candidates. Presumably this is Jay’s objective and I applaud it as very clever.
(5) Also re Jay’s Q-4, the info about Bill Gates’ views (which were unearthed by Cal Burgart IAW the assignment he undertook following our May 8 meeting), I had intended to highlight it for the Moderators as part of the intro for the Q’s (as well as documenting for the Moderators the source of Gates’ comments). So the issue is whether debate viewers would care enough about the views of Bill Gates to include them in Q-4 and whether it would then be desirable for them to be provided with the source documentation.
[NB: We also agreed at our May 8 meeting to provide each of the candidates with a copy of whatever is sent to the Moderators, the bulk of which would be the certified-mail letters they originally received -- so the candidates would be informed of Gates’ views and their source by virtue of the short covering letter to the Moderators even if not included in Q-4.]
(6) My only reaction to Jay’s Q-5 is remembering President Kennedy’s response to an embarrassing Q at a press conference immediately following the “Bay of Pigs Disaster.” After describing at length the disaster, the reporter disdainfully asked: “Would you care to comment.” President Kennedy grinned and said “No” and immediately called on the next reporter, to thundering applause!!! However, my reaction is irrelevant to the issue of whether Jay’s Q is too weak in permitting candidates to punt with one or two platitudes. It is respectfully suggested that the best way to pin them down would be to add to the original Q-5: “If not, why not?”
*****
Thank you, Jay, for your thoughtful contributions!!!
And everyone else, please provide any comments by tomorrow (Tues) evening.
Your friend,
John K.
PS for Lisa Corsetti – It is unclear whether your two exchanges of e-mails implied a willingness to become a member of our working group. Members are only expected to undertake assignments for which they volunteer and comment to the extent they want. But if you would like to part company, simply hit your “reply” button and type “deletion requested.”
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From: Jay Hansen
To: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com; Fern Lovett Baird; Calvin Burgart; Eric Kaufman; George Kunath
Subject: Edited questions for Democrat Candidate Letters & Debates
Date: Sun, May 19, 2019 – 9:14 am MDT
Attachment:
-----------------------------------------------------
Hi John,
Thanks for providing suggestions for the questions. Here are my edited versions – pretty much what you provided but in broader bits.
• How important do you believe the adverse effects of global warming are to the US economy; and do you have suggestions for how the US might lead China, India, and others to do their part to repair their obscene carbon emissions?
• [Follow-up: Since your opinion may be that hydro, nuclear, wind and solar are the key and most important sources of clean energy to drive the US economy, do you believe that it is even remotely possible to make a dent in the carbon emissions problem without using nuclear energy; and can you support that claim?
• Do you believe that solar and wind power generation with their intermittent availability will ever become more than minor contributors to the US power economy?
• Are you aware of previously developed, proven technologies from the 60’s that could potentially solve global warming in the near future; safe and scalable, relatively inexpensive nuclear sources such as thorium fission? According to Bill Gates, "Nuclear is ideal for dealing with climate change because it is the only carbon-free, scalable energy source that’s available 24 hours a day." Gates also has pointed out that "problems with today’s reactors, such as the risk of accidents, can be solved through innovation."
• Can you comment on your plans to provide safe and abundant power to decrease global carbon emissions?
Best regards,
Jay Hansen
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From: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
To: The Thorium Working Group Members Listed Below
Subject: Progress Report Following Our May 8 Meeting
Date: Thu, May 9, 2019 – 7:35 am MDT
Attachment: RL-f508-BillGatesNuclearInvestment
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To: Thorium Working Group Members –
Fern Lovett Baird
Calvin Burgart
Jay Hansen
Eric Kaufman
George Kunath
Yours Truly
Dear Friends,
This is a progress report following up on our May 8 meeting.
[The 5/9/2019 Report On Our May 8 Meeting follows below for your convenience.]
********************
Suggested Discussion Outline Sec. I – Democrat Candidate Letters & Debates
Jay Hansen agreed to edit/polish 4-5 questions, each 25 words or fewer, for inclusion in cover letters to the Democrat Candidate Debate Moderators to which a copy of the letter sent to the candidates on 4/5/2019 would be attached – if I took a first crack at drafting the 4-5 questions.
It is respectfully suggested that the following should be the 4-5 questions for inclusion in the cover letters --
1. Do you believe solving global warming is important?
2. Do you agree that hydro, nuclear, wind and solar are the only sources of clean energy?
3. Do you believe that it is possible to make a dent in the problem without using nuclear energy?
4. Do you believe that solar and wind will ever become economic?
5. Do you believe that solar and wind will ever be practical because of only intermittent availability?
6. Do you believe that the best way to solve global warming 100% in the near future would be developing a cheap and safe source such as thorium fission?
And yes, I realize that there are 6 questions rather than 4-5, and that the 6th is 29 words rather than 25.
Although only Jay agreed to edit/polish the questions, it is respectfully suggested that if anyone else has any comments, s/he should feel free to provide them.
*****
The meeting report recorded that the source of the $5 billion estimate by experts for developing the first commercial prototype of a molten-salt thorium reactor was Page 230 of “Superfuel: Thorium, The Green Energy Source for the Future” by Richard Martin (Macmillan 2012) which Cal Burgart had proposed as the focus book for our 10/10/2012 meeting which he led.
However, I also undertook to make a FOIA (Freedom Of Information Act) Request to the U.S. Department of Energy for a copy of Kirk Sorensen’s “seed money” application to ascertain his estimate of the cost and the time that would be required to develop the first commercial prototype.
That request has been made (DOE will advise, before proceeding, how much they will charge for compliance which could easily amount to several thousand dollars).
It is respectfully suggested that whether or not we obtain Kirk’s estimates, they should NOT be used in anything we send out to candidates, corporate decision makers, etc. – because doing so would likely upset Kirk’s attempt to rely on the “sophisticated investor” exception to complying with S.E.C. rules since we would become a de facto “shill” for Kirk and his company.
And, accordingly, it is respectfully suggested that we should proceed with our projects while giving no regard to the FOIA request.
********************
Suggested Discussion Outline Sec. II – Huge Silicon Valley Users (and other corporations)
On March 8, Cal Burgart disputed my surmise in the Suggested Discussion Outline that contacting Warren Buffet (one of whose Berkshire Hathaway businesses is solar/wind) and his close friend, Bill Gates, would be a “lost cause.” Cal claimed that Bill Gates is a strong proponent of nuclear energy. Accordingly, Cal accepted as his post-meeting assignment providing evidence that this is true.
Cal was apparently so stimulated by our meeting that before retiring for the evening on May 8, he had e-mailed the attached article describing how Bill Gates had invested in an experimental nuclear project in 2011 and was quoted as saying in a letter –
“Nuclear is ideal for dealing with climate change because it is the only carbon-free, scalable energy source that’s available 24 hours a day." He added that "problems with today’s reactors, such as the risk of accidents, can be solved through innovation."
George Kunath undertook generating a list of companies which are huge energy users for which $5 billion would be a “drop in the bucket” and who the key decision makers are in each of those companies.
However, George has been focused on other issues.
Accordingly, I made a Google search for a list of the most prominent “cloud” providers and obtained the following list from https://www.softwaretestinghelp.com/clo ... providers/. [The financial info following unfamiliar names was obtained from SEC filings per its “Edgar” service.]
• Kamatera – must be private since not listed with the SEC
• phoenixNAP - must be private since not listed with the SEC
• Amazon Web Services
• Microsoft Azure
• Google Cloud Platform
• Adobe
• VMware – only $8.9 billion of revenues and $2.1 billion of income for FY-2/1/2019 [shareholder equity was $14.66 billion at 2/1/2019, a SIGNIFICANT DROP from $21.21 billion at 2/2/2018!!!]
• IBM Cloud
• Rackspace – only $1.01 billion of shareholder equity at 9/30/2016 (most recent SEC filing)
• Red Hat – only $ 1.61 billion of shareholder equity at 2/28/2019
• Salesforce – only $15.61 billion of shareholder equity at 1/31/2019
• Oracle Cloud
• SAP
• Verizon Cloud
• Navisite – SEC’s Edgar produces only a $ 2 billion IPO Prospectus for Charter Communications Operating, LLC
• Dropbox – only $2.13 of shareholder equity at 3/31/2019
• Egnyte – must be private since there was an exempt IPO in 2011
It is respectfully suggested that we concentrate on the following companies (Google has already been covered by my 4/22/2019 report to you, a copy of which is available at http://discussingliberally-saltlake.org ... 8e20#p2415) --
Microsoft
Adobe
IBM
Oracle
SAP
Verizon
Berkshire Hathaway [per Cal Burgart’s info about Warren Buffet’s BFF, Bill Gates]
I would suspect that the key decision maker at Microsoft would still be Bill Gates, whom Cal Burgart has already demonstrated to be a keen nuclear-energy supporter.
Re the remaining companies, this will comprise an SOS while George Kunath is focused on other issues, for everyone else to try to try to ascertain who the key decision maker(s) are, and whether s/he or they have a known position on nuclear energy.
********************
Suggested Discussion Outline Sec. V – Other Ideas
A passing thought in the last 24 hours = judging from the reaction of Joe Biden to AOC’s criticism of him regarding “The Green New Deal” and global warming, perhaps it would be worthwhile sending to AOC a copy of the letter we have sent to the candidates.
Any comments re AOC anyone???
********************
Thank you all for your participation and continuing efforts!!!
Your friend,
John K.
REPRISE: Solving Global Warming 100% Without Military Action
Up-Dated Moderator Cover Letter & Attachment
.
---------------------------- Original Message -----------------------------
Subject: Up-Dated Moderator Cover Letter & Attachment
From: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
Date: Thu, May 30, 2019 5:58 am MDT
To: Thorium Working Group*
Attachments: [* Editorial Comment: The members of the Thorium Working Group are no longer listed because on 5/11/2019, two more of the approximately 150 recipients of our regular e-mails joined the Thorium Working Group on condition that they not be publicly identified.]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Friends,
Although I have been “getting my batteries re-charged” in NYC for the last week or so, old habits (e.g., working in the middle of the night) are difficult to shake.
*****
Moderator Cover Letter
I was flabbergasted a few hours ago while trying to “move the ball down the field” vis-à-vis our letters to CEO’s of large energy users for which the $5 billion development costs for the first commercial prototype for a Liquid Fluoride THORIUM Reactor would be “a drop in the bucket.”
While researching the 8 companies fitting that profile, there was quite a bit of important information that was NOT captured in the 1/2/2019 Popular Mechanics article that had been contributed to demonstrate that Bill Gates had an interest in nuclear energy (it was attached to our 5/16/2019 “Progress Report” e-mail, which is available at http://discussingliberally-saltlake.org ... 2610#p2432).
It turns out that Bill Gates has done quite a bit of lobbying of the US Government producing, inter alia –
(1) The Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act which became effective 1/14/2019 (the fourth attachment to this e-mail is a text of the Act); and
(2) The Nuclear Energy Leadership Act which was introduced in the U.S. Senate 3/27/2019 by an impressive list of 15 bi-partisan co-sponsors such as Republican Senator Lindsay Graham but, perhaps more importantly, including two Democrat Presidential Candidates – Sen. Cory Booker and Sen. Michael Bennet. [The fifth attachment to this e-mail is a text of the bill.]
Bill Gates also obtained a $28 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy in 2015 for TerraPower, his privately-owned nuclear-reactor design company headquartered in Bellevue WA.
This according to a presentation regarding ThEC15, a worldwide conference on thorium research that was held in Mumbai, India, in 2015 by the Government of India and two of its agencies, BARC and NPCIL, along with HBNI and IThEO. The ThEC15 website was cited on Page 2 of our 4/5/2019 Candidate Letter.
A YouTube of that particular presentation is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWRHRdq ... 02SpJc3mIw and was made by an official of the Dutch Liquid-Fluoride Thorium Reactor research program. Among other things, he said that --
(1) TerraPower, which had been around since 2006, finally decided in 2015 to begin conducting molten-salt research experiments (commonly called MSRE’s).
(2) TerraPower obtained the $28 D.O.E. grant to begin investigating MSRE’s.
(3) TerraPower is experimenting with chloride as its molten salt.
(4) The successful 18-month continuous-demonstration thorium-fission experiment conducted by the U.S. Nuclear-Research Laboratory at Oak Ridge TN in the 1960’s used fluoride as its molten salt.
(5) And everyone else in the world experimenting with MSRE’s also uses fluoride as the molten salt.
(6) Including the world’s largest MSRE – the Chinese Government’s thorium MSRE project at The Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics (SINAP).
BTW, officials from SINAP had visited Oak Ridge before our first meeting on thorium 7 years ago on 10/10/2012. [And SINAP regularly “makes the rounds” of the world’s other Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor Programs (“LFTR’s”) to monitor what everyone else is discovering.]
Also BTW, we have always been well aware that some of the 7 advantages of Liquid-Fluoride TH0RIUM Reactors (“LFTR’s”) – which we noted in our 4/5/2019 Candidate Letter are virtually identical to those listed by famous nuclear physicist Victor Stenger in The Huffington Post (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/lftr-a-l ... _b_1192584) -- are due to the concept of continuous feeding of liquid fuel into the molten salt (vs. using fixed fuel rods). And only some of the advantages are due to the fact that thorium (unlike uranium and plutonium) is incapable of exploding or being utilized to produce nuclear weapons, which is why President Nixon caused the nation to turn away from thorium and toward uranium and plutonium.
(7) The Chinese Government plans to triple the size its nuclear industry in 10 years.
(8) The reason why the Chinese Government is steadfastly focused on thorium for accomplishing this is because thorium is so plentiful and the Chinese Government does NOT want to be a hostage to any uranium shortages that might occur if it scales up its nuclear industry using uranium.
[Ironic that the Chinese Government would be more concerned with supply, rather than safety and economy.]
(9) Bill Gates’ TerraPower, in addition to concentrating on chloride rather than fluoride as its molten salt, is also concentrating on URANIUM as its MSRE fuel, rather than THORIUM!!!
[In addition, although Bill Gates’ U.S. legislation (Attachments 4 & 5) appears to accommodate all kinds of nuclear research, there are many provisions that apply specifically to uranium.]
*****
The Change to the Moderator Cover Letter
Although the Moderator Cover Letter was circulated for comment so long ago that it should be viewed as “etched in stone,” it has been modified (Attachment 1) by the addition of a New Question (currently numbered 5) to refer to the new legislation (Attachments 4 and 5).
AND MORE IMPORTANTLY, to grab the attention of both the Moderators and the Candidates (who will be provided with copies of the Moderator Letter) that TWO Candidates are co-sponsors of the new bill.
*****
The June 10 Date for the Moderator Letter
Previous correspondence mentioned that June 10 is probably the ideal time for sending the Moderator Letter to give both the Moderators and the Candidates approximately 2 weeks before the June 26/27 debates to focus on thorium.
NBC, which with MSNBC is televising the June 26/27 debates, announced two days ago that the debates will take place in Miami, but that NBC is holding off on announcing who the moderators will be.
So in 11 days, we may be facing the question whether to send a copy of the Moderator Letter (without knowing who the Moderators will be) to the Candidates to afford them sufficient time to re-focus on thorium.
*****
Research on the CEO’s
This e-mail began by saying that the info about Bill Gates’ legislation was stumbled upon while researching in the last night or so the the 8 companies fitting the profile of large energy users for which $5 billion would be “a drop in the bucket.”
It is extremely tedious to Google each of the 8 CEO’s (Advanced Search = nuclear + every version of the exact name of the CEO) because there are always zillions of hits, even though virtually none of the hits actually mention “nuclear” even though they all claim to do so.
However, in addition to stumbling across Bill Gates’ U.S. legislation for TerraPower, there were several other interesting items –
(1) Hasso Plattner (CEO of SAP) recently formed the Hasso Plattner Institute with Mount Sinai Hospital for the digitalization of health records and research – demonstrating that at least one of the CEO’s (in addition to Bill Gates) is interested in his legacy.
(2) In Googling Warren Buffet, it was discovered that one of the Billionaire Bit Coin Co-Founders has taken the “Gates-Buffet Pledge” to dedicate “the majority of their wealth to giving back” with, in the case of the Bit Coin Co-Founder, a focus of nuclear issues in general, and nuclear energy in particular.
(3) IBM recently acquired financially-floundering Red Hat Inc. for $34 billion in order to, according to IBM’s CEO Virginia Rometty, position IBM to become the biggest player in Cloud Computing which she claims “will be worth $1 trillion.”
*****
The Text of the CEO Letters
A draft CEO letter will be circulated shortly for comment.
As a practical matter, it will probably adopt most of the guts of our Candidate Letter.
*****
Thank you all for your invaluable contributions and efforts so far!!!
If anyone has any comments or questions about any of the foregoing, I’m sure nobody will be shy!!!
Your friend,
John K.
PS --
Re the penultimate section of this e-mail concerning creating a draft CEO letter, regret is already overwhelming that one of the most interesting facts about nuclear power WHICH WOULD GO A LONG WAY TOWARD REASSURING THE PUBLIC THAT THORIUM NUCLEAR POWER IS NOT DANGEROUS would take much too long to explain for inclusion in even a missive!!!
The fact comes from “Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Energy Will Lead the Green Revolution and End America’s Energy Odyssey” by William Tucker (Bartleby Press 9/19/2008).
Which was the focus book for our 4/13/2011 meeting on the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster caused by the Tōhoku earthquake on 3/11/2011.
The fact???
Which is the answer to the Q “is the earth’s core hotter than the surface of the sun and, if so, why???”
The answer???
Which BTW would make you wrong if you thought that China’s experimental THORIUM nuclear-power plant in Shanghai is the world’s largest thorium nuclear-power plant!!!
Because the world’s largest NON-EXPERIMENTAL thorium nuclear-power plant is the earth itself!!!
Scientists estimate that 60% - 90% of the heat in the earth’s core is produced by nuclear power since thorium and uranium in the earth’s core power the earth’s largest nuclear reactor which is the earth itself!!!
So the correct answer???
The earth’s core is 7,000 degrees Fahrenheit, which is hotter than the sun’s surface!!!
So no wonder that molten lava billows out of any fissure in the earth’s surface!!!
Fukushima Daiichi, BTW???
Yes, it was caused by the Tōhoku earthquake!!!
But like the only 3 nuclear accidents this world has ever seen, the Fukushima Daiichi disaster was also man-made!!!
The Tōhoku earthquake measured 9.0 on the Richter scale –
• 2.63 times more powerful than California’s famous 1906 earthquake, the largest since California earthquake records began being kept in 1769 which was nearly a century before California was detached from Mexico and became part of the U.S.;
• 16.99 times more powerful than California’s most powerful earthquake since 1906; and
• 34.48 times more powerful than California’s second-most powerful earthquake since 1906.
So how “man made”???
Unlike liquid-fluoride thorium reactors (LFTR’s) which are passively cooled (one of the 7 LFTR advantages we always list), Fukushima Daiichi was a conventional nuclear-power plant that used fixed nuclear fuel rods that have to be cooled by water.
And to shut down the plant completely, the fuel rods have to be lowered further into the cool water.
But what keeps the water cool???
Constant circulation.
By ELECTRICAL PUMPS which were powered by emergency generators that the geniuses who designed Fukushima Daiichi located in the basement where a 43-foot-high tsunami was bound to knock them out due to flooding.
And that’s if the diesel-fuel tanks for the emergency generators had not been located by said geniuses at ground level where they would be sure to be washed away by said 43-foot-high tsunami.
No problem with the Fukushima Daiichi containment chambers surviving the tsunami!!!
The highly-publicized but limited radiation contamination of sea water was caused by (1) limited venting LONG AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE/TSUNAMI to guard against a build-up of pressure in the containment chambers because of the continued lack of cooling due to the continued lack of electricity (caused by the design geniuses), and (2) water from the containment chambers leaking FROM PIPES OUTSIDE THE CONTAINMENT CHAMBERS just like your own home plumbing might spring a leak, especially after an earthquake.
And NEITHER PROBLEM COULD HAVE OCCURRED with a passively-cooled LFTR.
Chernobyl in 1986???
Soviet uranium-powered nuclear plants did NOT have containment chambers because Soviet engineers were so “cock sure” of their expertise!!!
And on that fateful 4/26/1986, TWO TEAMS of Soviet operators were warring with each other to use the plant for two contradictory purposes – the regular team supplying power to the grid and the other team experimenting to determine whether the momentum of the turbines would be enough to power the cooling system during an accidental shutdown!!!
The answer??? The momentum of the turbines was NOT sufficient!!!
[It just goes to show how little regard The Kremlin had, even in those days, for Ukraine where Chernobyl is/was located!!!]
Three-Mile Island in 1979???
Human error caused by the natural human reaction that if a warning light/siren is going off, there must be something wrong with the warning light/siren!!!
On that fateful day in 1979, there were more than 100 blinking lights and wailing sirens indicating that the reactor core was NOT getting enough cooling water. [A relief valve had stuck open.]
Despite what the warning lights/sirens indicated, the operators decided the reactor core was getting TOO MUCH cooling water and began draining water. The mistake wasn’t caught in time and one-third of the reactor core melted.
It has been estimated that if the operators had taken NO ACTION (e.g., because they had been “asleep at the switch”), there would have been no melt-down.
Only 3 nuclear accidents during the 75-year nuclear era???
In the U.S., this is due in large part to the fact that America’s commercial nuclear-power plants are manned and womanned by retired U.S. Navy experts, each of whom had 20 years’ of experience with the nuclear-power plants that propel our submarines and aircraft carriers.
BTW, Al Gore does NOT understand nuclear power!!!
Shortly after winning his Nobel Prize in 2007, he testified before a U.S. Senate Committee during which he uttered the famous/infamous statement that nuclear reactors “come in only one size – extra large”!!!
Obviously on the internet that Al Gore “invented” there is no information about the U.S. Navy’s relatively-small nuclear reactors located on submarines and aircraft carriers!!!
---------------------------- Original Message -----------------------------
Subject: Up-Dated Moderator Cover Letter & Attachment
From: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
Date: Thu, May 30, 2019 5:58 am MDT
To: Thorium Working Group*
Attachments: [* Editorial Comment: The members of the Thorium Working Group are no longer listed because on 5/11/2019, two more of the approximately 150 recipients of our regular e-mails joined the Thorium Working Group on condition that they not be publicly identified.]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Friends,
Although I have been “getting my batteries re-charged” in NYC for the last week or so, old habits (e.g., working in the middle of the night) are difficult to shake.
*****
Moderator Cover Letter
I was flabbergasted a few hours ago while trying to “move the ball down the field” vis-à-vis our letters to CEO’s of large energy users for which the $5 billion development costs for the first commercial prototype for a Liquid Fluoride THORIUM Reactor would be “a drop in the bucket.”
While researching the 8 companies fitting that profile, there was quite a bit of important information that was NOT captured in the 1/2/2019 Popular Mechanics article that had been contributed to demonstrate that Bill Gates had an interest in nuclear energy (it was attached to our 5/16/2019 “Progress Report” e-mail, which is available at http://discussingliberally-saltlake.org ... 2610#p2432).
It turns out that Bill Gates has done quite a bit of lobbying of the US Government producing, inter alia –
(1) The Nuclear Energy Innovation and Modernization Act which became effective 1/14/2019 (the fourth attachment to this e-mail is a text of the Act); and
(2) The Nuclear Energy Leadership Act which was introduced in the U.S. Senate 3/27/2019 by an impressive list of 15 bi-partisan co-sponsors such as Republican Senator Lindsay Graham but, perhaps more importantly, including two Democrat Presidential Candidates – Sen. Cory Booker and Sen. Michael Bennet. [The fifth attachment to this e-mail is a text of the bill.]
Bill Gates also obtained a $28 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy in 2015 for TerraPower, his privately-owned nuclear-reactor design company headquartered in Bellevue WA.
This according to a presentation regarding ThEC15, a worldwide conference on thorium research that was held in Mumbai, India, in 2015 by the Government of India and two of its agencies, BARC and NPCIL, along with HBNI and IThEO. The ThEC15 website was cited on Page 2 of our 4/5/2019 Candidate Letter.
A YouTube of that particular presentation is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWRHRdq ... 02SpJc3mIw and was made by an official of the Dutch Liquid-Fluoride Thorium Reactor research program. Among other things, he said that --
(1) TerraPower, which had been around since 2006, finally decided in 2015 to begin conducting molten-salt research experiments (commonly called MSRE’s).
(2) TerraPower obtained the $28 D.O.E. grant to begin investigating MSRE’s.
(3) TerraPower is experimenting with chloride as its molten salt.
(4) The successful 18-month continuous-demonstration thorium-fission experiment conducted by the U.S. Nuclear-Research Laboratory at Oak Ridge TN in the 1960’s used fluoride as its molten salt.
(5) And everyone else in the world experimenting with MSRE’s also uses fluoride as the molten salt.
(6) Including the world’s largest MSRE – the Chinese Government’s thorium MSRE project at The Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics (SINAP).
BTW, officials from SINAP had visited Oak Ridge before our first meeting on thorium 7 years ago on 10/10/2012. [And SINAP regularly “makes the rounds” of the world’s other Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor Programs (“LFTR’s”) to monitor what everyone else is discovering.]
Also BTW, we have always been well aware that some of the 7 advantages of Liquid-Fluoride TH0RIUM Reactors (“LFTR’s”) – which we noted in our 4/5/2019 Candidate Letter are virtually identical to those listed by famous nuclear physicist Victor Stenger in The Huffington Post (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/lftr-a-l ... _b_1192584) -- are due to the concept of continuous feeding of liquid fuel into the molten salt (vs. using fixed fuel rods). And only some of the advantages are due to the fact that thorium (unlike uranium and plutonium) is incapable of exploding or being utilized to produce nuclear weapons, which is why President Nixon caused the nation to turn away from thorium and toward uranium and plutonium.
(7) The Chinese Government plans to triple the size its nuclear industry in 10 years.
(8) The reason why the Chinese Government is steadfastly focused on thorium for accomplishing this is because thorium is so plentiful and the Chinese Government does NOT want to be a hostage to any uranium shortages that might occur if it scales up its nuclear industry using uranium.
[Ironic that the Chinese Government would be more concerned with supply, rather than safety and economy.]
(9) Bill Gates’ TerraPower, in addition to concentrating on chloride rather than fluoride as its molten salt, is also concentrating on URANIUM as its MSRE fuel, rather than THORIUM!!!
[In addition, although Bill Gates’ U.S. legislation (Attachments 4 & 5) appears to accommodate all kinds of nuclear research, there are many provisions that apply specifically to uranium.]
*****
The Change to the Moderator Cover Letter
Although the Moderator Cover Letter was circulated for comment so long ago that it should be viewed as “etched in stone,” it has been modified (Attachment 1) by the addition of a New Question (currently numbered 5) to refer to the new legislation (Attachments 4 and 5).
AND MORE IMPORTANTLY, to grab the attention of both the Moderators and the Candidates (who will be provided with copies of the Moderator Letter) that TWO Candidates are co-sponsors of the new bill.
*****
The June 10 Date for the Moderator Letter
Previous correspondence mentioned that June 10 is probably the ideal time for sending the Moderator Letter to give both the Moderators and the Candidates approximately 2 weeks before the June 26/27 debates to focus on thorium.
NBC, which with MSNBC is televising the June 26/27 debates, announced two days ago that the debates will take place in Miami, but that NBC is holding off on announcing who the moderators will be.
So in 11 days, we may be facing the question whether to send a copy of the Moderator Letter (without knowing who the Moderators will be) to the Candidates to afford them sufficient time to re-focus on thorium.
*****
Research on the CEO’s
This e-mail began by saying that the info about Bill Gates’ legislation was stumbled upon while researching in the last night or so the the 8 companies fitting the profile of large energy users for which $5 billion would be “a drop in the bucket.”
It is extremely tedious to Google each of the 8 CEO’s (Advanced Search = nuclear + every version of the exact name of the CEO) because there are always zillions of hits, even though virtually none of the hits actually mention “nuclear” even though they all claim to do so.
However, in addition to stumbling across Bill Gates’ U.S. legislation for TerraPower, there were several other interesting items –
(1) Hasso Plattner (CEO of SAP) recently formed the Hasso Plattner Institute with Mount Sinai Hospital for the digitalization of health records and research – demonstrating that at least one of the CEO’s (in addition to Bill Gates) is interested in his legacy.
(2) In Googling Warren Buffet, it was discovered that one of the Billionaire Bit Coin Co-Founders has taken the “Gates-Buffet Pledge” to dedicate “the majority of their wealth to giving back” with, in the case of the Bit Coin Co-Founder, a focus of nuclear issues in general, and nuclear energy in particular.
(3) IBM recently acquired financially-floundering Red Hat Inc. for $34 billion in order to, according to IBM’s CEO Virginia Rometty, position IBM to become the biggest player in Cloud Computing which she claims “will be worth $1 trillion.”
*****
The Text of the CEO Letters
A draft CEO letter will be circulated shortly for comment.
As a practical matter, it will probably adopt most of the guts of our Candidate Letter.
*****
Thank you all for your invaluable contributions and efforts so far!!!
If anyone has any comments or questions about any of the foregoing, I’m sure nobody will be shy!!!
Your friend,
John K.
PS --
Re the penultimate section of this e-mail concerning creating a draft CEO letter, regret is already overwhelming that one of the most interesting facts about nuclear power WHICH WOULD GO A LONG WAY TOWARD REASSURING THE PUBLIC THAT THORIUM NUCLEAR POWER IS NOT DANGEROUS would take much too long to explain for inclusion in even a missive!!!
The fact comes from “Terrestrial Energy: How Nuclear Energy Will Lead the Green Revolution and End America’s Energy Odyssey” by William Tucker (Bartleby Press 9/19/2008).
Which was the focus book for our 4/13/2011 meeting on the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster caused by the Tōhoku earthquake on 3/11/2011.
The fact???
Which is the answer to the Q “is the earth’s core hotter than the surface of the sun and, if so, why???”
The answer???
Which BTW would make you wrong if you thought that China’s experimental THORIUM nuclear-power plant in Shanghai is the world’s largest thorium nuclear-power plant!!!
Because the world’s largest NON-EXPERIMENTAL thorium nuclear-power plant is the earth itself!!!
Scientists estimate that 60% - 90% of the heat in the earth’s core is produced by nuclear power since thorium and uranium in the earth’s core power the earth’s largest nuclear reactor which is the earth itself!!!
So the correct answer???
The earth’s core is 7,000 degrees Fahrenheit, which is hotter than the sun’s surface!!!
So no wonder that molten lava billows out of any fissure in the earth’s surface!!!
Fukushima Daiichi, BTW???
Yes, it was caused by the Tōhoku earthquake!!!
But like the only 3 nuclear accidents this world has ever seen, the Fukushima Daiichi disaster was also man-made!!!
The Tōhoku earthquake measured 9.0 on the Richter scale –
• 2.63 times more powerful than California’s famous 1906 earthquake, the largest since California earthquake records began being kept in 1769 which was nearly a century before California was detached from Mexico and became part of the U.S.;
• 16.99 times more powerful than California’s most powerful earthquake since 1906; and
• 34.48 times more powerful than California’s second-most powerful earthquake since 1906.
So how “man made”???
Unlike liquid-fluoride thorium reactors (LFTR’s) which are passively cooled (one of the 7 LFTR advantages we always list), Fukushima Daiichi was a conventional nuclear-power plant that used fixed nuclear fuel rods that have to be cooled by water.
And to shut down the plant completely, the fuel rods have to be lowered further into the cool water.
But what keeps the water cool???
Constant circulation.
By ELECTRICAL PUMPS which were powered by emergency generators that the geniuses who designed Fukushima Daiichi located in the basement where a 43-foot-high tsunami was bound to knock them out due to flooding.
And that’s if the diesel-fuel tanks for the emergency generators had not been located by said geniuses at ground level where they would be sure to be washed away by said 43-foot-high tsunami.
No problem with the Fukushima Daiichi containment chambers surviving the tsunami!!!
The highly-publicized but limited radiation contamination of sea water was caused by (1) limited venting LONG AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE/TSUNAMI to guard against a build-up of pressure in the containment chambers because of the continued lack of cooling due to the continued lack of electricity (caused by the design geniuses), and (2) water from the containment chambers leaking FROM PIPES OUTSIDE THE CONTAINMENT CHAMBERS just like your own home plumbing might spring a leak, especially after an earthquake.
And NEITHER PROBLEM COULD HAVE OCCURRED with a passively-cooled LFTR.
Chernobyl in 1986???
Soviet uranium-powered nuclear plants did NOT have containment chambers because Soviet engineers were so “cock sure” of their expertise!!!
And on that fateful 4/26/1986, TWO TEAMS of Soviet operators were warring with each other to use the plant for two contradictory purposes – the regular team supplying power to the grid and the other team experimenting to determine whether the momentum of the turbines would be enough to power the cooling system during an accidental shutdown!!!
The answer??? The momentum of the turbines was NOT sufficient!!!
[It just goes to show how little regard The Kremlin had, even in those days, for Ukraine where Chernobyl is/was located!!!]
Three-Mile Island in 1979???
Human error caused by the natural human reaction that if a warning light/siren is going off, there must be something wrong with the warning light/siren!!!
On that fateful day in 1979, there were more than 100 blinking lights and wailing sirens indicating that the reactor core was NOT getting enough cooling water. [A relief valve had stuck open.]
Despite what the warning lights/sirens indicated, the operators decided the reactor core was getting TOO MUCH cooling water and began draining water. The mistake wasn’t caught in time and one-third of the reactor core melted.
It has been estimated that if the operators had taken NO ACTION (e.g., because they had been “asleep at the switch”), there would have been no melt-down.
Only 3 nuclear accidents during the 75-year nuclear era???
In the U.S., this is due in large part to the fact that America’s commercial nuclear-power plants are manned and womanned by retired U.S. Navy experts, each of whom had 20 years’ of experience with the nuclear-power plants that propel our submarines and aircraft carriers.
BTW, Al Gore does NOT understand nuclear power!!!
Shortly after winning his Nobel Prize in 2007, he testified before a U.S. Senate Committee during which he uttered the famous/infamous statement that nuclear reactors “come in only one size – extra large”!!!
Obviously on the internet that Al Gore “invented” there is no information about the U.S. Navy’s relatively-small nuclear reactors located on submarines and aircraft carriers!!!
Geothermal Green Energy
.
---------------------------- Original Message -----------------------------
Subject: Geothermal Green Energy
From: Pat
Date: Thu, May 30, 2019 4:52 pm MDT
To: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
Attachment:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear John,
I just finished reading your e-mail of earlier today and its long diversion in the PS about the earth’s core being 7,000 degrees Fahrenheit, hotter than the surface of the sun, because thorium makes the earth’s core a gigantic thorium-fission nuclear-power juggernaut.
[NB: “gigantic… juggernaut” is not redundant because it serves to distinguish from normal-size juggernauts!]
That reminded me that so-called geothermal power (conventional oil & gas-type drilling through the earth’s relatively-thin crust in order to tap the power in the heat of the earth’s core) always used to appear on green-energy lists.
Why didn’t you mention it in the materials produced by our Thorium Working Group?
Regards,
Pat
---------------------------- Original Message -----------------------------
Subject: Geothermal Green Energy
From: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
Date: Fri, May31, 2019 1:12 pm MDT
To: Pat
Attachment:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Pat,
Please refer to my 5/17/2019 response to Lisa Corsetti about biomass at http://discussingliberally-saltlake.org ... 6427#p2435.
And the ensuing 5/18/2019 exchange of e-mails with “solutions” about biomass at http://discussingliberally-saltlake.org ... 6427#p2439.
Lisa had twitted me about the omission of biomass from our list of green-energy sources.
The response to Lisa and the exchange with “solutions” explained at great length why biomass as a green-energy source was viewed by Al Gore as a fraud/hoax and why Al Gore was correct in his view.
And the PS of my 5/18/2019 e-mail to “solutions” pointed out that our cover letter to the Democrat Debate Moderators (which is what we have been working on and which we have agreed to limit to one page in order to have a chance that the Moderators might actually read it) could also have a 292-word explanation of why electric vehicles are a fraud/hoax – similar to the 292-word explanation that had been provided to Lisa of why biomass is a fraud/hoax.
Whereupon the PS suggested that “rather than trying to produce a 1,000-page Julia Child ‘Cook Book’ of recipes” good for countering every possible green-energy idea that doesn’t make sense, we should stick with our one-page Debate Moderator letter and only address other matters if and when they are raised.
To illustrate with obviously-excessive sarcasm, you might recall that when we were young in the 1940’s and 1950’s, our parents used to tell us that the moon is made of “green cheese”!!!
And wouldn’t it be just like the U.S. Government to fund a space mission to explore the far side of the moon to see whether there is, indeed, any green cheese??? And, in addition, to fund an experiment to ascertain whether burning green cheese as a fuel would produce any carbon gases???
After all, green cheese might be the key to green energy!!!
But I’m having too much fun!!
So back to geothermal and the relevance of “green cheese” to geothermal.
Geothermal is another way of tapping thorium-fission energy. And all nuclear energy -- whether fission or fusion, and regardless of the type of fuel (e.g., thorium, uranium, plutonium) -- produces no greenhouse gases.
But tapping the earth core’s thorium-fission energy by incurring all the up-front expense of drilling and by incurring all of the continuing operating costs of bringing that energy to the earth’s surface, will make it uneconomic.
[And I trust you realized that the “moon green cheese” idea would have been uneconomic, even if the science showed that green cheese as a fuel produces no greenhouse gases.]
I hope you haven’t been offended by my comments!!!
But I really think we should stick with the one-page Debate Moderator letter that we have.
And only address any of the zillions of other issues that could be raised, on an individual basis if and when each is raised.
Your friend,
John K.
---------------------------- Original Message -----------------------------
Subject: Geothermal Green Energy
From: Pat
Date: Thu, May 30, 2019 4:52 pm MDT
To: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
Attachment:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear John,
I just finished reading your e-mail of earlier today and its long diversion in the PS about the earth’s core being 7,000 degrees Fahrenheit, hotter than the surface of the sun, because thorium makes the earth’s core a gigantic thorium-fission nuclear-power juggernaut.
[NB: “gigantic… juggernaut” is not redundant because it serves to distinguish from normal-size juggernauts!]
That reminded me that so-called geothermal power (conventional oil & gas-type drilling through the earth’s relatively-thin crust in order to tap the power in the heat of the earth’s core) always used to appear on green-energy lists.
Why didn’t you mention it in the materials produced by our Thorium Working Group?
Regards,
Pat
---------------------------- Original Message -----------------------------
Subject: Geothermal Green Energy
From: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
Date: Fri, May31, 2019 1:12 pm MDT
To: Pat
Attachment:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Pat,
Please refer to my 5/17/2019 response to Lisa Corsetti about biomass at http://discussingliberally-saltlake.org ... 6427#p2435.
And the ensuing 5/18/2019 exchange of e-mails with “solutions” about biomass at http://discussingliberally-saltlake.org ... 6427#p2439.
Lisa had twitted me about the omission of biomass from our list of green-energy sources.
The response to Lisa and the exchange with “solutions” explained at great length why biomass as a green-energy source was viewed by Al Gore as a fraud/hoax and why Al Gore was correct in his view.
And the PS of my 5/18/2019 e-mail to “solutions” pointed out that our cover letter to the Democrat Debate Moderators (which is what we have been working on and which we have agreed to limit to one page in order to have a chance that the Moderators might actually read it) could also have a 292-word explanation of why electric vehicles are a fraud/hoax – similar to the 292-word explanation that had been provided to Lisa of why biomass is a fraud/hoax.
Whereupon the PS suggested that “rather than trying to produce a 1,000-page Julia Child ‘Cook Book’ of recipes” good for countering every possible green-energy idea that doesn’t make sense, we should stick with our one-page Debate Moderator letter and only address other matters if and when they are raised.
To illustrate with obviously-excessive sarcasm, you might recall that when we were young in the 1940’s and 1950’s, our parents used to tell us that the moon is made of “green cheese”!!!
And wouldn’t it be just like the U.S. Government to fund a space mission to explore the far side of the moon to see whether there is, indeed, any green cheese??? And, in addition, to fund an experiment to ascertain whether burning green cheese as a fuel would produce any carbon gases???
After all, green cheese might be the key to green energy!!!
But I’m having too much fun!!
So back to geothermal and the relevance of “green cheese” to geothermal.
Geothermal is another way of tapping thorium-fission energy. And all nuclear energy -- whether fission or fusion, and regardless of the type of fuel (e.g., thorium, uranium, plutonium) -- produces no greenhouse gases.
But tapping the earth core’s thorium-fission energy by incurring all the up-front expense of drilling and by incurring all of the continuing operating costs of bringing that energy to the earth’s surface, will make it uneconomic.
[And I trust you realized that the “moon green cheese” idea would have been uneconomic, even if the science showed that green cheese as a fuel produces no greenhouse gases.]
I hope you haven’t been offended by my comments!!!
But I really think we should stick with the one-page Debate Moderator letter that we have.
And only address any of the zillions of other issues that could be raised, on an individual basis if and when each is raised.
Your friend,
John K.
Final Moderator Letter + Progress Report on CEO Letters
.
---------------------------- Original Message -----------------------------
Subject: Final Moderator Letter + Progress Report on CEO Letters
From: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
Date: Sun, June 9, 2019 6:28 am MDT
To: Thorium Working Group*
Attachments: [* Editorial Comment: The members of the Thorium Working Group are no longer listed because on 5/11/2019, two more of the approximately 150 recipients of our regular e-mails joined the Thorium Working Group on condition that they not be publicly identified.]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To: Thorium Working Group
Dear Friends,
Thank you everyone for all of your efforts since the last Progress Report on May 30.
*****
Presidential Debate Moderator Cover Letter
The final version of the Moderator Cover Letter is attached.
The copies have been printed and are ready for delivery tomorrow morning to the USPS for being sent Certified Mail.
You may recall that the two previous versions had been dated June 10 which we thought would be the optimum time so that the Moderators and Candidates would have approximately 2 weeks after receiving them before the June 26/27 Debates.
NBC which, together with its affiliates MSNBC and Telemundo, is producing the June 26/27 debates, has not yet announced who the Moderators will be. And it looks like NBC will not do so any time soon, presumably to protect their Moderators from being deluged with communications such as ours.
Accordingly, the final version of the Moderator Cover Letter is addressed to the President of NBC News, the President of MSNBC and the Executive VP of Noticias Telemundo.
[And the “you elicit” in the last line was changed to “your moderators elicit.”]
It strikes me that however slim the odds may be of our questions being asked, they have probably increased significantly with the change in the addressees. Both because the new addressees are likely to take a greater interest and because our letters will now stand out rather than be part of a deluge.
The candidates???
The Moderator Cover Letter states that each of the candidates is receiving a copy of the Moderator Letter as a reminder of what they had received previously (viz., the attachment to the Moderator Letter).
However, there are 24 candidates and only 20 will qualify for the June 26/27 debates.
Moreover, despite speculation from various sources that do NOT agree on who the 20 will be, the Democratic National Committee will not announce the official list until June 13 at the earliest.
Accordingly, a copy of the Moderator Cover Letter with attachment is being provided to all 24 candidates.
*****
The Candidates’ Position on Conventional Nuclear Power
You may recall that the Final Question 5 in our Moderator Letter mentioned that two Candidates (Sen. Cory Booker and Sen. Michael Bennet) co-sponsored on March 27 the Nuclear Energy Leadership Act to accelerate the development of advanced nuclear reactor technologies.
On June 4, the Washington Post reported that it had queried the candidates on Climate Change and various related issues, including Conventional Nuclear Energy.
[The second attachment to this e-mail is a copy of their article.]
WaPo’s Second Question – “Do You Support Building More Nuclear Power Plants”
[NB: No mention of thorium or even small-module uranium reactors.]
Group 1 – “Yes, Expand Nuclear Power”
Bennet, Booker, Delaney, Hickenlooper, Moulton, Ryan, Yang.
Group 2 – “No New Plants At This Time”
Bullock, Buttigieg, Castro, de Blasio, Inslee, Swalwell.
Group 3 – “No And Let’s Phase Out Nuclear Power”
Gabbard, Messam, Sanders, Williamson.
Group 4 – Unclear/No Response
Biden, Gillibrand, Harris, Klobuchar, O’Rourke, Warren.
Group 1 = 7; Group 2 = 6; Group 3 = 4; Group 4 = 6; MIA = 3 – but of the Heavy Hitters, Cory Booker favors expansion (as we already knew), Bernie Sanders wants to phase out nuclear; and (surprise, surprise) Joe Biden, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren ARE ALL FENCE SITTERS!!!
Perhaps being reminded of the advantages of thorium may get them off the fence!!!
*****
Draft CEO Letter
The e-mails to the Thorium Working Group of May 22 (5:11 am and 10:27 am) and May 30 chronicled our progress on the letters to CEO’s of large energy users for which the $5 billion for development of a commercial prototype thorium/fission molten-salt nuclear reactor would be a “drop in the bucket.”
[The May 22 e-mails containing a lot of background info is available at http://discussingliberally-saltlake.org ... 031b#p2446 and the May 30 e-mail is available at http://discussingliberally-saltlake.org ... fecd#p2445.]
The May 30 e-mail had concluded with – “A draft CEO letter will be circulated shortly for comment. As a practical matter, it will probably adopt most of the guts of our Candidate Letter.”
The third attachment to this e-mail is a Draft CEO Letter.
IAW the second e-mail of May 22 (10:27 am), it is respectfully suggested that we ignore (1) Google/Alphabet, since they are already taken care of by my correspondence with them following their presentation at the NYC Harvard Club last April; (2) Microsoft since Bill Gates is still the effective decision maker and he already is quite active in developing conventional uranium-nuclear power with his privately-owned Terra Power for which he has done extensive lobbying of the U.S. Government, at least during the last 4-5 years, and (3) Berkshire Hathaway despite its subsidiaries which are engaged in solar and wind, because Warren Buffet is the decision maker and he presumably will be more influenced by his BFF Bill Gates than by anything we could send him.
Accordingly, the list of recipients is –
Adobe – Shantanu Narayen
IBM – Virginia Marie Rometty
Oracle – Lawrence J. Ellison
SAP – Hasso Plattner
Verizon – Hans Vestberg
We had agreed that the Draft CEO Letter might have more than one version if any of the recipients has a known attitude toward nuclear energy, either favorable or unfavorable.
The May 30 e-mail reported that I had been unable to discern any such attitudes.
Though I noted that the effort had been extremely tedious and it would be impossible to guarantee that “no stone has been left unturned” if, for no other reason, than it would be impossible to be certain that every “stone” (i.e., search criteria) has occurred to you.
Accordingly, if anyone else wants to “chase this rabbit further,” your efforts would be greatly appreciated.
But for the time being, let’s proceed on the assumption that the same CEO Letter will be sent to all five CEO’s on our list.
*****
Conclusion
The first two sections of this e-mail are, at this point, only informative of action being taken IAW past decisions.
Re the third section, if you have any questions/comments or any proposed modifications to the Draft CEO Letter, it would be appreciated if you could provide them by the end of the week.
Again, thank you all for your invaluable contributions and efforts so far!!!
Your friend,
John K.
***************************************************************************
USPS Certified-Mail Tracking Numbers
As explained in the first section of the foregoing e-mail (and is evident from Attachment 1) the Moderator Letter was mailed on 6/10/2019 to the three following executives –
Mr. Noah Oppenheim
President – NBC News
30 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY 10112
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1070 9943
Mr. Philip T. Griffin
President – MSNBC
30 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY 10112
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1070 9950
Mr. Luis Carlos Vélez
Executive VP – Noticias Telemundo
2290 West 8th Avenue
Hialeah, FL 33010
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1070 9967
As explained in the Moderator Letter (Attachment 1), each Candidate would be sent a copy of the Moderator Letter (including a sample 4/5/2019 Candidate Letter which was attached to the Moderator Letter) as a reminder of what each of them had previously received.
The 24 candidates who declared or formed an exploratory committee were sent a copy of the 4/5/2019 letter – USPS Tracking Numbers, etc., are available at http://discussingliberally-saltlake.org ... 021b#p2410.
This time, only one letter was sent to each candidate (on 4/5/2019 et seq., a letter was sent to current office holders at both their governmental office and their campaign headquarters, if addresses for both were available).
Here are the USPS Tracking Numbers for the copy of the 4/10/2019 Moderator Letter that was sent on that date to each of the following 22 Candidates who had physical addresses. [If the address indicated is a governmental office, no mailing address was yet available for that Candidate’s Campaign Headquarters.]
[The remaining two candidates, could be contacted by e-mail only. Information about how they were contacted follows the USPS Tracking Numbers for the 22 Candidates who did have mailing addresses.]
The Honorable Cory A. Booker
U.S. Senator - New Jersey
Presidential Campaign Headquarters
540 Broad Street
Newark, N.J. 07102
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1071 0000
The Honorable Michael F. Bennet
U.S. Senator - Colorado
261 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1071 0017
The Honorable Stephen C. Bullock
Governor of Montana
Governor’s Residence
2 Carson Street
Helena, MT 59601
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1071 0024
The Honorable Peter P.M. Buttigieg
Mayor of South Bend, Indiana
County-City Building
227 West Jefferson Blvd.
South Bend, IN 46601
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1071 0031
The Honorable Julián Castro
Former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
Presidential Campaign Headquarters
P.O. Box 501
San Antonio, TX 78292
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1071 0048
The Honorable Bill de Blasio
Mayor – New York City
Presidential Campaign Headquarters
157 13th Street
Brooklyn, NY11215
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1071 0055
The Honorable John K. Delaney
Former U.S. Representative - Maryland’s 6th Congressional District
Presidential Campaign Headquarters
P.O. Box 70835
Bethesda, MD 20813
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1071 0062
The Honorable Tulsi Gabbard
U.S. Representative - Hawaii’s 2nd Congressional District
Presidential Campaign Headquarters
P.O. Box 75255
Kapolei, Hawaii 96707
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1071 0079
The Honorable Kirsten E. Gillibrand
U.S. Senator - New York
Presidential Campaign Headquarters
Frear Building
2 Third Street
Troy, NY 12180
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1071 0086
The Honorable Maurice R. (“Mike”) Gravel
Presidential Campaign Headquarters
P.O. Box 1052
Olympia, WA 98507
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1071 0093
The Honorable Kamala D. Harris
U.S. Senator - California
112 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1071 0109
The Honorable John W. Hickenlooper
Former Governor of Colorado
Presidential Campaign Headquarters
P.O. Box 6377
Denver, CO 80206
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1071 0116
The Honorable Jay R. Inslee
Governor of the State of Washington
Presidential Campaign Headquarters
Inslee for America
P.O. Box 21725
Seattle, WA 98111
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1071 0123
The Honorable Amy J. Klobuchar
U.S. Senator - Minnesota
Presidential Campaign Headquarters
Amy For America
P.O. Box 18360
Minneapolis, MN 55418
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1071 0130
The Honorable Wayne M. Messam
Mayor of Miramar, FL
2300 Civic Center Place
Miramar, FL 33025
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1071 0154
The Honorable Seth W. Moulton
U.S. Representative - Massachusett’s 6th Congressional District
1127 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1071 0147
The Honorable Robert Francis (“Beto”) O’Rourke
Former U.S. Representative – Texas' 16th Congressional District
Presidential Campaign Headquarters
P.O. Box 3628
El Paso, TX 79923
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1071 0161
The Honorable Timothy J. Ryan
U.S. Representative - Ohio’s 13th Congressional District
1126 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1071 0178
The Honorable Bernie Sanders
U.S. Senator - Vermont
Presidential Campaign Headquarters
Bernie 2020
P.O. Box 391
Burlington, VT 05402
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1071 0185
The Honorable Eric M. Swalwell, Jr.
U.S. Representative - California’s 15th Congressional District
407 Canon House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1070 9974
The Honorable Elizabeth A. Warren
U.S. Senator - Massachusetts
309 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1070 9981
Mr. Andrew Yang
Presidential Campaign Headquarters
Friends of Andrew Yang
P.O. Box 214
Midtown Station
New York, NY 10018
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1070 9998
Two candidates had no mailing addresses per their official campaign websites and none could be discerned from other sources. Accordingly, they were each sent the following e-mails –
---------------------------- Original Message -----------------------------
Subject: Request to Debate Moderators To Ask You About Solving Global Warming 100% Without Military Action
From: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
Date: Thur, June 13, 2019 1:31 pm EDT
To: info@joebiden.com
Attachment: RL-f610-Moderator Cover Letter + Attachment - Final
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Sir:
Attached is a copy of letter sent to the President of NBC News, the President of MSNBC and the Executive VP of Noticias Telemundo requesting them to have their moderators ask you during the forthcoming Presidential Debates about information that you already received and that is contained in the 3-page attachment to the letter.
Since you have no mailing address, your copy of the 3-page attachment was sent to you by e-mail on 5/13/2019 at 1:59 pm EDT from john@johnkarls.com.
We look forward to hearing your position.
Sincerely,
John S. Karls, Facilitator
ReadingLiberally-SaltLake
---------------------------- Original Message -----------------------------
Subject: Request to Debate Moderators To Ask You About Solving Global Warming 100% Without Military Action
From: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
Date: Thur, June 13, 2019 1:33 pm EDT
To: contact@marianne2020.com
Attachment: RL-f610-Moderator Cover Letter + Attachment - Final
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Madam:
Attached is a copy of letter sent to the President of NBC News, the President of MSNBC and the Executive VP of Noticias Telemundo requesting them to have their moderators ask you during the forthcoming Presidential Debates about information that you already received and that is contained in the 3-page attachment to the letter.
Since you have no mailing address, your copy of the 3-page attachment was sent to you by e-mail on 4/7/2019 at 1:32 am EDT.
We look forward to hearing your position.
Sincerely,
John S. Karls, Facilitator
ReadingLiberally-SaltLake
***************************************************
***************************************************
***************************************************
When the original 4/5/2019 Candidate Letter was sent, http://discussingliberally-saltlake.org ... 4f4a#p2410 provided USPS Tracking Information, etc., for the 17 candidates who had declared or formed exploratory committees by that date.
And then provided USPS Tracking Info, etc., for the 7 additional candidates as they declared or formed exploratory committees.
Vis-à-vis Joe Biden, that additional information explained that --
(1) His official campaign website (https://joebiden.com) had no contact capability.
(2) News reports said he was considering Philadelphia as a location for his Campaign Headquarters, but no address for such a headquarters could be ascertained.
(3) The Biden Foundation ceased operations 4/25/2019 per https://bidenfoundation.org.
(4) If you clicked “donate” on his official website (https://joebiden.com), you were transferred to https://secure.actblue.com which is a website used by quite a few candidates for receiving campaign contributions – but provides no contact information for any of them.
(5) Accordingly, I made a token $100 contribution via https://secure.actblue.com and, sure enough, was instantly deluged with incoming e-mails from info@joebiden.com.
(6) So an e-mail was then sent 5/13/2019 to info@joebiden.com with the subject “Solving Global Warming 100% Without Military Action” and attaching a sample copy of the 4/5/2019 Candidate Letter.
When sending copies of the 6/10/2019 Moderator Letter (available for download at the beginning of this posting) to each of the Candidates to remind them of what they had previously received (viz., a copy of the 4/5/2019 Candidate Letter, another copy of which was attached to the Moderator Letter), the contact information for each Candidate was re-checked.
And nothing had changed vis-à-vis numbered paragraphs 1-5 with respect to Joe Biden.
So the e-mail shown above the preceding triple row of asterisks was sent to info@joebiden.com.
And the following e-mail was received from info+noreply@joebiden.com saying, in effect, that they are now trashing everything received at info@joebiden.com and to re-try at contact@joebiden.com.
Accordingly, it was re-sent to contact@joebiden.com as shown below.
---------------------------- Original Message -----------------------------
Subject: Request to Debate Moderators To Ask You About Solving Global Warming 100% Without Military Action
From: "Info" <info+noreply@joebiden.com>
Date: Thu, June 13, 2019 1:31 pm EDT
To: readingliberally-saltlake@johnkarls.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hello and thank you for emailing Biden for President! Due to the large number of emails that we receive each day, we are unable to personally respond to every email message. Below are answers to some of our most frequently asked questions. We hope that they are able to point you in the right direction.
The best way to support Joe Biden is by making a contribution to help fund our campaign for President. You can make a secure online contribution by going here: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/bidenpresident
If you wish to receive fewer emails or unsubscribe from our messages altogether, we are sorry to see you go, but click on this link (https://go.joebiden.com/page/content/Unsubscribe) and follow the instructions and you will be removed from our email distribution list. Please note that it may take one to two days for your request to be fully processed.
If you have a question about a donation or wish to modify an existing contribution, please contact our payment processing vendor, ActBlue, by emailing info@actblue.com. All other inquiries related to contributions can be answered by contacting us through email contact@joebiden.com.
For all other inquiries, comments, and feedback, please email contact@joebiden.com, and we will be happy to listen or answer any additional questions you may have.
Thank you for being a strong supporter of Biden for President.
---------------------------- Original Message -----------------------------
Subject: Request to Debate Moderators To Ask You About Solving Global Warming 100% Without Military Action
From: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
Date: Sun, June 16, 2019 11:39 am EDT
To: contact@joebiden.com
Attachment: RL-f610-Moderator Cover Letter + Attachment - Final
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Sir:
Attached is a copy of letter sent to the President of NBC News, the President of MSNBC and the Executive VP of Noticias Telemundo requesting them to have their moderators ask you during the forthcoming Presidential Debates about information that you already received and that is contained in the 3-page attachment to the letter.
Since you have no mailing address, your copy of the 3-page attachment was sent to you by e-mail on 5/13/2019 at 1:59 pm EDT from john@johnkarls.com.
We look forward to hearing your position.
Sincerely,
John S. Karls, Facilitator
ReadingLiberally-SaltLake
---------------------------- Original Message -----------------------------
Subject: Final Moderator Letter + Progress Report on CEO Letters
From: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
Date: Sun, June 9, 2019 6:28 am MDT
To: Thorium Working Group*
Attachments: [* Editorial Comment: The members of the Thorium Working Group are no longer listed because on 5/11/2019, two more of the approximately 150 recipients of our regular e-mails joined the Thorium Working Group on condition that they not be publicly identified.]
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To: Thorium Working Group
Dear Friends,
Thank you everyone for all of your efforts since the last Progress Report on May 30.
*****
Presidential Debate Moderator Cover Letter
The final version of the Moderator Cover Letter is attached.
The copies have been printed and are ready for delivery tomorrow morning to the USPS for being sent Certified Mail.
You may recall that the two previous versions had been dated June 10 which we thought would be the optimum time so that the Moderators and Candidates would have approximately 2 weeks after receiving them before the June 26/27 Debates.
NBC which, together with its affiliates MSNBC and Telemundo, is producing the June 26/27 debates, has not yet announced who the Moderators will be. And it looks like NBC will not do so any time soon, presumably to protect their Moderators from being deluged with communications such as ours.
Accordingly, the final version of the Moderator Cover Letter is addressed to the President of NBC News, the President of MSNBC and the Executive VP of Noticias Telemundo.
[And the “you elicit” in the last line was changed to “your moderators elicit.”]
It strikes me that however slim the odds may be of our questions being asked, they have probably increased significantly with the change in the addressees. Both because the new addressees are likely to take a greater interest and because our letters will now stand out rather than be part of a deluge.
The candidates???
The Moderator Cover Letter states that each of the candidates is receiving a copy of the Moderator Letter as a reminder of what they had received previously (viz., the attachment to the Moderator Letter).
However, there are 24 candidates and only 20 will qualify for the June 26/27 debates.
Moreover, despite speculation from various sources that do NOT agree on who the 20 will be, the Democratic National Committee will not announce the official list until June 13 at the earliest.
Accordingly, a copy of the Moderator Cover Letter with attachment is being provided to all 24 candidates.
*****
The Candidates’ Position on Conventional Nuclear Power
You may recall that the Final Question 5 in our Moderator Letter mentioned that two Candidates (Sen. Cory Booker and Sen. Michael Bennet) co-sponsored on March 27 the Nuclear Energy Leadership Act to accelerate the development of advanced nuclear reactor technologies.
On June 4, the Washington Post reported that it had queried the candidates on Climate Change and various related issues, including Conventional Nuclear Energy.
[The second attachment to this e-mail is a copy of their article.]
WaPo’s Second Question – “Do You Support Building More Nuclear Power Plants”
[NB: No mention of thorium or even small-module uranium reactors.]
Group 1 – “Yes, Expand Nuclear Power”
Bennet, Booker, Delaney, Hickenlooper, Moulton, Ryan, Yang.
Group 2 – “No New Plants At This Time”
Bullock, Buttigieg, Castro, de Blasio, Inslee, Swalwell.
Group 3 – “No And Let’s Phase Out Nuclear Power”
Gabbard, Messam, Sanders, Williamson.
Group 4 – Unclear/No Response
Biden, Gillibrand, Harris, Klobuchar, O’Rourke, Warren.
Group 1 = 7; Group 2 = 6; Group 3 = 4; Group 4 = 6; MIA = 3 – but of the Heavy Hitters, Cory Booker favors expansion (as we already knew), Bernie Sanders wants to phase out nuclear; and (surprise, surprise) Joe Biden, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren ARE ALL FENCE SITTERS!!!
Perhaps being reminded of the advantages of thorium may get them off the fence!!!
*****
Draft CEO Letter
The e-mails to the Thorium Working Group of May 22 (5:11 am and 10:27 am) and May 30 chronicled our progress on the letters to CEO’s of large energy users for which the $5 billion for development of a commercial prototype thorium/fission molten-salt nuclear reactor would be a “drop in the bucket.”
[The May 22 e-mails containing a lot of background info is available at http://discussingliberally-saltlake.org ... 031b#p2446 and the May 30 e-mail is available at http://discussingliberally-saltlake.org ... fecd#p2445.]
The May 30 e-mail had concluded with – “A draft CEO letter will be circulated shortly for comment. As a practical matter, it will probably adopt most of the guts of our Candidate Letter.”
The third attachment to this e-mail is a Draft CEO Letter.
IAW the second e-mail of May 22 (10:27 am), it is respectfully suggested that we ignore (1) Google/Alphabet, since they are already taken care of by my correspondence with them following their presentation at the NYC Harvard Club last April; (2) Microsoft since Bill Gates is still the effective decision maker and he already is quite active in developing conventional uranium-nuclear power with his privately-owned Terra Power for which he has done extensive lobbying of the U.S. Government, at least during the last 4-5 years, and (3) Berkshire Hathaway despite its subsidiaries which are engaged in solar and wind, because Warren Buffet is the decision maker and he presumably will be more influenced by his BFF Bill Gates than by anything we could send him.
Accordingly, the list of recipients is –
Adobe – Shantanu Narayen
IBM – Virginia Marie Rometty
Oracle – Lawrence J. Ellison
SAP – Hasso Plattner
Verizon – Hans Vestberg
We had agreed that the Draft CEO Letter might have more than one version if any of the recipients has a known attitude toward nuclear energy, either favorable or unfavorable.
The May 30 e-mail reported that I had been unable to discern any such attitudes.
Though I noted that the effort had been extremely tedious and it would be impossible to guarantee that “no stone has been left unturned” if, for no other reason, than it would be impossible to be certain that every “stone” (i.e., search criteria) has occurred to you.
Accordingly, if anyone else wants to “chase this rabbit further,” your efforts would be greatly appreciated.
But for the time being, let’s proceed on the assumption that the same CEO Letter will be sent to all five CEO’s on our list.
*****
Conclusion
The first two sections of this e-mail are, at this point, only informative of action being taken IAW past decisions.
Re the third section, if you have any questions/comments or any proposed modifications to the Draft CEO Letter, it would be appreciated if you could provide them by the end of the week.
Again, thank you all for your invaluable contributions and efforts so far!!!
Your friend,
John K.
***************************************************************************
USPS Certified-Mail Tracking Numbers
As explained in the first section of the foregoing e-mail (and is evident from Attachment 1) the Moderator Letter was mailed on 6/10/2019 to the three following executives –
Mr. Noah Oppenheim
President – NBC News
30 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY 10112
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1070 9943
Mr. Philip T. Griffin
President – MSNBC
30 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY 10112
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1070 9950
Mr. Luis Carlos Vélez
Executive VP – Noticias Telemundo
2290 West 8th Avenue
Hialeah, FL 33010
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1070 9967
As explained in the Moderator Letter (Attachment 1), each Candidate would be sent a copy of the Moderator Letter (including a sample 4/5/2019 Candidate Letter which was attached to the Moderator Letter) as a reminder of what each of them had previously received.
The 24 candidates who declared or formed an exploratory committee were sent a copy of the 4/5/2019 letter – USPS Tracking Numbers, etc., are available at http://discussingliberally-saltlake.org ... 021b#p2410.
This time, only one letter was sent to each candidate (on 4/5/2019 et seq., a letter was sent to current office holders at both their governmental office and their campaign headquarters, if addresses for both were available).
Here are the USPS Tracking Numbers for the copy of the 4/10/2019 Moderator Letter that was sent on that date to each of the following 22 Candidates who had physical addresses. [If the address indicated is a governmental office, no mailing address was yet available for that Candidate’s Campaign Headquarters.]
[The remaining two candidates, could be contacted by e-mail only. Information about how they were contacted follows the USPS Tracking Numbers for the 22 Candidates who did have mailing addresses.]
The Honorable Cory A. Booker
U.S. Senator - New Jersey
Presidential Campaign Headquarters
540 Broad Street
Newark, N.J. 07102
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1071 0000
The Honorable Michael F. Bennet
U.S. Senator - Colorado
261 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1071 0017
The Honorable Stephen C. Bullock
Governor of Montana
Governor’s Residence
2 Carson Street
Helena, MT 59601
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1071 0024
The Honorable Peter P.M. Buttigieg
Mayor of South Bend, Indiana
County-City Building
227 West Jefferson Blvd.
South Bend, IN 46601
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1071 0031
The Honorable Julián Castro
Former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
Presidential Campaign Headquarters
P.O. Box 501
San Antonio, TX 78292
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1071 0048
The Honorable Bill de Blasio
Mayor – New York City
Presidential Campaign Headquarters
157 13th Street
Brooklyn, NY11215
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1071 0055
The Honorable John K. Delaney
Former U.S. Representative - Maryland’s 6th Congressional District
Presidential Campaign Headquarters
P.O. Box 70835
Bethesda, MD 20813
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1071 0062
The Honorable Tulsi Gabbard
U.S. Representative - Hawaii’s 2nd Congressional District
Presidential Campaign Headquarters
P.O. Box 75255
Kapolei, Hawaii 96707
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1071 0079
The Honorable Kirsten E. Gillibrand
U.S. Senator - New York
Presidential Campaign Headquarters
Frear Building
2 Third Street
Troy, NY 12180
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1071 0086
The Honorable Maurice R. (“Mike”) Gravel
Presidential Campaign Headquarters
P.O. Box 1052
Olympia, WA 98507
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1071 0093
The Honorable Kamala D. Harris
U.S. Senator - California
112 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1071 0109
The Honorable John W. Hickenlooper
Former Governor of Colorado
Presidential Campaign Headquarters
P.O. Box 6377
Denver, CO 80206
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1071 0116
The Honorable Jay R. Inslee
Governor of the State of Washington
Presidential Campaign Headquarters
Inslee for America
P.O. Box 21725
Seattle, WA 98111
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1071 0123
The Honorable Amy J. Klobuchar
U.S. Senator - Minnesota
Presidential Campaign Headquarters
Amy For America
P.O. Box 18360
Minneapolis, MN 55418
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1071 0130
The Honorable Wayne M. Messam
Mayor of Miramar, FL
2300 Civic Center Place
Miramar, FL 33025
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1071 0154
The Honorable Seth W. Moulton
U.S. Representative - Massachusett’s 6th Congressional District
1127 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1071 0147
The Honorable Robert Francis (“Beto”) O’Rourke
Former U.S. Representative – Texas' 16th Congressional District
Presidential Campaign Headquarters
P.O. Box 3628
El Paso, TX 79923
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1071 0161
The Honorable Timothy J. Ryan
U.S. Representative - Ohio’s 13th Congressional District
1126 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1071 0178
The Honorable Bernie Sanders
U.S. Senator - Vermont
Presidential Campaign Headquarters
Bernie 2020
P.O. Box 391
Burlington, VT 05402
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1071 0185
The Honorable Eric M. Swalwell, Jr.
U.S. Representative - California’s 15th Congressional District
407 Canon House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1070 9974
The Honorable Elizabeth A. Warren
U.S. Senator - Massachusetts
309 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1070 9981
Mr. Andrew Yang
Presidential Campaign Headquarters
Friends of Andrew Yang
P.O. Box 214
Midtown Station
New York, NY 10018
USPS Tracking No. = 7018 1130 0000 1070 9998
Two candidates had no mailing addresses per their official campaign websites and none could be discerned from other sources. Accordingly, they were each sent the following e-mails –
---------------------------- Original Message -----------------------------
Subject: Request to Debate Moderators To Ask You About Solving Global Warming 100% Without Military Action
From: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
Date: Thur, June 13, 2019 1:31 pm EDT
To: info@joebiden.com
Attachment: RL-f610-Moderator Cover Letter + Attachment - Final
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Sir:
Attached is a copy of letter sent to the President of NBC News, the President of MSNBC and the Executive VP of Noticias Telemundo requesting them to have their moderators ask you during the forthcoming Presidential Debates about information that you already received and that is contained in the 3-page attachment to the letter.
Since you have no mailing address, your copy of the 3-page attachment was sent to you by e-mail on 5/13/2019 at 1:59 pm EDT from john@johnkarls.com.
We look forward to hearing your position.
Sincerely,
John S. Karls, Facilitator
ReadingLiberally-SaltLake
---------------------------- Original Message -----------------------------
Subject: Request to Debate Moderators To Ask You About Solving Global Warming 100% Without Military Action
From: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
Date: Thur, June 13, 2019 1:33 pm EDT
To: contact@marianne2020.com
Attachment: RL-f610-Moderator Cover Letter + Attachment - Final
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Madam:
Attached is a copy of letter sent to the President of NBC News, the President of MSNBC and the Executive VP of Noticias Telemundo requesting them to have their moderators ask you during the forthcoming Presidential Debates about information that you already received and that is contained in the 3-page attachment to the letter.
Since you have no mailing address, your copy of the 3-page attachment was sent to you by e-mail on 4/7/2019 at 1:32 am EDT.
We look forward to hearing your position.
Sincerely,
John S. Karls, Facilitator
ReadingLiberally-SaltLake
***************************************************
***************************************************
***************************************************
When the original 4/5/2019 Candidate Letter was sent, http://discussingliberally-saltlake.org ... 4f4a#p2410 provided USPS Tracking Information, etc., for the 17 candidates who had declared or formed exploratory committees by that date.
And then provided USPS Tracking Info, etc., for the 7 additional candidates as they declared or formed exploratory committees.
Vis-à-vis Joe Biden, that additional information explained that --
(1) His official campaign website (https://joebiden.com) had no contact capability.
(2) News reports said he was considering Philadelphia as a location for his Campaign Headquarters, but no address for such a headquarters could be ascertained.
(3) The Biden Foundation ceased operations 4/25/2019 per https://bidenfoundation.org.
(4) If you clicked “donate” on his official website (https://joebiden.com), you were transferred to https://secure.actblue.com which is a website used by quite a few candidates for receiving campaign contributions – but provides no contact information for any of them.
(5) Accordingly, I made a token $100 contribution via https://secure.actblue.com and, sure enough, was instantly deluged with incoming e-mails from info@joebiden.com.
(6) So an e-mail was then sent 5/13/2019 to info@joebiden.com with the subject “Solving Global Warming 100% Without Military Action” and attaching a sample copy of the 4/5/2019 Candidate Letter.
When sending copies of the 6/10/2019 Moderator Letter (available for download at the beginning of this posting) to each of the Candidates to remind them of what they had previously received (viz., a copy of the 4/5/2019 Candidate Letter, another copy of which was attached to the Moderator Letter), the contact information for each Candidate was re-checked.
And nothing had changed vis-à-vis numbered paragraphs 1-5 with respect to Joe Biden.
So the e-mail shown above the preceding triple row of asterisks was sent to info@joebiden.com.
And the following e-mail was received from info+noreply@joebiden.com saying, in effect, that they are now trashing everything received at info@joebiden.com and to re-try at contact@joebiden.com.
Accordingly, it was re-sent to contact@joebiden.com as shown below.
---------------------------- Original Message -----------------------------
Subject: Request to Debate Moderators To Ask You About Solving Global Warming 100% Without Military Action
From: "Info" <info+noreply@joebiden.com>
Date: Thu, June 13, 2019 1:31 pm EDT
To: readingliberally-saltlake@johnkarls.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hello and thank you for emailing Biden for President! Due to the large number of emails that we receive each day, we are unable to personally respond to every email message. Below are answers to some of our most frequently asked questions. We hope that they are able to point you in the right direction.
The best way to support Joe Biden is by making a contribution to help fund our campaign for President. You can make a secure online contribution by going here: https://secure.actblue.com/donate/bidenpresident
If you wish to receive fewer emails or unsubscribe from our messages altogether, we are sorry to see you go, but click on this link (https://go.joebiden.com/page/content/Unsubscribe) and follow the instructions and you will be removed from our email distribution list. Please note that it may take one to two days for your request to be fully processed.
If you have a question about a donation or wish to modify an existing contribution, please contact our payment processing vendor, ActBlue, by emailing info@actblue.com. All other inquiries related to contributions can be answered by contacting us through email contact@joebiden.com.
For all other inquiries, comments, and feedback, please email contact@joebiden.com, and we will be happy to listen or answer any additional questions you may have.
Thank you for being a strong supporter of Biden for President.
---------------------------- Original Message -----------------------------
Subject: Request to Debate Moderators To Ask You About Solving Global Warming 100% Without Military Action
From: ReadingLiberally-SaltLake@johnkarls.com
Date: Sun, June 16, 2019 11:39 am EDT
To: contact@joebiden.com
Attachment: RL-f610-Moderator Cover Letter + Attachment - Final
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Sir:
Attached is a copy of letter sent to the President of NBC News, the President of MSNBC and the Executive VP of Noticias Telemundo requesting them to have their moderators ask you during the forthcoming Presidential Debates about information that you already received and that is contained in the 3-page attachment to the letter.
Since you have no mailing address, your copy of the 3-page attachment was sent to you by e-mail on 5/13/2019 at 1:59 pm EDT from john@johnkarls.com.
We look forward to hearing your position.
Sincerely,
John S. Karls, Facilitator
ReadingLiberally-SaltLake
Letter to U.S. Rep. Ben McAdams re his First Unitarian talk
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On July 24, Yours Truly carpe’d the diem to send U.S. Rep. Ben McAdams (Utah’s 4th Congressional District) this letter re his presentation at First Unitarian Church of SLC on Sun July 28 –
It should be self-explanatory except for the fact that Rep. McAdams' Utah Office was closed on July 24 because it was a Utah holiday (Pioneer Day) as a result of which Yours Truly called Rep. McAdams’ Washington DC Office to obtain an e-mail address that would handle attachments.
This is an example of how everyone who reads this website should feel free to send our materials to anyone -- influential or otherwise.
[In this case, I prepared a cover letter to Rep. McAdams attached to which was our 7/16/2019 Moderator Cover Letter (and its own 3-page attachment which was a sample 4/5/2019 Candidate Letter) – which (the Moderator Cover Letter and attachment) are available for download as an Adobe.pdf file in the so-called “reply” to the first posting in Section 1 of http://www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org.]
At First Unitarian on July 28, Rep. McAdams said he had received the materials, he described them at length, and he said that they were very helpful!!!
On July 24, Yours Truly carpe’d the diem to send U.S. Rep. Ben McAdams (Utah’s 4th Congressional District) this letter re his presentation at First Unitarian Church of SLC on Sun July 28 –
It should be self-explanatory except for the fact that Rep. McAdams' Utah Office was closed on July 24 because it was a Utah holiday (Pioneer Day) as a result of which Yours Truly called Rep. McAdams’ Washington DC Office to obtain an e-mail address that would handle attachments.
This is an example of how everyone who reads this website should feel free to send our materials to anyone -- influential or otherwise.
[In this case, I prepared a cover letter to Rep. McAdams attached to which was our 7/16/2019 Moderator Cover Letter (and its own 3-page attachment which was a sample 4/5/2019 Candidate Letter) – which (the Moderator Cover Letter and attachment) are available for download as an Adobe.pdf file in the so-called “reply” to the first posting in Section 1 of http://www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org.]
At First Unitarian on July 28, Rep. McAdams said he had received the materials, he described them at length, and he said that they were very helpful!!!
FUKUSHIMA DAIICHI FIELD TRIP – Sep 17-21, 2019
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Our weekly e-mail of 7/27/2019 had requested everyone’s prayers, whether or not s/he was religious, for Cal Burgart who was scheduled for an aortic valve replacement on 7/29/2019.
[Cal, who earned his PhD in Nuclear Engineering from the U.S. National Nuclear-Research Laboratory at Oak Ridge - U/Tenn, has (1) led almost a dozen of our meetings on nuclear matters since our 4/13/2011 meeting on Fukushima Daiichi, and (2) served as our nuclear expert on our Global-Warming Thorium-Fission Working Group which, since its formation last March, has mounted the first 4 of the 41 action campaigns chronicled in Section 1 of http://www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org.]
After one night in “critical care” and 5 more nights in “acute care,” Cal was released from the hospital and is convalescing well.
HOWEVER, he feels unable to participate in a Fukushima Daiichi field trip Sep 17-21 and is looking for someone to take his place. Details are available in the following e-mail from Cal and its attachments.
[FYI, I (John Karls) responded to Cal that I believe that I already know enough about history’s 3 nuclear disasters, including Fukushima Daiichi, as set forth in the Suggested Answers to the Short Quiz for our 4/13/2011 meeting on Fukushima Daiichi, which is available at http://discussingliberally-saltlake.org ... =201&t=735.]
If you are interested in taking Cal’s place (or obtaining more information) but do not have Cal’s e-mail address, please let me (John Karls) know and I will give Cal your e-mail address.
----- Original Message -----
From: Calvin Burgart
To: "John Karls" <john@johnkarls.com>
Sent: Tue, 13 Aug 2019 02:48:36 -0600
Subject: Fukushima
Attachments: Dear John,
If you want to have personal observations on what is going on, here is your chance.
I had a tour booked through a fraternity brother, Dave Clark, who has been married to a Japanese wife for 50 years. He also did a whole lot of far east business. It may be the first private tour.
I had planned on going for almost a year. But with my current operation recovery, I think that is unlikely. I was departing to Japan on Sept 12th, on the same flight out of LAX as Dave and Shirley. But it could be later depending on your interest in the other part of the tour. I think the only thing I paid for separate from the tour (which I have paid for and don't want paid back) is the hotel the night before coming back.
There are actually five spots. So if you know someone else that would be great.
Sure would love you or one of my nuke friends to fill my spot.
See attachments.
Cal
Our weekly e-mail of 7/27/2019 had requested everyone’s prayers, whether or not s/he was religious, for Cal Burgart who was scheduled for an aortic valve replacement on 7/29/2019.
[Cal, who earned his PhD in Nuclear Engineering from the U.S. National Nuclear-Research Laboratory at Oak Ridge - U/Tenn, has (1) led almost a dozen of our meetings on nuclear matters since our 4/13/2011 meeting on Fukushima Daiichi, and (2) served as our nuclear expert on our Global-Warming Thorium-Fission Working Group which, since its formation last March, has mounted the first 4 of the 41 action campaigns chronicled in Section 1 of http://www.ReadingLiberally-SaltLake.org.]
After one night in “critical care” and 5 more nights in “acute care,” Cal was released from the hospital and is convalescing well.
HOWEVER, he feels unable to participate in a Fukushima Daiichi field trip Sep 17-21 and is looking for someone to take his place. Details are available in the following e-mail from Cal and its attachments.
[FYI, I (John Karls) responded to Cal that I believe that I already know enough about history’s 3 nuclear disasters, including Fukushima Daiichi, as set forth in the Suggested Answers to the Short Quiz for our 4/13/2011 meeting on Fukushima Daiichi, which is available at http://discussingliberally-saltlake.org ... =201&t=735.]
If you are interested in taking Cal’s place (or obtaining more information) but do not have Cal’s e-mail address, please let me (John Karls) know and I will give Cal your e-mail address.
----- Original Message -----
From: Calvin Burgart
To: "John Karls" <john@johnkarls.com>
Sent: Tue, 13 Aug 2019 02:48:36 -0600
Subject: Fukushima
Attachments: Dear John,
If you want to have personal observations on what is going on, here is your chance.
I had a tour booked through a fraternity brother, Dave Clark, who has been married to a Japanese wife for 50 years. He also did a whole lot of far east business. It may be the first private tour.
I had planned on going for almost a year. But with my current operation recovery, I think that is unlikely. I was departing to Japan on Sept 12th, on the same flight out of LAX as Dave and Shirley. But it could be later depending on your interest in the other part of the tour. I think the only thing I paid for separate from the tour (which I have paid for and don't want paid back) is the hotel the night before coming back.
There are actually five spots. So if you know someone else that would be great.
Sure would love you or one of my nuke friends to fill my spot.
See attachments.
Cal
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