Whorled View

Now that the Republican party has practically let the mainstream media pick their candidate we can look forward to what their debates will be like: Hillary: Repeal the Bush Tax cuts!
McCain: I agree! Hillary: Reward illegals with citizenship!
McCain: I agree! Hillary: Punish America alone for global warming!
McCain: I agree! Hillary: No conservative Judges like Alito!
McCain: I agree! Hillary: Abort unwanted babies!
McCain: I agree if it belongs to my daughter! Hillary: Gay rights!
McCain: As long as they’re “passionate lesbians”! Hillary: No Man-Woman Marriage Amendment!
McCain: I agree! Hillary: Protect incumbents and limit free speech!
McCain: Long live McCain-Feingold! Hillary: No Alaska drilling!
McCain: I agree! Hillary: Vote for me!
McCain: I agree! Wait… ! Ummmmmm… Note to skin: Start crawling.

So says Benjamin Netanyahu, former Prime Minister from Israel. This clip is about a week old, but it is incredibly good. It’s one of those little blurbs that gets lost in the shuffle that speaks loads of wisdom that is lost on even the most respected thinkers of our time.



PM Netanyahu makes some extremely good points - the first being the fragility of democracy.Then there’s the insidious attitude of apathy so prevalent among the left side with regard to the danger jihadists like Mahmoud present. They see him as a harmless funny little man, just as Hitler was perceived, and not so long ago. Mahmoud and Hitler share far too much in common. I shudder to consider what liberally bent teachers are telling our kids - that all leaders of all foreign nations are respectable diplomats with sovereign authority which should be appreciated and respected. Not where I come from. Respect is earned, no matter who you are, and Mahmoud is the least deserving of all.

Our nation’s forefathers would never have given a platform of legitimacy to a terrorist bent on world domination the the genocide of any people. The thought is ludicrous. There are public spaces for that, including the internet and news networks like Al Jazeera. A state sponsored university however is a platform of legitimacy - by the mere invitation the University legitimized Ahmadinejad’s genocidal and holocaust denying views. It matters little how degrading was the introduction that the leader of that forum gave to Mr. Mahmoud “I want a jihad”. Would such an audience be given to a known pedophile as if he was a respectable diplomat? There is no doubt that he is developing a nuclear weapons program. Even after it’s built, a nuclear energy plant would cost him far more than Oil-based energy. If he want to save his economy the economical thing to do is build refineries.

But Mahmoud wants fissionable material - easily garnered from nuclear waste. He has also made it clear that the bomb will drop will drop on Israel as soon as it’s developed. What I find amazing is the apathy among the liberal left - almost as if they’re saying “not my problem”, but Netanyahu is probably closer to understanding their apathy as being a lack of understanding or belief.

There’s been so much of this crossing of the protective line of democracy that we’re playing a veritable game of hopscotch with the devil, and it’s only a matter of time until we loose the game.

Every now and then some genius comes up with a good idea that changes everything. A Houston company called “global warming solutions” claims to have just done that.

This effectively makes solar 1/3 it’s current cost - which makes Solar PV competitive with grid, WITHOUT SUBSIDIES!

See, one of the main problems with Solar PV (those panels you can put on your roof to generate electricity) is that they usually only covert about 13% of the sun’s energy into usable energy. Solar thermal however, which is only feasible in a power plant setting, can convert over 50% into usable energy. Until now the idea to improve PV (Photo-Voltaic) efficiencies involved modifying the solar cell so that it could use a larger spectrum of the light. These involved using multiple junction cells (layers on top of layers), with each junction capturing a different range of the light spectrum. This, of course adds siginificant cost to the PV solar cells, which are already much more expensive than was predicted 10 years ago for today. In fact, one of the reasons AstroPower (the company I worked for) went belly up was because they couldn’t get the costs down (there were other more important reasons, but that’s H2O under the bridge). What GWS did was to modify the incoming sun’s rays instead of modifying the solar cell. Brilliant idea really. It’s surprisingly simple too. They have the sunlight pass through this liquid, and liquid can be made to change a light’s wavelength. They claim that it could improve efficiencies by 250%! That would make a 13% efficient cell 13*(1+2.5)= 42.5% efficient. More importantly, it should take an 18% efficient cell (like some of the more expensive sharp solar cells) and make them 18% * (1+2.5) = 63% efficient! Believe me when I say that is truly mind-boggling. In fact, it’s way too mind-boggling. Those are best case numbers - based on their best case estimates. My guess is that they’re never get efficiencies better than 50% with Silicon solar cells - and even that has to be proven in a real world setting. However, assuming that this is true then suddenly Solar PV is competitive - even beyond competitive in some ways with Solar Thermal for Power Plants. It even puts distributed electricity (domestic roof panels) attractive for the masses instead of the rich. In short, this effectively makes solar 1/3 it’s current cost - which makes Solar PV competitive with grid, WITHOUT SUBSIDIES! I won’t do the math for you, but believe me … with current solar pv subsidies (50% in many states), it will make you money the day you install it (assuming a decent 7 year loan).

Call me a cynic if you must, but come on …

I’ll believe it when I see it. Call me a cynic if you must, but come on … some things are just too good to be true. Or are they? One thing is for sure … it will never happen unless they cut the cost of PV grade silicon by 75%. That’s supposed to happen within the next couple years based on some new technologies… again: I’ll believe it when I see it. I also wonder if when they said 250% more efficient (1 + 2.5 more = 3.5x current efficiency), what they meant was 250% of it’s current efficiency meaning it’s only 150% more efficient (1 + 1.5 more = 2.5x current efficiency). There’s a huge difference there. Still if it’s only 150% more efficient, that’s still incredibly significant, as it puts Solar PV in a whole new market.

Being deeply interested in the future of Energy, and knowing the interesting fact that what 99% of the public hears is pure baloney, I’m always on the lookout for the latest and greatest new energy technology and this one is worth mentioning. A little background for you non-physics-types first … E=mc^2 means that if you could convert matter directly to energy then you could get an unbelievable amount of energy from it. One ton (think of a dump truck full of dirt) could power 3 Million homes for a year. Or it can provide the propulsion for space tourists to cheaply fly around the solar system and beyond, and at much higher speeds than is currently possible. The Polywell EIF (Inertial-Electrodynamic Fusion) device, invented by Robert Bussard who was a former Assistant Director to the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), can do just that. It seems to have overcome all the major obstacles facing fusion.

The Polywell Fusion Reactor

That said, don’t confuse a fusion (fuse atoms together) reactor with a fission (tears atoms apart) reactor. Dangerous and dirty fission is what all contemporary nuclear reactors use. If it helps you, think “fusion = fuse together, or build up”, “fission = tear apart, destroy”. Fusion is usually good because it produces safe byproducts, fission is bad because it usually produces dangerous byproducts and requires radioactive fuel.

The proposed fusion-based energy generator uses Boron of which we have enough reserves to last us 200,000 years (at our current energy usage). What’s more is that the only byproduct is unreactive (safe) helium which harmlessly vents naturally to space, where it is the 2nd most abundant element in the universe. Sounds better than Solar CSP of which I’m such a huge fan. Time will tell. I’m convinced Einstein would love it Why not us?

I saw a PBS special (or was it a CPAN thing? - can’t remember) recently called “Peak Oil”. If you get a chance watch it. Let me repeat myself: If you get a chance watch it. Apparently in about 5 years we (mankind) will reach a point in oil production called “Peak Oil”. That’s when we’ve tapped pretty much everything there is to tap. From then on oil production will decrease. It will be gradual, and over the next 30-50 years oil production will drop at about the same rate it has increased up until now. Of course all this is theoretical, but it was very convincing and based on as about solid evidence as anything that I’ve heard. It sounded more believable than global warming - and I believe in global warming. I became a believer about 5 - 10 years ago. Even before then however I thought that prudence was the best policy and have disapproved of the negligent attitudes that our government has had toward the issue. Anyway, Peak Oil is a very closely related topic to the global warming topic, but in my opinion it is far more frightening. Then there’s global dimming - which is apparently far more statistically significant, and perhaps more influential on the world’s weather patterns than gloabal warming. The upshot of global dimming is that it is likely easily purged from the atmosphere within a short time, greenhouse gases aren’t though. What’s worse, when Peak Oil is reached then global dimming will likely go down while greenhouse gases remain or increase. It is now known that the phenomena known as global dimming has counteracted the effects of global warming to a very significant degree. The result is that when the global dimming decreases then the earth will become very very hot very quickly. And that seems to be right around the corner. The economic impact of Peak Oil is even far more significant. I used to work in a PV Solar Cell factory as an engineer. I know the alternative energy market industry, and believe me when I tell you it sucks. Nothing comes close to petroleum when it comes to bang per buck. Coal is the closest thing - but it has such a long way to go. Bottom line: when petroleum becomes more scarce (only 5 years away) all hell will break loose. It kind of puts the Iraq confict into a whole new light. I don’t know all the alterior motives that may have existed for going into Iraq, but if we’re in for what it sounds like Peak Oil will give us then we would have been stupid to not secure a large portion of the middle east for ourselves to keep from being financially utterly destroyed after Peak Oil production is reached. Maybe we really did go in there to secure for ourselves a little future. Maybe, however unpopular it is now, in 5-10 years we’ll be very glad that we did. So here it is, unbelievably cold … what do I do? We’ve dressed our kids in thermals and thick clothing. I’m wearing 3 pairs of thermals, warm clothes and a turtleneck sweater. We keep the temperature in the mid 60’s and let it get real cold at night. We have a pellet stove hooked directly into our forced air system that I plan on using next year. I’ve been doing a lot of programming lately. Thank heavens the orders for kiosks have slowed down, as my shop is freezing and I don’t want to fire it up. Too expensive to keep warm when it gets down to the sub-zero temps (F). So sadly I’m incredibly reliant on heating oil, and there’s little I can do about it. At a minimum I do think an extra hefty gas guzzler tax should be waged on gas guzzlers. Yes, that’s coming from me, a Republican that hates big government and beauracratic red tape. I also think they should triple the incentives given to adopt non-fossil-fuel technologies. Don’t give the money directly to the energy companies to develop new enery technologies - instead give it to comsumers who will invest in them. It should be financed with the gas guzzler tax. Huge incentives should be given to make homes better insulated. Public awareness campaigns should advocate dressing warmly and keeping home temperatures at a lower setting in the winter. Public transportation needs to be made more inviting and convenient. All these things need to happen, and most of them aren’t even being discussed. And no more Hydrogen Economy flap. Where do you think the hydrogen comes from? It comes from either water that is split by fossil fuel technologies, or directly from fossil fuel itself. H2 Economy is a clap trap and the public has been all too engaging. And on top of that we need to secure for ourselves a mutually beneficial relationship with the bulk of Middle East countries as we prepare for this transistion.