Tag: renewable energy

The Fantastical Bolt Box Is Here

You can throw away your gas cans, your flashlights, your batteries, your power lines.  

The world is saved.  Hallelujah.

The fabled bolt box that can store lightning bolts in a thimble and make talk of intermittent energy as defunct as a flat earth has been patented.



Patent filing claims solar energy ‘breakthrough’

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/201…

In science-challenged U.S. only a patent application has been filed but elsewhere patents have issued.


Inventor Ronald Ace said that his flat-panel “Solar Traps,” which can be mounted on rooftops or used in electric power plants, will shatter decades-old scientific and technological barriers that have stymied efforts to make solar energy a cheap, clean and reliable alternative.

“This is a fundamental scientific and environmental discovery,” Ace said. “This invention can meet about 92 percent of the world’s energy needs.”

Not only is Ace – a truly accomplished inventor – an unparalleled genius but he is supremely modest as well.  It is obviously nonsensical to talk of a missing 8% when limitless energy is available to all.

John Darnell, a scientist and the former congressional aide who has monitored Ace’s dogged research for more than three years and has reviewed his complex calculations, has no doubts.

“Anybody who is skilled in the art and understands what he’s proposing is going to have this dumbfounding reaction: ‘Oh, well it’s obvious it’ll work,'” said Darnell, a biochemist with an extensive background in thermodynamics.

There you have an official imprimatur that is even superior to Papal bull.

Best,  Terry

If Only Those Kindergartners in Newton Had Guns To Defend Themselves…

Yeah, another shooting.  This one in an elementary school in Newton, MA.  One shooting that struck even closer to home for us was across the country at a shopping Mall in Happy Valley, OR.  Yeah I know they call it Portland but we lived in a trailer court in or near  Happy Valley when we were first married.

It was a happy valley then.  Probably the same number of loons but not so many semi-automatic guns with huge capacity clips.  There was no FoxNews and Rush Limbaugh and…

Oh there were plenty of gun nuts but it just wasn’t the same.

The most dire threat to the kiddies and their progeny comes from those leading us to a hellish future, from the Koch denialists to the Obama temporalists to the sun and wind worshipers.

And I suggest the last is not the least.


Sorry, Terry. I do not find your claims credible.

From a desultory discussion in comments at the end of

http://www.renewableenergyworl…

My comments were just facts, not arguments.

In response to the usual fanciful figuring of an imagined continent-wide smart grid, selective weather data and wildly overbuilt wind farms, I pointed to the words of Rep. Jerry McNerny (D-CA), mathematics Ph.D. and wind energy entrepreneur, supporting baseload renewable energy.

Might as well have written on the wind.

It is akin to the Japanese seriously planning [seriously] an armada of solar satellites beaming energy down to earthlings like Scotty used to beam down the crew of the Enterprise.  Meanwhile, of course, the nukes were about to fall down, go boom.  How would Japanese know of the threats of nuclear energy?

You just can’t talk to crazy people.

Shouldn’t give them semi-automatic rifles with large clips.  Actually the shooter in Happy Valley stole his gun from a neighbor.  Best the neighbor of crazy people not have semi-automatic guns with large clips IMO.

But worst of all, by far the worst of all, is trying to talk to sane, concerned people with a closed mind.

“Bad” Bob is a contributor to Huffington Post where he misleads other innocents in the wind and solar cult.

Best,  Terry

Join the Green New Deal Coalition

In response to our nation's vast economic and ecological problems, Green Change has launched a campaign for a Green New Deal.

The Green New Deal is an ambitious program to create economic prosperity together with ecological sustainability.

We are building a coalition of candidates, individuals and organizations to support the Green New Deal – starting today.

Join the Green New Deal Coalition now.

Here are the ten policies you endorse by joining the Green New Deal Coalition:

1) Cut military spending at least 70%;

2) Create millions of green union jobs through massive public investment in renewable energy, mass transit and conservation;

3) Set ambitious, science-based greenhouse gas emission reduction targets, and enact a revenue-neutral carbon tax to meet them;

4) Establish single-payer “Medicare for all” health care;

5) Provide tuition-free public higher education;

6) Change trade agreements to improve labor, environmental, consumer, health and safety standards;

7) End counterproductive prohibition policies and legalize marijuana;

8) Enact tough limits on credit interest and lending rates, progressive tax reform and strict financial regulation;

9) Amend the U.S. Constitution to abolish corporate personhood; and

10) Pass sweeping electoral, campaign finance and anti-corruption reforms.

Will you help us turn these ideas into reality?

Sign up for the Green New Deal Coalition now.

The first step is to agree on these ten priorities. The next step is to push for specific policies to make them happen.

We need your help. Share your ideas about a Green New Deal on the Green Change network.

The Preamble; Fix it or Nix It?



Transportation Without Petroleum or Biofuels

copyright © 2010 Betsy L. Angert.  BeThink.org

At present, oil saturates the Gulf Stream.  An official six-month cessation of permits for new drilling did not actually affect the industry or government decisions.  Despite Moratorium, Drilling Projects Move Ahead.  To explain such an authorization and waiver, the Department of the Interior and the Minerals Management Services Division which regulates drilling, pointed to public statements by Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar.  He did not intend to forbid all first cuts in the Earth’s crust.  Absolutely not.  The Federal Government approved wells off the coast of Louisiana in June. Regardless of the day, or realities that are anathema to our citizenry, little has truly changed.  Today, just as in yesteryear, we, the people of the United States of America, in order to form a more perfect Union, polish policies to appear as though our civilization would wish to protect and defend all beings, equally.  

BP; Texas Tea or Gulf Coast Coffee



BP Spills Coffee

copyright © 2010 Betsy L. Angert.  BeThink.org

For more than a century, in unison, the planets’ population proclaimed, thankfully petroleum flows.  Oil powers our machines.  The refined product has helped us manufacture massive quantities of clothing, aluminum sheet, and photovoltaic (PV) solar cells.  “Plastics.”  As was professed in a popular film decades ago, “There’s a great future in plastics.” Presently, and in the past, BP understood this and much more.  The company’s Executives knew petroleum could and would provide endless profits, power, and a perpetual presence.

Dystopia 22: Gerry Revisited

Invictus (Unconquered)

Out of the night  that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my  unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of  circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under  the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond  this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the  shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and  shall find me unafraid.

It matters not how strait  the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I  am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

William Ernest Henley

A favorite poem of Nelson Mandela

NIMBYism threatens our future …

Oh, no you don’t!

You’re not doing that!

Not-In-My-Back-Yard!!!  

This is perhaps one of the most natural of human reactions.

Sludge plant? I might poop but don’t put that upwind of me.

Oil Refinery? I’ll drive as much as I want but don’t let that cancer-causing behemoth ruin my view or threaten my kids’ health.

Prison? Put the bums away, far away from me.

Not-In-My-Back-Yard!!!

Natural and understandable doesn’t make NIMBYism right or correct.

He Works. We Wait



“White House to Main Street” Town Hall: Elyria, OH

copyright © 2010 Betsy L. Angert.  BeThink.org

A recent change of the guard in the Massachusetts Senate race force the President to reveal he is working.  We, the American people, are waiting, just as we have been for months and months.  For a full year, countless citizens have felt as though they were patient.  Yet, the President did not seem to have their interests at heart.  True change has not come.  Countless constituents anticipate none is forthcoming.  Three hundred and sixty five plus have gone by and the American people are tired of being patient.

Clean Energy Jobs go swimming

Clean Energy Jobs Go Swimming: $300 million per year for 10,000 jobs

This is part of a series of brief posts on ‘clean energy jobs‘ opportunities for sparking meaningful employment, quickly, in the United States.

Legislation is, they say, analogous to making sausage. Sometimes, in the mixing and mashing, seemingly well-intentioned and sensible options can create counter-productive situations and leave many valued goods on the table. One small example of this could open the door to creating employment, lowering costs for state & local governments (including educational institutions), improving ‘customer’ satisfaction, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

When it came to the stimulus package earlier this year, “swimming pools” were explicitly excluded from ARRA funding mechanisms.  While, amid serious economic stress and government investment to keep the economic from continuing in freefall, it might have seemed morally appropriate to do this, this restriction simply flies in the face of reality and good sense.

Natural Fusion is Energy (and otherwise) COOL …

Since diving into the deep end when it comes to energy issues, almost every day sees new fascinating concepts, approaches, and technologies.  Fascinating … exciting … even hope inspiring at times.  And, as well, as the passion builds, so many of these are truly Energy COOL.

And, Natural Fusion truly does look to be Energy COOL …

No, we’re not speaking about Cold Fusion, but Penn State’s entry into the DOE Solar Decathlon, which opens Thursday on the Mall in Washington, DC.  

Let’s take a look at some of Natural Fusion’s features from its website, which is dynamic, enabling rapid connection of concepts and approaches with the home’s physical layout.

Obama fact sheet too generous to McCain re renewable energy

The spin machines work long and hard and fast nowadays. Email boxes around the country are filled with “fact sheets” and other material from campaigns during presidential debates and in the hours afterwards. Among other things, the Obama campaign produced “John McCain’s 26 Lies Tonight“. Lie #16:

RENEWABLE ENERGY: McCain claimed to support renewable energies, but his record shows otherwise. He has voted 23 times against investing in renewable energies and opposed a bipartisan effort to remove tax breaks for oil companies in order to invest in renewable energy.

23 times? Wow, that seems pretty bad … except that the real story is worse than that. On at least 50 occasions, John McCain voted against clean energy or (14 times) simply didn’t bother to show up.

McCain Versus Sustainable Energy Independence

Crossposted to Agent Orange … please help make Susan Kraemer’s good work on this more visible. And click through to the article on the original site, vote it up and leave comments, so her boss knows that her hard work is appreciated.

I just read up on John McCain’s 50 Votes Against Clean Energy, on the MatteR Network(1).

The take home message is really straightforward. The only energy sector that John McCain supports is Nuclear Power. When a “clean”(2) vote comes up for any Sustainable Energy Source, McCain’s position is simple: He’s Agin It.

It seems that the claim at the DNC that McCain voted against Renewable Power 25 times has been attacked by a fact checking web site, so what Susan Kraemer has done is go through 50 votes, and the picture is that of one of the dirtiest Sustainable Energy voting records in the Senate:

Summary

McCain voted with Boxer 1 out of 50 times – against signing the Kyoto protocol (vote 14). McCain voted with Inhofe 42 out of 44 times unless Inhofe voted with Boxer (see votes 34 and 35). McCain voted with Republicans unless the majority voted with Democrats  (see votes 9, 10, 12, 15,16 and 36). I will similarly review Senator Obama’s voting record in a future post.

The full tally is 37 votes against, and, during his current run for the White House, Missing 13 times on bills where he has stated opposition.

The Take-Home message is: on Sustainable Energy, John McCain is Inhofe’s twin, and Boxer’s opposite.

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