alt energy savior

ALT ENERGY SAVIOR


Just a reminder on the comment made by a loyal minion. He suggests forgetting about my recommended solar charger for AA/AAA/C/D batteries and going with the yard solar lamps ( Sunforce 86115 Solar Garden Lights pack of 10 ). On sale at Home Despot ( Dictators' Homes: Lifestyles of the World's Most Colourful Despots ) they can be two to four bucks each. One lamp ( or at least my sample unit I have that I turned into a porch lamp by lashing it to the roof railing- the door is on the north side and to see any sun you must go up on the roof- good enough to see the desired keys on your key ring ) will charge a single AA battery. I can’t vouch for the quality or longevity or daily performance or run a comparison between them and the regular unit but it is certainly something to keep in mind if you want to save a few bucks. Say your LED flashlights ( Neiko Super-Bright 9 LED Heavy-Duty Compact Aluminum Flashlight - Gunmetal Silver Color ) all use three AA batteries. Then you just need three solar chargers ( the kind that stick in the ground such as around the driveway so that your Yuppie McMansion can look like you have nothing better to do than engage in outdoor design ) for under ten bucks ( I would most likely buy better quality rechargeables myself ). Or, buy six for eighteen bucks compared to the other charger costing $20 plus shipping plus the cost of the batteries. I don’t think it is the best way to go but at least it is a bit cheaper and can be done three bucks at a time.

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There seems to be a movement afoot to get everyone to opt for the slower Pervert Security Grope rather than the Full Body Radiation Exposure Leading To Lifelong Infertility Scan in airports on Wednesday’s busy holiday flights. I don’t know how the airlines do things if security holds you up past your flight departure time. My guess is that they leave your ass there. If that is so then the plan will fail. If the average idiot will scream down the freeway twenty miles over the speed limit in the middle of winter, untroubled by snowplows or black ice or the need to have studded tires then they certainly don’t care if they receive enough radiation to cause them to glow in the dark as long as they get nowhere in a hurry. If they were to miss the Turkey Day ( Turkey Day (Scholastic Reader Level 1) ) football game their entire universe would implode and we can’t have that.

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As many folks have guessed on the missile sighting off California awhile back, I feel the need to chime in myself with absolutely no facts or even an educated guess. Some say China was warning us against quantitative easing. Bad theory, since it is a done deal. Others say the Chinese are probing our defenses. China doesn’t have to do anything about our defenses other than waiting for us to go from shooting ourselves in the foot to working our way up to a head shot. No, my theory is that someone, and it doesn’t really matter if it was our own people or the Chinese, decided to spread an aerial dispersed disease. Yes, it might have been easier to infect a van load of illegals south of the border. But if you are Chinese the missile is much easier. And if you are an American agency you can’t do anything that is cheap or easy but instead overcomplicate everything and overpay by twenty times. Perhaps not the most feasible theory, but no one else seems to be advancing it and it’s all the time I care to devote to the “problem”.

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Whenever I bring up Peak Oil ( Hubbert's Peak: The Impending World Oil Shortage (New Edition) ) someone has a ready made answer to solve it. Now, I’m not saying they aren’t great ideas. Usually they are. I just try to point out how unlikely they are to be implemented. Today, mass solar arrays in the desert. Okay, say we go with mirrors and a boiling medium to generate electricity rather than silicon PV panels ( HQRP 100 Watt (50W + 50W) Solar Panel 100W Power 12V Monocrystalline 12 Volt PV Module DC Battery Charger RV Marine Yacht Boat Car + HQRP Coaster ). That makes sense given the high cost of converting free sand into an electrical generating sheet. This has been done before in our southwest and it evidently wasn’t feasible enough to replicate. And I’m just guessing but more than likely that was done with Federal tax rebates, outright subsidies and a high cost of oil at the time of planning/construction. I haven’t done more than casual reading on the subject but I can guess at the number of problems. First, our country hasn’t engaged in a truly massive project since the Vietnam War. No more Interstate freeways, no more moon landing, no more WWII style warfare. Ever since our own domestic oil supply has contracted there has been no real “huge” project. Second, we might debate this but my gut feeling is that all things considered oil is really not all that expensive. Granted, it is not the same as in decades past where it was so abundant that we had to invent ways to use more. It isn’t so cheap that it hasn’t effected the economy big time. But it certainly is still cheap when compared to alternate energy costs. Oil goes up, the price of steel in windmills or the cost of silicon in PV panels goes up. It would behoove us to convert oil into alternate energy for a less traumatic future but unfortunately oil is still cheaper to burn outright. And since almost no one wants to believe we are running out of it, no one thinks we need to take the financial hit to invest in alternates.

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Then there is the issue of the costs added to a solar project. Moving infrastructure out to a proposed site. The cost of custom mirrors. The engineering costs. Specialized labor. Real estate cost. Would copper be available for the extra electrical lines? And what about NIMBY? As the reader pointed out, lack of balls, lack of will. And lack of financing. And lack of motivation ( as long as the perception of oil abundance is here ). And the lack of available materials. Unless you cannibalize existing lines which would only happen with forced suburb relocations. Plus, how far would pure electric go to run things. If we don’t have the materials for all new cars and all new fueling stations ( the current grid is way under maintained so fueling at home crashes the grid ), what use is the whole endeavor? Hydrogen conversion in the desert might be far better if placed on an existing rail line but if car conversion on a mass scale is not feasible, or if bringing in the water is problematic ( like it is to bring water to the Rockies oil shale deposits ), it is a No Go. It might be that everything is feasible and doable but until oil gets much more expensive than nothing will be done. And by that time we still encounter other problems such as materials, fuel to convert, financing, or even the simple fact that all material, labor, and finance costs move in pace with oil and so it can never be done.

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If we had acted after the seventies oil problems we would have had decades of affordable oil and had first dibs on materials before the Chinese got them to build its own Industrial Economy. As it is, most likely it is too late.

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My e-mail is jimd303@netzero.com
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