Category Archives: turn it off

Can We Live Off The Land If We Have To – Bear in mind that doom is rarely sudden

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Rome did not end in a day or a week or a year or even a decade. Still the past few day’s meditations have been CAN we live off the Earth peacefully? Today’s is better thought of as WILL we HAVE to life off the Earth peacefully?

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/story/print?guid=47729BA0-933E-4299-92CC-EB41EEE671D2

Paul B. Farrell

Paul B. Farrell

 

Oct. 20, 2009, 1:38 p.m. EDT

Death of ‘Soul of Capitalism:’ Bogle, Faber, Moore

20 reasons America has lost its soul and collapse is inevitable

By Paul B. Farrell, MarketWatch

ARROYO GRANDE, Calif. (MarketWatch) — Jack Bogle published “The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism” four years ago. The battle’s over. The sequel should be titled: “Capitalism Died a Lost Soul.” Worse, we’ve lost “America’s Soul.” And worldwide the consequences will be catastrophic.

That’s why a man like Hong Kong’s contrarian economist Marc Faber warns in his Doom, Boom & Gloom Report: “The future will be a total disaster, with a collapse of our capitalistic system as we know it today.”

No, not just another meltdown, another bear market recession like the one recently triggered by Wall Street’s “too-greedy-to-fail” banks. Faber is warning that the entire system of capitalism will collapse. Get it? The engine driving the great “American Economic Empire” for 233 years will collapse, a total disaster, a destiny we created.OK, deny it. But I’ll bet you have a nagging feeling maybe he’s right, the end may be near. I have for a long time: I wrote a column back in 1997: “Battling for the Soul of Wall Street.” My interest in “The Soul” — what Jung called the “collective unconscious” — dates back to my Ph.D. dissertation: “Modern Man in Search of His Soul,” a title borrowed from Jung’s 1933 book, “Modern Man in Search of a Soul.” This battle has been on my mind since my days at Morgan Stanley 30 years ago, witnessing the decline.

Has capitalism lost its soul? Guys like Bogle and Faber sense it. Read more about the soul in physicist Gary Zukav’s “The Seat of the Soul,” Thomas Moore’s “Care of the Soul” and sacred texts.

But for Wall Street and American capitalism, use your gut. You know something’s very wrong: A year ago “too-greedy-to-fail” banks were insolvent, in a near-death experience. Now, magically they’re back to business as usual, arrogant, pocketing outrageous bonuses while Main Street sacrifices, and unemployment and foreclosures continue rising as tight credit, inflation and skyrocketing Federal debt are killing taxpayers.

Yes, Wall Street has lost its moral compass. They created the mess, now, like vultures, they’re capitalizing on the carcass. They have lost all sense of fiduciary duty, ethical responsibility and public obligation.

Here are the Top 20 reasons American capitalism has lost its soul:

1. Collapse is now inevitable

Capitalism has been the engine driving America and the global economies for over two centuries. Faber predicts its collapse will trigger global “wars, massive government-debt defaults, and the impoverishment of large segments of Western society.” Faber knows that capitalism is not working, capitalism has peaked, and the collapse of capitalism is “inevitable.”

When? He hesitates: “But what I don’t know is whether this final collapse, which is inevitable, will occur tomorrow, or in five or 10 years, and whether it will occur with the Dow at 100,000 and gold at $50,000 per ounce or even confiscated, or with the Dow at 3,000 and gold at $1,000.” But the end is inevitable, a historical imperative.

2. Nobody’s planning for a ‘Black Swan’

While the timing may be uncertain, the trigger is certain. Societies collapse because they fail to plan ahead, cannot act fast enough when a catastrophic crisis hits. Think “Black Swan” and read evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond’s “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed.”

A crisis hits. We act surprised. Shouldn’t. But it’s too late: “Civilizations share a sharp curve of decline. Indeed, a society’s demise may begin only a decade or two after it reaches its peak population, wealth and power.”

Warnings are everywhere. Why not prepare? Why sabotage our power, our future? Why set up an entire nation to fail? Diamond says: Unfortunately “one of the choices has depended on the courage to practice long-term thinking, and to make bold, courageous, anticipatory decisions at a time when problems have become perceptible but before they reach crisis proportions.”

Sound familiar? “This type of decision-making is the opposite of the short-term reactive decision-making that too often characterizes our elected politicians,” thus setting up the “inevitable” collapse. Remember, Greenspan, Bernanke, Bush, Paulson all missed the 2007-8 meltdown: It will happen again, in a bigger crisis.

3. Wall Street sacked Washington

Bogle warned of a growing three-part threat — a “happy conspiracy” — in “The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism:” “The business and ethical standards of corporate America, of investment America, and of mutual fund America have been gravely compromised.”

But since his book, “Wall Street America” went over to the dark side, got mega-greedy and took control of “Washington America.” Their spoils of war included bailouts, bankruptcies, stimulus, nationalizations and $23.7 trillion new debt off-loaded to the Treasury, Fed and American people.

Who’s in power? Irrelevant. The “happy conspiracy” controls both parties, writes the laws to suit its needs, with absolute control of America’s fiscal and monetary policies. Sorry Jack, but the “Battle for the Soul of Capitalism” really was lost.

4. When greed was legalized

Go see Michael Moore’s documentary, “Capitalism: A Love Story.” “Disaster Capitalism” author Naomi Klein recently interviewed Moore in The Nation magazine: “Capitalism is the legalization of this greed. Greed has been with human beings forever. We have a number of things in our species that you would call the dark side, and greed is one of them. If you don’t put certain structures in place or restrictions on those parts of our being that come from that dark place, then it gets out of control.”

Greed’s OK, within limits, like the 10 Commandments. Yes, the soul can thrive around greed, if there are structures and restrictions to keep it from going out of control. But Moore warns: “Capitalism does the opposite of that. It not only doesn’t really put any structure or restrictions on it. It encourages it, it rewards” greed, creating bigger, more frequent bubble/bust cycles.

It happens because capitalism is now in “the hands of people whose only concern is their fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders or to their own pockets.” Yes, greed was legalized in America, with Wall Street running Washington.

5. Triggering the end of our ‘life cycle’

Like Diamond, Faber also sees the historical imperative: “Every successful society” grows “out of some kind of challenge.” Today, the “life cycle” of capitalism is on the decline.

He asks himself: “How are you so sure about this final collapse?” The answer: “Of all the questions I have about the future, this is the easiest one to answer. Once a society becomes successful it becomes arrogant, righteous, overconfident, corrupt, and decadent … overspends … costly wars … wealth inequity and social tensions increase; and society enters a secular decline.” Success makes us our own worst enemy.

Quoting 18th century Scottish historian Alexander Fraser Tytler: “The average life span of the world’s greatest civilizations has been 200 years” progressing from “bondage to spiritual faith … to great courage … to liberty … to abundance … to selfishness … to complacency … to apathy … to dependence and … back into bondage!”

Where is America in the cycle? “It is most unlikely that Western societies, and especially the U.S., will be an exception to this typical ‘society cycle.’ … The U.S. is somewhere between the phase where it moves ‘from complacency to apathy’ and ‘from apathy to dependence.'”

In short, America is a grumpy old man with hardening of the arteries. Our capitalism is near the tipping point, unprepared for a catastrophe, set up for collapse and rapid decline.

15 more clues capitalism lost its soul … is a disaster waiting to happen

Much more evidence litters the battlefield:

  1. Wall Street wealth now calls the shots in Congress, the White House
  2. America’s top 1% own more than 90% of America’s wealth
  3. The average worker’s income has declined in three decades while CEO compensation exploded over ten times
  4. The Fed is now the ‘fourth branch of government’ operating autonomously, secretly printing money at will
  5. Since Goldman and Morgan became bank holding companies, all banks are back gambling with taxpayer bailout money plus retail customer deposits
  6. Bill Gross warns of a “new normal” with slow growth, low earnings and stock prices
  7. While the White House’s chief economist retorts with hype of a recovery unimpeded by the “new normal”
  8. Wall Street’s high-frequency junkies make billions trading zombie stocks like AIG, FNMA, FMAC that have no fundamental value beyond a Treasury guarantee
  9. 401(k)s have lost 26.7% of their value in the past decade
  10. Oil and energy costs will skyrocket
  11. Foreign nations and sovereign funds have started dumping dollars, signaling the end of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency
  12. In two years federal debt exploded from $11.2 to $23.7 trillion
  13. New financial reforms will do little to prevent the next meltdown
  14. The “forever war” between Western and Islamic fundamentalists will widen
  15. As will environmental threats and unfunded entitlements

“America Capitalism” is a “Lost Soul” … we’ve lost our moral compass … the coming collapse is the end of an “inevitable” historical cycle stalking all great empires to their graves. Downsize your lifestyle expectations, trust no one, not even media.

Faber is uncertain about timing, we are not. There is a high probability of a crisis and collapse by 2012. The “Great Depression 2” is dead ahead. Unfortunately, there’s absolutely nothing you can do to hide from this unfolding reality or prevent the rush of the historical imperative.

:}

I am just shaking in my boots.

Oh, and if you are interested in hiring a green consultant…I hear these guys are pretty good.

 http://www.greenappleconsult.com/

:}

Do Not Mess With Powerlines – I have not done enough about safety

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I do not care whether it is gasoline, oil, coal, natural gas, or electricity. Power can be dangerous and our motto is it’s Jam Band Friday ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UIY45rqzmNQ ).

NO – Safety First!

www.plu.edu/~safety/safety-training/home.html

:}

(  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sq2vl99iIEc&feature=related )

There is a show that  is put on at the Illinois State Fair by the folks at Safe Electricity Org

sfair3.jpg

http://www.safeelectricity.org/

It amazes me after living in 2 hurrican prone areas…Tampa and New Orleans… that anyone would mess around with downed powerlines or purposely come int0 contact with high power electrical equipment. But they do every year.

:}

( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ab6lr2b66Ig )

live.psu.edu/album/1170

Do not drive over, touch or otherwise disturb downed powerline. They will fry your limbs off your body.

:}

( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1IyJOc-l4s )

Shawn Miller lost an arm when he touched a downed line:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q-mLyqXndA

:}

( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IuwxZSIS__4 )
Shawn’s case was a lack of education and thoughtlessness. Some people do it on purpose.

http://205.243.100.155/frames/longarc.htm

long spark!

 

The cylindrical object on the left houses a multi-million volt (MV) high voltage impulse generator (called a Marx Generator) at the Siberian Power Research Institute  (SIBNIIE) high voltage testing facility in Novosibirsk, Siberia. The rate of rise of the voltage pulse from the Marx Generator was adjusted to maximize the “efficiency” of long spark propagation. Although first reports of huge 100+ meter sparks were initially met with skepticism by scientists and high voltage engineers, a number of power engineers and scientists have subsequently witnessed similar events at this facility. Sometimes these errant bolts hit the top of street lamps in the adjacent parking lot!  At this facility, sparks up to 200 meters long have been created using a (comparatively low) potential of 5.2 MV.  In order to gain a feel for scale in the above photo, the cylindrical building is 28 meters (~92 feet) high, and it houses a 28-stage Marx generator that’s capable of generating positive or negative output pulses of up to 7 million volts.

In late 2005, a member of the Tesla Coil Mailing List (Dmitry, a Tesla Coiling enthusiast who lives near the facility) was able to schedule a visit with members of their staff. Dmitry subsequently shared details about this facility in a series of email messages to the other members on the list, and the excellent pictures he took can be seen on our mirror of Terry Fritz’s old Hot-Streamer web site.  :}

They are insane.

( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xXIeD8HGoU )

:}

Run Like Hell The Pollution In The Atmosphere Will Kill Us – But there is no place to run

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and the people who are doing the pollution are lying to keep on doing it. As you know this week I have (it’s) been examining phrases with (jam) hell in them to avoid thinking about how (band) bad things are about to get here on Planet Earth. Now it appears that even if we stop today the oceans will continue to acidify for years (friday – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ySO-gryuO-c) and that means a huge loss of food.

http://www.what-the-hell-is-hell.com/Hellphrases.htm

Run like Hell seems to imply really really fast. Like you can run from hell? Or as the song says “get out of hell before they know you are there”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBcY9HGqehE&feature=related

But there is also something in the phrase that implies that you not look back,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ntm1YfehK7U&feature=related

And you you do not stop running until you can run no more.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRcQZ2tnWeg&feature=related

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run_Like_Hell

:}

Yet the Energy Industry continues to lie through its teeth about our real choices:

 http://www.alternet.org/water/141202/energy_industry_threatens_water_quality,_sways_congress_with_misleading_data/

Energy Industry Threatens Water Quality, Sways Congress With Misleading Data

By Abrahm Lustgarten, ProPublica. Posted July 9, 2009.

The industry is misleading the public into a false choice between the economy and the environment.

The two key arguments that the oil and gas industry is using to fight federal regulation of the natural gas drilling process called hydraulic fracturing — that the costs would cripple their business and that state regulations are already strong — are challenged by the same data and reports the industry is using to bolster its position.

One widely-referenced study (PDF) estimated that complying with regulations would cost the oil and gas industry more than $100,000 per gas well. But the figures are based on 10-year-old estimates and list expensive procedures that aren’t mentioned in the proposed regulations.

Another report (PDF) concluded that state regulations for drilling, including fracturing, “are adequately designed to directly protect water.” But the report reveals that only four states require regulatory approval before hydraulic fracturing begins. It also outlines how requirements for encasing wells in cement — a practice the author has said is critical to containing hydraulic fracturing fluids and protecting water — varies from state to state.

One recommendation in that report flies in face of industry’s assertion that its processes are safe: hydraulic fracturing needs more study and should be banned in certain cases near sensitive water supplies.

Hydraulic fracturing — where water and sand laced with chemicals is injected underground to break up rock — is considered essential to harvesting deeply buried gas reserves that some predict could meet U.S. demand for 116 years.

In 2005 hydraulic fracturing was exempted from the Safe Drinking Water Act, based on assurances that the process was safe. But a series of ProPublica reports has identified a number of cases in which water has been contaminated in drilling areas across the country, and EPA scientists say they can’t fully investigate them because of the exemption.

Now, Congress is considering legislation to restore the Environmental Protection Agency’s oversight of the process. And industry — leveraging its money and political connections — is using the recent reports to fight back.

Since January at least five studies have been published making the case that state laws (PDF) are adequate and that new regulations could hamper exploration (PDF), raise fuel prices and eliminate jobs. Three of the studies were paid for by the Department of Energy and produced by consulting firms that also work with the industry. One of the DOE reports (PDF) was written by the same person who authored a study for the Independent Petroleum Association of America (PDF)

:}

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jx3DtXyEqrE

If you are in England you might want to give these folks a try:

http://www.souththamesgas.co.uk

http://www.allaspectsltd.co.uk/services/plumbing-services/

Dave Stern likes them.

:}

Our Atmospere Is A Hell Bound Train – Illinois moves south and eventually ends up with Louisiana’s weather

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I have suddenly become interested in the descent into hell as a metaphor for the descent of humankind from peak activity to tribalism. I am not a big fan of the descent theory either. It seems like commercial activity and traveling are universal and have gone on since the beginning of time. It is true that certain forms of economic organization have come and gone. But it seems to me that it universally accepted education that comes and goes. Mainly that is because the things we know are true are  constantly evolving. Like he said in Men in Black:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJvl5fnB-bU&feature=PlayList&p=41D6FF8997B79F88&index=3

Anyway, the difference between “hell in a hand basket” and “hell bound train” is that the basket metaphor seems almost leisurely and the train seems to move a lot faster. As far as origins:

http://everything2.com/title/The%2520Hell-Bound%2520Train

One long poem or:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlqqeobOJvg

One long song:

http://tomtrumpinski.com/Tom_Trumpinski/Books_&_Stories.html

One long book.

Nonetheless you have to admit that it can’t predate the invention of the actual train itself. Why worry about such things? Because the idea that Illinois shall soon have sub Trobical weather is just simply revolting. But according to this it is happening faster than even the “extremists” thought:

http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2166

30 Jun 2009: Analysis

Report Gives Sobering View
Of Warming’s Impact on U.S.

A new U.S. government report paints a disturbing picture of the current and future effects of climate change and offers a glimpse of what the nation’s climate will be like by century’s end

by michael d. lemonick

For anyone wondering whether climate change has already hit the United States, a recent U.S. government report says it has — and in a big way.

Witness these trends: In the northeastern U.S., winter temperatures have increased by 4 degrees F since 1970; in the Pacific Northwest, the depth of the Cascade Mountain snowpack on April 1 has declined by 25 percent over the last half century, while spring runoff from the Cascades now occurs nearly a month earlier than 50 years ago; and in Alaska, winter temperatures have increased a stunning 6.3 degrees F in the last 50 years.

Those are just some of the sobering signs of rapid warming spelled out this month in a new report by a U.S. government body that almost no one has heard of: the United States Global Change Research Program (USGCR), which by law is required to report to Congress every ten years on the causes, effects, and possible responses to climate change in the U.S.

If the changes that the U.S. already has experienced make you uneasy, then perhaps you shouldn’t read the the downloadable document itself: It makes quite clear that if the U.S. and the world do little or nothing to slow greenhouse gas emissions, then the climate in the U.S. will be far hotter — and decidedly unpleasant — by the end of this century.

For those inclined to dismiss the USGCR’s report, it should be noted that the group’s scientific pedigree is impeccable. The study is a joint effort of the departments of Energy, Commerce, Defense, State, Interior, Transportation, Health and Human Services, and Agriculture — plus the Environmental Protection Agency, NASA, the Smithsonian Institution, the National Science Foundation, and the Agency for International Development.

The report, which includes new material not contained in the 2007 report

Click to Enlarge
climate

U.S. Global Change Research Program

The Warming of Illinois

of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, brings climate change down to the level where people live. For each region of the U.S., the report describes some of the changes that have already been observed, then looks at what’s likely to happen under both a low-emissions scenario (in which emissions of greenhouse gases are cut substantially) and a high-emissions scenario (where the world pretty much stays on the course it’s now following).

Either way, the authors say, significant changes are coming. Substantial emissions cuts are under active debate, but they remain hypothetical so far; the highlights cited here will therefore focus on the business-as-usual scenario — not in order to be alarmist, but to stay in the realm of the concrete.

:}

I included all that I did just so I could include the cool map of Illinois. Read the rest it is really frightening.

:}

Sealing A Continuous Ridge Vent – The method I used was not great

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But it was the best I could come up with off the top of my head. Now that I think about it I probably should have used hardening spray foam from a can. Commonly referred to by the trade name Stuff.

http://building.dow.com/global/greatstuffpro.htm

As you can see from this question:

http://en.allexperts.com/q/Roofing-1598/Icynene-Insulation-Sealing-Ridge.htm

Roofing – Icynene Insulation and Sealing Ridge Vents

Expert: Dan Merrill – 7/26/2007Question
I am having a home built and plan to have icynene foam insulation sprayed into the attic (exterior walls and the attic ceiling)as well as exterior walls.   My understanding is that with foam insulation, ridge vents are not needed and in fact defeat the purpose.   The house is now framed and the architectural shingles are being installed this week.   I noticed that the opening for the ridge vent has not been physically closed.    The builder uses a truss design rather than a stick built roof.    The tar paper and shingles are just being laid over the open ridge.Is this a problem?   It seems to me that there should be a more solid barrier at the ridge…like wood, rather than just foam, tar paper, then shingles.Any thoughts?   ThanksAnswer
It should not pose a problem.
The usage of conditioned attic space as you are building is fairly new to the building codes and not in general use.
It is likely that most roofing installers have never seen the specifications before, so they just did as they always do.
The foam will be sprayed under the whole roof deck, so it will act as a vapor barrier. The opening cut for a ridge vent should have no affect.

Dan

:}

However what I did  was cut a rectangular piece of black 4 mill. plastic:

http://hardware.hardwarestore.com/27-112-polyethylene-film/4-mil-plastic-black-poly-film-637465.aspx

Big enough to cover the exposed vent space between the rafters and allow some “drape” over all of the exposed surfaces, approximately 2 ft. by anywhere from 20 inches to 30 inches. I made a continuous bead of 30 year silicon caulk in a square configuration much smaller than the piece of plastic:

http://www.easy2diy.com/cm/easy/diy_ht_3d_index.asp?page_id=35783013

http://www.onlinetips.org/caulk-types

I pushed this up to the peak of the roof, making sure to make complete contact between all of the wood surfaces and the caulk. I then smoothed the plastic out and popped in  5 or 6 staples with my PowerShot staple gun.

http://www.shopping.com/xPO-Black-Decker-Black-Decker-5700-Powershot-Forward-Action-Stapler

Then I put the insulation back up. I bought a cool new product for cheap; plastic wrapped r-17 insulation for 16 bucks. Kinda like insulation in a tube.

http://www.askthebuilder.com/B54_Fiberglass_-_Newest_Improvements.shtml

And I dragged it across the artificial ceiling studs.

:}

A reader could rightfully ask, why didn’t you make the roofing company come and fix it?

The answer is 2 fold. One, I ordered the roof and I should have been aware that it came with a continuous ridge vent. It is not up to the roofer to go into the attic to determine if you ordered the right roof before he or she installs it.

Second I always fight the battles I want to fight. I have expertise in this area and though I wish I would have thought of the foam solution earlier, it did not take much longer to fix the problem the way I fixed it. Another homeowner might have thought that this was a fight to take to the roofing company.

It turned out when we finally got around to stripping out the paneling to remodel the attic that they had done the same thing to the dormer…man was it hot up there!

:}

Cool Surge – Another fraud just like the Amish Heater

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(jam band friday – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72DdlmI_Jug – Mark Bolen the original glam rocker)

What has happened to the newspaper business? Has corporate greed simply run amuck or has 30 years of deregulation simply inured us to the type of fraud you used to find in the back of comic books. You know the kind that advertises “X-Ray Glasses” – with the caveat that “you see what you imagine when you put them on”. Back then the sums of money involved were so small and the companies were so hard to find that the Feds didn’t even bother with tracking them down. Anyway they served as a valuable education tool for children – “advertising is nothing but skillful lieing”. But the Ad in the State Journal Register was a part of a national campaign that must have cost MILLIONs of $$$, was targeted at old people and as one commenter said, “could costs the lives of the elderly in a heat wave”. See for yourself:

http://www.regruntled.com/2008/06/26/cool-surge-scam/

coolsurgetower The morning paper had another of those full-page ads.  You know, the ones that look like newspaper articles but have “advertisement” in tiny print somewhere on the page.  According to the Cool Surge website:

The Cool Surge eco-friendly air cooler is a work of engineering genius from the China coast so advanced that no windows, vents or freon are required. It is as easy to use as a baby’s vaporizer and even includes the four hour extra cooling power of the glacier ice blocks. It uses the same electricity as a 60 watt light bulb, yet it blasts out ice cooled air. The hi-efficiency motor cools the air around the unit up to ten degrees so you’ll instantly feel cool and refreshed. The 3 cooling levels and auto shut off function put all the comfort controls right at your finger tips. It’s so impressive that it even comes with a full year Money Back Guarantee.

A 60-watt ventless air conditioner?  Yeah, right.  It’s a fan that blows air over “glacier ice blocks” which you have to freeze in your freezer.  The freezer uses all the electricity, not the fan.  And since the whole system (fan + refrigerator) is ventless, it makes your house WARMER, not cooler.  That is, the fan blows cool air in your face, while your refrigerator makes the kitchen warmer.  On average, the house gets warmer.

:}

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFpwSTEWc34&feature=related )

So essentially what the machine does is blow air over an icepack that you freeze in your freezer. This is nothing but an attempt to bilk poor people and people on fixed incomes out of money. They hope to take advantage of the ever rising energy prices to blind people to the laughable nature of any sort of cooling claims. You can buy a cheap window fan (that at least partial vents the heat from the fan) for 30 $$$ at a hardware store  and a freeze pack or 2 at your local grocery store for under 5 $$$. They want 300 $$$ PLUS shipping for their unit. What a joke. If you have ever taken your lunch to work with an ice pack in it, you know how well your cooler has to be insulated to make it work well. Try that in a house.

( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUc629OcQPo&feature=related )
http://www.thestuccocompany.com/maintenance/Cool-Surge-Portable-Air-Cooler-319687-.htm

This from Ed last year:

Posted by Edwin Pawlowski on July 18, 2008, 10:01 pm

The laws of physics still win. It uses ice blocks. You remove the heat
from the block in your freezer. The freezer takes that heat and puts it
back into the room. Then you put the blocks in the unit and they absorb
heat making you feel cool right in front of it. Meantime, the block get hot
so you put them back in the freezer and remove the heat putting it back into
the room again.

It is close to a perpetual motion machine, but it has to actually add heat
along the way from the mechanical devices moving the heat energy around.

Get a real AC that removes the heat from one place and puts it into the
outdoors, not in another room of the same house.

:}

( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkXPz9zoAS0  )

Then there is this cute response from HeyBub:

 http://groups.google.com/group/alt.home.repair/browse_thread/thread/27d30a3abc22aabb

HeyBub

It blows air over blocks of ice which you’ve created in your fridge.
Assuming your freezer is in the same house – a closed system – you’re
creating more heat than you’re removing.
Google “cool+surge+scam” yields over three million hits.

:}

( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NUTS0ggJ4o )

What does it matter if some boobs get swindled? Well it does matter.

http://www.globalaging.org/health/world/holocaust.htm

Holocaust of the elderly: death toll in French heatwave rises to 10,000

By John Lichfield in Paris

The Independent, 22 August 2003 

The summer of 2003 will be remembered as the year of the holocaust of the French elderly.

France was reeling yesterday from figures that suggested some 10,000 people – mostly over the age of 75 – were killed by this month’s heatwave, double the previous estimate.

As a political storm raged over blame for the deaths, President Jacques Chirac called an emergency cabinet meeting and promised an inquiry to examine “with complete openness” the failings of the health and welfare system.

Half the victims are believed to have died in old people’s homes, many operating with fewer staff during the August holidays. Many hospitals had closed complete wards for the month and were unable to offer sophisticated, or sometimes even basic, treatment to victims. About 2,000 people are thought to have died in their homes from the effects of dehydration and other heat- related problems while neighbours and relatives were away.

Such was the death rate – described officially as a period of “surplus mortality” – that families are now having to wait for up to two weeks for a funeral because of a shortage of coffins, priests and grave-diggers.


back

 

 

:}

Studies show that elderly women tend to live alone more than men and their life expectancies are higher so you are talking about your grandmother or your mother. So care already!

:}
I leave you with the history of Glam

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-YZnEomMjs

:}

Oil Speculators At It Again – This time instead of fooling with contracts they are actually fooling with the tankers themselves.

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Is there no end to the criminal ingenuity of Wall Street. It’s not enough that they destroy the mortgage market or sell all our jobs over seas, they just have to squeeze every dollar out of their grandmother’s social security check.

http://www.peakoil.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=45530

http://marketplace.publicradio.org//display/web/2009/01/09/pm_contango/?refid=0

Investment banks hoarding oil

Fifty million barrels of oil are just sitting around on supertankers. They’re not getting unloaded because investors are waiting for the price of oil to go up. Mitchell Hartman explains.

More on Oil

TEXT OF STORY

Bob Moon: Now here are some millions that haven’t raised the ire of Congress — 50 million… Barrels of oil. They’re sloshing around on huge supertankers right now. They’re not going into port, not getting unloaded. They’re just waiting, for the price of oil to go up. It’s a financial play known as “contango.” A lot of investors are getting into the act. Marketplace’s Mitchell Hartman explains.

Mitchell Hartman: “Contango” refers to a market condition in which the future price of a commodity is higher than the cost of buying it today. Right now, investors can lock in oil futures contracts to get paid $46 a barrel in March. They can fill a supertanker right now for just $41 and change. It’s pretty cheap to keep the tanker floating around in the ocean. When it unloads in the spring, the investors make a tidy profit: more than $3 a barrel.Daniel Yergin is author of the Pulitzer-winning book, “The Prize.” He says there’s a glut of oil right now, caused by the global recession. But futures prices are going higher, because OPEC has promised to cut production. And, says Yergin, oil traders are reading something else in the economic tea leaves.>Daniel Yergin: There’s a bet here that all of the stimulus, new economic programs, are going to work, and that by the second half of the year, we’re going to move out of recession, back into economic recovery, and that demand will start rising for oil again.

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For more please go to the PBS site and listen to the report. For a different point of view:

http://www.supplyexcellence.com/blog/2009/01/13/oil-price-fundamentals-contango-opec/

Oil Price Fundamentals: Don’t believe the hype

January 13th, 2009 · by Bob Zieger ·

Last week, Marketplace had an interesting report on the growing trend of “contango” in the oil industry. For those of you who are not familiar with the practice, contango occurs when investors sit on a commodity because the future price is higher than the spot price. In this case, that results in full oil tankers sitting offshore, waiting for the price to rise before they unload their 50 million barrels onto the market. So a quick buck is made by those holding the inventory on the high seas, but what happens when those barrels eventually reach a port ? We’ve got a glut of material again, which forces prices down. This type of profit-taking merely adds to the volatility of the market, but has little influence on macroeconomic fundamentals.

Frankly, it seems as though the oil/energy sector has the most interesting bag of tricks when it comes to speculation, rhetoric, and other market manipulation. But all the headline grabbing stories aside, oil is just like other commodities in that pricing is governed by supply and demand. While contango, Somali pirates, and accounting tricks can be a source of market volatility, these games don’t have a long term impact on pricing.

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The POINT for us is that they are “messing around” like mice worrying at a hole. Practicing. If someone doesn’t hit them with a broom, sooner or later they will succeed.

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For more on Cantango and other disgusting practices:

http://www.investopedia.com/articles/07/contango_backwardation.asp

 http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2009/01/super_contango.html

http://blogs.wsj.com/marketbeat/2008/11/11/crudes-credit-contango/

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/47633

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Please note Goldman Sachs says oil will hit 102$$ per barrel by the end of the year and I have said that oil will hit 130$$ a barrel by next summer. I wonder whose right?

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Ed Begley, Jr. And His Bicycle Powered Toaster – Is this really good for the environment?

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Is Ed Begley, Jr.  Silly? The answer is not so easy to discern.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkFr9XWaKuU

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=28_3Rzw-VCA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPECtUoeqP8

September 17, 2007 5:01 AM PDT

Human energy harvesting–

a very silly idea

Posted by Peter Glaskowsky

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9779334-7.html

Power to the people” was a popular rallying cry among anti-establishment activists in the 1960s.

“Power from the people” appears to be the latter-day equivalent.

The theory behind the slogan is that humans move around a lot, and the only result of all this motion is that the humans end up in a different place.

According to some, this isn’t good enough.

The MIT News reports that two MIT graduate students in architecture have proposed to extract energy from the motion of humans through public spaces such as train stations:

A responsive sub-flooring system made up of blocks that depress slightly under the force of human steps would be installed beneath the station’s main lobby. The slippage of the blocks against one another as people walked would generate power through the principle of the dynamo, a device that converts the energy of motion into that of an electric current.

But if there’s enough motion to provide harvestable energy, there’s enough motion for the humans to notice. Ever walked along a pedestrian suspension bridge that bounced under your feet? It takes more energy to walk on such a surface than it does on a rigid surface.

Where does that energy come from? From you, of course. It’s like carrying a parasite that takes a little bit of your energy. In fact, this approach is also called parasitic power generation. By keeping the parasite fed, you get a little more tired and you eat a little more food. In effect, you become a highly inefficient motor that runs on food.

Food calories are inefficient to produce. A wheat field is a giant biochemical solar panel that turns a small part of the sun’s energy into chemical compounds that you can eat.

And then those compounds have to be kept cool and transported large distances, then cooked and eaten. By comparison, traditional electric power generation is hugely more efficient.

So when you see celebrity Ed Begley Jr. using a stationary bicycle to turn a generator to power his toaster, remember that this is a crime against the environment–not environmentalism.

The same goes for parasitic energy generation–it creates exceptionally expensive energy. Nevertheless, there are places where this approach is entirely appropriate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_harvesting

Piezoelectric energy harvesting

The piezoelectric effect converts mechanical strain into electrical current or voltage. This strain can come from many different sources. Human motion, low-frequency seismic vibrations, and acoustic noise are everyday examples. Except in rare instances the piezoelectric effect operates in AC requiring time-varying inputs at mechanical resonance to be efficient.

Most piezoelectric electricity sources produce power on the order of milliwatts, too small for system application, but enough for hand-held devices such as some commercially-available self-winding wristwatches. One proposal is that they are used for micro-scale devices, such as in a device harvesting micro-hydraulic energy. In this device, the flow of pressurized hydraulic fluid drives a reciprocating piston supported by three piezoelectric elements which convert the pressure fluctuations into an alternating current.

Piezoelectric systems can convert motion from the human body into electrical power. DARPA has funded efforts to harness energy from leg and arm motion, shoe impacts, and blood pressure for low level power to implantable or wearable sensors. Careful design is needed to minimise user discomfort. These energy harvesting sources by association have an impact on the body. An international Workshop is organized by Virginia Tech on Piezoelectric Energy Harvesting [2] every year which reviews the past developments and current state of the technology .

The use of piezoelectric materials to harvest power has already become popular. Piezoelectric materials have the ability to transform mechanical strain energy into electrical charge. Piezo elements are being embedded in walkways [3] [4] to recover the “people energy” of footsteps. They can also be embedded in shoes [5] to recover “walking energy”.

Pyroelectric energy harvesting

The pyroelectric effect converts a temperature change into electrical current or voltage. It is analogous to the piezoelectric effect, which is another type of ferroelectric behavior. Like piezoelectricity, pyroelectricity requires time-varying inputs and suffers from small power outputs in energy harvesting applications. One key advantage of pyroelectrics over thermoelectrics is that many pyroelectric materials are stable up to 1200 C or more, enabling energy harvesting from high temperature sources and thus increasing thermodynamic efficiency. There is a pyroelectric scavenging device that was recently introduced, however, that doesn’t require time-varying inputs. The energy-harvesting device uses the edge-depolarizing electric field of a heated pyroelectric to convert heat energy into mechanical energy instead of drawing electric current off two plates attached to the crystal-faces. Moreover, stages of the novel pyroelectric heat engine can be cascaded in order to improve the Carnot efficiency.

 http://humanbatteries.com/

(:=}) The Human Batterry site is a movie site using a flash player technique. It argues that many houses use 3,000 watts a day that can be offset by energy harvest. There is also a game where you can generate electricity from typing on the key board of your computer. (:=})

 http://www2.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi/10.1109/MPRV.2005.8

This month’s Works in Progress column has four contributions. The first examines how harvesting environmental energy in sensor networks changes the way an application developer views energy management, and discusses prototype devices. The second proposes devices that combine energy harvesting and data acquisition. The third explores novel approaches for optimizing the power extracted using piezoelectric materials. The final one explores kinetic and thermal energy harvesting from human users’ activities.

http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=857199.858024

As the power requirements for microelectronics continue decreasing, environmental energy sources can begin to replace batteries in certain wearable subsystems. In this spirit, this paper examines three different devices that can be built into a shoe, (where excess energy is readily harvested) and used for generating electrical power “parasitically” while walking. Two of these are piezoelectric in nature: a unimorph strip made from piezoceramic composite material and a stave made from a multilayer laminate of PVDF foil. The third is a shoe-mounted rotary magnetic generator. Test results are given for these systems, their relative merits and compromises are discussed, and suggestions are proposed for improvements and potential applications in wearable systems. As a self-powered application example, a system had been built around the piezoelectric shoes that periodically broadcasts a digital RFID as the bearer wal

http://www.citeulike.org/user/ingedwar/article/2940413 

Over the past few decades, the use of portable and wearable electronics has grown steadily. These devices are becoming increasingly more powerful, however, the gains that have been made in the device performance has resulted in the need for significantly higher power to operate the electronics. This issue has been further complicated due to the stagnate growth of battery technology over the past decade. In order to increase the life of these electronics, researchers have begun investigating methods of generating energy from ambient sources such that the life of the electronics can be prolonged. Recent developments in the field have led to the design of a number of mechanisms that can be used to generate electrical energy, from a variety of sources including thermal, solar, strain, inertia, etc. Many of these energy sources are available for use with humans, but their use must be carefully considered such that parasitic effects that could disrupt the user’s gait or endurance are avoided. This study develops a novel energy harvesting backpack that can generate electrical energy from the differential forces between the wearer and the pack. The goal of this system is to make the energy harvesting device transparent to the wearer such that his or her endurance and dexterity is not compromised. This will be accomplished by replacing the strap buckle with a mechanically amplified piezoelectric stack actuator. Piezoelectric stack actuators have found little use in energy harvesting applications due to their high stiffness which makes straining the material difficult. This issue will be alleviated using a mechanically amplified stack which allows the relatively low forces generated by the pack to be transformed to high forces on the piezoelectric stack. This paper will develop a theoretical model of the piezoelectric buckle and perform experimental testing to validate the model accuracy and energy harvesting performance.

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Mini nuclear power plant proposals – The BBC scooped the Guardian by 7 years

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Wonder who will print this story in 7 more years?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1504564.stm

Scientists funded by Japan’s Atomic Energy Research Institute are developing a nuclear reactor so small that it would fit into the basement of a block of flats.

The reactor, known as the Rapid-L, was conceived of as a power source for colonies on the Moon, New Scientist magazine says. But the 200 kilowatt reactor measures only six metres (20 feet) by two metres (6.5 feet).It uses molten lithium-6 as a coolant in a system which the researchers hope will automatically shut down if it overheats.Planning trouble“In future it will be quite difficult to construct further large nuclear power plants because of site restrictions,” Mitsuru Kambe, head of the research team at Japan’s Central Research Institute of Electrical Power Industry (CRIEPI) told New Scientist.“To relieve peak loads in the future, I believe small, modular reactors located in urban areas such as Tokyo Bay will be effective,” he said.Conventional nuclear reactors use solid rods to control the rate at which the nuclear fuel releases energy and thereby control the temperature of the reactor.

Liquid solution

The rods absorb neutrons, the subatomic particles which keep the nuclear chain reaction going.

But they have to be lowered in and out of the reactor to control it. The Japanese researchers aim to make the process automatic by using molten lithium-6 instead.As the temperature rises in their reactor, the molten liquid expands and rises through tubes into the reactor core, absorbing neutrons and slowing the chain reaction to a safe rate.Mr Kambe was both optimistic and realistic about the future of his team’s work.“Rapid power plants could be used in developing countries where remote regions cannot be conveniently connected to the main grid,” he told the magazine, adding:“The success of such a reactor depends on the acceptance of the public, the electricity utilities and the government.”The reactor would still face the problems of waste transport and disposal associated with larger power stations.

 http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/nov/09/miniature-nuclear-reactors-los-alamos

Mini nuclear plants to

power 20,000 homes

£13m shed-size reactors will

be delivered by lorry 

  • John Vidal and Nick Rosen
  • guardian.co.uk, Sunday November 9 2008 00.01 GMT
  • The Observer, Sunday November 9 2008

    • Nuclear power plants smaller than a garden shed and able to power 20,000 homes will be on sale within five years, say scientists at Los Alamos, the US government laboratory which developed the first atomic bomb.

    The miniature reactors will be factory-sealed, contain no weapons-grade material, have no moving parts and will be nearly impossible to steal because they will be encased in concrete and buried underground.

    The US government has licensed the technology to Hyperion, a New Mexico-based company which said last week that it has taken its first firm orders and plans to start mass production within five years. ‘Our goal is to generate electricity for 10 cents a watt anywhere in the world,’ said John Deal, chief executive of Hyperion. ‘They will cost approximately $25m [£13m] each. For a community with 10,000 households, that is a very affordable $2,500 per home.’

    Deal claims to have more than 100 firm orders, largely from the oil and electricity industries, but says the company is also targeting developing countries and isolated communities. ‘It’s leapfrog technology,’ he said.

    The company plans to set up three factories to produce 4,000 plants between 2013 and 2023. ‘We already have a pipeline for 100 reactors, and we are taking our time to tool up to mass-produce this reactor.’

    The first confirmed order came from TES, a Czech infrastructure company specialising in water plants and power plants. ‘They ordered six units and optioned a further 12. We are very sure of their capability to purchase,’ said Deal. The first one, he said, would be installed in Romania. ‘We now have a six-year waiting list. We are in talks with developers in the Cayman Islands, Panama and the Bahamas.’

    The reactors, only a few metres in diameter, will be delivered on the back of a lorry to be buried underground. They must be refuelled every 7 to 10 years. Because the reactor is based on a 50-year-old design that has proved safe for students to use, few countries are expected to object to plants on their territory. An application to build the plants will be submitted to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission next year

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    For Halloween I Give You Trolls – Ok this is not the ElectroLux story

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    So what is the ElectroLux Story anyway? Well it seems that in the 1960s a Swedish firm bought the ElectroLux vacuum cleaner company. They told the advertising firm in New York that they wanted to design the first advertsing commercial  for the new company themselves and then have the New York firm buy the airtime. When the Swedish developed Ad arrived the Ad Execs took one look and sent it back with a message that there was no way such an Ad could run in the US. The Ad read, ElectroLux! A vacuum cleaner that really sucks.

    On that order these Trolls are not what you would expect but the idea of being fluent in both Norwegian and English really frightens me. Do you think they meant Dr. In? below or Dr. Eng.? below.  Happy Hallos Eve:

    http://eng.trollpower.no/?history=search&news=23

    Dr.Ing/PhD/ Chatered Engineers/ Electrical Engineers
    31. august 07

    A constant increase in the demand of our expertise has led to the requirement to hire more co-workers in our Trondheim office.

    Troll Power has, since early 2004 established itself as one of Norway’s leading experts in power systems. The company is localized with the headquarters in Bergen and a division office in Ørsta and Trondheim.

    The market for Troll power is traditionally within the supply of energy inside and outside of the country as well as within industrial and offshore activities.

    Troll power As offers its clients skills connected to:

    • Calculations, planning and theoretical evaluations connected to power stations
    • Testing and commissioning of bigger electrical systems
    • Condition Assessment of electrical components

    Required Qualifications:

    • Dr. eng./ PhD/ Chatered Engineers(MSc) in the line of Power systems. The tasks will be related to Project management, design, theoretical analyses and optimization of big and small power stations.
    • Chatered Engineers(MSc)/ Engineers in the line of Power systems. The tasks will be related to project management, design, commissioning, maintenance- and condition control of power systems.

    Troll Power As wants to get in contact with qualifying candidates who wish to be employed now or at a later point in time. Newly qualified persons will also be considered. Commencement will take place after further agreement.

    The following applies for both positions:

    • Some traveling operations must be reckoned upon
    • Emphasis will be placed on personal qualities
    • Can speak and write both Norwegian and English language
    • Good co-operation abilities

    Troll Power As can offer:

    • Competitive salaries and good insurance schemes.
    • Projects with technical challenges.
    • Further development of one’s workplace.

    For more information, contact our division manager Børre Johansen on tlf. 93261567 or by email Borre.Johansen@TrollPower.no,  or the Office manager Lene Christin Kjørlaug on tlf. 55382032 or by email Lene.kjorlaug@TrollPower.no  Our general manager can also be contacted ( Yngve.aabo@trollpower.no )

    Application with a CV and references to be sent to:

    Troll Power