New Japanese Wind Generator Could Triple Electrical Output

I found this excellent post at the blog Zero Energy Construction. It predicts an even brighter future for wind energy than previously believed. It says:


A surprising aerodynamic innovation in wind turbine design called the 'wind lens' could triple the output of a typical wind turbine, making it less costly than nuclear power.

The International Clean Energy Analysis (ICEA) gateway estimates that the U.S. possesses 2.2 million km2 of high wind potential (Class 3-7 winds) — about 850,000 square miles of land that could yield high levels of wind energy. This makes the U.S. something of a Saudi Arabia for wind energy, ranked third in the world for total wind energy potential.

Let's say we developed just 20 percent of those wind resources — 170,000 square miles (440,000 km2) or an area roughly 1/4 the size of Alaska — we could produce a whopping 8.7 billion megawatt hours of electricity each year (based on a theoretical conversion of six 1.5 MW turbines per km2 and an average output of 25 percent. (1.5 MW x 365 days x 24 hrs x 25% = 3,285 MWh's).

The United States uses about 26.6 billion MWh's, so at the above rate we could satisfy a full one-third of our total annual energy needs. (Of course, this assumes the concurrent deployment of a nationwide Smart Grid that could store and disburse the variable sources of wind power as needed using a variety of technologies — gas or coal peaking, utility scale storage via batteries or fly-wheels, etc).

Now what if a breakthrough came along that potentially tripled the energy output of those turbines? You see where I'm going. We could in theory supply the TOTAL annual energy needs of the U.S. simply by exploiting 20 percent of our available wind resources.

Well, such a breakthrough has been made, and it's called the "wind lens." 

Imagine: no more dirty coal power, no more mining deaths, no more nuclear disasters, no more polluted aquifers as a result of fracking. Our entire society powered by the quiet "woosh" of a wind turbine. Kyushu University's wind lens turbine is one example of the many innovations happening right now that could in the near future make this utopian vision a reality.

Yes, it's a heck of a lot of wind turbines (about 2,640,000) but the U.S. with its endless miles of prairie and agricultural land is one of the few nations that could actually deploy such a network of wind turbines without disrupting the current productivity of the land (Russia and China also come to mind). It would also be a win-win for states in the highest wind area — the Midwest — which has been hard hit by the recession. And think of the millions upon millions of jobs that would be created building a 21st century energy distribution system free of the shackles of ever-diminishing fossil fuel supplies. 

It's also important to point out that growth in wind power capacity is perfectly symbiotic with projected growth in electric vehicles. EV battery packs can soak up wind power produced during the night, helping to equalize the curve of daytime energy demand. So the controversial investment currently being entertained by President Obama to pipe oil down from the Canadian Tar Sands would — in my utopian vision — be a moot point.

It is indeed a lofty vision, but the technology we need is now in our reach. And think of the benefits of having our power production fed by a resource that is both free and unlimited. One downside often cited by advocates of coal and gas power is that wind turbines require a lot more maintenence than a typical coal or gas power plant. But in a lagging economy this might just be wind power's biggest upside — it will create lots and lots of permanent jobs, sparking a new cycle of economic growth in America.

Military Surplus

Political Cartoon is by Steve Sack in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

Misguided Energy Subsidies

The fossil fuel industries (oil, gas, coal) are making record-breaking profits, and yet our government subsidizes these established and very profitable industries to the tune of many billions of dollars. Yet the solar energy industry gets very little in government subsidies -- even though it is an inexhaustible resource that could provide much energy for the future if properly developed. Does this make sense? Shouldn't we be investing in developing new technology -- not propping up already successful industries? Found at the blog Thurman's Notebook. 

Boehner - Between A Rock And A Hard Place

The last few days shows us just how weak a Speaker of the House John Boehner really is. The fact is he can't control his own caucus of Republicans in the House of Representatives, and that's not good for a Speaker who wants to remain in that position. A continuing resolution needs to be passed in the next few days to keep the government from shutting down. But when Boehner brought the bill to the House floor, it was defeated -- not by Democrats (who voted as he expected them to since the bill wasn't to their liking), but by members of his own party.

The teabagger Republicans don't really seem to care what the Republican leadership wants -- they vote their failed ideology regardless of how much it may hurt their party or the country. Rumor has it that Boehner blew up and called them "know-it-alls". "Know nothings" would have been more accurate.

Now Boehner has a choice to make. He can bring up a better, more rational bill that could pass with Democratic help (and even pass the Senate), or he can give in to the teabaggers and pass a bill the Senate won't accept. That would shut down the government. Sources say he is trying to revive the bill that failed and talk the teabaggers into changing their votes. That's not going to work. Even if he could get the teabaggers to change their vote, Democrats in the Senate have promised to vote it down because it doesn't adequately fund FEMA.

I think he's finally going to have to take the compromise reasonable bill approach and pass it with Democratic help. It's that or shut the government down (because the Democrats are talking like they've finally discovered they have a backbone). And appeasing the teabaggers won't help him -- not now or in the upcoming Republican primary. He's already got a teabagger opponent running against him next year, so he might as well cast his lot with the sane people in his district (and in Congress).

Boehner has problems, and shutting down the government is not going to help him. The Republicans tried that on the debt ceiling debate and the bottom fell out on congressional approval by the public. It affected both parties, but it hurt the Republicans more. Can they afford another hit like that?

It will be an interesting next few days. Will Boehner get a continuing resolution passed that Democrats can approve in the Senate, or will he shut down the government? We can only wait and see.

Misplaced Fear (And Anger)

Political Cartoon is by Pat Bagley in the Salt Lake Tribune.

Faster Than The Speed Of Light ?

It was more than a century ago (in 1905) that Albert Einstein introduced his famous equation Energy = Mass X Speed of Light Squared. By 1916 he had expanded this into his General Theory of Relativity. This theory said, among other things, that the speed of light was a constant (about 186,282 miles or 299,792 kilometers per second), and that nothing could travel faster than the speed of light. Since that time these facts have become universally accepted by scientists, and form the foundation upon which modern physics is based.

Now those facts may be called into question -- at least the part that says nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. Scientists at the CERN Large Hadron Collider in Europe say they have sent particles called neutrinos from near the Swiss-French border to Italy faster than the speed of light. Here is how the Associated Press reported it:

CERN says a neutrino beam fired from a particle accelerator near Geneva to a lab 454 miles (730 kilometers) away in Italy traveled 60 nanoseconds faster than the speed of light. Scientists calculated the margin of error at just 10 nanoseconds, making the difference statistically significant.

Now 50 to 60 nanoseconds is an incredibly small period of time, and the CERN scientists have been poring over and re-calculating their figures for a couple of months. But considering that physics didn't think it was possible for anything to travel faster than light (not even by 1 nanosecond), this is huge. It would send shock waves through the entire physics community and cause them to re-evaluate nearly everything.

That is why even a couple of months later the CERN scientists are still reticent about trumpeting their findings. They want someone else to do the experiment and verify their findings, and they say at least two other facilities have the capability to do this -- Fermilab near Chicago and the T2K experiment in Japan. Hopefully, the scientists at one or both of these facilities will soon try to duplicate the CERN results.

This is some pretty exciting stuff, even for a non-science political nerd like myself. I look forward to hearing from Chicago or Japan on this in a few months.

NOTE -- The picture above is of a segment of the CERN Large Hadron Collider.

Taking The High Road

Political Cartoon is by Bob Englehart in The Hartford Courant.

There Were No $16 Muffins

The Republicans have something new to whine about. It seems that the Department of Justice held a legal training conference and had some refreshments at that conference. The hotel providing those refreshments listed the costs in just a few categories and that made it look, at least to one nut in the federal government, as though they had paid $16 each for muffins. The truth is that the DOJ spent $14.74 per attendee for food and beverages (and you just can't squeeze a $16 muffin into that figure). Here is how the website of Mother Jones explains it:

So did DOJ really pay $16 for muffins? Of course not. In fact, it's obvious that someone quite carefully calculated the amount they were allowed to spend and then gave the hotel a budget. The hotel agreed, but for some reason decided to divide up the charges into just a few categories instead of writing a detailed invoice for every single piece of food they provided. 


This is unremarkable. In fact, I'm here to tell you that this happens All. The. Time. I've been involved in what feels like a thousand conferences of this kind, and I'd be shocked if it happened any other way. Hell, I'm surprised DOJ even got that much of a breakdown. Far more commonly, your event person negotiates what kind of refreshments you'll get, and the invoice ends up looking something like this:


Refreshment table (bev/morn/aft) — 5 days....................$39,500


None of this is to say that DOJ didn't overspend on its conferences. In fact, it sounds like they did — though in some cases this was just an artifact of applying overhead costs to the food instead of accounting for it separately. But the $16 muffin? That's a myth. It'll never die now that it's been delivered to posterity thanks to some enthusiast in the OIG who broke out a calculator and mistakenly assumed they could calculate actual costs this way, but it's still a myth.

But the Republicans don't really care much about the truth. They want heads to roll at the Department of Justice for buying those muffins -- and they'll probably still be talking about those muffins years from now. I guess they need something to try and mask their own fiscal incompetence.

Class Warfare

Political Cartoon is by Jeff Parker in Florida Today.

The Regressive Tax System In Texas

This is the extremely regressive tax system in Texas that Rick Perry is so proud of. As you will note from the chart, the poor pay at least four times the percentage of their income in taxes than the rich do. Fairness isn't nearly as important to Texas Republicans as sucking up to the rich.

Obama's U.N. Speech Is Disappointing

The United Nations has started a new session, and without a doubt the most important (and most politically sensitive) item on this session's agenda is a Palestinian state. Palestinian leaders have asked the United Nations to recognize the Palestinian Territories as a state and give them a seat in the United Nations General Assembly. They are hoping that such a move will force Israel back to the negotiating table to finally agree to a two-state solution.

The Israeli government is opposed to the U.N. granting statehood and membership to the Palestinian Territories. Such a move by the U.N. would further marginalize the position Israel has taken in refusing to negotiate, and would put more pressure on Israel to stop stealing Palestinian lands by building illegal settlements -- settlements they have no intention of giving up in any future peace agreement.

The Obama administration has tried to keep the Palestinians from bring this proposal before the United Nations (even though they have been unsuccessful in convincing Israel to negotiate a peace settlement). They have threatened to cut off foreign aid to the Palestinian Territories and even said they might veto the plan when it comes before the Security Council.  But, so far, Obama's threats have not persuaded the Palestinians to abandon their U,N, proposal.

Yesterday President Obama spoke to the United Nations. The world was waiting to hear what the United States is going to do about the Palestinian proposal, but the president side-stepped the issue. Here is what he did say about this issue:

Now, I know, particularly this week, that for many in this hall, there's one issue that stands as a test for these principles and a test for American foreign policy, and that is the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

One year ago, I stood at this podium and I called for an independent Palestine. I believed then, and I believe now, that the Palestinian people deserve a state of their own. But what I also said is that a genuine peace can only be realized between the Israelis and the Palestinians themselves. One year later, despite extensive efforts by America and others, the parties have not bridged their differences. Faced with this stalemate, I put forward a new basis for negotiations in May of this year. That basis is clear. It’s well known to all of us here. Israelis must know that any agreement provides assurances for their security. Palestinians deserve to know the territorial basis of their state.
 
Now, I know that many are frustrated by the lack of progress. I assure you, so am I. But the question isn’t the goal that we seek -- the question is how do we reach that goal. And I am convinced that there is no short cut to the end of a conflict that has endured for decades. Peace is hard work. Peace will not come through statements and resolutions at the United Nations -- if it were that easy, it would have been accomplished by now. Ultimately, it is the Israelis and the Palestinians who must live side by side. Ultimately, it is the Israelis and the Palestinians -- not us –- who must reach agreement on the issues that divide them: on borders and on security, on refugees and Jerusalem.
 
Ultimately, peace depends upon compromise among people who must live together long after our speeches are over, long after our votes have been tallied. That’s the lesson of Northern Ireland, where ancient antagonists bridged their differences. That’s the lesson of Sudan, where a negotiated settlement led to an independent state. And that is and will be the path to a Palestinian state -- negotiations between the parties.
 
We seek a future where Palestinians live in a sovereign state of their own, with no limit to what they can achieve. There’s no question that the Palestinians have seen that vision delayed for too long. It is precisely because we believe so strongly in the aspirations of the Palestinian people that America has invested so much time and so much effort in the building of a Palestinian state, and the negotiations that can deliver a Palestinian state.
 
But understand this as well: America’s commitment to Israel’s security is unshakeable. Our friendship with Israel is deep and enduring. And so we believe that any lasting peace must acknowledge the very real security concerns that Israel faces every single day.

Let us be honest with ourselves: Israel is surrounded by neighbors that have waged repeated wars against it. Israel’s citizens have been killed by rockets fired at their houses and suicide bombs on their buses. Israel’s children come of age knowing that throughout the region, other children are taught to hate them. Israel, a small country of less than eight million people, look out at a world where leaders of much larger nations threaten to wipe it off of the map. The Jewish people carry the burden of centuries of exile and persecution, and fresh memories of knowing that six million people were killed simply because of who they are. Those are facts. They cannot be denied.

The Jewish people have forged a successful state in their historic homeland. Israel deserves recognition. It deserves normal relations with its neighbors. And friends of the Palestinians do them no favors by ignoring this truth, just as friends of Israel must recognize the need to pursue a two-state solution with a secure Israel next to an independent Palestine.
 
That is the truth -- each side has legitimate aspirations -- and that’s part of what makes peace so hard. And the deadlock will only be broken when each side learns to stand in the other’s shoes; each side can see the world through the other’s eyes. That’s what we should be encouraging. That’s what we should be promoting.

This body -- founded, as it was, out of the ashes of war and genocide, dedicated, as it is, to the dignity of every single person -- must recognize the reality that is lived by both the Palestinians and the Israelis. The measure of our actions must always be whether they advance the right of Israeli and Palestinian children to live lives of peace and security and dignity and opportunity. And we will only succeed in that effort if we can encourage the parties to sit down, to listen to each other, and to understand each other’s hopes and each other’s fears. That is the project to which America is committed. There are no shortcuts. And that is what the United Nations should be focused on in the weeks and months to come.

While the president did not say what the United States will or will not do to the Palestinian proposal in the United Nations, he did reveal once again what drives U.S. policy in the region -- holocaust guilt. Don't get me wrong. I do not deny the holocaust. It happened, and it was one of the most horrible cases of genocidal activity in world history -- and it should not be forgotten. I further believe that both the United States and other Western nations could have done more to stop it earlier.

But that was more than 60 years ago. Must we let the guilt of our fathers and grandfathers continue to drive our foreign policy in that region of the world? Must we continue to pay for the sins of a past generation by turning over our Mideast policy decisions to the Israeli government?

Israel has a right to exist, and its citizens have a right to live in peace and safety. We should do everything in our power to see that is a reality. But this does not justify current Israeli actions, whether it is building illegal settlements on Palestinian land, refusing to negotiate a two-state peaceful solution, or the abhorrent blockades of the West Bank and Gaza (which is nothing more than an effort to starve millions of people into submission, and a majority of those people are women and children -- innocent victims).

There is little doubt that even though the president did not come out and say so, the United States will veto the Palestinian proposal in the Security Council. It shouldn't do it, but it will. If the United States cannot support the proposal, what they should do is step aside and let the world's nations vote on it. But they will veto it because that is what the Israeli government wants.

The really crazy part of this mess is that a majority of the people that live in that region support the Palestinian proposal -- both Palestinians and Israelis. The Jerusalem Post has reported that a joint survey (done by the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah) has found this to be true.

Although 77% of Palestinians and 79% of Israelis believe that the United States will veto the proposal, majorities of both groups believe it is not the right thing to do. Around 83% of Palestinians and 69% of Israelis feel the proposal should be accepted and new talks to work out a negotiated peace should be started.

It is time for the United States to do the right thing -- and the right thing would be to allow the vote to proceed in the U.N. without a veto, and then pressure the Israeli government to return to the negotiating table.  

Sinkhole

Political Cartoon is by Gary Markstein at Copley News Service.

Another Threat Of Government Shutdown ?

The government is not yet a half a year away from a previous threat of government shutdown -- with the political parties arguing over the extension of the government's debt ceiling. They were barely able to avert that government shutdown, but it was enough to make the American people so mad that they are still giving Congress record-breaking low approval ratings -- around 15%.

It was hoped that Congress had learned their lesson, especially since the leaders of both parties came back to Washington after their August break swearing there would not be a repeat performance of that ridiculous stand-off. Well, those promises didn't last very long, because another threat of government shutdown is now brewing on Capitol Hill. This time it's over funding for FEMA -- the agency tasked to helping American victims of disasters.

There is a continuing resolution that must be approved by both houses of Congress before the end of this month. The continuing resolution will allow the government to operate until at least November 18th, while work continues on the budget for the new fiscal year. If the resolution doesn't pass before the end of this month, there will be a government shutdown, since the government will not have the allocated funds to operate.

The fly in the ointment that could prevent the continuing resolution from being passed is FEMA funding. The House has allocated only $3.65 billion for FEMA, but the Senate has approved $6.9 billion. The difference, slightly more than $3 billion, is tiny when compared to the budget in general. But if both parties dig in their heels and refuse to budge, it will shut down the government. Adding to the mess is the fact that Congress is supposed to be in recess next week -- which means there is only a couple of days to get the continuing resolution passed.

So far, neither side is giving in. The House Republicans won't raise their allocation without cuts to equal the raise, and Senate Democrats say they will send the bill back if FEMA is not fully funded. It looks like brinkmanship has become the new norm for our government.

The Republicans should fold this time. I know they are trying to make a point about government spending, but Democrats have given in to massive cuts recently, far more than the funding they want for FEMA. And I don't think the American people are going to be happy with Republicans making a whipping boy out of FEMA (and the thousands of victims they help every year).

There are lots of areas of government that Republicans and Democrats can argue about funding, but FEMA is not one of them. Disasters strike without warning, and the victims of those disasters cannot wait around while Congress argues about spending.

Economic Fashion

Political Cartoon is by Rob Rogers in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.