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#Post#: 145--------------------------------------------------
40 Years Back, 40 Years Forward
By: AGelbert Date: October 22, 2013, 11:04 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
40 Years Back, 40 Years Forward
[move]What the 1973 Arab oil embargo taught us about energy
efficiency, innovation, and moving to a fossil-free
future[/move]
Forty years ago, 1973, Elvis sang Aloha from Hawaii, the first
global concert satellite broadcast. Bobby Riggs and Billie Jean
King faced off on the tennis court in the Battle of the Sexes.
And The Exorcist terrified theater-going audiences across the
country. Then in October the Arab oil embargo hit and the bottom
fell out of the American economy, fueled largely by fossil fuel
imports from the Middle East.
Today, in 2013, we are approximately halfway between the Arab
oil embargo of 1973 and the fossil-free future RMI envisions by
2050 in Reinventing Fire. There are both similarities and
differences in what happened in the 70s and what is happening
today. The main impetus for conserving energy four decades ago
was our lack of access to oil and the realization we should not
depend on foreign imports. Now, forty years later, instead of a
fuel crisis, we have a climate crisis. We recognize the
environmental urgency of curbing our fossil fuel use as we never
have before. Hopefully, we can learn from what we went through
40 years ago to help us get to where we want to be 40 years from
now.
Crisis spurs innovation
As author Daniel Jack Chasan wrote in the Seattle Times, “When
the price of energy quadrupled, industry started substituting
other things—insulation, efficiency, ingenuity.” The crisis of
the oil embargo spurred innovation.
Congress formed the Department of Energy, bringing most federal
energy activities under one umbrella, and providing the
framework for a comprehensive national energy plan. Two Senators
founded the bipartisan Alliance to Save Energy to promote energy
efficiency. Fuel efficiency standards were adopted for auto
manufacturers resulting in a doubling of the average new car’s
fuel efficiency. More efficient refrigerators, light bulbs,
windows, and air conditioners came to market. Insulation sales
soared. Numerous energy policies regarding conservation and
efficiency were enacted, including the Energy Reorganization Act
of 1974, Energy Policy and Conservation Act of 1976, Energy
Conservation and Production Act of 1976, and National Energy Act
of 1978.
And Jimmy Carter, after his famous fireside cardigan-sweater
chat urging Americans to conserve energy, put solar panels on
the White House.
The net effect? Oil imports fell 50 percent (from 1977 to 1985)
and brought about a culture of conservation unheard of in
previous decades. Unfortunately, once the gas lines disappeared
and oil prices dropped, some of these efforts were abandoned.
In the following decades dependence on foreign oil increased,
SUVs gained popularity, and Ronald Reagan removed the solar
panels from the White House. >:(
Confronting the new crisis
Yet we learned that in a crisis, the nation can do what it takes
to reduce our energy consumption. Today, while we no longer have
an artificial shortage of imported fossil fuels, we have melting
glaciers, rising sea levels, and a warming planet. It’s time to
take the innovation that occurred in the 1970s to a new level as
we face today’s crisis—climate change.
We’re already on the way, thanks in part to some of the
efficiency initiatives and innovation that came out of the 70s.
Today’s appliances require less than half the energy they did
four decades ago. Heating systems are now 20 percent more
efficient. The past couple of decades have seen a renewed
interest in solar and wind power. Global wind power capacity has
grown from 18 GW in 2000 to 282.5 GW today. Over the past five
years alone, global installed PV capacity grew by 900 percent.
U.S. car manufacturers, who were being outdone by Japanese
companies faster to bring fuel-efficient cars to the American
market in the late 1970s and early 1980s, are making not only
more fuel-efficient cars, but a plethora of electric cars. And
some of today’s American-made fuel-efficient cars are modeled
after the unsuccessful 1970s cars Detroit produced in response
to the oil crisis (with some improvements, of course!). Yet we
still have a way to go.
Applying the lessons to reinvent fire
As we saw during the late 1970s and early 1980s, and then the
energy efficiency backslide of the late 80s and 1990s,
government mandates can only go so far, and progress can stall
or even reverse as political climates, market dynamics, and
other factors shift. People’s memories only go so far as well—as
soon as oil prices dropped and gasoline lines dwindled, the
energy crisis seemed forgotten. But we don’t have to forget; in
fact, we can forge ahead with as much determination and
opportunity as before.
And forged ahead we have: by 2009, America was making a dollar
of real GDP using 60 percent less oil, 50 percent less total
energy, 63 percent less directly used natural gas, and 20
percent less electricity than in 1975. But we have further to
go.
In Reinventing Fire: Bold Business Solutions for the New Energy
Era we laid out a roadmap for getting the U.S. off fossil fuels
by 2050 while supporting a 158 percent larger economy. The
Reinventing Fire solution relies on business taking the lead, as
the economic case for moving to efficiency and renewables is so
strong—saving $5 trillion, and achieving internal rates of
return from 17 to 33 percent in buildings, industry, and
transportation.
Looking ahead to the next 40 years—or in the case of RMI’s
Reinventing Fire scenario, 37 years to 2050—we need to remember
the lessons from the 70s. We cannot be complacent in our move
towards efficiency and renewables. We must realize that we are
once again facing a crisis, and we need to act.
Jimmy Carter’s words, said in his cardigan by the fire, are as
relevant today as ever: “Twice in the last several hundred years
there has been a transition in the way people use energy… we
must prepare quickly for a third change, to strict conservation
and to the use of . . . permanent renewable energy sources,
like solar power.”
[img width=640
height=480]
HTML http://i1.ytimg.com/vi/MmlcLNA8Zhc/hqdefault.jpg[/img]
“We must not be selfish or timid if we hope to have a decent
world for our children and grandchildren,” he continued. “By
acting now, we can control our future instead of letting the
future control us.”
HTML http://blog.rmi.org/blog_2013_10_15_forty_years_forward_oil_embargo
[move]Agelbert NOTE: Never underestimate the level of
participation and funding that the fossil fuel Big Oil Oligarchy
is responsible for in the portraying of Jimmy Carter as a
"failed" President. They hated him because he told the TRUTH
about our need to get off of dirty energy. >:( [/move]
#Post#: 152--------------------------------------------------
What Did the 1973 Oil Embargo Teach Us?
By: AGelbert Date: October 24, 2013, 2:30 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
What Did the 1973 Oil Embargo Teach Us?
Amory B. Lovins
Chief Scientist
Forty years ago this month, Syria and Egypt launched a Yom
Kippur surprise attack on Israel to regain land and prestige
lost in the 1967 Six-Day War. Israeli forces were nearing
Damascus and Cairo when a ceasefire took hold. But as the Soviet
Union resupplied its Arab clients and President Nixon resupplied
Israel, Arab members of the OPEC oil cartel, led by Saudi
Arabia, announced a five percent monthly cut in oil output, then
embargoed oil exports to the U.S. and later others. OPEC
provided 35 percent of America’s oil at the time.
Prices soared and deliveries faltered. “No gas today” signs
spread. People waited in line for gasoline, risking scuffles and
occasional gunshots. America had lost her energy innocence.
Relaxed regulations and massive subsidies tried to expand
fossil, unconventional fossil, and nuclear energy. (In 1975 oil
fueled 15 percent of U.S. electricity vs. less than one percent
today.) Most such efforts proved far too costly, but President
Carter’s shift toward renewables and especially energy
efficiency was strikingly successful.
On his watch, President Ford’s 1975 auto standards took effect
in 1978, raising new domestic cars’ efficiency 7.6 mpg during
1977–85. They drove one percent fewer miles on 20 percent fewer
gallons, and became lighter, cleaner, safer, but scarcely
smaller and no less peppy, saving fuel even when 55-mph top
speed limits were abandoned 13 years later. New federal and
state policies also made buildings and factories more frugal.
Appliance efficiency standards passed Congress without a single
nay vote.
The results were stunning. During 1977–85, the U.S. economy grew
27 percent, oil use fell 17 percent, oil imports fell 50
percent, and imports from the Persian Gulf fell 87 percent;
they’d have reached zero in 1986 had President Reagan not
reversed the policy. Oil burned per dollar of GDP fell by 35
percent in eight years, or an average of 5.2 percent per
year—enough to displace a Persian Gulf’s worth of net imports
every two and a half years.
OPEC’s oil sword was shattered in a dozen years as customers
saved oil faster than OPEC could conveniently sell less oil. It
sales plummeted 48 percent, breaking its pricing power for a
decade. Then in 1985–86, as massive new energy supplies
belatedly arrived to meet needs efficiency had already filled,
energy gluts crashed prices. Policymakers, instead of finishing
the job, hit the snooze button for a decade.
By the 1991 Gulf War, we put our kids in 0.56-mpg tanks because
we hadn’t put them in 32-mpg cars (enough to displace Persian
Gulf oil). Yet oil imports continued to soar, reaching 60
percent of oil use in 2005 and returning to 1973-level
dependence only this year. Thus today, America pays $2 billion a
day for oil, plus $4 billion a day for its hidden economic and
military costs.
Four times since 1980, U.S. forces have intervened in the
Persian Gulf to protect not Israel but oil. The Gulf hasn’t
become more stable. Readiness for such interventions costs a
half-trillion dollars per year—about ten times what we pay for
oil from the Gulf, and rivaling total defense expenditures at
the height of the Cold War. And burning oil emits two-fifths of
fossil carbon, so abundant oil only speeds dangerous climate
change that destabilizes the world and multiplies security
threats.
Yet practical, profitable solutions are at hand. Producing a
dollar of GDP now uses less than half the energy and one-third
the oil it took in 1973. Last year, wind and solar power, now
cheaper than gas-fired power in favorable sites, added half of
new U.S. generating capacity, and making a dollar of GDP took
3.4 percent less electricity than a year earlier.
That’s just the start. By 2050, the U.S. could triple its energy
efficiency, switch supplies from one-tenth to three-fourths
renewable, and run a 158-percent-bigger economy with no oil,
coal, or nuclear energy and one-third less natural gas. This
could cost $5 trillion less than business-as-usual, emit 82–86
percent less fossil carbon, need no new inventions nor Acts of
Congress, and be led by business for profit. The 2011 book
Reinventing Fire by Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) details how.
America’s two-ton steel autos use nearly half our nation’s oil.
In the past quarter-century, they gained weight twice as fast as
we did, yet their weight causes two-thirds of the energy needed
to move them. Moreover, each unit of energy saved at the wheels
saves six more units that needn’t be lost getting that energy to
the wheels, saving seven units of fuel in the tank—huge
leverage.
Making cars 2–3 times lighter with today’s ultralight but
ultrastrong materials can make them safer, sportier, buildable
more simply with four-fifths less capital investment, affordable
to electrify (because they need 2–3 times fewer costly batteries
or fuel cells), and more profitable for automakers and dealers.
The first such carbon-fiber electric cars have entered
production at VW (a 235-mpg two-seat plug-in hybrid) and BMW (a
~110-mpg battery-electric 4-seater). Other automakers, including
Audi and Toyota, have shown equally impressive concept vehicles.
And such electrified autos’ batteries add distributed storage to
the grid, helping integrate varying solar and windpower that
could get electricity off coal.
Such 125-to-240-mpg-equivalent autos, 2–4 times today’s best
standards, can run on any mix of electricity, hydrogen, and
advanced biofuels needing no cropland; superefficient trucks and
planes, on the latter two (or trucks on natural gas). Thus a
far more mobile U.S. economy could need no oil. Global
competition can spread these technologies, not forced by policy
but demanded by customers.
Displacing or saving each barrel for $25 rather than buying it
for over $100 would save the U.S. $4 trillion in net present
value. That’s $12 trillion including our curable oil addiction’s
hidden economic and military costs—plus any damage to climate,
environment, health, global development and stability, or our
nation’s independence and reputation.
That’s why my RMI colleagues have assembled a supply chain to
scale Detroit’s production and adoption of carbon-fiber auto
parts and developed technology to make them at automotive cost
and speed. It’s why RMI’s Electricity Innovation Lab convenes
industry leaders to devise the next electricity industry, and
why we’re cutting solar power’s installation cost, simplifying
its financing, and helping utilities and customers pay each
other fairly for the services they exchange. It’s why our
RetroFit program is helping real estate portfolio owners triple
or quadruple energy productivity. (U.S. buildings’ energy use
costs more than Medicare, but their energy efficiency
opportunities offer $1.4 trillion net savings with a juicy 33
percent internal rate of return.) It’s why we’ve redesigned over
$40 billion worth of industrial plants for radical energy
efficiency at juicy profits.
This hard work’s growing success is exhilarating. And we’d be
doing it even if the 1973 oil embargo hadn’t happened, because
the energy system’s other existential threats, from climate
change (a known threat even in the late 1960s) to nuclear
proliferation, compel the same actions. But the oil embargo did
concentrate the mind wonderfully. Many smart people rose to the
challenge. Their efforts are making oil uncompetitive even at
low prices even before it becomes unavailable even at high
prices.
The rotted residue of primeval swamp goo—a cubic mile of oil
costing $3.5 trillion that the world burns each year, plus three
cubic miles of coal and gas—is becoming no longer economic.
Fracked oil and gas, Canadian tar sands, Saudi oil—none can beat
modern efficiency and renewables on direct cost, price
stability, or impacts. Now-worthless old energy studies long
claimed we’re fated to burn oil forever. We’re not, and we
won’t. The end of the conflict-creating, climate-threatening Oil
Age is coming clearly into view, and not a moment too soon.
HTML http://blog.rmi.org/blog_2013_10_17_what_did_the_1973_oil_embargo_teach_us
#Post#: 161--------------------------------------------------
The Arab Oil Embargo, Sandy, and Adapting to New Realities
By: AGelbert Date: October 25, 2013, 11:21 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
Clean Edge Views
The Arab Oil Embargo, Sandy, and Adapting to New Realities
by Clint Wilder
October 14, 2013
This month marks the anniversaries of two notable events,
decades apart yet related in terms of historical impact,
awareness of vulnerability, and challenge to business as usual:
the Arab oil embargo 40 years ago (Oct. 16, 1973) and Superstorm
Sandy, which hit the Northeast on Oct. 29 last year. Both events
sparked a national and global focus on two concepts I’ve been
hearing quite a bit about in recent months: adaptation and
resilience.
Much is being written and said about the oil embargo anniversary
– one event on Oct. 16 features two former Secretaries of State,
two ex-Secretaries of Defense, and the CEOs of GE, GM, FedEx,
and Waste Management. The United States, of course, still
depends on imported oil, but we have made notable recent
progress (after decades of very little) on vehicle fuel
efficiency. The administration’s aggressive CAFE standards, with
a mandated fleet average of 54.5 mpg by 2025, are arguably
President Obama’s signature achievement on climate action to
date, and both hybrid and electric cars have good market
momentum. It would make for an interesting debate, but I would
argue that the U.S. auto industry and its regulators have done
more to adapt to new market realities than most U.S. electric
utilities.
As the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) annual meeting convened
in New York City in late September, it seemed a fitting symbol
when the failure of a Con Edison feeder cable shut down service
on one of the nation’s busiest commuter rail lines,
Metro-North’s New Haven Line between New Haven, Connecticut and
Grand Central Station. This occurred as New York Mayor Michael
Bloomberg and others were discussing the need for resilient
cities with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria at CGI.
Full train service wasn’t restored for 12 days, costing the
Connecticut economy an estimated $62 million. The Metro-North
debacle was obviously not climate-related – and was not a
failure of the overall grid per se – but that didn’t matter to
tens of thousands of frustrated commuters. And it symbolizes the
challenge of how best to generate and distribute electric power
in the twenty-first century – whether to a rail line, a
manufacturing plant, or an urban neighborhood.
Connecticut officials, according to the Hartford Courant, are
taking another look at a fuel cell-powered microgrid as an
alternative to grid power from Con Ed, an option first studied
in 2007. If that happens, Metro-North will actually be returning
to its historical roots. Then known as the New Haven Railroad,
the line was the first in the U.S. to be powered by a dedicated
generation plant, the Cos Cob Power Station, built by the
railroad and Westinghouse Electric to replace steam locomotives.
That happened in 1908.
The Metro-North power outage is merely one recent example of the
unprecedented challenges being faced by traditional, centralized
utilities. Microgrids, distributed solar, data-empowered
customers, grid storage mandates in places like California, and
many other factors are challenging business as usual as never
before, for utilities, regulators, and policymakers. They also
have to deal with RPS mandates for renewable power in many
states, but those are generally met with large-scale wind,
geothermal, and biomass plants (and occasional utility-scale
solar) that may shift power sources but don’t have to challenge
centralized business models.
The distributed energy revolution is arguably clean tech’s
front-and-center issue of 2013. From SolarCity’s rapid growth
(the firm now expects its distributed PV installations to nearly
double next year) to the smart thermostats from Global Cleantech
100 North America “Company of the Year” Nest Labs, all trends
point to more and more electricity that is generated and/or
managed at or very near the point of its use. In the face of all
this, many (though certainly not all) utilities cling to the
centralized, command-and-control paradigm that they’ve perfected
over more than a century. >:(
“If Thomas Edison came back today, he’d know exactly how
everything works,” said Robyn Beavers, senior VP of NRG Energy
and founder of NRG’s San Francisco-based “Station A” innovation
unit, at the recent SXSW Eco conference in Austin, Texas. “We’re
looking at the disruption of longtime models of generation,
distribution and usage.
It’s overwhelming and it’s daunting – but it’s time.”
HTML http://www.pic4ever.com/images/47b20s0.gif
For utilities, adapting to the new realities of distributed
energy will also help bring adaptation and resilience in the
face of climate-related power disruptions. To date, many
utilities, including some large investor-owned entities like
Edison International and Xcel, are doing a pretty good job of
this.
But many others are not, digging in their heels against net
metering and other distributed generation-friendly policies.
Another speaker at SXSW Eco, Kate Gordon of Tom Steyer’s
clean-energy advocacy group Next Generation, suggests they take
a lesson from another well-established, entrenched but
challenged U.S. industry based in Detroit.
“I’m from the Midwest,” Gordon said, “and I spent years watching
the auto companies saying how they owned the market and didn’t
need to change. Now, they’re seeing how strong fuel-economy
standards might be a good thing and building cars accordingly.
Utilities are getting there, but they need to see that their
backs are up against the wall; they can’t maintain their market
share.
Innovative utilities will move ahead – non-innovative utilities
will be in trouble.” In industry after industry, that history
lesson is always worth learning.
Wilder is Clean Edge's senior editor, a blogger about clean-tech
issues for the Green section of The Huffington Post, and
co-author of Clean Tech Nation and The Clean Tech Revolution
(both with Ron Pernick). E-mail him at wilder@cleanedge.com and
follow him on Twitter at @Clint_Wilder.
HTML http://www.cleanedge.com/views/index.php
#Post#: 478--------------------------------------------------
40 Years Back
By: AGelbert Date: November 30, 2013, 11:25 pm
---------------------------------------------------------
[center]For those who labor under the view that the reversal of
fortunes for Renewable Energy in the early 1980s was just
ignorance, supply and demand and big oil wasn't INSTRUMENTAL in
bringing it about: [/center]
Oh, and about NON-HYDRO renewable energy being THROTTLED shortly
after the technology was[I] proven competitive with fossil
fuels. You mean you DIDN"T KNOW there was SIGNIFICANT PROMISING
RENEWABLE ENERGY NON-HYDRO COST COMPETITIVE TECHNOLOGY BEFORE
1980? ???[/I]
I understand that the media BURIED the FACT that IT HAPPENED TO
WIND TURBINE TECHNOLOGY shortly after 1980 when Carter left
office!
It was SHELVED -DEEP SIXED - LEFT TO DIE UNTIL RESURRECTED in
the mid to late 1990s BUT NOT BY THE USA!
The GREATEST PENETRATION OF PURE HYDRO renewable energy in the
USA was in 1940.
[quote]Over 1500 hydroelectric facilities produce about one
third of the United States' electrical energy.[/quote]
HTML http://www.usbr.gov/power/edu/history.html
HTML http://www.usbr.gov/power/edu/history.html
It was ALL DOWN HILL FOR HYDRO AS A PERCENTAGE of electrical
energy generated FROM THEN ON.
The NEW CSP, wind turbine and, to a lesser but still important
extent PV technologies, were being assiduously developed during
the late 1970s.
Power companies closed ranks AGAINST that technology. Even
places WITHOUT electricity like a Navajo Reservation in New
Mexico triggered angry letters from the utility to NASA to STOP
putting solar panels for water pumping there because it COULD
"force electrical rates DOWN IN THE FUTURE". NASA STOPPED but
Carter kept pushing until 1980. GET IT?
NO?
Check THIS out:
[center][img
width=640]
HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/2/3-120119154144.jpeg[/img][/center]
[center]Westinghouse uprated version, the Mod-0A. Four Mod-0A
protototypes were installed (Puerto Rico, New Mexico, Hawaii &
Rhode Island).[/center]
When do you think the above picture was taken, dear readers?
Would you believe THIRTY FIVE YEARS AGO!!?
HTML http://renewablerevolution.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/1/3-120818180835-16181943.gif<br
/>
[center]Wind Energy Comes of Age[/center]
By Paul Gipe
Pag 103
[quote]After the moon landings, the space program began winding
down, and with it the space agency.
NASA was scrambling to redefine itself, to find new "missions,"
when opportunity struck in the form of the oil embargo.
What began as mere tinkering by researchers at the agency's
Lewis research center near Sandusky, Ohio[I] quickly evolved
into the most costly wind energy R&D program in the world.[/I]
NASA began translating all known documents on wind energy
worldwide. They consulted with Hutter and Putnam and studied the
operation of Juul's machine at Gedser. In the end they started
down a path blazed years before by Putnam. The result, the
Mod-0, resembled neither Hutter's lightweight, flexible,
downwind design nor Juul's rigid thee bladed upwind design.
NASA's Mod-0 incorproated none of the lessons of Europe, while
abandoning Putnam's most significant design element, his hinged
blades.
Westinghouse, the contractor on the Mod-0, was subsequently
hired to build an uprated version, the Mod-0A, for extended
field tests. Four Mod-0A prototypes were installed (Puerto Rico,
New Mexico, Hawaii & Rhode Island).
All were scraped when none of the host utilities wanted to
assume maintenance of the turbines. [/quote]
HTML http://www.worldbooksonline.inf
o/Wind-Energy-Comes-of-Age-9780471109242
HTML http://www.worldbooksonline.inf
o/Wind-Energy-Comes-of-Age-9780471109242
The book goes on to explain, in detail, how various R&D goals of
a high MTBF "couldn't seem to be achieved" in order for these
machines to be considered "reliable". [img
width=20]
HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-311013201314.png[/img]
They could build rockets to the moon, supersonic aircraft, high
speed jet turbines with micrometer tolerances, but making gears,
housings and transmissions for a glacially slow giant propeller
to generate electricity was just "too hard".
[move]If you believe that, I have time shares in a black hole at
the core of the milky way to sell you cheap.
HTML http://www.pic4ever.com/images/snapoutofit.gif[/move]
[center][img width=640
height=380]
HTML http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1075312/thumbs/o-FALL-BLACK-HOLE-facebook.jpg[/img][/center]
[move] Call 1-800-BIG OIL for your time share reservations.
[/move]
#Post#: 541--------------------------------------------------
Re: 40 Years Back, 40 Years Forward
By: AGelbert Date: December 13, 2013, 12:43 am
---------------------------------------------------------
I always get strange looks when I talk about two different,
seemingly unrelated, historically important events going on in
exactly the same time period.
It's as if the propagandists writing the history books and the
news have blunted people's ability to think. Never mind critical
thinking. That's even more nearly impossible now.
Some things people do not want to think about:
1) During the Great Depression the U.S. government spent massive
amounts of money to develop the bomb while people were literally
starving. This went on for several years. During the 1930s the
knowledge of the photoelectric effect was old hat (Einstein
described it right after the turn of the century!) but somehow
it was only developed when it was needed in space. ;)
2) During the 1970s the incredibly efficient heat deflecting
tiles on the space shuttle were perfected. This technology would
have wiped out 70% of heating and cooling costs in the USA if it
had been released to the public during the oil shocks of the
70s. From refrigerator/freezer insulation to house insulation to
keep heat in or hot weather out, we would have been well on the
road to energy independence. I even asked a NASA rep at their
public presentation at Cape Kennedy in 1980 before the first
shuttle flight (the speaker would torch a six inch tile he was
holding which would get red hot inches from his fingers and just
as quickly dissipate before reaching them. The part of the
ceramic foam tile he held remained cool while he kept the blow
torch inches away on the red hot section for at least 5 minutes)
why this wasn't available to the public for energy saving? ???
You guessed it; the old "national security" trick. It was more
like the old "big oil runs the USA" trick. ;)
3) How about those nifty ski lifts and gondolas that have been
around forever? The cabling strength needed was old hat towards
the end of the 19th century as was the ability to power the
gondola from a fixed point with pulleys. Consider how
ridiculously easy it would have been to string these things
across cities and neighborhoods joining shopping and work areas.
Consider the difference in energy use of moving just the people
and a gondola versus a 4,000 pound car or public buses that
weigh much more; the oil pigs at work again, I suspect. Sorry
MKing! ;D
4) Since the 1980s the technology to have computer controlled
automatic sails providing over 50% of the power for ships has
been available. The Japanese even made a sail assisted oil
tanker. Now why do you suppose a proven technology like sails
married to computers isn't common? ;) No, it's NOT cheaper to
run without sails regardless of the extra maintenance. NO, you
DON'T need more crew (the computers, electric motors and servos
take care of it).
Frankly, when you start looking at the USA as an oil oligarchy
type dictatorship since around 1913, all foreign policy and most
of the technology that has been allowed domestically becomes
quite understandable (except to fossil fuelers like MKing, of
course!).
The pieces begin to fall into place. Those are the dots the
media propagandists work overtime to prevent anyone from
connecting. That also explains the ROUTINE theft of the
elections. The fossil fuel pigs just will not let go of the oil
piggery (even if it kills us).
And here we are with [s]peak oil[/s] an environmental crisis
caused by burning fossil fuels and what does NASA do to help
convince us to switch to renewables? Whatever big oil tells them
to >:( (SEE NEXT PARAGRAPH).
NASA scientists on the mars robot teams acted all surprised when
the solar panels lasted several years instead of the "projected
six months". [img
width=30]
HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-051113192052.png[/img]<br
/>Of course they knew they would last but it wouldn't look good
to
celebrate solar panel technology in a harsh Martian environment,
now would it? 🙊 [img
width=30]
HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-051113192052.png[/img]<br
/>
So, they claimed it was a fluke. Liars for oil goons is what
they are. 🤬
That said, the irrational crap about scientists being
"surprised" at how great solar panels are at harvesting
electricity come hell or high water does not extend to the rest
of NASA, that has been instrumental in showing just how bad our
fossil fuel burning caused climate crisis is. [img width=30
height=30]
HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-141113185701.png[/img]
All of this came together for me when I read "The Tyranny of
Oil" by Antonia Juhasz.
#Post#: 543--------------------------------------------------
Re: 40 Years Back, 40 Years Forward
By: AGelbert Date: December 13, 2013, 6:16 pm
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MKing,
If you are NOT aware of what "happened" in the 1980s, to KILL
renewable energy by Hook and by Crook, you are uninformed. If
you are aware and you are reaching for some make believe
COST/SUPPLY curve, then you are engaging in rank mendacity.
[quote]Reagan is a key reason we have only about one-sixth of
the soaring global market for windpower — an industry we once
dominated: “President Reagan cut the renewable energy R&D budget
85% after he took office and eliminated the wind investment tax
credit in 1986. This was pretty much the death of most of the US
wind industry” (see “Anti-wind McCain delivers climate remarks
at foreign wind company“).
Reagan gutted Carter’s entire multi-billion dollar clean energy
and energy efficiency effort. He opposed and then rolled back
fuel economy standards. Reagan turned all such commonsense
strategies into “liberal” policies that must be opposed by any
true conservative, a position embraced all too consistently by
conservative leaders from Gingrich to Bush/Cheney and now to
John McCain.
[/quote]
HTML https://archive.thinkprogress.org/who-got-us-in-this-energy-mess-start-with-ronald-reagan-4ca0f6a9614/
ALL THE ABOVE was going on while the massive subsidies for
fossil fuels and nuclear power actually INCREASED. The double
hulled new tanker bottom regs in the pipeline for oil tankers
BEFORE the REAGAN Administration were cancelled UNTIL THE Exxon
Valdez forced them onto a reluctant oil pig loving
administration. TEN **** YEARS the oil pigs put money in their
pockets by not having to convert to double hulls.
Do you want to talk about tanker hold regs? Probably not! Where
do you get all this BULLSHIT about COST/SUPPLY? The whole ****
operation was a losing proposition for fossil fuels then, like
it is today.
They only stayed profitable because they COULD fill the tanker
holds with sea water and dump it willy nilly when they returned
to pick up another load (among MANY other bennies to **** on the
environment that they were allowed to get away with).
And then you come here and talk about COST/SUPPLY curves.
HORSESHIT!
Do you know what the Coast Guard fine for a TANKER that didn't
"pass inspection" for various environmental features they were
supposed to have like tank cleaning updated equipment (BUT
DIDN'T for at least a decade!)? Around $25,000. THAT's NOTHING
when you are hauling millions in crude.
Were you THERE in the Reagan Administration when they DIRECTED
the Coast Guard to BE NICE to the tankers and cut them "slack"
on the regs to help with their PROFIT? NO, you don't know a
thing about that, DO YOU?
I wrote a long article on it and pissed Ilargi off at TAE over a
year and half ago. He, like you, has this interesting idea about
cost/benefit.
I don't know if you have noticed, but I NEVER claimed oil was
"running out". I am not a peak oiler. Regardless of how much
there is on earth, there is a lot more on Titan in the form of
hydrocarbons so the SUPPLY is ENDLESS, for all practical
purposes. In your "interesting" view of energy, if the supply is
endless, THEN you should KEEP USING IT regardless of
environmental "externalities".
That's unethical BULLSHIT. It's a mendacious cost benefit
analysis too!
You think Renewable Energy was TOO EXPENSIVE in the 1980s (your
fossil fuel pals claimed it cost 4 times as much as energy from
fossil fuels!).
Sure, YOU get the massive subsidies and YOU don't pay for
trashing the environment and YOU get cheap leases and interest
rates on capital investments from coal to oil to gas and YOU
don't pay for health costs of the affected populations. Such a
DEAL!
HTML http://www.pic4ever.com/images/acigar.gif
But you fossil fuelers aren't done with your massive energy
"playing" field rigging. Oh no! You are just getting started.
ANY renewable energy technology ALREADY proven, in the pipeline
and ready for scaling up due to the Carter Administration's
efforts are surrounded with ZERO capital investment, ZERO
government sponsored low interest loans, lack of cheap
Government land leases and access, hysterical claims about
environmental "damage", "waste" of tax payer funds and
"ridiculous subsidies" that CRUSH wind, solar and solar power
towers along with limiting CSP plant size when all these
technologies were ready for prime time.
SURE, of course, by the INVISIBLE HAND OF THE FREE MARKET
COST/SUPPLY CURVE, fossil fuels were much, much "cheaper" than
renewable energy.
HTML http://www.pic4ever.com/images/ugly004.gif
Keep believing it. PAL!
HTML http://www.pic4ever.com/images/p8.gif
#Post#: 611--------------------------------------------------
Re: 40 Years Back, 40 Years Forward
By: AGelbert Date: December 23, 2013, 9:49 pm
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[move]Historic ANOMALY! Exxon Oil Pig Precursors told the TRUTH
in 1962 AD! ::) :P[/move]
[img width=640
height=380]
HTML http://a.disquscdn.com/uploads/mediaembed/images/759/202/original.jpg[/img]
#Post#: 5747--------------------------------------------------
Re: 40 Years Back, 40 Years Forward
By: AGelbert Date: September 29, 2016, 5:25 pm
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[img
width=100]
HTML https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/527210744178167809/z6CbCdS5.jpeg[/img]
[center]Soft Energy Paths[/center]
[center]
Lessons of the First 40 Years[/center]
Article written by Amory B. Lovins, cofounder, chief scientist,
and chairman emeritus of Rocky Mountain Institute.
SNIPPET 1:
When the 1973 oil shock threatened security and prosperity,
America’s initial policy responses were confused and
ineffectual. Intensifying business as
usual — drilling oil and gas wells, building giant
coal and nuclear plants, perhaps developing coal-to-liquids
synfuels — was vigorously proposed, but soon began
looking too costly, dirty, slow, and difficult. The huge capital
requirement would choke off other needed investments and
ultimately make energy prices soar, so faltering demand couldn’t
pay for the costly new supplies. Yet by autumn 1976, no coherent
alternative vision had been articulated. Policy imagination was
stuck.
At that teachable moment, my Foreign Affairs article “Energy
Strategy: The Road Not Taken?” reframed the energy problem and
added an alternative vision of U.S. energy strategy. The “hard
path” was more of the same; the “soft path” combined energy
efficiency with a shift to renewable supply. The article soon
became that venerable journal’s most-reprinted ever, spreading
as virally as pre-Internet technologies permitted. Forty years
later, a review of its initial reception and continued influence
shows what lessons have and haven’t been learned.
SNIPPET 2:
Incumbent energy industries [img
width=60]
HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-241013183046.jpeg[/img]<br
/>greeted the article with skepticism, scorn, even outrage. A
four-inch-thick Senate hearing record compiled three dozen pairs
of critiques and responses. Nowadays it makes amusing reading,
reminding us that 40 years ago energy efficiency was novel and
controversial, while renewable energy was strange, threatening,
or absurd. Some people still cling to those views.
When the hubbub died down, ARCO’s chief economist, Dr. David
Sternlight, nicely captured the conclusion of sober observers:
He for one didn’t care if I were only half
right — that would be better performance than he’d
seen from the rest of them. Over the next decade, the article’s
thesis gained enough credence that many of its harshest critics
hired RMI, founded in 1982, to help them adopt it. By the
current decade, two leading journals of the electricity industry
generously recognized our approach’s prescience, and the
article’s thesis has broadly prevailed in the energy
marketplace.
The article was so influential because rather than just
proposing yet another portfolio of energy investments, it
redefined their purpose and logic. Previously, the problem was
where to get more energy — more, of any kind, from
any source, at any price. Planners extrapolated historic growth
in energy demand and built supply to meet it. The article
started at the other end by asking what we want energy
for — what “end-uses” we sought, such as hot
showers, cold beer, mobility, comfort, smelted alumina, baked
bread — and how to deliver each of those services by
providing the amount, kind, scale, and source of energy best
suited to the task. This end-use concept soon merged with Roger
Sant’s “least-cost” language, resonant with the emerging
Reaganomics emphasis on free markets. The resulting
“end-use/least-cost” approach revealed the most cost-effective
solutions, chosen via competition or planning, to such questions
as whether to keep warm in winter by gas or electric heating, or
by insulation and weatherstripping.
Different questions yield different answers, so the article
contrasted two ways the U.S. energy system could evolve (Figures
1A and 1B). (at article link)
Agelbert NOTE: The two alternative energy scenarios consisted of
going for more fossil fuels (Hard Path) or eliminating them with
efficiency and Renewable energy (Soft Path). The hard energy
path required investments, infrastructure, and institutions that
precluded the soft energy path.
SNIPPET 3:
THINGS I GOT RIGHT
Climate understanding isn’t new. The 1976 Foreign Affairs
article says of the hard path:
“The commitment to a long-term coal economy many times the scale
of today’s makes the doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide
concentration early in the next century virtually unavoidable,
with the prospect then or soon thereafter of substantial and
perhaps irreversible changes in global climate. Only the exact
date of such changes is in question.”
Are we there yet? Cue the Clean Power Plan and the Paris
Agreement.
Anticipating RMI’s 2002 book Small Is Profitable and today’s
market trends, the article says avoided grid costs and
diseconomies of scale could reduce electricity costs, and “an
affluent industrial economy could advantageously operate with no
central power stations at all!” It also notes that “Energy
storage is often said to be a major problem of energy-income
technologies.” But partly since thermal storage is easier and
cheaper than electrical storage to do the same tasks, “On the
whole…energy storage is much less of a problem in a soft energy
economy than in a hard one.” So
[quote]“One of the article’s most controversial
claims — that soft and hard energy paths are
mutually exclusive — has unfortunately been borne
out.”[/quote]
says the market today. Renewables’ lower costs, risks, and
hassles; favoring market-led over policy-driven adoption; and
reinforcing individual and community choice are all now
commonplace. [img width=90
height=50]
HTML http://cliparts.co/cliparts/Big/Egq/BigEgqBMT.png[/img]
The hard path’s political risks sound familiar too:
“In contrast to the soft path’s dependence on pluralistic
consumer choice in deploying a myriad of small devices and
refinements, the hard path depends on difficult, large-scale
projects requiring a major social commitment under centralized
management…. The hard path, sometimes portrayed as the bastion
of free enterprise and free markets
HTML http://www.pic4ever.com/images/acigar.gif,
would instead be a
world of subsidies, $100-billion bailouts, oligopolies,
regulations, nationalization, eminent domain, corporate
statism.”
HTML http://www.createaforum.com/gallery/renewablerevolution/3-200714183337.bmp
The grave vulnerabilities of over-centralized systems, later
amplified in [font=times new roman]Brittle Power
(1981/82),[/font] are also now visible.
Other gratifying content from the article includes the utility
death spiral, backcasting, integrative design (demonstrated in
my house seven years later), institutional barriers and
solutions, cogeneration, reliance on market principles and
mechanisms, and utilities’ financing customers’ solar systems
(though “solar” in 1976 meant solar-thermal, as photovoltaics
were still “exotic”).
Full article with several eye opening graphics and some
interesting historical pictures: [img
width=50]
HTML http://www.clipartbest.com/cliparts/xig/ojx/xigojx6KT.png[/img]
[img width=75
height=50]
HTML http://www.pic4ever.com/images/reading.gif[/img]
HTML https://medium.com/solutions-journal-summer-2016/soft-energy-paths-f044e7b65443#.50kd1s7gh
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