The future of solar power

The future of solar power

The future of solar power is linked to the cost of the medium for generating it. If it is too expensive, then the cost savings do not come into play fast enough to make it attractive to the greed instinct. A possible future breakthrough lies in a thin film that absorbs sunlight and generates electricity. It takes far less material to build photovoltaic cells from high grade silicon that is over US$500 per pound. Solar power is therefore a whole lot cheaper to generate and once you have established a solar farm it works without moving parts for 30 years. Instead of adding to global warming, nuclear waste dumps or using a finite resource, maintaining large scape solar power batteries becomes more possible when it is seen in a social context. Every roof in a city for example. It is time to evolve away from dependence upon a resource that is always going to be available for free. Unless we pollute the atmosphere with too much soot from burning coal, or worse a 500 year nuclear winter.

Challenge to Scientific Consensus on Global Warming

Challenge to Scientific Consensus on Global Warming

Challenge to Scientific Consensus on Global Warming: Analysis Finds Hundreds of Scientists Have Published Evidence Countering Man-Made Global Warming Fears - Press Release

"Global Warming" (and cooling) has always been a natural process! So are the natural processes that excessive pollution threaten to upset. What about the scale of extinctions since the industrial age started to poison rivers and air? These scientists correctly say an ice age would be worse that "global warming". Tell that to land owners who are affected by a sea level rise. If we abate pollution, it will not stop "global warming", but it may allow the trend to, one day, revert. If its a cycle, then its either naturally getting warmer or colder.

It seems a little irrelevant to worry about if its going to become warmer or colder if our risky activity could be projected into an outcome of life extinction. Sure the Earth may recover, but the dinosaurs did not.

Climate change is the present and real danger that we are causing. And poisoning our environment is just a crime against nature. It will pay us back. But we have already buried the worst culprits, the giants of pollution, until GW Bush came along and tried to keep America on top of the tables, but Asia will out-pollute them as they compete to try to catch up.

The world does not need another billion SUVs badly maintained in a Chinese economy that is collapsing in 2060 as their economic sunshine fades. One possible future.

"Global Warming" is the wrong target. The melting ice will not stop to examine tree rings. Change will occur with or without us, but we are contributing more than dinosaur flatulence and we should spend more on research into reducing our energy footprint. It is just responsible!

Harnessing free energy supports moderate growth. Burning all the oil competitively does not. It is time for the great nations of the world to stop competing for control of the Earth's resources and paid the true cost to this and future humanity, (as well as repair nature).

War is redundant if you can not support a decent quality of life for all citizens.

The 11th Hour

The 11th Hour

The most severe criminal act is destroying the world, the current leadership seem to think its the end of the world so why not burn everything up...

Real faith is shown by those who take the long term view. The one where their grandchildren have some air to breath, clean rivers and streams, abundant fish in the sea.

The film The 11th Hour by Leonardo Dicaprio addresses these issues. It looks inspiring and full of the kind of hope that drives people to do something positive.

I have been raving on about climate change for years here on disturbingtrends.org and agree - it is late in the game to be making a change to the way we behave - but act we must - and the sooner the easier - we must act politically and change the underlying philosophy. The philosophy must be revised because it is exactly our need to compete to survive that is the fire underlying our outstanding success in dominating all life on Earth.

Humans have quickly evolved intellect in order to see how we can reduce our impact. It requires less greedy and criminal motives. It requires a different motive for competitive behavior. We should moderate our population growth.

If we could reduce our footprint with technology it also requires us to retreat somewhat and let nature recover. Or we will bring another Great Flood upon ourselves, this time it will be for very clear scientific reasons.

From an article about Mikhail Gorbachev

GORBACHEV | All of us, but particularly in America, consume too much for the planet's well being. Americans are less than 5 percent of the world population, but use 30 percent of all the energy. Gradually, we need to abandon the model of consumer society. If we continue with this model, we will surely undermine nature. And that, in turn, will undermine the stability of our societies.

The Energy of Progress

The Energy of Progress

Al Gore may be right that ultimately it is up to every individual to believe that change is possible, in order that politically we choose leaders who advance progress in priority to growth. On the 07/07/2007 we all swung away from unrestrained capitalism as the only panacea necessary to allow us to thrive in harmony most successfully.

It is really only the political consideration that matters, for, ultimately we may care how many plastic bags make poisonous pits out of landfills but that does not stop the factory down the road from making the local river murky and lifeless.

It has only been political change that has allowed us to control our impact upon the environment. And for America this provides an alternative impetus for progress. What is progress? It is invention, finding a better way to do it. And these days cleaner and environmentally friendly is going to become something as important and enforceable as any other law.

US Industry is growing at 1% per annum. It is already a substantial contributor to global warming because it requires so much energy. If we draw the energy from burning coal, as seems "politically realistic" it will be with advantages in air filtration and clean burning technologies that do not emit excessive CO2 or other gases that poison the environment.

Understanding the problem is hard enough for the scientific community so one can not expect political change unless the addiction to growth is not curbed. Political change needs to encompass stronger motivations for choosing to advance the case for free power generation using large batteries of wind farms.

Taking the energy from the air seems logical as a counter measure to climate change. Scientific analysis of this effect may well prove important if the religion of growth is continued. Our climate is like the Earth's circulatory system. We got to learn to stop screwing with it to get our energy.

Free passive energy can obtained with solar cells. If every rooftop in America was covered with power generating solar cells, power would be free.

If the environmental cost was assessed and taxed to every business in the world, we could make progress to ensure our safety.

It is political for the same reason that it would be very hard to stop someone competing in a race, for example, after they had prepared for it. You would have to have a very good reason.

The most convincing commercial argument to prevent climate change is that there is rather a lot of money to be made.

The Green Bush

The Green Bush

So, George Bush, having polluted the world with wars over oil wants us to suddenly believe that his heart is in it when he suddenly proclaims that China, India, Russia and the major pollution culprit America will respond to his sudden "decision" that they will somehow control the forces that affect our world?

It's a horrible sham, and a very dangerous one at that.

Iraq March

Iraq March

The march at Majaf instigated by the Sadrist Shiite majority demonstrated against the foreign forces occupying Iraq. The political capital enjoyed by Bush and Blair is evaporating rapidly. The naked ambition to control the world's oil supply appears the apparent goal in seeking to control outcomes in the Middle East. It is a rational strategy of the US Government as controlled by the remanants of the all bases covered Republican Senate, House and Presidential dominance of recent times - with only the office of President left to argue for the war. It is the voice that counts, the one voice in the wilderness of "who are you kidding" disbelief. Dragging the West into this unsavourary and premature war has recreated divisions on our own soil. The Bush Black/White doctrine does not allow hesitation but it is exactly that, hesistation, that has saved the world from Nuclear madness, on more than one occasion.

Humans causing climate change

Humans causing climate change

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Humans blamed for climate change

As climate change skeptics and scientists argue out whether human activity is the cause of global warming - we are seeing the disintegration of the ice that has been there since the last ice age and as we continue to argue this ice melts, makes the situation worse until the atmosphere saturates and then the atmosphere will change. Perhaps that will cause the atmosphere to become more laden with clouds.

Nobody is asking the question - why these masses of ice appeared. If they melt it would change the map of land significantly. Are they what remains of the last ice age? Restoring things (which is what nature does) would require another ice age. And if the system (weather) becomes over saturated, it is possible that a precipitous ice age could ensue.

C02 may trap heat, but extensive cloud cover may reduce heat.

Science needs to answer the question of why ice ages occur so often - it seems a macro instability in the system. In this system a human lifetime is not significant. 500 years from now, it may well become a problem that humanity can do nothing about.

But we can do something about it now.

IPCC Report

Wildlife

Wildlife

Independent Online Edition > Wildlife - as predicted, the disturbing trend of accumulative climate change is already having effects upon life on Earth. Creatures live by instinctive traditions, the changes in temperature trigger the "firing mechanism" that end hibernation and upset established breeding patterns. What is next?

While we fiddle with the politics of the environment, our world will burn up in places as it is flooded elsewhere.

Soil with less water could spell dangers to agriculture like desertification. Bird migrations could change virus distribution and result in sporadic mini epidemics as Virus X goes into Environment Y which has less immunity than Environment X; in addition to the usual problems of cities being buried by water (London and New York will be more like Venice in fifty years) we have upset the intricate system of nature.

But do not worry. Nature is a self correcting mechanism and it will limit our ability to do damage. Now that will be truly disturbing.

President Warns of Afghan Battle

President Warns of Afghan Battle

Pressing Allies, President Warns of Afghan Battle - New York Times - even Bush himself acknowledges that the efforts in Afghanistan may come to nothing if the military success of the American presence there is insufficient.

Compare the American contribution to Afghanistan of 13,000 troops with the 170,000 Bush wants in Iraq and the scale appears out of whack. The Taliban established they were prepared to protect Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, giving America adequate reason to attack militarily and establish a more moderate Government in Afghanistan. But instead of acting forcefully to promote democratic ideals, the US Government has underfunded completion of the military goals, and now with the once avoidable expense of Iraq to contend with, the problem is larger than it was before.

Strategy can not be shot from the hip. This man exposes the singular logic of an all powerful Commander in Chief being in control of these wars. Bush is convinced that he is right. Perhaps he needs to be. But one must wonder if Bush is best man for the job, since it must be done by one man, perhaps Bush should retire. So far his record is a testament of exactly how not to win a war.

Bush will continue to lead America by the nose into conflict. Not that he wants to, but that he has blundered his way into a quagmire and is unlikely to have the smarts to conclude the mess gracefully as the months count down to zero, the same realization will dawn on the American electorate.

The republicans best nominate an anti war candidate. How the winds of politics are turning.

Is climate change politics or science?

Is climate change politics or science?

You do not have to be in the pay of global oil to cast doubts about the scientific veracity or otherwise, of global warming. Indeed, all the Northern Hemisphere of the Earth have to do is experience the great frosts and ice overs this year to see for yourselves that global warming is some kind of myth dreamed up by left wingers who just want to get their own back on people who drive larger cars than they could ever afford.

There is a theory brewing that politics is a science of trying to defeat reason by extrusion of wacky arguments. The wackier the arguement, the more that its opposite must be defended, or so the theory goes. Today's world is a product of wacky ideas in conflict. The real world is not as wacky as the world we invent.

Science is less wacky but often surprising, but it is conclusive. Politics tends towards the wacky, over focused arguments that are not conclusive.

It is understood that the Sun's rays are the primary cause of the Earth's weather. No doubt about it. And it is also understood that fluctuations in the Sun's intensity would have a major effect on climate. That is not in dispute.

But to argue that because these effects trump man made pollution is facile. It does prove nothing.

The atmosphere is a fragile self correcting eco-system - our excessive pollution and aggression has wiped out a very large number of species and ecosystems that took millenia to evolve. They did not belong to us to devour. We are a part of it and we undo the chain of events that result in us at our folly.

To state that unusually harsh winters disprove climate change is wrong. Pollution is changing the consistancy of the atmosphere. Yes, the sun does it too and is capable of producing larger effects due to its far greater energy. Our atmosphere mitigates the effects of the sun. But if we fill it full of pollution, we will ruin nature. Trees will die. It will then get much warmer, and we risk sea levels ignoring certain low lying cities.

It is not a risk worth taking. Just start working to stop the pollution of our home. We share it with other life forms and have no right to murder them.