Solar Cat Web Log

The Sooner the Better.

2006-05-20T14:59:00.000-07:00

There are 4 energy sources:

The Sun, the Earth, the Moon & the Atom.

Forget about the last three. This is the SolarCat Web log.

Solar includes everything from the most ancient fossil fuel to the sunlight bouncing off my windowsill. Now why am I writing this instead of gazing out at that lovely solar illuminated view of San Francisco, the Golden Gate bridge and Marin Headlands I have out my window? Oops, can't go there!

How to succinctly express the idea that the shorter the time from the instant sunlight leaves for earth to the moment we apply it to a task, the better our method of conversion?

It's a time thing.
The more immediate the better.
The sooner the better.
Ah! The sooner the better.

Solar Energy - the Sooner the Better!

Hmmm. A little abstract, but that's me . . .
back to that view and the real nature of nature . . .

What's Going on here?

2006-04-16T01:00:00.000-07:00

How can otherwise apparently sane people come to think that nuclear energy is the only possible solution to the human civilization-disrupting problem of climate change?

They claim it it is the only large scale, cost effective way to meet demand with no CO2 emissions. But are they right? Can this be true?

Nuclear is not cost effective. How could it be? The cost of containing the radioactive fission products of commercial nuclear power plant operation- for 10 or 20 thougsand years is . . . . . . well, how much is that now, really? Hard to guess unless you know how you'd do it.

If we can't meet "demand" without it - meaning with solar energy alone, then maybe we better take a nice close look at what this "demand" thing is, and why on earth it is so unthinkably important we meet it.

I like staring at my navel.

Solar Rules! Nuclear Drools.

2006-03-06T18:39:00.000-08:00

The sun is earth's dominant energy source.
Nothing else comes close.
It drives our weather, grows our food, it gives us light to see what there is to see.
And it's big, very big.
Far, far bigger than nuclear power will ever be.

I enjoyed building nuclear plants.
It was fascinating.
It was incredibly complex.
It was rooted in simple, perfectly logical physical realities - just lots of them.
All or at least most of them interrelated.
It is an incredible tribute to the creative intelligence of the human mind that it has learned to make bombs and draw electricity from the process of nuclear fission.

But what a waste!
Sure, maybe someday we'll blow up the alien mothership with a nuke as in "Independence Day".
Or maybe divert an asteriod with a well placed H-Bomb (though you could probably do it with well- timed bag of high speed concrete).
But face it, both bomb and fission in general is of little use on the surface of the earth, it makes such a mess!

There is no way to avoid creating radioactive 'fission products' either when exploding a bomb or operating a commercial power reactor.
It is in the nature of the beast.
Containment of these wastes is key.
If only we could contain them, we'd be home free.
We might over look that in the alien mothership case, but not really anywhere else.

Analyzing and addressing design flaws in nuclear containment systems was the most interesting thing I did in nuclear.
It taught me that things in nature are interrelated.
Wacked-out, stoned hippies figured this out as well - without taking fluid dynamics or differertial equations.

Do I feel cheated?
No.
I'm happy to have done what I did.
Because I did as well as I could.
When I stopped doing better.
I stopped altogether.

OoH! A rhyme!

So what's my point?

I need a point?
Can't make your own point?
After all these idealets?

Yeah. It's tough.

Let's Reorganize the Department of Energy!

2006-02-11T22:34:00.000-08:00

When faced with the challenge of 9/11, what did we do? We reorganized our government! Today, suddenly faced with the spectre of a sinister societal addiction to oil, our first response must be to reorganize! But reorganize what? The Department of Energy comes to mind.

It's doubtful anyone really knows the organizational structure of the U.S. Department of Energy, but whatever it is, it's got to be screwed up. What else could explain the hopeless energy mess we're in? It's D.O.E.'s job, after all, to keep exactly such a mess from ever happening! So obviously, some sort of reform, if not outright reorganizing needs to happen here.

So let's do it. Let's Reorganize the Department of Energy!

OK, how about "zero-sum" reorganizing. Start from scratch. Don't conform to what we've got, but rather to what we'd like to have as if we were starting out all over again.

So what do we have here . . . the Department of Energy . . .

OK, it seems like the first cut would be a "Supply" Division and a "Demand" Division. Like this:

The U.S Department of Energy

Supply Division ---------------- Demand Division

Of course, these two divisions would get equal funding, since in the end they have to be equal. If they weren't equal, then we'd be violating The Law of Supply and Demand, and we can't do that, now can we? But wait a minute. What's going to keep them equal? Market Forces? Adam Smith's Invisible Hand? These govenrment entities tend to grow unpredictably on their own accord. Maybe we need a thrid division here.

Let's add an Invisible Division. The Invisible Division wouldn't have much to do, and even if it did, we'd never know it since it was invisible. So maybe it wouldn't even need much of a budget. But we better keep it in there, just in case. So now we have:

The U.S Department of Energy

Supply Division --------- Invisible Division --------- Demand Division

Next, we probably need to split each of these into rational Sub-Divisions.

The Supply Division would be split according to the basic energy sources of Solar, Tidal, Geothermal, and Nuclear. Solar includes fossil fuels, hydro, wind, waves, ocean currents and thermal stratification, biomass, visible daylight, photovoltaics and solar thermal. Tidal energy comes from the gravitational interaction of the moon, sun and oceans. Geothermal draws upon the heat of the interior of the earth, and nuclear comes from busting up or slamming together atomic nuclei. These would not be equally funded since Solar is so much bigger than the others. We might rely on the Invisible Division to do the balancing here, but that's just a detail.

The Demand Divsion can be split into a Needs subdivision, and a Wants subdivision. The Invisible Division would take care of balancing these. Both the Needs and Wants sub divisions need Efficiency sub-sub-divisions, since efficiency is always a concern. It wouldn't be adviseable to have Conservation sub- or sub-sub divisions since we'd then have to balance it with a Liberation Division to achieve political parity. We might also consider a few sub or sub sub divisions in there somewhere designed to deal with how "demanding" the demand is . . . as is in Now or Later. The "Now" Sub-Division of the Demand Division of the Department of Energy would include electricity and daylight, the ones that are really instant, while the "Later" Sub-Division would encompass everything else, like and all the various sort of fuels that you can store for a while before you use.

So our stucture now is:

The U.S Department of Energy

Supply Division --------- Invisible Division --------- Demand Division

Solar - Tidal - Geothermal - Nuclear --- ???????? --- Efficiency - Needs - Wants -Now - Later

There's no law that says that all these sub divisions have equal funding, so maybe we could trust Congress to decide and periodically adjust the relative proportions. On second thought, we better give that task to the Invisible Division and just have Congress appropriate one big fat lump sum each year in proportion to how important energy is to our economy. For starters, let's say 25% of GNP. That's a lot, but energy is actually a very big deal.

How about let's start with:

Supply Division Funding

75% Solar
2% Tidal
8% Geothermal
10% Nuclear

Demand Division Funding

80% Efficiency
10% Needs
10% Wants
10% Now
10% Later

OK, that should be enough to get started. All we need now is someone to head this thing and make it all work. Dick Cheney already has a job, so he's out. There's Michael Brown or Michael Moore, or somebody.

Getting back to the Supply Division. . . there'd be no sense including nuclear weapons research and development in the Nuclear Sub-Division of the Supply Division of the Energy Department, Nuclear weapons are, after all, such a clear and colossal waste of energy. This is the Energy Department we're talking about here, not the Waste-of-Energy Department. All that bomb stuff really ought to be in the Department of Defense, which could be split into the sub department of actual defense, and the sub department of actual nonosense. This way, we don't have to lay off so many people. But that's a whole different reorganizational thing!

So I feel better already.

There is No Doubt

2006-02-08T19:06:00.000-08:00

There is no doubt that the sun is the only energy source which can possibly work in the long run. It is the biggest, the most reliable, and by far the easiest to use. Nothing else comes close. Not tidal, not geothermal, not nuclear.

Now if that's not solar fundamentalism, I don't know what is!

The Four Spheres of Energy

2006-01-18T17:21:00.000-08:00

There are only four energy sources available to us. The sun, the earth, the moon, and the atom.

They are each spherical, more or less.

The amount of energy available from each is roughly proportional to their physical sizes. The relative cost (to us) of that energy may well be inversely proportional to their sizes.

How cool is that!

A Drop in the Bucket

2006-01-13T18:19:00.000-08:00

The California PUC's action to channel $3 billion toward solar energy development is great, but it is just a drop in the bucket compared to what we really need to invest in solar to turn around the horrible energy fix we're in today. By we, I don't just mean we in California, I mean we in the U.S., and in fact, we in the world.

Demand for Solar Cat Aircraft Carriers Exceeds Supply!

2005-10-09T16:38:00.000-07:00

A recent order for a Solar Cat Aircraft Carrier has completely outstripped the ability of the International Solar Cat Society's industrial aircraft carrier production facility to keep up with demand! Nobody knows what to do! Employees and managers alike are running in circles chasing their tails!

Truth be told however, receipt of the required down payment has not yet been received, however the mere suggestion that such a thing could happen, even if the check were later to bounce, has resulted in hissy fits of heretofore unheard of proportions!

Stay tuned.

Poem

2005-09-23T22:13:00.000-07:00

Sun shines everywhere.
More or less.
5 kilowatt-hours a day
On each square meter
Less when cloudy
More when sunny
Use it as you will

Solar Energy
Delivered to my doorstep
Not a bad deal.

How to use it?
Simple.
Let it hit you instead of the doorstep and you'll heat up.
Using it to go to Mars is not all that much more complicated
You can do it.
You already know how.
That's right. Just do it.

Solar Energy.
Delivered to Your Doorstep.
Use it.

The energy in sunlight
Our past, our future

Solar is Free Nuclear is Not

2005-09-15T22:27:00.000-07:00

Solar energy isn't too expensive. It's free.

Nuclear isn't free. It costs a lot to build, a lot to keep going, and a whole lot to keep apart from the living environment.

We have no Energy Crisis

2005-09-15T22:08:00.000-07:00

We have all the energy we need. The energy in sunlight hits the earth 10,000 faster than we use it for everything we do. That is enough. It has been enough to develop life on this planet over billions of years, and will be enough to continue doing so for billions more. We don't have an energy crisis.

Too Bad SB-1 Bit the Dust

2005-09-14T07:53:00.000-07:00

But it doesn't matter. Not really. Solar energy will triumph in the end. It's only a matter of time. It would be nice if our politicians realized the collossal seriousness of the energy problem we face. But even if they never do manage to get it, they'll all be gone before too long, and the energy in sunlight will still be there for the taking. We need only the will and focus to learn how to catch it on its way down.

SB-1 was sunk largely by the prevailing wage dispute. It really had nothing to do with whether or not accelerated development of solar energy was desireable or worth the effort. Yet there are lots of silly misconceptions about solar energy. It's too weak, it's too costly, it's unreliable, intermittant and unpredictable, it's really nothing but a hippie's pipe dream.

How big is too big? How fast is too fast?

2005-09-06T19:01:00.000-07:00

It seems like prevalent economic theory says things can't be fine unless economic activity keeps growing at some very-hard-to-know appropriate rate. This sort of thinking has also been applied in the realm of energy, particularly in forcasting how much energy will be needed in the future to keep things running nicely. But there might be an invisible problem here . . .

The Invisible Research Institute has been picking up bits and pieces of information from various places for quite some time, and now believes that the current worldwide energy "consumption" rate for all purposes is about 13 TeraWatts. Various sources project this will grow to 50 TW in the next 45 years.

Going from 13 to 50 in 45 years is an annual growth rate of 3.0388%. That sounds like a nice, conservative, healthy growth rate, now doesn't it?

So if we start using 13 TW, and grow at this rate for say 1,600 years, we'd be using about 9 times as much energy as the entire sun produces - not just the energy that hits the earth, but all of it! - and 9 of them!

That seems unlikely, not to mention potentially unhealthy, so what's wrong? Surely 1,600 years is not the problem, as today we're fighting wars over ideas spawned roughly that long ago . . . and surely it can't be the growth rate since 3,0388% is so conservative and healthy. I wonder what it is?

It's still simply a matter of time.

2005-08-31T17:56:00.000-07:00

Solar energy will dominate. It'll take a while, but it's enivitable that human civilization will come to draw virtually all its energy from the continuous stream of sunlight that has, after all, been the energy source for development of life on earth for the billions of years.

How's that for solar absolutism!

It's hard to argue that something like nuclear - fission or fusion - with barely 50 years of human experience could possibly be a better investment bet than learning ever better ways to use the the sun's energy more or less as it comes in.

Of course fossil fuels are a lost cause. We've known this was coming for a long time. There's a limited supply we're using up ever more rapidly, and the environmental pollution resulting from their use is a mounting disaster.

So what's left? Tides? Geothermal?

Tidal energy drawn from the gravitational interaction of the moon, earth and sun is fantastic - clean, reliable, and essentially inexhaustable. But tidal energy is goegraphically localized and compared to the sun or even to geothermal is not all that big.

So how big is the sun? In terms of energy. In a word: Big. SIt comes in 10,000 times faster than we currently use energy - all energy - all of us - worldwide - for everything - agriculture, transportation, electricity, commerce, industry, everything. 10,000 times. We oughta be able to make that work.

Geothermal energy - extracting heat from the molten core of the earth - is big all right, and even though it's also geographically localized to a good extent, it suffers from two long term problems. First, you can't use too much of it since the more heat you draw out of the center of the earth for use up here on the surface, the hotter it'll get up here on the surface. Not a problem until you've drawn up a lot of heat over a long time - kind of like the situation we've experienced with fossil fuel pollution. It didn't matter until it got too big. The second problem is that some seothermal energy extraction techniques also draw not-so-beneficial chemicals and compounds out of the bowels of the earth, which have to be contained or dealt with carefully. Again, not a problem as long as we're careful - you know, a bit more careful than we've been with fossil fuels or nuclear.

But all this stuff takes time. Time to discover the benefits and effectiveness of efficiency, time to wean from fossil fuels, time to let go of the nuclear fantasy, and time to get better and better at using the sun.

Yup, it's all just a matter of time.

So what does this have to do with cats?

Who says Solar Energy is weak?

2005-08-31T13:04:00.000-07:00

Where did Hurricane Katrina get it's energy?

Hint: it didn't come from nuclear, coal. oil or natural gas . . . and it only took a few days to build up!

So do you think it would be more likely to convince the collective American psyche to embark upon:

a massive project to build a floating, vertical axis paddle fan with 200 to 300 mile diameter blades than could turn part of the power of hurricanes into electricity, thus tempering the increasingly deleterious effects of imaginary global warming? or . . .
a long term plan to methodically and agressively support and increase the growth of already proven solar energy technologies?

Hint: People do the darndest things!

A Balanced Energy Portfolio

2005-08-19T21:50:00.000-07:00

What is that anyway? A "Balanced Energy Portfolio?" It sounds so good! It sounds so rational, so reasonable, so measured, safe and deliberate. But what is it beyond a truely brilliant phrase?

It means whatever you want it to mean.

Cats would say a well-balanced energy policy (for people) would focus:

50% on Supply Side stuff like this:

75% on Solar Energy
15% on Geothermal Energy
5% on Tidal Energy
5% on Nuclear Energy

50% on Demand Side stuff like this:

40% on Transportation Energy Efficiency
30% on Building Energy Efficiency
10% on Industrial Energy efficiency
20% on Research into benign restrain wasteful consumerism

What would you want it to mean?

Final score: Ducks 9, Cats 3

2005-07-29T09:54:00.000-07:00

Finally! After a three year long extra session marathon, the Ducks have won the 2005 Energy Bill! Again. Their 9 to 3 victory stunned nearly everyone involved! Imagine! Only $9 spent on supply for every $3 spend on demand! How could this happen when everyone knows that:

Supply = demand!

After the game, the Ducks kept right on quacking and the Cats kept right on napping - in the sunlight, storing, conserving, and dreaming of another day. . .

Ergonomic Fundamentalism

2005-07-28T09:25:00.000-07:00

Cats don't use money as their medium of exchange for goods and services. They use ergs. That's right, ergs. Tiny amounts of energy in various denominations to pay their debts and store the fruits of their labor.

It works out well. There's no inflation since an erg is an erg and if it ever somehow became even a tiny bit less than an erg, it wouldn't be an erg anymore, now would it? Human money, on the other hand always seems to become worth less over time.

Basing their entire economy on ergs also makes the value of things a lot easier to grasp since anything that took a lot of energy to make would cost a lot of ergs to buy. The more energy it took to make, the more ergs it would cost. Cats are no dopes!

People think way too much about money and not at all enough about energy. But if they switched their money to ergs, they could direct all that focus toward ergs - and maybe do something about their energy problems even if by accident.!

Cats, Ducks, & the 2005 Energy Bill

2005-07-27T18:14:00.000-07:00

Cats don't have bills. Ducks have bills. Congress is filled with a bunch of ducks. They certainly do a lot of ducking, in addition to all that quacking they do over their bills. Or maybe their bills are made by a bunch of quacks? Whatever. . .

Their energy bill is one big duck. One really big duck! It ducks the biggest and most obvious problem we've got. We use too much oil. We use too much coal. We spew too much junk in the air and the water because of all that oil and coal we burn. We need to use less of these things. Way less. Fast. Really fast. Everybody knows this, except the ducks.

We're in the 14th year of a war to control the Gulf oil and gas reserves. How much longer do they figure this will last? 12 more years? What if they're wrong? Have they ever been wrong? What if it's longer? When do they figure we'll start fighting China over this stuff? China's not going to want to loan us the money to keep that war going so we can secure those oil fields for ourselves. They want them. So who are we going to borrow the money from then?

Energy is an issue of supply and demand, right? Not just supply. Supply AND demand. But ducks can't deal with more than one thing at a time, now can they? Nothing but supply supply supply supply for the last 30 years! Quack quack quack quack - once a quack always a quack.

But they'll all retire some day. Every last one of them will duck out the back door, to be replaced by . . .

Solar Energy: The Newer the Better

2005-07-22T01:08:00.000-07:00

Energy Fundamentalism

2005-07-14T12:18:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the the ideal world, where everyone at birth is given an irrevocable right to some fixed amount of power - for now, let's say 1 kilowatt of power, to be used as they see fit - 24/7/365 for as long as they live. They could choose to use all, part or none of it, lend part or all of it to others, but they can always get it back whenever they want - it would be their irrevocable birthright. To keep things stable in the long term, no one can pass their birthright to power on to others after they die. This would amount to an amalgamation of "cap and trade" the "death tax". Something for everyone.

So with about 7 billion people in the world, that would come to 7 billion kilowatts, or 70,000 gigawatts. The U.S. Dept of Energy's Energy Information Agency says the entire world will consume "primary" energy at a rate of about 15,000 gigawatts this year. So a 1 kilowatt birthright is in the ball park. So now what?

Now we've got a benchmark, something to compare our own, individual energy use to. The next question: what is our individual energy use rate anyway - compared to that 1 kilowatt each ideal person would ideally get?

OK, 1 kilowatt continuous comes to 8,760 kilowatt-hours a year. That's cause there are 8,760 hours in a year (trust me on this). So that's 730 kilowatt hours a month. But that's for everything, home, car - everything. Don't forget to divide your home use by the number of people in your home. Gasoline is easy, just count the gallons use in a year - you do keep track of that, don't you? You could try to figure your share of all the energy consumed at your workplace, and that consumed to produce all the things you eat and buy. There's also your share of all the energy that goes into the infrastructure of civilization, like for roads, factories, aircraft carriers, etc. But it's best to forget all that for now, it'll just make your head hurt! Focus on what's easy: like the energy you use for things you get bills for. That's it: follow your bills! Start with your home and your car.

Don't have time? Not a problem. If you live in the U.S., in a red state or blue state, you're probably over that 730. So now what? Go on a diet? Switch to "low-energy" energy or something? I know, let's up that birthright! Yeah, let's double or quadruple it! While we're at it, let's run a background check on those D.O.E. numbers. Find a way to get that agency to bump them up like they do for the number of new jobs added or lost in the economy each month. Let's shoot for a factor of ten. How about it?

There is No Such Thing as Renewable Energy

2005-07-12T10:31:00.000-07:00

Renewable energy is a physical impossibility. It would violate the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Energy dissipates down a one way street. It goes from hot to cold, from high level to low level. There is no turning it back. Can't be done. You can always get more high level energy from somewhere, but once you use it, it always dissipates to become lower level energy.

That's the way the world works. When we use energy, we're just catching it on its way down, doing with it what we will, and letting it go after "using it up" or depleting it to an unsuably low level.

So what.

It's just that the meaning of the term "renewable energy" is a little vague. There is widespread and growing support for it in the public mind. That's good. Or I suppose its good. But when proponents of nuclear energy begin to claim it too is renewable, I begin to wonder if we have a problem. The trouble is, we can't very well inform Houston about this as the Apollo 13 crew did of their problem, now can we?

Jobs Jobs Jobs, Everyone Needs Something to Do

2005-07-12T09:34:00.000-07:00

It's true. Everyone does need something to do. But that's not why jobs are the political sacred cow they are. It has more to do with the fact that so many are living so close to the bone these days. But it's also about self-interest. Intense self-interest in keeping from sliding further into the hole, in climbing out of the hole, and in getting ever farther away from that hole.

That's why cats lay in the sun. It's their job. It's what they do. It serves their self interest. They get something for nothing.

Is that an idle muse or what?

Solar Energy: It's Simply a Matter of Time

2005-07-11T07:39:00.000-07:00

The shorter the time from capture to use of solar energy, the better. This is true both environmentally and politically.

Solar energy comes in many forms. The energy in fossil fuels is from sunlight captured millions of years ago. The energy in biomass fuels came from the sun much more recently. So to with hydro-electric power, wind, wave, and ocean thermal power. The shortest capture to use time of any form of solar energy is with visible sunlight, followed by solar electric panels (photovoltaics) , and all the various solar thermal heating, detoxification, desalinization, and electric power technologies, which take from minutes to days from capture to use. There are a variety of photo-chemical and biochemical technologies with comparatively short capture to use times.

The time from first sun-strike to the moment of use is the measure of 'directness', or how 'direct' the solar energy application is.

In general, the more direct the better, the more direct the more efficient, and the more direct the less of a deleterious environmental impact. Think about it.

Politically, it is also simply a matter of time before the general political consensus in this country and the world comes to know that the only way human civilization can possibly sustain itself is to live within the energy budget flowing to us from the sun, available to us in the ocean tides, and in the naturally occuring thermal energy flows from the core of the earth. Nuclear fission and nuclear fusion have no place in a sustainable world.

It is only a matter of time for solar energy to become conventional energy in the collective mind of human civilization.

Fusion Fries

2005-07-09T19:09:00.000-07:00

"You base your energy supply policy on the energy sources you have - not on the sources you might want or wish to have . . ." - so who said that, and is it true, and if it is, it doesn't look so good for sudion, now does it?