I hear it sometimes many times a day, from everyone who thinks about running for Town Council up to and including the President of the United States.

“We need clean and affordable energy.”

Let me tell you something about energy. It comes at a price.

We generate electricity in a number of ways but in all but one we need to crank a generator. The exception is a solar panel, the photovoltaic conversion of sunlight energy into a flow of electrons.

We crank generators with a turbine powered by steam, water, wind or burning fuel—the jet engine.

With the exception of wind and water all the other systems use steam made by heating water by burning hydrocarbons or heat generated by the decomposition—fission—of nuclear material.

Generators turned by jet engines burn either gas or burn refined jet engine fuel.

Those are our only options. The dream of generating heat from fusion, the squeezing together of hydrogen atoms to form helium with the byproduct of heat only occurs on stars. The best minds on the planet have been attempting to achieve this for decades but have failed. The temperatures and pressures required are not attainable on a continuous basis.

Now to some of the reasons why we will not have “clean and affordable energy.”

The best deal that you can get regarding energy is to hang your wash on an old-fashioned clothesline but your neighbors and environmentalists don’t want to see your underwear flapping in the breeze like Tibetan prayer flags.

Neither do they want to see wind turbines against the skyline on their hills.

Neither do they want to see solar panels on your roof or in your yard if there is not enough sun that hits your roof.

Neither do they want to see dams on the rivers.

Neither do they want to see power plants and transmission towers on their favorite beach.

So to keep saying, “We need to find new ways to generate clean and affordable energy”, accept the fact. There are no new ways.

KNOW WHAT WE NEED?

“Peace on earth, goodwill toward men.”

Looks good on a Christmas card but it ain’t gonna happen anymore than we will get affordable and clean energy.

It’s esthetics versus utility.

It’s wishes versus reality.

When you are done chewing your nails, go to Whole Living Today to get your blood pressure back down to normal.

A puppy takes a lot of care. You must feed it, make sure it has water, take it for walks, play with it, teach it to interact socially, take it to the vet and spend a lot of time with it.

Yesterday I opened a can of worms that I have been trying to avoid since I started this BLOG–politics and Global Warming.

They are intertwined.

Now that I have, I must follow through on a series of related articles….or look like an idiot.

In short, yesterday, “I Bought a puppy”.

The planet is warming. There is enough good data to support this at the present time. We do not know if it will continue to warm up or if it will start to cool.

So far this winter some seriously cold weather and snow have been seen around the world.

In the 1970’s the fear was that the planet was cooling.

As I said yesterday it is cyclic and unpredictable.

There are greater amounts of CO2 in the atmosphere today than there had been as shown by measurements in core samples from ice.

Whether the Sun started the warming cycle a couple of centuries ago and people are adding to it now is a possibility.

Warming of the northern regions releases carbon dioxide from the permafrost along with a far more effective greenhouse gas, methane.

Glaciers are melting. That too is verifiable.

Iceland and Greenland are volcanic in nature and some of the glacial melting can be coming from the rock under the ice and not just the atmosphere.

Science is full of symbols and numbers. Symbols frighten some people but they are “shorthand” for abstract concepts: momentum, energy, force etc.

Numbers indicate magnitude or quantity.

I will try to keep these at a minimum

Most people have heard of “Carbon Dating”.

There are three isotopes of carbon. An isotope has the same chemical properties but different internal configuration for an element.

Carbon 12 is the most common form of carbon and about 99 % of all carbon exists in this state.

Carbon 13 makes up most of the rest.

But there is also Carbon 14, a radioactive form that disintegrates to about half of itself in 5600 years. This is termed, “Half Life”.

Carbon is the major constituent of plant life and it is from this that we derive all of our common energy sources, our hydrocarbons: firewood, coal, oil and natural gas.

No matter what hydrocarbon that we burn to extract the energy that the sun originally put into it, the by-product is water and carbon dioxide.

By measuring the residual carbon 14 contained in ice samples we can determined when that carbon was captured and stored.

Ice core samples do indicate that the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere has been increasing during the period of the industrial revolution and  the increasing population on the planet.

It seems obvious to conclude that people are the cause.

Maybe but maybe not.

If the Sun triggered this warming trend agriculture would spread and populations would grow because there is more food to support them. It may be a corollary rather than a cause.

I am in total agreement that we must reduce carbon emissions but not catastrophically destroy our ability to lead reasonably comfortable lives until we really understand what is happening.

I will continue with this subject in a series of articles that deal with power generation, electric vehicles and nuclear energy.

“Stay tuned for the next thrilling episode of…. Will the World Turn?”.

“Do I need it?”

“Will I use it?”

“Can I afford it?”

That is how I have managed my life’s finances.

There are obviously times during one’s life when we buy things that we don’t really need but those are what makes life fun. These are the frivolous items that we buy or the trips that we take simply for pleasure.

However, before I spend the money I always ask myself, “Can I afford it?”

I answer that question honestly every time and often forego the pleasure out of a sense of fiscal responsibility.

In my previous post, “Black Plastic”, I questioned the necessity of the plastic sheet at construction sites.

To date, one person has agreed with me and one has misunderstood my article.

I did not blame Saudi Arabia for our misguided use of polyethylene.

If readers go back to the beginning of my articles they will find that my entire purpose in writing these articles is to question actions based on emotion rather than reason.

I assume the intended purpose of the plastic is to protect the environment. However, it does not and its use amounts to “Fiscal Irresponsibility”.

In short, we don’t need it and we can’t afford it.

The US has been in a continuously increasing trade deficit and purchasing polyethylene from a foreign country worsens the situation.

Polyethylene is a petroleum-based product. It is my opinion that crude oil, which we are told is a limited resource, is being diverted to the production of a product that we don’t need and can’t afford.

When I read something by Ben Stein I feel that it is not simply someone’s opinion but information that has been well considered.

While chasing another subject, I recently ran across an article that Stein wrote last year regarding the cost of Medicare that made the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

I was pursuing the trend of the Euro against the Dollar and wondered if crude oil was really increasing in price or whether the US dollar was becoming worth less.

If the trend continues the dollar will not only be worth less, it will be worthless!

Today it takes $1.48 US to buy 1 Euro. Six years ago a Euro could be bought for $0.835. That’s a 77% increase in the value of the Euro over the dollar.

Crude oil was selling for $51.80 in January of this year. This week it’s around $99 a barrel. That’s a 91% increase in less than a year. An oil barrel contains 42 gallons so at $99 a barrel that means crude oil costs $2.36 a gallon before any refining.

The following is a quote from Stein’s article of July 2006 entitled “Your Golden Years Don’t Have to be Tarnished”.

“Inevitably, barring some strange turn of events, this means that foreigners will want to hold less of our currency and bonds. This will lower the value of the dollar and raise the value of the currencies of other nations that export more then we do. This, in turn, will mean that oil and gasoline and other commodities will be more expensive in dollars.”

He was correct in forecasting what we are experiencing today. I mentioned in a previous article that there is pressure within OPEC to no longer accept US dollars.

Getting back to Medicare, it was in this same article by Stein that he forecast where the costs were heading.

Stein projects that the cost of Medicare alone will total or exceed the assets of the entire United States during the coming century.  That may or not be correct but at the present rate of medical cost increase it will certainly be an amount that the present tax structure of the country can not support.

In “the old days” people would put away money to pay their own medical bills. People took a great deal of pride in their self-sufficiency. They were ‘conservative’. People generally had too much pride to live beyond their means and find themselves having to ask for a hand-out.

That was a reasonable way of life in a realistic world. That was when a hospital room cost twenty to thirty dollars a day. Today, a visit to an “Emergency Room” can cost a person $1800 to have a foot X-rayed. People cannot be expected to have that kind of cash on hand particularly when the price of heating oil and gasoline has risen to such a high percentage of the average worker’s paycheck.

One of his solutions is for Americans to save more than they are presently doing and to consider investing in stocks of emerging countries like India, China, and other Southeast Asian countries.

That sounds like a sensible thing to do but the average person has nothing left over at the end of the month to either save or invest.

The future doesn’t look very bright. Perhaps we should consider that’s it’s a lot less expensive to maintain rather than repair, whether it’s a house, a car or a body.

A return to “the good days” might be a reasonable partial solution to the cost of medical treatment by reconsidering “natural healing” and “home remedies”.

It apparently kept our ancestors alive long enough as evidenced by our being here today.

The large pharmaceutical companies are still investigating the tropical forests for potential cures so perhaps we might start to apply what we have already proven.

If the herb doesn’t work then we still have the option of the high-priced high-tech pill.

Specialization promotes efficiency. More of anything can be produced if a single person can do repetitive tasks. Assuming that all individuals are capable of all things such as hunting, felling trees, making nets, making pottery, chipping flint for knives and weapons etc we know is untrue. Even within the smallest unit, the family, the members specialize.
Consider the most primitive of family units. It would be impractical if the senior male member were to spend his time gathering wood instead of hunting if he had small children to do that work. The same applies to preparing and cooking food, tending a garden or weaving baskets. Each of these tasks is better accomplished by specialists, that is, those most suited to the task by physical strength, experience or age.
As a social group grows in numbers, specialization becomes even more specific until within a small band of families one person may become the flint chipper for the entire group. Because he is engaged in that task full-time, some other member, the hunter, must supply him with food in exchange for arrowheads.
As the group expands more elaborate shelter and protection of its assets much be established. This in turn requires sources of wood and stone that may not be available in the particularly good hunting or fishing area in which they are established. This creates the need for trade of food for raw materials from other areas.
At this point in the rudiments of civilization, agreements must be established regarding the value of the exchanged goods or services. The need arises for negotiators because an interdependence between the groups has evolved such that neither group can continue its standard of living without the other group. If one of the groups involved in this mutual dependence, either through greed or miscommunication, becomes hostile to another group, a breakdown of this harmonious trading relationship can lead to risk of survival to all groups.
The conditions leading to the failure of social groups is thoroughly explained in Jared Diamond’s excellent book, “Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed”, in which he covers the subjects of resource depletion, isolation from trading partners and weather.
Countries all over the world are in similar peril at the present time. We have grown into such large groups of highly specialized individuals that the majority of us would starve in a very short time because we no longer have the tools nor the knowledge required for survival.
Locally available wood was our primary source of energy for cooking and staying warm. Most of the world’s population live in areas where this source is no longer available. We rely on food that we are no longer capable of producing on our own individual home sites but which must be grown and transported to us.
Today we are heading for a breakdown in trade as a result of antagonistic attitudes between different countries. In primitive societies stone, wood, food and furs were the required materials for survival. Today it is energy, primarily in the form of oil.
The modern world can not exist without, at the present time, oil. (I will deal with alternative energy options in later postings). Two major oil-producing countries, Venezuela and Iran, are teaming up to restrict the US oil supply because of politics. They can damage our economy through both restricting their oil output or by raising the price of oil. At the recent meeting of OPEC they have advocated not accepting US currency for oil.
This might be compared to two tribal trading partners when one says, ” I no longer accept your flint in exchange for our food.” Perhaps the one tribe can get along for a long time without new flint but how long can the other go without food?
When the US blockaded Japanese oil shipments that Japan needed for survival, Japan attempted to destroy the source of the trouble, the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor.
Messing around with someone’s survival is a dangerous game.