Swickard: Wind and solar are a-changin'

© 2016 Michael Swickard, Ph.D.   “I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t believed it.” Marshall McLuhan
            That’s the problem with the future which always creeps up on us. There are huge changes in our society coming but most people don’t see them because they don’t believe in relatively sudden technological changes.
            Example: many people don’t believe wind or solar power will have any effect upon them. They see it as the government throwing money so politicians can get votes and donations. Wind or solar to them are boondoggles when the government gets involved for political reasons. And in today’s world I must agree. Today’s world.
            That leaves the future of wind and solar generation which is much different and closer than most people realize. Currently, except for harvesting government subsidies these technologies are only of use in houses in the sticks where bringing a power line in would cost the same as building a battleship.
            However, the use of wind and solar will change. As 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature winner Bob Dylan wrote in 1964: For the times they are a-changin’ You must believe to see the changes coming. That may catch people and governments unaware and could mean they are today investing in the wrong technologies.
            Solar and wind generation has three major shortfalls compared to traditional generation: first, the density of the power while generating it. Secondly, the continuous dependability of the power. Finally, the transmission and generation cost. All three are deal breakers for adopting wind or solar in today’s world.
            There is another problem adopting the current commercial wind and solar generation. It is the thousands of dead birds smacked by wind generation blades or fried from flying into solar death rays. Our current efforts are not the way to have these technologies become mainstream.
            The change that will enable solar and wind generation to become mainstream is when innovation dramatically lowers the cost to store that wind and solar power cheaply at the end-user’s home. This would allow wind and solar generation to become the technology of choice without any government subsidies.
            Can this happen? Yes, here’s a way to look at that possibility of massive change.
            Twenty years ago, the technology in my life involved seven different media devices. I used a Canon F1 camera, a Sony tape recorder/player; a Motorola cell phone, a Gateway home computer with modem, a digital storage unit to back up my computer files and a VHS video player plugged into my Sony television.
            Seven devices that are now contained in my Samsung smartphone. And, I now have Wi-Fi which allows me as a writer to do things I could only dream of doing twenty years ago. Twenty years ago I had no idea so much change was on the horizon.
            That is the same scenario for the dramatic shift to home-based electrical generation and storage. It starts with the move to power vehicles with stored electricity rather than fossil fuel. Currently, the cost per mile of an electric vehicle is above that of gas or diesel powered vehicles. But like the change in my media devices, the core issue is the cost of storage which is dropping dramatically.
            Take computer memory sticks. Just a few years ago it was ten dollars for one megabyte of storage in a memory stick. Now it is ten dollars for a hundred gigabytes. All in a couple years. The same will happen in power storage which will allow homeowners to have their own wind or solar storage.
            I could write more but that is enough to point out that having the expectation of oil and gas being a major benefit to budgets in years to come might just be proven wrong by the dropping storage costs in whole home batteries.
            Stanford University’s Tony Seba has written about this in, “Clean Disruption of Energy and Transportation: The industrial age of energy and transportation will be over by 2030.” It is a very thought provoking dialog about how technology will change our world soon.
            It isn’t if conventional power will end being useful, only when. That point is when home power storage costs less than the transmission of traditional energy. Then it will make sense to change.

Share/Bookmark

Zero Integrity - Democrats rig elections

© 2016 Jim Spence - You have to shake your head at the media dialogue surrounding a “rigged” presidential election. If you are under the delusion that voter fraud does not happen in virtually every Democratic stronghold in America, you should stop reading right now.
Democrats are not simply establishing all sorts of back doors that can be used to commit voter fraud. They are paving the way for a horrible end to American society as we know it. There is no fundamental value or integrity that Democrats hold sacred including the sanctity of citizenship and a fair voting process.
The sequence of voter fraud is actually pretty easy to follow. When we go to vote at our precinct we see our niece and sister's names still on the voting rolls. We have informed the Democrats in the County Clerk’s office at least three times that neither our niece nor sister has lived in the state for more than twenty-five years. While we have not checked to see if someone has “voted” on behalf of our sister or niece recently, we really don’t have to. We read the reports of dead people voting as well as more people voting than were actually registered in a precinct. These sorts of outrageous frauds and many others occur constantly. Investigative reports show that tens of thousands of illegal aliens vote. Even illegal alien felons are voting. Nobody is ever prosecuted.
How do Democrats get away with voter fraud on such a widespread basis? First, the people they use in their fraud schemes may not even know they are breaking the law. Second, if they do know they are committing felonies, they probably do not care because once again, they realize they won’t ever be prosecuted. Third, in the inner cities and rural areas where Democratic Party registrations are high, fraudulent voters are brought to voting precincts in vans by Democratic Party organizers. Those who commit voter fraud are often given alcohol and/or tobacco. They are taught how to sign someone else’s name on a voter card and often Democratic Party operatives go in the voting booth with them to pull the Democrat lever. Simply put, it is easy to vote illegally and fraud is an epidemic.
How could it be this easy? Think about what Democrats do to make sure fraud is easy. Want to use your credit card? Produce a photo I.D. Want to fly? Produce a photo I.D. Want to rent something? Produce a photo I.D. Want to cash a check? Produce a photo I.D. Democrats understand that you must have an I.D. to live in modern society. Democrats never object to the fact that if you want to fly or charge something you must have a photo I.D. They even support driver's licenses for illegal aliens to make it easier for them to function here illegally.
However, because Democrats know that voting in many Democratic precincts can be packed with people committing fraud, they become outraged whenever it is suggested that requiring a photo I.D. to vote is fundamental and should be the law of the land. Democrats block voter fraud reform efforts at every turn. Democrats have the audacity to say that requiring an I.D. to vote is.......racist. They get Democrat judges to agree with their positions and as a result of this judicial collusion, the fraud goes on and on.
Democrats help voter fraud by refusing to enforce immigration laws. As a result, working America subsidizes everyone's living standard who violates our border laws. Government agents on the taxpayer payrolls who get paid to secure our borders.....do not do so. This leads to working America actually subsidizing over-crowded emergency rooms, doctor’s offices, and clinics. Accordingly, Democrats have managed to destroy the best healthcare system in the world in less than eight years. It is overrun with freeloaders.
Working America continues to get conned every single day by the Obamas and Clinton’s and their adoring media. Anyone who calls foul on their dumb open border policies is a racist anti-immigrant. Along with all of these other costs, we also pay for an insidious process that enables voter fraud to rob us.
It is sad to see that Democrats have zero respect for the most fundamental nature of democracy. They are willing to promote racial paranoia to achieve the perversion of the sanctity of the vote. Democrats have no problem whatsoever with allowing voter fraud at every turn.
As much as I hate defending Trump......if the question is this: "Do Democrats rig elections?" 
The answer is is simple. Democrats rig elections every chance they get.
The great sadness with the way our society has devolved in the 21st Century is that Democrats no longer care about basic fundamental integrity.
Share/Bookmark