For Whom the Bike Bell Tolls

Most people are pretty good at thinking on their feet, but nobody’s arguing that we couldn’t use better set protocols to fall back on as well…Especially when trying to avoid dangerous urban traffic snags, or at least unsnarling any incidents with an added measure of basic diplomacy. But short of conceding our autonomy to some Orwellian version of a Master Traffic Control that safely auto-pilots us around within rails and fences like well-tempered livestock, most people would likely prefer to just relate and react to each other more effectively without needing to change the world around us first. Unfortunately, popularised use of public CB Radio never made it past the 70′s, so the only usable ‘public broadcast’ tools that we have on the road are a handful of visual signals, and our crude but effectively alarming horns and bells. Nevertheless, since Cyclists still have the most safety to lose in any traffic mêlées, let’s pause to consider a communications experiment that involves our existing but oddly underused bike bells…Rather than just ringing them willy-nilly without rhythm or good reason.

Copper Spurs New NanoTech Growth!

	Copper Nanowires can now be ‘grown’ in bulk and then ‘printed’ on a surface to transparently conduct current! - Benjamin Wiley, Duke Chemistry

Most people probably don’t realize that thin film solar panels and flat screen TV’s share alot in common, since they both rely heavily on the technologies of ‘thin-film dialectrics’ (TFD) to produce the substrates (electrode layers) that control either the emission or absorption of light. So obviously, any advances made in the manufacturing processes for these films could create both cost and technical efficiencies that would enable TFD’s to either consume less power, or generate more energy on an even cost basis for a given amount of light. This would be no small achievement if you consider the growing demand for efficient display screens, and the persistent cost barriers to all the solar panels that people are hoping to install in the very near Future.  The exciting Science News here is that new discoveries in copper-based ‘Nano Tech’ are offering the first cheaper and efficient alternatives to existing methods that we’ve seen in quite awhile, and could genuinely change the surface of playing field if Cu-based nanotech can continue to overcome the hurdles of establishing a brand new TFD process.

Currently the status quo of TFD manufacturing is based in a predominance of electrode films made from Indium Tin Oxide (ITO), and this rather expensive method still has quite a few nagging drawbacks. First of all, ITO is pricey to process, it’s also brittle and thus fragile; so its production process remains highly inefficient; and it’s already an expensive technology that’s becoming even more costly because of the dual increases in market demand (scarcity) for both raw materials and the finished product. Currently the only alternatives we see on the horizon are coming from nano technology that uses either silver or carbon nano-tubes – which both remain highly cost prohibitive and difficult to produce. However a research team at Duke University have recently announced that they’ve perfected a method to grow nanowires from Copper, which promises to dramatically reduce not only the manufacturing demands for these thin films, but also allow for them to be much more flexible, durable, and cost efficient – Especially since copper is an abundant resource who’s price can’t be as easily cornered and manipulated by merchants and market forces…

A Diesel Powered Future?

	Diesel Power was a revolution that still inspires new innovations even today. Bridging the gap for Industry and Transportation as they seek out a sustainable Future. Check the Green History of Diesel!

Upon operating his first successful engine design back in 1897  Rudolph Diesel changed the world in ways that most people still don’t fully appreciate today. Especially now, as we begin the long process of moving out of the petroleum-powered era, we should pause to take lessons from visionaries like Tesla and Diesel, and consider how they harnessed natural forces and physical phenomena to revolutionize existing technologies, and enabled enormous leaps into the Future by allowing others to build upon the solid foundations that they laid. The venerable diesel engine was an innovation of the internal combustion engine that continues to be improved upon even today, with the new methods and materials that are offered by modern science.

Many of us associate diesel power with loud smelly trucks and buses, so it might come as a great surprise that Diesel technology is actually still being improved upon after all this time. In fact, in just the past few years we’re seeing a level of improvement to efficiency and emissions that are actually positioning diesel as a sustainable interim solution for our transportation needs…While other options continue to be researched for that quantum leap in technology that will slingshot both Industry and Society towards the next century. So If you’re ready to see how diesel power still holds a few tricks up it’s sleeve, then let’s start exploring, by looking at railway locomotives as our prime motivator!

BTW: If you’re curious about Rudolf Diesel’s sense of environmental and social responsibility, as it was well over a century ago…Just pop-open another window by clicking HERE for further insights.

Diesel’s Vision

	At one time, Diesel power was poised as an alternative to big Coal and Oil… Today it could once again bridge the sustainability gap, offering Industry and Transportation the time to find its renewable power for the Future. Learn More Here

At the World’s Fair of 1900 in Paris France, Rudolph Diesel demonstrated the virtues of his new pressure-ignited “rational heat motor”  which came to bear his name to the world then, and has done so to the present day. We’ve come to also know Rudolf Diesel as an eminent mechanical and thermal engineer, a multi-lingual and knowledgeable patron of the Arts, and not least of all a highly progressive Social Theorist. Although his legacy is inestimable, his rise to fame was as quick as it was brief…and leaves us with some unanswered questions about how Diesel’s vision may have offered us a different world than the one ruled by Oil and Big Banks.

Hemp Diesel

	A century ago, it looked like Diesel Power and Hemp Products could have combined to side-track (eliminate?) our current dependencies on Oil and Forestry…Funny how things could still come full circle! ♦ CLICK HERE to learn how Diesel is cleaning up it’s act, and kicking the forced Oil habit!

In 1893, German inventor Rudolph Diesel published a paper entitled “The Theory and Construction of a Rational Heat Engine” which described a motor in which air is compressed by a piston to a very high pressure, causing a temperature spike where injected fuel is auto-ignited and efficiently burned in the expanding compression during the down-stroke. This basic concept results in a simple, safe, cool, highly efficient engine that could run on locally produced vegetable oils – and therefore level the playing field for those who otherwise couldn’t compete with the large steam-powered Industries and Shippers of the day.

Unfortunately, in the early 20th century Big Banks and Financiers were already doing everything in their power to support their Oil and Forestry interests, ,and thus assure the dominance of Petro-Chemical industries. So instead of seeing how Diesel’s vision would have played out, we’ve had to wait until the combined and destructive effects of Financial, Energy, and Environmental crisis’ here the 21st Century, would obviate the ideals and benefits that Rudolf Diesel had envisioned for Society over a century ago…When he built his first engines to be run on the same types of Bio-Fuels that we now have available today, and which could have cut Coal and Oil out of the picture from the very start…

GRID2.0: Power Struggles and Open Markets

	GRID 2.0 could be an chance revolutionize Society by catalyzing two critical resources… Energy and Information!

People have been hearing more Mainstream Media buzz around Smart Grid or GRID2.0 initiatives. Some have even considered the finer points of the debates that have sprung out from the power struggles that are going on behind the scenes – mostly arising from the proposed methods and standards that would be applied to unify the current patchwork of disparate electrical transmission systems that we call “The Grid”. This need to get competing interests to actually cooperate on common initiatives is only one of the biggest challenges to overcome in leapfrogging over simple upgrades, and actually re-building our electrical distribution systems to meet the emerging needs of the 21st Century.

Some people will simply presume that these initiatives are just another example of the Corporate world wishing to cut it’s costs through new efficiencies, by updating equipment or infrastructure at the expense of Customers and Taxpayers. While this may well be true, the biggest opportunities (and risks to corporate hegemony) actually revolve around the emerging protocols and standards that threaten to democratize monopolistic hierarchies, open up delivery systems to smaller suppliers, and take full advantage of the enormous opportunities to fully optimize (and even automate) the basic economic principals of Supply and Demand with lightening fast methods based on remote sensing and network communications.

Basically, the entire electrical system stands on the edge of entirely re-defining the way it both supplies and delivers power. The deeper implications point to an opportunity to invert pyramids of power through a technical overhaul of a system that was initially designed to support monopolies, and closed markets for insiders.  Unfortunately this is one revolution that can’t be easily driven by Customer demand, because let’s face it….Most of us have little to no understanding of how electricity actually works, and can only hope that increasing technical failures, and new economic pressures will ultimately force the Utilities to upgrade into a more open framework for power distribution.

Pop-Open “The Trouble With Electricity” to learn more about the true nature of electricity.

So even though Electricity makes our entire modern world go round, it remains a surprisingly misunderstood resource, that we’ve come to easily think of as a “product” that simply flows through lines of distribution like some sort of moving fluid that can be increased or decreased to meet demand at our end. Few of us realize that it can’t be warehoused and released later to meet spikes in demand, or just turned down when there isn’t enough to go around. Rather it’s more of a “pressure” that must be constantly maintained to strict technical standards, even if that means running a wasteful surplus to cover off the shortcomings of a dumb/mechanical distribution system! All while also responding in real time to consumption and demand patterns (and spikes) by varying output in real time right back at it’s various sources.

What’s really exciting about overhauling the distribution of electricity is that, in the process of considering an upgrade of our power distribution grids, and electricity consumption/production in general, we might also change the economics of traditional supply chains, and perhaps even the power structures of Society itself in a future where citizens can achieve new forms of energy independence! . Although there is no particualr political alliance or ideology behind these lofty ideals, perhaps we could conclude this initial introduction to the bigger subject of Social Change through Open Power Markets by considerign the stated ideals of “Libertarianism, and perhaps consolidate these into a bigger mission statement for open and free markets for Power.

Click to Consider the The Power of Social Change

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Libertarianism is a people’s movement and a liberation movement. It seeks the sort of open, noncoercive society in which the people, the living, free, distinct people, may voluntarily associate, disassociate, and, as they see fit, participate in the decisions affecting their lives. This means a truly free market in everything from ideas to idiosyncrasies. It means people free collectively to organize the resources of their immediate community or individualistically to organize them; . . . Liberty means the right to shape your own institutions. It opposes the right of those institutions to shape you simply because of accreted power or gerontological status.

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Don’t underestimate :
The Power of GRID 2.0
A Driver of Social Change & Dissruptor for the Status Quo !

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GRID2.0: The Trouble with Electricity

	How could such a pervasive part of modern life still be so easily misunderstood?

Electricity is the invisible force at the very center of almost all the enabling technologies of our Modern world, and has filled this role for quite awhile now, so it might come as a surprise to many that it actually doesn’t operate anywhere near as well as it could, or should.  In fact, this incredibly powerful and pervasive amenity has actually been under increasing pressure and burden as a result of its poorly aging design concepts that are based in distribution principals set down well over a century ago, and which are now are in dire need of upgrading. By looking at some of the ‘Smart Grid’ or Grid 2.0 concepts that have been getting renewed attention of late, we see all sorts of progressive ideas to better deliver a product that already travels to the Customer at the speed of light, but that is currently still often getting managed and brokered via analogue links and mechanical switches, along distribution systems that were never really meant to accept power, rather than distribute it…and that’s just where the shortcomings begin.

GRID2.0 The Social Challenges of Energy

Nothing serves to unite people and incite cooperation among ourselves quite like the assuring the basic necessities of Life. Among these basics, only food, water, and shelter rate higher than Energy on our list of survival needs, and since our industrialized world makes Energy a pre-requisite for these anyhow, perhaps it should take top spot by default…Unless we were to somehow revert back to an animal powered Agrarian Society that subsisted on local resources. Things being as they currently are though, out of all our currently available sources of heat, light, and power, none is more ubiquitous than the electrical energy grid that has clearly become a pre-requisite for Life as we know it.

In it’s longstanding role as an enabler for the technologies that modern civilization is based upon, the history of electricity also serves as a direct reflection of how Technology, Business, and even Politics have all interconnected over time to shape our world into what it is today. Therefore, it’s not at all surprising that the future of civilization is directly dependent on how well electricity will be ‘generated’ (with Renewable and Green sources coming online), ‘distributed’ (via an electrical grid that is long overdue for a major upgrade), and ‘consumed’ (by more ecologically aware and participative Consumers). In addressing the complex distribution challenges, radically new business models, and progressive technical opportunities that are currently being faced by our outdated electrical energy grids, we are also and in fact confronting the bigger social issues and technological opportunities that face our Society in general, and which will most certainly define the future of Modern Civilization. So what are the greater opportunities that can be realized at a time when Energy production, Distribution, and Consumption are all on the cusp of such radical change?

GRID2.0: Why Upgrade?

Our various electrical grids have been built, rebuilt, and patched up in an ongoing process that began when electric power first began to be generated well over a century ago.  Of course plenty of new power plants and transmission towers have been patched into the existing infrastructure since those early days, and the costs of maintaining these have been paid for (repeatedly) by ratepayers who would presumably like to benefit from these fully amortized assets (at least for awhile) before incurring any new costs, or adding to already enormous public debts. So why exactly should anybody be bothered to consider the staggering expenses of undertaking a major upgrade of our various electrical grids at this particular point in history?

Most people are in fact much more interested in the development of new energy (re)sources, rather than in understanding the boring details of delivering existing electricity into our homes and commercial spaces, so why worry about the distribution of power in a ‘smart’ electrical grid, when the old grid seems to be doing an adequate job ?

The True Nature of Contrails

	If you’re here for a clear view of what actually creates Jet Contrails just: Click for the Facts…

In our explorations of jet exhaust and ‘vapour contrails‘ and the impact of air travel on our Future Environment, we’ve made previous attempts to speculate upon why certain channels in the Mainstream Media have taken interest in a weak Conspiracy Theory like “Chemtrails”, rather than digging into the underlying science of Contrails (and environmental impact of jet exhaust) for a bonefide piece of investigative journalism. If there are such things as actual “Conspiracies” that are being covered up by weaker Conspiracy Theories, then it’s quite possible that the airline industry knows full well that it is doing serious damage to the stratosphere, and the prevalence of “Chemtrail” theories might simply serve to throw people off the true damages being done to the atmosphere, and simply associate any negative environmental news about airliners with more “crackpot conspiracy theories”.

Otherwise, the best explanation we’ve derived for such shallow reporting on the otherwise highly speculative and poorly substantiated subject of Chemtrails could be the ongoing trend for rather deficient Science and Climate reporting in general. This prevailing paucity exists in most media outlets, who after years of “restructuring” are more geared towards relaying/rewriting central news wire/agency stories, rather than undertaking their own independent investigations and research. Aside from the largest, or most specialized sources, the vast majority of mainstream news outlets now just seem to be systematically lacking in the resources required to properly report such complex news, while paradoxically still being faced by increasing demand for incisive or alternative Climate stories, especially after the post-Copenhagen letdown. In this informational fog that obscures Climate Science complexities, it’s no wonder that most people are easily drawn into the ‘ipso facto‘ or linear logic of easily adopted Chemtrail theories, rather than trying to track down and digest the much more convoluted causes and environmental effects of the (changing?) vapor contrails emanating from jet airliners. Which is what we’ll endeavor to do here instead…

If you’d like to consider our own counter-speculations on why the Mainstream Media has taken up a thin selection of climate/conspiracy stories, and presented them as hard news, then just click here to pop them into a new window. Otherwise, let’s put some realistic perspective on the recent popularity of Chemtrails, by establishing some factual foundations for the exact causes of Contrails, and their actual and under-exposed environmental risks. We might even discover some double-sided cover-ups behind the whole Chemtrails Conspiracy phenomenon while we’re at it…