*The REAL Solutions to the Fuel / Global Warming / War Disaster

 By IgnoranceIsntBliss

Right now a storm is brewing, but not just the "Global Warming" driven "Malthusian Apocalypse" storm theory / ideology that Al Gore is promoting on all four corners of the earth.

The storm I speak of partly refers to the massive global efforts to replace oil as the source for "gas". We have so many methods for 'recreating' "Gas" on the table that I won't even waste time mentioning them. This storm also refers to major debates that are igniting all over the world about the nature of "global warming" itself. There is an ever-growing consensus of scientists, and clear weather patterns that suggest the global warming issue is overwhelmingly true. Now the debate is shifting into whether or not the Sun itself is the primary cause of it, and if we should even block the Sun.

But this storm doesn't stop there… This storm further entails the other broad efforts, all throughout the science and political communities, in light of this global warming issue. Right now we're catapulting into a full scale World War 3 scenario, which this time has nuclear weapons on the table, all because of oil and natural gas. With an $8.3 Trillion (and growing) National Debt, this storm also includes that our nation is about to crumble (yes, going absolutely bankrupt would effectively kill the United States) because of the debt that keeps ballooning with each new imperial war effort.

Yet this storm doesn't stop there either… To "save us" from ourselves, our elite masters are literally 3 years away from completing their artificial intelligence system that is set for full integration (by 2013) into the military, records / tracking and Internet systems (omnipotent / omnipresent), which Al Gore himself is a central figure in.

Most of the debates and efforts relating to the oil disaster are centered around new solutions to keep it going. "Solution" concepts like "lets elect an oilman for US President because he'll know how to get more oil", or "who are we going to invade next (and will we need nukes?)", or "lets convert fast food grease into gas", or "stop driving your car", or "how soon can we blindly rush in artificial intelligence to save us" have become the Social Norms (except that last one, we're being blindsided). All of these "solutions" are like sticking bandaids to motorcycle road-rash.

We do have some semi-unconventional solutions up our sleeves, but these do still have some limitations that are perhaps more than just our elite masters spending the money for solar panels for every house, or developing some others (painstaking hydrogen when we face water shortages)… spending our phony tax "dollars", while constantly driving up inflation (reduces the value of any paper currency) to pay for wars to get more oil. It's time for some fresh new solutions, and we have them: geothermal and nanotechnology.

According to a recent MIT panel, we can utilize "geothermal" energy, from deep down inside the earth, to meet virtually all of the nations long terms electricity goals. Sounds like a winner, but I did some rough calculations on the costs to convert our entire electrical generation system, and the current costs of such a vast overhaul are staggering (roughly $80 trillion to completely replace oil/nuclear/gas/coal).

So from there the dilemma, to replace all traditional power-plants with geothermal, is to lower power consumption right? We could do put solar panels on every house perhaps. That could be a solution, but is that alone the best solution? Perhaps more importantly, does it solve our imperial gas guzzling ambition to get oil for automobiles ordeal? It could reduce them, sure, as we wouldn't need those sources for the electrical grid anymore. Still, assuming mankind really plans on existing for more than another hundred years, that's still just a bigger bandaid on the road-rash.

Still operating the cars on oil distillates, even in hybrid vehicle systems, will still contribute to greenhouse gasses and the long term availability. Hydrogen is too tricky, and still needs things like power and / or water to produce it. Even advances in battery technologies, assuming we go with battery electric vehicles, only extends the performance of the batteries. They still need to be recharged, which would hamper the electrical grid, and that would marginalize the "solar panels on every house" 'large bandaid' prospect.

Enter the world of nanotechnology:

Last May I reported the invention of a new (nanotechnology) "piezo-electric" material. Piezoelectricity is basically any material that produces electricity when it is shaken, bent, compressed etc. If you've ever wondered what it means when it says "Quartz" on a watch, now you know. Quartz crystals are piezo. There many limitations with traditional peizo materials that apparently have prevented mankind from building large scale power production applications with them.

That's no longer the issue. Dr. Zhong Lin Wang's new "zinc oxide" piezo material produces piezoelectricity far more efficiently than traditional crystals because it is many times more sensitive.

The National Science Foundation and NASA and DARPA, who funded Wang's research, initially admitted that electricity can be harvested "wherever mechanical energy, hydraulic motion of seawater, wind or the motion of a foot inside a shoe is available."

Through email correspondence that I had initiated, Dr. Wang admitted that it could be used for "self-powered cell phone, walkman, some small scale power generator for defence applications".

So what's stopping us from using this to power cars and the electrical grid? Well the material, and even the field of nanotechnology itself, is rather new. Big deal. The 2007 National Nanotechnology Initiative is only being funded $1.2 Billion. Of that, only $373 Million is going to the NSF, who are funding more projects besides Dr. Wang's. In fact, the NSF's funding only increased by $29 Million, and I doubt that's all going to Dr. Wang.

The total funding for nano actually decreased by about $25 Million between 2006 and 2007. Within the overall Initiative, the DOD actually requested some $90 Million less than 2006, while funding to the DOE increased some $50 Million. Perhaps that $50 Million is going to Dr. Wang, but it's highly unlikely. Even if so, that's chump change compared to the $532.8 Billion that the DOD is spending (at least what's on the record) for the establishments imperialist war efforts.

Potential ways of exploiting energy from nano-piezo:
-Water anchored power plants: Suspend special buoys in the ocean to harness the power from waves and ocean currents. This could also work in rivers. The 'buoys' wouldn't actually need to be above water. Existing dams could also retrofit special nano-piezo embodiments to harness even more power.

-Vibrating foundation mass scale power plants: Massive buildings, like the size of football stadiums (perhaps starting with old decommissioned stadiums) with special foundations that shake continuously, but with little energy required to keep it moving once started.

-Replace all dry cell batteries:  It still takes power to charge batteries which means the collective operation of batteries, both rechargeable and non, affects the global power grid.

-"Engine block" power plants: Replace internal combustion engine space with large nano-piezo clusters. Cars go all electric. Electric cars can actually be made to have better acceleration than gas powered cars (and it's all about acceleration). Gas tanks and other dead space could also house power plants. Kits could be designed to retrofit into many existing vehicles.

-Portable generators: No hydrocarbon fuels needed. Speaks for itself.

-Further reductions to power grid requirements: Piezo blocks built into industrial / commercial / residential machines or appliances that have motors or vibrate otherwise. There are endless ways to build them into the casings of virtually anything.

-Vibration power block elements added to appliances that don't normally vibrate, but where the piezo elements don't interfere with the device.

We could scale back DOD spending to $100 Billion and have over $400 Billion on fixing the system as we apparently have that much to spend. Even at 'only' $100 Billion, that would put U.S. roughly $40 Billion ahead of any of the rest. United States consumers already spend about $450 Billion annually on energy, so somehow the taxes could be adjusted, as the energy costs decline during the transition, to reroute that money into the new path. After success, and everything pays for itself, all unnecessary taxes could be eradicated, including excessive military spending that wouldn't be necessary in a world where nobody cares about exploiting fuel.

It would cost roughly $3-4 Trillion to put 6 kW solar panels on top of every house in the country. We divide that by 10, or $300 Billion, and split the other $100 Billion between the development and deployment of the nano-piezo and geothermal efforts. The solar panels will give short-term benefits while preparing for the mid-long term production of the other two. As the year progress, thanks to the economics of scale, solar panel costs would go down significantly and exponentially as the funding for the mass production of the other 2 grows demanding. Those too would also benefit from the economics of scale.

All of the above will create jobs across the board, and therefore the economy will have more money. As people start receiving the solar panels they'll then have more money from the decrease in their electricity costs, which is another way of boosting the economy. Initially start dispersing the panels to the lower class from the bottom up. At the same time order the higher class, from the very top down, to make their properties compliant. Plan the entire process to increment over the course of 10 years, and at some point towards the end, some bracket of the middle class will eventually fall into a medium of paying for about half the costs, which would have decreased thanks to the economics of scale.

Nationalize the power grid. It wouldn't be the first time those in an industry lost their industry. It happens all time, and at almost every great technological revolution. You say, "but that's socialism"? Yeah, and so is Social Security and Welfare, for starters. You don't even own your land; not even if you "pay it off" (see: Allodial Title). Enough said. Perhaps we wouldn't even need socialist institutions like Social Security and Welfare were it not for absurd fuel prices and the taxes we have to pay to fund the imperial wars and global tyranny that is required to keep the oil coming.

Imagine all the materialistic 'toys' we could have and operate, and places everyone could go to spend money thanks to not having to buy gas and the other economic benefits involved. With the extra money everyone would have we could actually produce and buy nothing but high quality goods so that we get the most from the plastics involved. Would you rather pay the state / corporations high taxes and fuel, or go through a 10 year transition process, and then never have to pay much for energy again? The corporations could still find ways to get their cut from the solar panel and nano-piezo industries, but eventually the goal would be to replace the solar panels with enough geothermal plants to minimize whatever environmental impact the mass production and replacement burden the solar panels cause.

I tend think they can settle for the massive nano-piezo market.