A compilation of information and links regarding assorted subjects: politics, religion, science, computers, health, movies, music... essentially whatever I'm reading about, working on or experiencing in life.
[...] The prospect of cheap solar panels combined with powerful batteries has been a source of significant anxiety in the utility sector. In 2013, the Edison Electric Institute, the trade group for investor-owned electric companies, issued a report warning that disruption was coming. "One can imagine a day when battery storage technology or micro turbines could allow customers to be electric grid independent," the report said, likening the speed of the coming transition to the one from landlines to cellphones 10 years ago. Suddenly regulated monopolies are finding themselves in competition with their own customers.
They haven’t had to deal with this on the residential side yet, primarily because people can sell excess power back to the utilities at fairly high rates — a practice called net metering. But that’s hurting utilities, too, and some have tried to lower the price at which they buy back power, which has been met by furious protests from people leasing panels. If utilities lower the buyback rate too much, however, and batteries get cheap enough, people may just unplug from the grid altogether — or more likely, install systems that let them rely on it only rarely — prompting what those in the industry call "the utility death spiral." It’s quite a bind: by fighting net metering, utilities would help make battery storage more economically viable, driving the transition to a distributed grid.
Manghani believes utilities aren’t doomed, but they may undergo a radical transformation, becoming something closer to service providers and minders of an increasingly distributed grid rather than the centralized power producers they are today. Such a system would require lots of batteries to help balance the load and supply extra power during peak times, which is why GTM estimates the market will grow from $48 million today to about $1 billion in 2018. [...]
Excellent, I say bring it on! And Tesla seems perfectly poised to pounce and make it happen. Read the whole thing for the details that back it up, embedded links and more.
Not the Japanese policeman, but the emergency bicycle pedal pump he's using to manually pump gas from an underground tank.
Such a practical and sensible device could also be used, I think, to manually pump water out of my well if our power were out for a long length of time.
I did a google search for "tmc pump pedal", and I found the device here:
Why are such devices not available in the USA? They could be so useful in so many ways.
Maybe we need an incentive to start making them. Such devices can also be used to generate electricity. So here is an idea.
In the 1930's, they had all those "pick and shovel" programs to make work for people. Obama can't do that now, because heavy machinery have replaced most those pick-and shovel jobs. But we could have a new kind of "job" instead.
Create tons of bicycle pump generators, and then let all the overweight people who sit around collecting welfare, pump water or generate electricity for several hours per day. They could even watch TV while they are doing it. There would be many benefits:
1.) In our nation of obese people, it would be a way to get thinner and stay healthier.
2.) Taxpayer's would actually be getting SOMETHING in return for their money.
3.) It's GREEN energy. Hooray! Placate fanatics AND get people to work!
4.) In an emergency, "pumpers" could be deployed to pump gas, water, and generate electricity to charge batteries as needed.
Isn't that what they call a win/win situation? Or does it just make too much sense? Or is it just Sunday, and I haven't drank enough coffee yet?
SUBSIDING STORMS: The geomagnetic storms of March 10th and 11th are subsiding. Earth's magnetic field began shaking on March 10th in response to a CME impact; the reverberations continued for more than 24 hours. In Sweden the auroras were so bright, they competed with campfires:
"When I was sitting next to the fire and had the Aurora dancing above me, I felt like it could have been 100 years ago," says photographer Peter Rosén in Sweden's Abisko National Park. "I wonder what people thought when they saw this phenomenon in centuries past. Old stories say that the Sami people believed the Aurora was home for the spirits of the dead, and that we should show respect when the lights appeared."
They could appear again, soon. A new solar wind stream is buffeting Earth's magnetic field today, and NOAA forecasters estimate a 10% chance of severe geomagnetic storms. Get your aurora alerts here!
Sunspots are continuing. Solar storms, not so much. For now.
And a bit of solar storm history, with contemporary relevance:
CAUTIONARY TALE: This week marks the 22nd anniversary of the Quebec Blackout. On March 13, 1989, a geomagnetic storm brought down Hydro-Québec's power grid and blacked out the entire province. Brownouts and other power irregularities were experienced across much of North America. Today's "smart power grids" are even more vulnerable because they are interconnected by high voltage lines spanning thousands of miles. In good times, this arrangement allows utilities to guide power wherever it might be needed. During geomagnetic storms, however, it spreads the danger of a blackout far and wide. What we need is a Solar Shield.
The Solar Shield article is interesting, it mentions the Quebec event of March 13th 1989, and other storms like the Carrington event of 1859. The Shield is a warning system that interprets solar data and alerts utility companies to act accordingly.
High-energy electric pulses from the sun could surge to Earth and cripple our electrical grid for years, causing billions in damages, government officials and scientists worry.
The House is so concerned that the Energy and Commerce committee voted unanimously 47 to 0 to approve a bill allocating $100 million to protect the energy grid from this rare but potentially devastating occurrence.
The Grid Reliability and Infrastructure Defense Act, or H.R. 5026, aims "to amend the Federal Power Act to protect the bulk-power system and electric infrastructure critical to the defense of the United States against cybersecurity and other threats and vulnerabilities."
It cites electromagnetic pulses from geomagnetic or solar storms as the big threat to our energy distribution grid, and demands "an order directing the Electric Reliability Organization to submit … reliability standards adequate to protect the bulk-power system from any reasonably foreseeable geomagnetic storm event."
Solar storms occur when sunspots on our star erupt and spew out flumes of charged particles that can damage power systems. The sun's activity typically follows an 11-year cycle, and it looks to be coming out of a slump and gearing up for an active period.
"The sun is waking up from a deep slumber, and in the next few years we expect to see much higher levels of solar activity," said Richard Fisher, head of NASA's Heliophysics Division. "At the same time, our technological society has developed an unprecedented sensitivity to solar storms." [...]
I've posted previously about EMP dangers, both man-made (military attack or terrorism) and naturally occurring (solar storms and flares). That congress has decided to protect our infrastructure from these threats is hopefully a good thing (that the money is spent wisely). But I would like to examine another aspect of this threat, that deserves special scrutiny; our growing dependence on satellite technology, and it's vulnerability to the sun.
The following link starts off describing the Quebec power failure of 1989, that was caused by a solar flare. The Quebec power grid had extensions reaching far North, where in inducted electricity from the flare. One of their main transformers was permanently damaged. What is even more alarming is, that the Northeast United states power grid was also almost collapsed, which would have resulted in 50 million Americans without power. The Quebec failure is now a textbook case as an example of the destructiveness of solar flares on modern power grids.
While the Quebec portion of the article is certainly worth reading, I'm going to excerpt a portion from the latter part of the article, that deals with satellite technology. It shows how our dependency on satellites has grown by leaps and bounds, and how it represents a new, growing vulnerability:
[...] Why should we care that we are now once again living under 'sunspot maximum' conditions? After all, we have already weathered at least five of these solar activity cycles since the end of World War II. What is different about the world today is that we are substantially more reliant upon computers and telecommunications to run our commerce, and even our forms of entertainment and recreation. In 1981, at the peak of solar cycle 21, there were 15 communication satellites in orbit. Cellular phones were rare and there were 800,000 PCs sold in the U.S. with 300 hosts on the Internet. By the time the peak of solar cycle 22 came around in 1989, there were 102 communication satellites, and 3 million cellular phone users in the United States. With the new Intel 80486-based PCs, you could send e-mail to your choice of 300,000 host machines on the Internet.
As we arrive at the peak of the 23rd sunspot cycle in 2000-2001, however, we enter a very different world far more reliant on what used to be the luxuries of the Space Age. By 2000, 349 communication satellites orbit the Earth supporting over $60 billion of commerce. Over 100 million people have cellular phones, and Global Positioning System handsets are a commonplace for people working, or camping, 'off road'. By 2003, 400 million people will routinely use wireless data transmission via satellite channels. There will be over 10 million Internet hosts with 38% of US households Internet-connected.
[...]
As if to emphasize today's exuberance and expectations, 'Individual Investor' magazine announced on its cover 'The Sky's the Limit: In the 21st century satellites will connect the globe'. The International telecommunications Union in Geneva has predicted that by 2005, the demand for voice and data transmission services will increase to $1.2 trillion. The fraction carried by satellite services will reach a staggering $80 billion.
To meet this demand, many commercial companies are launching; not just individual satellites, but entire networks of them with names like 'Iridium', 'Teledesic', 'Skybridge' and 'SpaceWay'. The total cost of these systems alone represents a hardware investment of $35 billion between 1998 and 2004. The actual degree of vulnerability of these systems to solar storms is unknown, and will probably vary in a complex way depending on the kind of technology they use, and their deployment in space. They do, however, share some disturbing characteristics: They are all light-weight, sophisticated, built at the lowest cost, and following only a handful of design types replicated dozens and even hundreds of times, often with off-the-shelf electronics.
It is common to base future expectations on recent past experiences: "Past is prologue" some say. Increasingly, these past experiences with, for example, commercial space technology, do not extend back much beyond the last solar maximum in 1989-1990. So, when we wonder why infrequent events such as solar storms aren't more noticeable, we have to remind ourselves that most of our experience comes from times when the Sun was simply not very active, and when we were a lot less technologically vulnerable. [...]
So we can see a dramatic increase in satellite usage in the eleven year intervals in solar maximums. This article projected figures up until 2005. What is our satellite usage now? Here are some contemporary figures:
Satellites are tracked by United States Space Surveillance Network (SSN), which has been tracking every object in orbit over 10 cm (3.937 inches) in diameter since it was founded in 1957. There are approximately 3,000 satellites operating in Earth orbit, according to the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), out of roughly 8,000 man-made objects in total. In its entire history, the SSN has tracked more than 24,500 space objects orbiting Earth. The majority of these have fallen into unstable orbits and incinerated during reentry. The SSN also keeps track which piece of space junk belongs to which country.
[...]
As space technology matured, satellites were launched for military and commercial purposes. The price of satellite launches has dropped to as low as a few million dollars for light satellites, and a few tens of millions for heavy satellites. This put satellite technology within the reach of many nations and international companies.
Satellites have an operating lifespan between five and 20 years. As of 2008, the former Soviet Union and Russia had nearly 1,400 satellites in orbit, the USA about 1,000, Japan more than 100, China about 80, France over 40, India more than 30, Germany almost 30, the UK and Canada 25, and at least ten each from Italy, Australia, Indonesia, Brazil, Sweden, Luxembourg, Argentina, Saudi Arabia, and South Korea. [...]
So humankind is using and depending on satellite technology to a degree never seen before, and most of the growth of this usage has occurred in the past few decades.
We have gone from 15 communication satellites in 1981, to 1,899 communication satellites in 2010. We have yet to experience a severe solar storm, with all this satellite technology. Are we ready for it? Military satellites may be reinforced with extra shielding to withstand EMPs. But what about the many light-weight "cheap" satellites made with off the shelf parts? Are we ready to suddenly do without all this technology we've come to depend on, if many or most of these satellites get fried in a solar storm?
What do future presidents need to know about existential dangers this country could face? Explorer investigates the science behind the dangers of a high-altitude electromagnetic pulse, or HEMP. Picture an instantaneous deathblow to the vital engines that power our society, delivered by a nuclear weapon designed not to kill humans but to attack electronics. What could happen if an electromagnetic pulse surged to earth, crippling every aspect of modern society's infrastructure?
[...] The internet, said former national intelligence director Michael McConnell, "is the soft underbelly" of the US today. Speaking recently at a new cybersecurity exhibit at the International Spy Museum in Washington, McConnell said the internet has "introduced a level of vulnerability that is unprecedented".
The Pentagon's computer systems are probed 360 million times a day, and one prominent power company has acknowledged that its networks see up to 70,000 scans a day, according to cybersecurity expert James Lewis.
[...]
The exhibit at the Spy Museum - Weapons of Mass Disruption - tries to bring that threat to life.
A network of neon lights zigzags across the ceiling. Along the walls computer screens light up with harrowing headlines outlining the country's digital dependence. Drinking water, sewer systems, phone lines, banks, air traffic, government systems, all depend on the electric grid, and losing them for weeks would plunge the country into the 1800s.
Suddenly, the lights go out and the room is plunged into silent darkness.
Seconds later as the sound system crackles, a video ticks off a pretend crisis: no food, no water, system shutdown.
That faux threat has become a prime concern for the government, but fully protecting the grid and other critical computer systems are problems still waiting a solution.
Federal agencies, including the Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security, are pouring more money into hiring computer experts and protecting their networks.
But there are persistent questions about how to ensure internet traffic is safe without violating personal privacy. [...]
Read the whole thing for details. The power grid and many other systems are tied into, and relying on, the internet. Systems that never used to be, systems that got along fine without the internet before. But as they become increasingly reliant on the web, it presents a growing vulnerability. People may not take the threat seriously enough, until they experience the danger first-hand.
Green nonsense The 'cap and trade' bill would cost much and deliver little
[...] Waxman-Markey is, ostensibly, a "cap and trade" bill, which would impose substantial costs. One is the direct cost to business to purchase from the government "credits" to emit carbon dioxide, a cost which, presumably, would be passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices. Consumers would have to pay much more for electric power, in particular, since it's much cheaper to generate electricity from carbon-emitting fossil fuels than from wind and solar, the sources favored by the Obama administration.
The whole point of cap and trade -- which President Obama is careful not to make explicit -- is to make fossil fuels so expensive we will use less of them.
The president won't call this a tax. But his most prominent supporter in the business community, billionaire investor Warren Buffett, thinks it's one which will devastate an economy already in "shambles."
"It's a huge tax and there is no sense calling it anything else," Mr. Buffett said in a CNBC interview June 24.
We rely on fossil fuels for 85 percent of the energy we use to run our automobiles; to heat, light and cool our homes and offices; and to power our factories. The problem with wind and solar is not just that they are much more expensive than coal, oil or natural gas, but that they can't begin to replace the amount of energy we get from fossil fuels. [...]
California tried to "Go Green" when Gray Davis was Governor. I remember it well, because we lived in California then and owned a restaurant.
The state invested it's money in solar and wind projects, instead of building new power plants. The solar and wind projects were expensive, and failed to produce the needed energy. We ended up with high energy costs and "rolling blackouts". California had to scramble to build additional power plants, the ones they should have built in the first place, but now at great additional cost to the taxpayers. The rolling blackouts were so bad, that many businesses left the state, which also decreased the tax base.
Try running a business with "rolling blackouts". With skyrocketing energy costs, and soaring taxes too. We, like many business owners, couldn't do it. We had to start borrowing money just to stay open. That was the beginning of the end. We closed our restaurant, sold our assets and moved to Oregon.
Meanwhile in California, Gray Davis was removed from office in a recall election. But the state's economy was badly damaged, and has never fully recovered. Trying to "go green" using technology that can't as yet replace fossil fuels, was one of the big contributing factors that has put California into the severe financial distress it finds itself in today.
California has showed us where this path leads. And yet, now we, as a nation, are now going to follow same path, and expect different results?
Terrorists with nukes are bad enough. But what about bombs, nuclear and non-nuclear, that create an Electromagnetic pulse (EMP)?
I had mentioned in my earlier post the American Starfish Prime 1.44 megaton nuclear test explosion in 1962, in space above the earth's atmosphere, and it's EMP effect on Hawaii. That same year, the Soviets did a similar test over Kazakhstan. Their bomb was only 300 kilotons, about one fifth the size of the Starfish Prime bomb, yet the EMP damage was more extensive. Why? Because they did it above a heavily populated area, and because it was also in the northern hemisphere where the Earth's magnetic field was very strong, which amplified the EMP effects, giving the smaller explosion a much stronger EMP!
An atomic bomb detonated high in or above the Earth's atmosphere could be used in a northern location to take advantage of the strength of the Earth's magnetic field to amplify the effect and spread it southward. The diagram below illustrates what such an EMP spread pattern might look like:
The above diagram shows us something called the Compton effect. The scenario it illustrates in this particular picture, is similar to one I read about recently in the September 2008 issue of Hillsdale college's Imprimis:
[...] Consider Iran. President Ahmadinejad and his Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) have control of key strategic parts of the Iranian government, and the IRGC is capable of operating as a terrorist training unit both inside and outside of Iran (witness Iran’s support of Hezbollah in Lebanon and its backing of lethal attacks on Americans in Iraq). For the past decade, Iran—with the assistance of Russia, China, and North Korea—has been developing missile technology. It is believed that the Iranians have produced hundreds of Shahab-3 missiles. This is not the most sophisticated missile in the world, but it is capable of carrying a payload to Israel or—if launched from a ship—to an American city.
The current controversy over Iran’s nuclear production is really about whether it can produce an industrial infrastructure that would be capable of producing nuclear warheads. It has sought nuclear capability since the time of the Shah, as most nations do, since nuclear weapons bestow on a country great military and political power. Even a fully democratic and pro-western Iran would want such weapons.
Mr. Ahmadinejad said in 2005: “Is it possible for us to witness a world without America and Zionism? But you had best know that this slogan and this goal are attainable, and surely can be achieved.” What about this do we not get?
Consider this scenario: An ordinary-looking freighter ship heading toward New York City or Los Angeles launches a missile from its hull or from a canister lowered into the sea. The missile hits a densely populated area and a million people are incinerated. The ship is sunk and no one claims responsibility. There is no firm evidence as to who sponsored the attack, and thus no one against whom to launch a counterstrike.
But as terrible as that scenario sounds, consider a second one: Let us say the freighter ship launches a nuclear-armed Shahab-3 missile off the coast of the U.S. and it explodes 300 miles over Chicago, creating an electromagnetic pulse. Gamma rays scatter in what is called the Compton effect, and three separate pulses disable consumer electronics, some automobiles, and, most importantly, the hundreds of large transformers that distribute power throughout the U.S. All of our lights, refrigerators, TVs and radios stop running. We have no communication. This is what is referred to as an EMP attack, and such an attack would effectively throw America back into the early nineteenth century. Perhaps hundreds of millions of us will die from lack of food and water and as a result of social breakdown.
Opponents of missile defense call such scenarios far fetched, on the basis that the U.S. would launch a nuclear attack against whatever nation attacks us. That is, they continue to rely on the doctrine of mutually-assured destruction that our leaders prior to Reagan relied on during the Cold War. But in my scenarios, we would not know who attacked us, so that doctrine is no help. And in any case, even if Iran could be identified as the attacker, who is to say that it wouldn’t gladly sacrifice itself to destroy the Great Satan? As the Ayatollah Khomeini said in 1979, during the American hostage crisis: “I say let [Iran] go up in smoke, provided Islam emerges triumphant in the world.”
I do not use the word “destroy” lightly: An EMP attack on the U.S. would mean the end of American civilization, and dropping nuclear weapons on or retaliating against whoever caused the attack will not bring our civilization back. Nor is this science fiction. Twice, in the Caspian Sea, the Iranians have tested their ability to launch ballistic missiles in a way to set off an EMP. And the congressionally-mandated EMP Commission, including some of America’s finest scientists, has released its findings and issued two separate reports, the most recent in July, describing the effects of such an attack on the U.S. [...]
It goes on to describe the steps we could take to protect ourselves from such an attack. And the reasons we are not taking them.
Both China and Russia see America as an obstacle to expanding their global influence. Both are working on and advancing space weapons that could be used against us. We could be working on space based missile defense systems, but we are told we must not, because it could "upset" China and Russia.
As if that is not bad enough, we have increased our own vulnerability needlessly. Computer chip Technology, which is highly vulnerable to EMP forces, has been incorporated into many items what previously worked fine without them.
Take automobiles, for instance. Cars made before 1985, that don't use computer chips, would be largely impervious to an EMP attack. Cars made after that date would be rendered useless. Cars don't conceptually NEED computer chips to function, but the way they are designed and made now, they depend on them. Computer chips are now even being incorporated into the most ordinary things, even light switches. They are in almost everything. It's become a needless liability of our own making.
And to be effective, an EMP attack doesn't even have to be as large scale as the attack pictured in the diagram. Even one attack on a city on our coastline, or on a city anywhere in the world, would create panic and instability in an already unstable global market place. Several attacks, even more so.
People often think our civilization could only end from a massive war. But in truth, it could be more like "Death by a thousand cuts". Multiple, continuous small EMP attacks could impair our ability to function normally, till we no longer can.
It should be obvious why it's important to curtail rogue states who are attempting to acquire these weapons, and the countries that support them. And there is so much more we could do to defend ourselves. But will we? Or are the majority of us going to keep living our lives like we're in some unreal TV drama, living and breathing BS, until one day the lights go out, perhaps for decades, and we have a very rude awakening?
Our President should take note of some relevant facts about Russia, such as Russia's quickly shifting demographics, that demonstrate that the country will soon have a Muslim majority, making it a Muslim nation. With access to all of Russia's weapons technology and resources.
Pakistan already has nuclear technology, and it is inevitable that other Muslim nations will obtain it as well. I don't say that all Muslim states with nuclear capabilities are a threat to us, but clearly some rogue states like Iran are not only a threat to us but to the stability of the Middle East. As this technological capability spreads throughout the world, we are going to need every advantage available to us to contain it among peaceful nations, and protect ourselves as much as is humanly possible.
Now is not the time to back down on missile defense systems. We should in fact, be doing every thing we can do develop it quickly. We should also be doing all we can to make our electrical infrastructure less vulnerable to EMP attacks.
I've said generally that foreign policy has not been a strong point for Democrats, and I can't say that I like what I've seen from them so far. But I live in hope. A strong Democrat that gets the job done on these issues? That would be A Change I Could Believe In. For all our sakes.
[...] The electromagnetic pulse was first observed during high-altitude nuclear weapon detonations.
Electromagnetic weapons are still mostly classified and research surrounding them is highly secret. Military speculators and experts generally think that E-bombs use explosively pumped flux compression generator technology as their power source, though a relatively small (10 kt) nuclear bomb, exploded between 30 and 300 miles in the atmosphere could send out enough power to damage electronics from coast to coast in the US. The US Army Corps of Engineers issued a publicly available pamphlet in the late 1990s that discusses in detail how to harden a facility against "HEMP" - high frequency electromagnetic pulse. It describes how water pipes, antennas, electrical lines, and windows allow EMP to enter a building.
According to some reports, the U.S. Navy used experimental E-bombs during the 1991 Gulf War. These bombs utilized warheads that converted the energy of conventional explosives into a pulse of radio energy.[2] CBS News also reported that the U.S. dropped an E-bomb on Iraqi TV during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, but this has not been confirmed.[3]
The Soviet Union conducted significant research into producing nuclear weapons specially designed for upper atmospheric detonations, a decision that was later followed by the United States and the United Kingdom. Only the Soviets ultimately produced any significant quantity of such warheads, most of which were disarmed following the Reagan-era arms talks. [citation needed] EMP-specialized nuclear weapon designs belong to the third generation of nuclear weapons. [...]
"Most" of them were disarmed? Have some been sold? Has the technology to build new ones been sold? Who would be interested in building and using new ones? Take a guess.
The effects of such devices are sometimes exaggerated and/or misrepresented in fiction and bad journalism. Much depends on the power of the the device, the type of bomb, it's altitude and it's location in the Earth's magnetic field.
Follow the link for a definition of EMP bombs, nuclear and non-nuclear, and the details of the effects of such devices.
Some videos on Youtube.com, parts 1 and 2. Both are about 7 minutes long:
This video has some startling information about EMPs. It seems that since the end of the Cold War, the US military has really slacked off on protecting military installations and equipment from EMP forces, and our society in general has become more reliant on highly vulnerable technologies.
The Russians had developed EMP bombs as small as a beer can. Not all of them have been accounted for since the demise of the USSR. Such devices could be used in a busy airport, to blind air traffic, or in the NYC stock exchange, causing trillions of dollars in losses. It's a new world with new threats, but are we keeping up?
This 2nd video illustrates my point above, about modern automobiles. You get to see what happens to a modern car driven under an EMP pulse device, that simulates a high altitude pulse.
After the pulse, the car stops. It won't start. But it's battery is still working; the electric windows work, because they are simple motors. A few lights in the dashboard work, but everything else is dead, because they are needlessly tied into either transistors or computer chips. A vehicle that could be impervious is made unnecessarily vulnerable. Can't we change this?
