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<DIV>Thanks for this, Paul. It's disturbing but critical information.</DIV>
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<DIV>In a message dated 8/16/2004 6:10:13 PM Eastern Standard Time, paul.werbos@verizon.net writes:</DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: blue 2px solid"><FONT face=Arial>Rooftop PVs are nice, but best solar thermal is cheaper and more efficient.<BR>More important, rooftops are a drop in the bucket.<BR><BR>The one really serious and urgent energy crisis in the US is the crisis<BR>of electricity regulation so crazy that we dramatically overuse natural gas<BR>as a fuel, distorting markets worldwide. Even modest reforms<BR>have gotten nowhere based on folks in Congress who have said<BR>"First things first. First MUST come controversial corporate welfare<BR>(pork for my buddies, either earmarks or tax breaks). And if we DO get that <BR>through...<BR>well, next year more of the same will come first..."<BR><BR>But the world oil situation is coming to a head fast. Decisions within the <BR>next 5 years will<BR>be decisive, in terms of our ability to avert global catastrophe 20 years <BR>hence.<BR>(Those poor folks who think TODAY'S problems with the Middle East are large...)<BR><BR>IF Bush were brave enough to dump Cheney AND Halliburton, and bring on <BR>McCain with<BR>a promise to really clean house and get back to what the US and the world <BR>really needs...<BR>well... there might be some hope by that route... But I have to admit, <BR>putting it all together,<BR>it's my personal judgment right now that the chances of nonextinction would <BR>definitely be a lot greater<BR>if we all picked Kerry (f Bush-Cheney is the alternative).<BR><BR>The present grid, and the modest reforms now before Congress, wouldn't do <BR>much to<BR>give the US the kind of "spinning reserve" backups that made the big <BR>blackouts in France<BR>and Italy last so much less time than the big one in the US Northeast. <BR>Expanding spinning<BR>reserves is just one aspect of "intelligent" (and more rationally <BR>regulated) power grids,<BR>and... as you say, critical to getting full value from intermittent <BR>distributed generation.<BR><BR>To put it another way... a major barrier to mega-use of stuff like solar <BR>thermal power is<BR>the low VALUE (and payment) per kwh of intermittent power today. More <BR>intelligent grids<BR>(including better and more use of spinning reserves) would raise that <BR>value... raise<BR>what utilities can RATIONALLY pay to intermitted power generators... and <BR>SUBSTANTIALLY<BR>increase the potential market for much larger-scale renewables.<BR><BR>By the way... "intelligent grids" are a major official priority of DOE. <BR>They will tell you<BR>it's $80 million/year. But IEEE-USA people tell me more than half of that <BR>is just<BR>Ronald Reagan's superconductor program, recycled and relabelled.<BR>(Since current projections are that such wires will cost ten times present <BR>transmission<BR>capability, and we can't even afford simple wires these days, one may question<BR>the relevance to what I just discussed...) Lots more is pork. They estimate <BR>about<BR>$2 million for the actual grid research in FY03, about half or a third of what<BR>NSF put in. There are some unmet opportunities as it happens... a polite way<BR>of saying we are sitting down marking time as the flood waters rise...<BR><BR>========<BR><BR>Best of luck to us all...<BR><BR> Paul<BR><BR>_______________________________________________<BR>paleopsych mailing list<BR>paleopsych@paleopsych.org<BR>http://lists.paleopsych.org/mailman/listinfo/paleopsych</FONT></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT lang=0 face=Arial size=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" PTSIZE="10">----------<BR>Howard Bloom<BR>Author of The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History and Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind From The Big Bang to the 21st Century<BR>Visiting Scholar-Graduate Psychology Department, New York University; Faculty Member, The Graduate Institute<BR>www.howardbloom.net<BR>www.bigbangtango.net<BR>Founder: International Paleopsychology Project; founding board member: Epic of Evolution Society; founding board member, The Darwin Project; founder: The Big Bang Tango Media Lab; member: New York Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Psychological Society, Academy of Political Science, Human Behavior and Evolution Society, International Society for Human Ethology; advisory board member: Youthactivism.org; executive editor -- New Paradigm book series.<BR>For information on The International Paleopsychology Project, see: www.paleopsych.org<BR>for two chapters from <BR>The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of History, see www.howardbloom.net/lucifer<BR>For information on Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century, see www.howardbloom.net<BR></FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>