Dana Blankenhorn

The Renewable Energy Sweet Spot is Storage

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 17 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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While most attention in renewable energy is focused on solar panels, or wind turbines, or the use of pine pellets and algae for fuel, the real sweet spot is in storage.

Imre Gyuk , energy storage program manager at the Department of Energy, says it's not just because solar and wind are intermittant. It's also because an increasingly computer-driven society requires cleaner power.

You know this in your own life. If you have a desktop PC, chances are you have a Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) sitting under your desk, or at least a “power conditioning” power strip next to you – maybe both. Spikes can damage critical components.

Round Two of the Copyright Wars

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 13 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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I have been following the copyright wars since their inception, in 1997. I watched the passage of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) in 1998, and the No Electronic Theft Act.

Both had a similar aim, to keep people from stealing making and re-selling copies of material subject to copyright, now that technology allowed for clean (or nearly clean) copies.

My sympathies here are purely with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and blogs like Boingboing, which hate these laws as attacks on freedom of speech, of association, and the free exchange of ideas.

Tax Carbon in the Name of Growth

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 7 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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The following is going to annoy my liberal friends, but hear me out.

The decisive turn in a generation's political thesis, which is a collection of myths and values driving power, the point at which you go from winning elections to winning them for a generation, comes when business moves to your side.

You don't need all of business. You only need the rising tide of business to be on your side, that element of business driving economic growth.

Without significant business support, your side of the political world is always swimming upstream. That's because the business of America is business, even its political business is business, and anyone who questions that doesn't know America. (This Rising Tide is a restaurant in Scarborough, Maine. We hear good things about the lobster.)

Will Biofuels Join the War Against Oil?

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 6 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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I haven't gotten into the nitty-gritty of the War Against Oil here in some time.

For those who need a quick refresher, the War Against Oil is the chief economic necessity of our time. The Sun shines, the wind blows, we live on a molten rock, yet we still power our world like cavemen did, by digging up shit we can burn and burning it. As a result we're burning up our planet.

There are still (believe it or not) idiots who deny that methane and carbon dioxide are responsible for increased global temperatures, for more extreme weather, and for the melting of ice caps around the world. Some are paid shills for folks who want to dig shit up and burn it. Others are ideologues who scream “no” at anyone saying yes. And some are indeed idiots.

The political winds toward burning shit grew to hurricane force during the Bush years, with the wholesale takeover of the country by the fossil fuel industry. The results were war and (ta da) rising fossil fuel prices. We're now accustomed to paying $4/gallon for gasoline, just as the “boiling frog” got used to hot water, and the industry wants to apply more pressure.

All the fracking in the U.S. is not going to drop gas prices one dime. It's not in the frackers' interest to do it, they control the process of getting fracked oil to market, it's just not going to happen. Besides, fracking costs big money. Margins are thinner from fracking than they are from sticking a straw into the ground and sucking.

The only way we're going to get a thumb down on prices is with an alternative to fracking. And right now, that means biofuels.

Why the Crisis Continues

Think of this as Volume 17, Number 5 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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Previous crises in American political history were pretty much settled by this point after the crisis election.

By January of 1865 the Confederacy was all but dead. By this time in 1901 the Populists were a spent force. The initial crisis that created the New Deal was settled by 1937, although the struggle for democracy was just beginning. By 1973, we were well past the 1960s and talking full-time about Watergate.

While the course of our future politics seems settled, however, the political crisis that began in 2008 is ongoing, and the underlying economic cause – the War Against Oil – seems barely to have been launched.

You may ask why. I'm here to tell you:

Is Wal-Mart Good for America

Think of this as Volume 16, Number 49 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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Following any political realignment there is often a re-evaluation of a major sector in American business. It's not the heart of the losing side that's attacked, it's usually something on the periphery that represents something larger.

In the 1970s this was Detroit. GM and Chrysler and Ford were all symbols of the manufacturing era, the post-War boom in which factories were where wealth came from. The attacks that began with Ralph Nader in the 1960s accelerated during this period until the industry became symbolic of what was obsolete about America. The movement of production, first to Japan, then to Korea, and eventually back to the American South, was also symbolic of the “Rust Belt – Sun Belt” attitude that was so much a part of the Nixon era.

The Open Source Thesis Returns

Think of this as Volume 16, Number 48 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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Right after this year's election I began looking back at all the stories I've written, since 2006, on political philosophy.

I was looking for patterns, and frankly for an e-book.

My review is far from complete – there are over 200 pages just in the first year I began my work – but what I have found is that my views on political patterns were first informed by my work on open source. I first wrote about what I called the “open source thesis” in 2006 , and I found, even then, that it matched up very well with the political aims of one Barack Obama.

The Real Cloud Problem is Identity

Think of this as Volume 16, Number 32 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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The whole “cloud problem” FUD being sold by the media and Steve Wozniak over Apple's so-called iCloud service comes down to one word.

Identity.

It's a simple word, one we use every day. And it is a real problem.

But only because we choose to make it one.

Your Gun Culture

At the time the U.S. Constitution was written, “guns” meant muskets, and militias were what made armies.

Muskets were inaccurate, even at close range. The states saw active militias as the only protection the central government would have against insurrection. This had just been proven, in Shays' Rebellion, an armed revolt against the government in Massachusetts. The Amendment wasn't written to enable such rebellions, but to put them down. As the Whiskey Rebellion of 1791 would be put down, by militias under President Washington.

That's the real Second Amendment. It's not this “everyone gets as many guns as they want” nonsense the so-called National Rifle Association spouts. No matter how many judges or politicians may agree with them, that is just not the historical fact. It's a fiction, a lie, and those who write it are liars.

There is no Debt Crisis

Think of this as Volume 16, Number 25 of A-Clue.com, the online newsletter I've written since 1997. Enjoy.

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I hate it when reporters lie.

Maria Bartiromo and Michele Cabruso-Cabrera have been doing this regularly. Lying.

They claim there is a debt crisis.

There isn't.