Solar Power Research

Solar Power is going to be a big part of your future life whether you like it or not. With the cut throat politics of big oil, the future is going to be very different. America much like in the past will change the world with our direction. Not from some group in some far away lands demands, but on our own terms. American’s are a funny people, we will buy your product on our terms if it is affordable and reliable. That includes our energy needs. While the nice folks sitting on mega trillions of oil think that they have “We the People” over their barrel, creative Americans are turning those same barrels into wood stoves and home made bio-fuel tanks.

I love the New York Times and I have to thank my friend Jeff from Worm Town Taxi for turning me onto this story. The New York Times writer could not find his back side from his elbow on this topic. Rather than reporting on the true research they condemn solar power as a fad for this generation. Different paper, different generation but the same is true, Solar power is not good enough once more over at the NYT…

A link between Moore’s Law and solar technology reflects the engineering reality that computer chips and solar cells have a lot in common.

“A solar cell is just a big specialized chip, so everything we’ve learned about making chips applies,” says Paul Saffo, an associate engineering professor at Stanford and a longtime observer of Silicon Valley.

Financial opportunity also drives innovators to exploit the solar field. “This is the biggest market Silicon Valley has ever looked at,” says T. J. Rogers, the chief executive of Cypress Semiconductor, which is part-owner of the SunPower Corporation, a maker of solar cells in San Jose, Calif.

Mr. Rogers, who is also chairman of SunPower, says the global market for new energy sources will ultimately be larger than the computer chip market.

“For entrepreneurs, energy is going to be cool for the next 30 years,” he says.
Optimism about creating a “Solar Valley” in the geographic shadow of computing all-stars like Intel, Apple and Google is widespread among some solar evangelists.

“The solar industry today is like the late 1970s when mainframe computers dominated, and then Steve Jobs and I.B.M. came out with personal computers,” says R. Martin Roscheisen, the chief executive of Nanosolar, a solar company in San Jose, Calif.

Nanosolar shipped its first “thin film” solar panels in December, and the company says it ultimately wants to produce panels that are both more efficient in converting sunlight into electricity and less expensive than today’s versions. Dramatic improvements in computer chips over many years turned the PC and the cellphone into powerful, inexpensive appliances — and the foundation of giant industries. Solar enterprises are hoping for the same outcome. - New York Times

This is where the article should have ended but it didn’t. You can read the rest of it if you like but it is more or less if you can’t have the whole loaf of bread then you don’t want even one slice.

When it comes to our nations energy needs in the future you can no longer put all your eggs in one basket. You need to look at all options and Solar Power is just one option of many for your individual energy needs. There isn’t a person involved in the real life business of solar power that will tell you it will serve all of your energy resources. That kind of science and technology just doesn’t exist… YET! When you think of solar power you have to think of your vegetable garden, it offsets your grocery bill with food grown by your own hand that you know will help your family budget. It’s only the vegetables. As in the old commercials from long gone by political campaigns “Where’s the BEEF?”

The beef is in the current research that will mass produce the solar panels to the point where Joe and Joanne Sixpack can afford to install a solar panel on their home. That is where Moore’s Law meets the common consumer. That is where engineers and scientist break the back of OPEC and pretty much look at locations in the middle of the desert here in America with sunshine year round that are not in the Middle East for our nations electric power needs.

Solar Power was not a fad in the 70‘s, or the 80‘s, or for that matter in the 90‘s. It is and will be part of your life, it is only a question of what part it will be producing power for your families needs. Ten years from now you could probably pick up a whole house solar panel unit that you plug into your outdoor outlet that powers your entire home from Home Depot or Lowes. Then again Walmart might have those nasty falling prices and outsource the American designed technology to China to mass produce it. Any way you look at it, the technology will be cheaper and our nations energy needs will come from somewhere else and solar power is just one piece of the puzzle.

The only thing that will hold solar power back is the people most afraid of it and how much of their bottom line it will take away. Those are the people that this story in the NYT’s should have looked at more closely. That is when you will smell the sense of smoke in the air and new patents for new energy smoldering on the bonfires of big energy R us. Capitalism at its worst.

Papamoka

Cross posted at MichaelLinnJones.com and Bring IT ON!

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Back To The Future: The Economic World Of Hunter-Gatherers

BY MICHAEL LINN JONES

The story of human social evolution goes roughly as follows: for eons people were hunter-gatherers, collecting food while moving from place to place. Such a life was VERY in tune with nature, resulting in very short life spans. Nature, after all, is not that friendly.

Then people discovered they could grow their food in one place. This was called farming. This method lasted to modern times, although in a very mechanical and corporate form.

The industrial revolution, starting in the 19th century, led more and more people to forsake farming for an urban existence. This also created a complex co-dependency between industry and those who worked in them.

Today in Bloomberg.com, Rich Karlgaard has this piece, THE DEEPER ROOTS OF ECONOMIC ANXIETY. I highly recommend the article, as well as the comments left by readers. They are quite revealing.

The U.S. economy is in better shape than the pundits, polls and press say it is. I don’t believe America is in a recession now. I don’t think one is coming. After eight months of anxiety and stock market turbulence, if the bad event hasn’t happened by now, I doubt it will happen at all.

The Fed is on the case. Bargain hunters like Warren Buffett are moving in, signaling a bottom. Small business is curiously robust despite the credit crunch. Employment is strong. Every commercial flight I’ve taken this year has been oversold.

Much as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton would like us to believe 2008 is a trap door to the 1930s, they’re wrong.

So, there IS no recession, there is not GOING to be a recession, and all it takes is one man...Warren Buffet...to signal the bottom of something that isn't happening. Unless, of course, one considers Wall Street as the American economy. With all due respect, rather than Senators Clinton and Obama wanting us to believe 2008 is a trapdoor to the 1930's, it could also be said that Mr. Karlgaard's words could have been written by Calvin Coolidge or Herbert Hoover. In the economic funhouse that set up its tent in the 1970's, lip service is paid to the vast pool of unwashed consumers. The REAL decisions; the true engine of the economy, are those of the "investing class" who are better-educated, and therefore wiser, than a bunch of chocolate cherry-chomping chumps watching TV.

Cheap production technology combined with vast pools of talent, capital and consumers around the world guarantee a world of “extreme competition” (to borrow a McKinsey phrase) and ever-accelerating business-model evolution. What could slow it down? Nothing I see. Not even war.

What goes for companies goes for careers. Your career and mine can be disrupted more easily than before. The best personal career strategy is to assume that our jobs will be disrupted. Everyone needs a Plan B.

If you and I face up to these facts and trends and likelihoods, the world will look scary but thrilling, and full of opportunity, too. If we cover our eyes or imagine that politicians can protect us from change, the world will look scary, period.

As my MIT Sloan School host on Wednesday, Howard Anderson, likes to say: Welcome to a world where you will eat well or sleep well, but not both.

Question for the day: Economic populists such as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton call for "change," yet ironically claim they can protect Americans from change. In a world where ideas and capital can move anywhere in the world at the speed of light and flock to cheap production technology and talent, what protections against the future can politicians give us?

If one is to accept the premise that this "new" economic mold is to be unquestionably adapted to, there lies a problem right on the surface. Hunter-gatherer mentality requires cooperation, whereas capitalism requires competition. As Herbert Hoover liked to say, "A man who builds a factory builds a temple. And the man who works there, worships there." Certain forms of capitalism require slavish devotion from labor. And slavish devotion TO the concept that all taxation is evil; that spending is good as long as it's not paid for, and acknowledgment that certain well-educated experts know all the pitfalls of capitalism. Of which there are none, of course.

It is amusing to hear the phrase "creative destruction" in the context of economic activity. If such were applied equally across the board it might make sense. The problem is, some destruction and creativity is more equal than others.

As regards Mr. Karlgaard's Question of The Day, economic populist is synomous with communisim to the investing class. There is great offense taken at "class warfare," even if it's been going on forever and it doesn't take an Einstein to know who has been winning. Senators Clinton and Obama offer some form of change....their policies do not differ all that much. However, they DO differ from the status quo, which as we all know is Latin for "the mess we're in." The protections that government can give us against rampant unchecked corporate supremacy is the only hope the 95% of the population have for a future that MIGHT be brighter.

Welcome to a world where you will eat well or sleep well, but not both. This is a credo for hunter-gatherers. There is no stability, only uncertainty. In a Sim-City economic theory bubble it sounds so exciting, so dashing. It prompts me to ask why some people get so incensed at "big government" (which they should) but bow to illusory "market forces" when it comes to big corporations. At least with big government you have SOME rights as a human being.

I believe that this nation cannot withstand another four years of Bush economics (a contradiction in terms anyway). Should a Democrat sit in the Oval Office with the same fealty to large corporate donors then we're confronted with the choice this November between a moderate Republican and a moderate Republican.

In 1942 a Japanese general warned that they were suffering from "victory disease." Everything was going too smoothly; every goal was met and all opposition crushed. Such can be said for dedicated adherents to the status quo.

As regards making a choice between eating or sleeping, it's best to be reminded of an old saying, "The castle is safe as long as the cottage is happy."
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Cross-posted at Michaellinnjones.com
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This post kindly featured at MemeOrandum

ECONOMIC VORTEX FORMING IN GULF OF STUPIDITY (WHY IT AIN'T LOOKIN' A LOT LIKE CHRISTMAS)

BY MICHAEL LINN JONES

Recently I wrote about the possibility that an economic Nathan Bedford Forrest would come charging in on some economic experts and badly upset their applecarts. And cause a stampede.

This morning I am scanning the business section of news.yahoo.com and three stories are lined up one after the other. The Federal Reserve dropped interest rates another 1/4 point yesterday, despite the fact that the GDP grew at a rate of 3.9%. Ordinarily a cut would be strongly resisted....but...but...there are those issues to deal with involving the collapse of the subprime mortgage market and its spreading effects.

This AP article by Alex Veiga, FORECLOSURE FILINGS SOAR IN 3RD QUARTER, is one part of the equation.

LOS ANGELES - A soaring number of U.S. homeowners struggled to make mortgage payments in the third quarter, with properties in some stage of foreclosure more than doubling from the same time last year, a mortgage data company said Thursday.

A total of 446,726 homes nationwide were targeted by some sort of foreclosure activity from July to September, up 100.1 percent from 223,233 properties in the year-ago period, according to Irvine-based RealtyTrac Inc.

The current figure was 33.9 percent higher than the 333,731 properties in foreclosure in the second quarter of this year.

There was one foreclosure filing for every 196 households in the nation during the most recent quarter, RealtyTrac said.

Next, Oil above $96 on drop in US supplies by John Wilen, AP Business Writer:

SINGAPORE - The price of oil rose to a new record above $96 a barrel Thursday after a surprise drop in U.S. crude stockpiles raised concerns about supplies for coming winter demand. Other energy futures also gained.

It was the second week in a row the U.S. Energy Information Administration reported a sharp and unexpected drop in oil inventories.

"The decline in U.S. crude oil inventories has been a key driver of oil prices," said David Moore, commodity strategist at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia in Sydney.

SNIP,

Much of that decline was due to a big drop in crude supplies at a closely watched oil terminal in Cushing, Oklahoma.

Cushing supplies have been under pressure in recent months due to differences in the price between front-month oil contracts and those for delivery in future months. This price difference, or spread, has given storage tank owners a financial incentive to sell their oil, rather than hold it in inventory. Analysts have also blamed falling Cushing supplies, in part, for the rally in which oil prices have jumped 35 percent since August

Finally, Stock Investors Fear End To Rate Cuts, again an AP story by Joe Bel Bruno.

Mindful of a warning from the Federal Reserve Wednesday about inflation, the market nervously watched the price of oil, which passed $96 a barrel overnight for the first time before dipping on profit-taking. The Fed, which cut interest rates a quarter point, said in a statement that inflation remained a concern, and oil's ascent to another record raised the possibility not only that the Fed might stop cutting rates, but that it might even consider raising them if inflation accelerates.

These, of course, are just snippets from the articles. I strongly recommend reading each in full. After reading what I've done so far I thought of renaming this "That 70's Show (Again)." If one were to take into account the three stories listed above...and Jimmy Carter was President instead of George W. Bush, there would be hell to pay. We would be talking in terms of a "malaise" or some such. But we're not, because we are being reassured (again) that everything is A-okay.

Am I crazy? Okay, don't answer that...but even if that's been established it doesn't take away the sense of wrongness when I read that oil prices go up because stocks are down because oil price "spreads" caused by the commodities markets give an incentive to keep oil storage tanks dry. Which information is used to further increase the price of oil, etc., etc. It's a nasty circular logic that does three things: makes some people a lot of money, costs many more to spend what they don't have, and screws the pooch on retail sales.

The other day I heard George Will say a couple of things. Bear in mind I admire Mr. Will's logic and prose even when I don't agree with him. He said (and I'm paraphrasing here) that even if crude oil reaches inflation-adjusted levels of the early 80's it doesn't matter that much since the influence of oil as a part of the economy has shrunk since then.

Oh yeah? Well what is the minimum wage when inflation-adjusted? I'm not arguing for the minimum wage, but rather using it as a standard of sorts since many jobs offer compensation that is compared to the minimum wage. Besides, gasoline at $3 or $4 a gallon is still that....money that would otherwise go elsewhere.

He also made the point that a lot of the subprime mortgage failures were by people speculating in 2nd or 3rd homes. Again, what difference does that make? Whether for a 1st, 2nd, or 5th mortgage, those subprime deals were sold as securities that have evaporated in value. The end effect is the same no matter WHO held the paper.

I'm a capitalist. I once lived in what once euphemistically called a "semi-state" environment and it was terrible. Capitalism is indeed the only form of economic activity that works. But, it is quite caustic in nature and also self-destructive if left unregulated. I live in a fairly stable neighborhood. I never ordinarily have contact with law enforcement. But I know that if a wildman was trying to walk off the property with everything I own I would call the police. They would intervene between stability and chaos. I think they call it the "Thin Blue Line."

For the last twenty years or so we've had one politician after another cutting that thin blue line of economic regulation like a local mayor with oversize scissors opening a county fair. Our nation has changed, as all things change, but not all change is necessarily good.

And the result is that our economic neighborhood is overrun with wildmen gleefully filling their stockings because the police are now forbidden to even look for crime. It is a sad fact that the first Chairman of the Securities & Exchange Commission, Joseph P. Kennedy (himself a notorious Wall St. speculator) had to have bodyguards while on the floor of the stock exchange.

Kennedy's job was to pour some unpalatable liquid into many bowls of cornflakes, and the consumers of said cornflakes did not like it a bit. They still don't and that's why they pay out a lot of money to ensure their meals taste sweeter every year.

So if the bottom falls out of the bucket we all can rest assured that in the long run things will straighten out. But like Harry Hopkins once told a Senate committee, " the problem is, people have to eat in the SHORT RUN."

And they have to drive cars to work so as to keep the economy going. And they have to heat their homes (those who still have them).

And they have to hold their noses next November to elect people who like the taste of their cereal and aren't about to allow any cops in THEIR neighborhood.
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Cross-posted at Michaellinnjones.com

Russian First Elected President Boris Yeltsin has Died

Picture Courtesy of the Washington Post

Personally, I am not a favorite advocate for Boris Yeltsin as a man or as the first freely elected President of Russia. I am however appreciative of what he brought to his people and that is freedom. The price of that freedom from the oppression of the communist regime since the days of Stalin came with a heavy price and yet the Russian people survived it. Most of them did anyway.

Former Russian Leader Boris Yeltsin, 76, Dies

By Lee Hockstader
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, April 23, 2007; 11:36 AM

Boris Yeltsin was once asked to name his greatest goal as president. He answered that more than anything, he wanted tranquility for Russia.

Ultimately, Yeltsin failed to achieve it in his own term. But the burly Siberian who was Russia's first freely elected leader in 1,000 years did more than anyone to raze the rotting communist superstructure of the former Soviet Union and build from its ruins the framework of a newly democratic and capitalist country.

Yeltsin died today at 76, a Kremlin official announced, without providing further details. The Interfax news agency quoted an unidentified medical source as saying Yeltsin died of heart failure.

Like Peter the Great, the 18th century czar he once mentioned as his model, Yeltsin was no great democrat. In ordering the war on the breakaway southern region of Chechnya in 1994, he was responsible for the violent deaths of more Russian citizens than any Kremlin leader since Joseph Stalin. As president he tolerated--and even authorized--the excesses of a system in some ways as corrupt and morally adrift as the one it replaced.

Yet like the autocratic Peter, Yeltsin took hold of a stultifying, hermetically closed country and flung open its doors to fresh ideas, methods and influences.
"He created a new kind of power," said Vladislav Starkov, editor of the weekly newspaper Argumenty i Fakty. "He created a new economic situation. A new psychological situation. A new international policy. A new Russian mentality. Of course, there were many mistakes, stupidities. But today we live with and take for granted absolutely new political ideas and institutions . . . This is Yeltsin's legacy." – The Washington Post

Boris Yeltsin was not the picture perfect first president other than the fact that he was the one man with the power and convictions to end the madness of his government and replaced it with his own corruption ridden rule. Beside his best efforts to profit from his own government the larger idea of a free Russia stuck with his people and sometimes the good comes with the bad.

Ending the Communist Party and its oppressive mentality of government that suppressed the people of Russia and any state that the former Soviet Union touched is Boris Yeltsin’s legacy. Americans only have to look ninety something miles to the south of the Sunshine State of Florida to see the continued existence of the failed experiment of the communist mentality and government system.

I admire Yeltsin for what he did to truly end the misery of his people but I frankly can not shed a tear for what he did as President of Russia to make sure it continued. His own people will tell his history and that is how it should be.

Papamoka

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