Vortex Wind Turbine, Why?

The Vortex wind energy generator is a spanish invention. It rocks back and forth in the wind, has no blades, less moving parts. It is presented as a viable alternative for horizontal axis bladed turbines. One has to wonder whether this is true.

Wind energy means capturing the energy of the wind, and this requires one to block its streaming where it is. A wind generator has to carve out a window in the wind that it can harvest energy from, the bigger the window, the more energy.

Normal horizontal axis bladed turbines carve out a circle. The size of the circle and the hight it is at determins the power. Vertical axis wind turbines usually carve out a rectangle, because they have vertical blades moving as the wall of a cilinder. Seen from the side this is a rectangle. They can be pretty efficient too.


Power per swept area

The Vortex will carve out a cone shape, from the base to the top the cone widens. If it doesn’t widen then the conical rod will still sweep a pizza slice in the sky. The size of the slice determines the energy harvested. The Vortex will have to deal with serious forces at its base. The bigger it gets the more force.


Other turbines swept areas

The way the power is generated, by moving back and forth, is also not optimal, because as the cone slows down against the magnetic baring (assumed) it will store the wind energy as elastic energy before it sweeps back. That energy conversion causes a loss. Only with the stiffest of conex/rods will this be as efficient as a spinning blade (vertical or horizontal) that never has to stop and reverse.

 

 

 

 

The Energytrain

Flywheels are common energy storage devices, used in stationary applications as well as mobile such as in busses and racing cars. The energy is stored in what is essentially an electro motor, which is used to speed it up and which draws power as a generator, slowing the wheel down.

Turning a Fly wheel into a flytrain

ECN developed a concept that is similar to the flywheel, a flytrain of sorts, a system that has a large mass traveling around a circular track at high speed. The energy can be added and extracted just like in an electric car or train, by feeding power to the wheels to speed up, and braking ‘regeneratively’ and thereby slowing down. The cost of such system can be lower, up to 90% than alternatives, one assumes that is battery storage.

We think this is a great idea, the only thing is that once you have an enormous heavy train that runs around a track this track will have to be ultra stiff. It will warp and push out to the ground with tremendous force if the force of the wheels isn’t reflected back for a very high percentage.

The good news is : The design is simple and easy to understand

In a sense such a train would be like a gyroscope, which is a device with a spinning disk. A gyroscope resists movement of its axle, a property used in bicycles to keep them upright. Gyroscopes are used in planes to indicate its orientation relative to the ground. Three fast spinning disks in such devices will stay in exactly the same orientation no matter what moves the plane makes (they do drift eventually). What happens if you attach a giant gyroscope to the Earth?

The earth is itself a gyroscope

Either the Energytrain will lose energy because the earth spins and moves its virtual axis, or the Earth moves differently as a result of the forces from the device. The latter option may be remote, but measurable. Also the massive periodic forces may trigger earthquakes just like fracking, oil drilling and conventional gas well depletion does. There are a lot of instabile faultlines to trigger..

Best place to build : Hard Rock

These risks may turn out to be neglible, and there’s a big chance they can be made so by picking the right place to build. One could imagine  a system in granite rock, a bit like the CERN particle accelerators, something that would be possible under New York for instance. The rock would ensure minimal loss of energy as the mass would circle the track. People could feed power into it and draw from it at will, it would be the New York Circular Buffer. In Dutch swampy soil it would be harder to make this concept work, perhaps dug deep into the sand it could but you can imagine the tube wiggeling it’s way through it over time..

It’s a great concept, but let’s hope it won’t eventually make Earth travel in a straight line! 😉

 

 

 

De Schulden Catharsis

Update :

“The Company has already taken a series of positive and substantive actions and steps relating to its debt repayment plans, including the recent repayment of the Company’s mid-term notes in the principal amount of RMB 1.2 billion, which matured on May 3rd, 2015.” (bron)

We lezen dat de op een na grootste zonnepanelen fabrikant ter wereld ‘in de problemen zit’. Yingli Green heeft te veel schulden en verlies geleden..

“De onderneming weet niet zeker of het wel aan de betalingen kan voldoen, waardoor het mogelijk failliet gaat en onderdelen verplicht verkocht moeten worden. Mogelijk leveren deze bezittingen minder op dan waarvoor ze in de boeken staan.”

Maar wat is er nu eigenlijk gebeurt? Het bedrijf heeft fossiele resources kunnen gebruiken (via krediet) om met Aluminium, glas, silicium, EPA en andere grondstoffen en halfproducten zonnepanelen te maken. Die fossiele brandstof is verbrand, weg, in de atmosfeer. In ruil kregen we 7 keer dezelfde energie die we uit de panelen kunnen putten en gebruiken in het productie process. We sparen die (meest fossiele) energie dus die blijft over.

Productie van hernieuwbare energie bronnen is een belangrijkere taak dan die van een bank

De ‘schuld’ is niet echt van belang, normaal gesproken kan een bedrijf die niet terugbetalen, want er wordt geen fossiele brandstof gemaakt. Dus wat een bedrijf doet is winst maken dwz geld elders weghalen en naar de bank brengen. Dit heeft geen invloed op de consumptie van fossiele brandstoffen want de bank zal bij een geschikt project gewoon weer krediet aanmaken, de brandstof moet worden verbrand, als de ene bank het niet doet doet een andere het wel. Shuld is slechts een middel om de geldhoeveelheid te beheersen, iets dat moet omdat de macht van de banken daar van afhangt.

Het moment dat je beseft dat een schuld nooit kan worden afbetaald, tenzij je zelf fossiele brandstof kunt produceren weet je dat schulden slechts een beheersfunctie hebben

In de huidige omstandigheden zouden we slechts moeten kijken naar de WattPiek per Dollar/Euro output van zonnepanelen fabrieken. Die moet zo laag mogelijk zijn, en dat kan oa door energie optimalisatie, gebruik van hernieuwbare energie in het productie proces. Zo kan inefficiente  productie worden vervangen door efficientere. Maar ‘schulden’ mogen geen rol spelen, we verlaten het fossiele tijdperk en het enige dat de fossiele sector mag doen is zoveel mogelijk energie ter beschikking stellen om zich zo snel mogelijk overbodig te maken.

Net als met landen moeten bedrijven die hernieuwbare energie bronnen maken worden geholpen zolang ze deze productie efficient aanpakken. Banken moeten gewoon nul rente leningen schrijven en hun bek houden.

Overigens is het dreigement van een faillisement nonsense. Het verkopen van een zonnepanelen fabriek in delen terwijl de vraag naar panelen nooit hoger is geweest? Het meest waardevolle dat je kunt doen met een failliete boedel waarmee je zonnepanelen kunt maken, is er zonnepanelen mee maken. Het enige alterntief zou zijn opkopen (tegen een frauduleus laag gewaardeerde prijs) en laten braakliggen. Dat hebben we al zien gebeuren met de thin-film fabriek van Helianthos.

AI Paymasters, or how AI may run your life sooner than you think

Google, Baidu and and others are working hard at visual recognition software. Baidu just reported it now has an AI system that recognizes images better than humans. It can distinguish 1000 categories, so that would be trees, houses, people, dogs etc. This ability is implemented such that it could be used as a service, meaning if you fire an image to Baidu, it will tell you what category it is.

Already this has consequences for our daily lives. It is highly likely that Baidu will now be able to categorize websites by their image content, and for instance block any sites with to much nudity or other offensive material. But these recognition systems can be trained in specific fields, they can process 2d or 3d info, this doesn’t make too much of a difference. This means they can not only recognize but also validate a real situation, if this is offered to them in image form.

Now imagine you want to run a hospital, and you have cleaners for the rooms, and you want every room to look tidy after they are done. You can either have someone check the rooms, or you can ask the cleaner to scan it after they are done. The scan gets uploaded to a Baidu image analysis system, and you get your answer about the quality of the work.

This simple principle works in many different places. A lot of what we do is judged by visual cues. And Baidu type systems can be trained in a specific area of expertise, so for instance to look at seams in clothing (there’s even a system that recognizes criminals in camera footage by the seams of their jeans, but that is a segway). Camera observation systems can now become overseers. One can not only look for possible burglars, but also whether the place looks like it should at any given time.

How would it be if we tie this functionality to access to our cash, or the ability to get fuel at the gas station. In the coveted cashless society anyone can now be asked to document their actions, have them ‘approved’ by Baidu type recognition systems, or find themselves be cut off or punished (lets not use euphenisms here).

Work benches can have cameras just like factory conveyor belts so that someone at Foxcon can lay his Iphone under the cam at every step of the assembly process for a green light and 5 sleep credits. AI only needs good recognition systems, because we already have a super control system for humans, a bank owned money supply. Money is the gateway to everything we need, or banks are trying to make that so, and with that we are imprisoned even before these systems become implemented.

The surveillance state is one that exists because of fear and scarcity, the scarity creates an elite which then uses fear to justify surveillance. The primary scarce thing in this mechanism is fossil fuels. A surveillance state would not come about if everywhere you go around the world people would meet their local needs with local renewable energy. There would be no need to go elsewhere and take or ‘share’ oil as the west does in the Middle East, People would not become terrorist except in a rare case of insanity. People would not be afraid because they would know what their live depends on, and it would not be money because money would be virtually elimintated (as most things would be free and produced automatically see: the Roboeconomy).

Fossil fuel (natural resouce) scarcity drives surveillance and the emergence of a slave class

The Baidu system may in future include recognition of smell. It can already easily include recognition of audio, something easily adapted for making people chant affirmations in the morning. But these captivating opportunities to totally dominate a work force with no human effort are misguided in the sense that our competition for cash is one born out of an unnecessary scaricty of energy, one we can eliminate with renewables.

Let’s hope we achieve a state where renewables are overabundant, and we don’t need to have human slaves work for food and water credits in FoxConn factories until they ask to be euthenized. The fossil fuel /banking elite will certainly like to see it, and your weapon is to drive the building and realization of more renewable energy sources, and replace the remote factory worker with a local who you can check is happy.

Content Surveillance

It is easy to imagine that one develops a ‘content observer’ (content as in happy) application that can be used with any image feed in a fixed place. When things are as they should be, the system is content, when it is not it signals this and draws attention to it (of either humans or some other AI system). So town square with relaxed tourists : ok, slight altercation with between to men : Not ok, send sentries. Robots arrive at the scene and ask the fighting men to stand apart to be searched. Not happening? Taze them etc. etc.

These ‘content obeserver’ systems really do almost as much as a humans do, and they can of course be linked so that we get content areas, zones. This may however in our current economy mean that the people in the zones are doing what they should do, even if that makes them unhappy. This factor keeps depending on whether it is an elite that has to fight over resources or whether they are abundand as they can be.

 

 

 

The Missing Link in Development of AI

Years ago I was a scientist, working on understanding the brain. I wanted to know how we process information and was given card blanche to read every paper on brain physiology, every theory around. I build computer simulations of neural networks, not the common ones but more detailed ones with ion channels. I simulated learing and forgetting as a result of our emotional state.

A magnonic holographic memory device

What I concluded then was that any approach to AI based on logic or computational analogies where doomed to fail, because logic is a special case of behavior, a class so to say, of perfect percepts that kind of hijacks our brain. For example most things we see around us are more or less recognizable, but words, written down, are always perfectly recognizable, they are always that specific word. You will not see “Tree” written on a piece of paper and have an impression of anything else than the word “Tree”. This all or nothing kind of perception and action constitutes a small niche in our behavioral ‘space’. Most of our behavior and perception is vague and unreliable and not driven by any logic.


It is not like a computer

Looking at our brain and how we learn it became clear that there are some real challenges you never think of when you program a PC or build a website. Our brain does NOT know and has NO WAY to know what is important to its survival. It does not know it wants to survive. It is a part of a larger system and it has no idea what is going on outside. This is what it means when people say “There is no homuculus”. There is no interpreter inside our brain that decides what we pay attention to. We are really just a very complex mechanism that manages not to destroy itself and therefore exists for as long as it may last.

At the time I visited Daniel Dennet at Tufs University and was unimpressed. He spoke a lot in analogies, which did not tell me what I wanted to know : How does it work. Telling someone the brain is like a swiss cheese or whatever doesn’t tell me what it is exactly. Analogies are circular, they suggest an attitude towards something by comparing it to something else. Dennet was able to inspire many people to think about what we are, which I think is certainly good because it makes us more humble.

The frustrating thing about our brain is that it really doesn’t lend itself to easy understanding. There is a huge advantage in that, it may even be one of the most important factors in our survival, that we are not capable of readily hacking our own brain. When that is done, for instance by giving rats control over their own reward centers, it is very destructive. Heroin addicts are people that can circumvent their own reward systems. They know a shortcut and their brain does not let them take any other way. I predict that the downfall of all real AI is its ability ot hack itself.


Brain activity can be correlated with arm movements, such that a person with a neural implant can control a robot arm.

When we look inside a brain we see neurons, glia cells, all kinds of dendrites and constant activity. All the time our brainscells are stimulating each other with impulses, spikes, it would make a sound like the bustle of grand central station. The sound changes in different rythms when we sleep, or do something specific, and then returns when we rest again. Even if we are doing specific things the chatter appears random. One can analyse the neurons in our motor cortex (right side to the front) and extract our arm movements statistically, but what you would hear is just a chaos of spikes. Part of this is because our brain (the top or neocortex) only does part of the job, part of this is because many neurons partake in the same jobs (so we can lose some if we have to), and part of it is the way our brain works, it does not know how to organize because it does not know anything about that it is supposed to do.

 Listening to one neuron firing regularly

Granted we have specialized brain regions, sensory systems so in fact our brain gets a head start at processing information that is relevant to our specific organism in our environment. If it fails we die. For instance we have vocal cords, and areas in the brain that control them and others where we recognize words and language.  We get born in a world where our parents speak, and even if they dont we have a talent to show language behavour.

Other species have other brains. Some are highly differentiated (so conducive to specific behaviour) and others don’t seem to be (like that of a sea turtle, just a big mess really). Looking at these differences one can start to get an idea what our brain really does. And this brought me to my theory at the time, it was called the Entrance Identity or Liquid Basin theory of cognition.

Entrance identity theory/ Liquid basin theory is about allowing chaotic activity to capture and recognize itself, without requiring it is ‘human readable’ as a mechanism of cognition

The liquid basin theory of cognition focusses on what a typical pyramidal neuron does in our brain : It recognises a brain state. It is build to ‘fire’ when it recieves spikes from other neurons and the number of spikes it gets moves over a certain threshold. It can take a snapshot of such imput, which as mentioned above can be completely chaotic to the outside observer. That doesn’t matter, because 1. The same outside situation will cause approximately the same chaos. 2. If there are neurons that respond to part of the chaos in a predictable way, the chaos will become more recognizable to other neurons. If this happens the system of neurons will leave chaos and start to behave at specific rythms, which both allows individual neurons to be heard and helps others to program themselves for recognition. This is the learning state.

Recognition happens when our brain is able to self organize its activity. It can because it programmed itself to do so on a previous occasion.

So our brain is able to pick itself up from a chaotic state to an organized state because its neurons learn what the chaos looks like. The result is that we perform similar behavior in similar situations if (and this is a big if) our body sends the signal that we are doing well. So the above organizing is conditional on our reward centers giving the green light for learning, through dopamine mainly. We can also ‘forget’ which is mediated by Serotonin and of course this is a gross simplification. If the neurons in our brain can pick up the chaotic signature of outside input and pull itself towards an organized state we can say we have recognized something. This is an extremely important aspect of cognition, the most important. It enables us to be goal oriented, even robustly goal oriented, which is my definition of intelligence (not awareness yet). We are ARGO, Autonomous Robust Goal Oriented organisms.

So called ‘grandmother cells’ are neurons that are singularly sensitive to one specific percept (like your grandmother) they are theoretical. Most neurons seem to express a data compression lexicon element (if that means anything to you), so they can represent an approximate percept when combined, like the tiles of a Jpeg image.  

The picking up signals from the chaos part is clearly not something a computer easily does. It really doesn’t like chaos at all. It likes to know what is going on, zeros or ones or the ‘syntax error’ is sounded. Even making a computer act like it is a chaotic neuronal system is not easy, it needs to sequentially run through each neuron and calculate what happens with it and conclude if it fires and in what state it will be, for billions of neurons and trillions of connections between them. Dedicated systems have been build to do the task, but until now their capacity has been small. The quest would be for a system that from a state sensitive to all possible inputs can avelanche quickly towards one outcome state.

Grandmothers are recognized by many different neuronal areas whose activity is in turn recognized by other neurons.

It seems the device that can do that is here. It is called a “magnonic holographic memory device”. It is being developed in California in collaboration with University of California, Riverside Bourns College of Engineering and the Russian Academy of Sciences.

“The most appealing property of this approach is that all of the input ports operate in parallel”

It has the property that one can offer an input pattern in parallel, and gave it sweep into one of several stabile states in 100 nanoseconds, which is much quicker than our brain which needs 100 milliseconds to recognize something visually. This is similar to having a neuron that knows what to listen to inside the chaotic environment of our brain.

Like the memristor this new device opens up possibilities for instance to build a complex recognition system without classic CPUs, that can instantly differentiate between many possible input states and suggest ‘behaviour’, when implemented in some kind of robot. Of course such a system can feed back on itself either through simulation or through reality and become a super quick intelligent system. Why intelligent? Because it can be programmed to adjust itself to any situation so that it achieves its ‘goals’ (which inintially will be programmed directly). I have no idea how these devices are programmed right now, but if there is some kind of learning algorithm involved one can imagine this be driven by evaluation of the outcome (hopefull human evaluation).

Recognizing situations and initiating the actions that bring it closer to its goals is all an intelligent system does

I think these Magnonic holographic devices are the missing link for real AI, because they do what we do at incredible speed, they allow massive parallel input as we recieve and seem to offer the outcome of their recognition to logic manipulation (which for the time being can be taken on by normal computers).  They are something to watch closely, because the next time you’re in a battle field and the drone overhead knows all your moves, it most likely carries this technology.

The Dangers of Striving for Economic Usefullness

The world and its countries form an international economic system. Products and services are traded and books are kept on who owns what, who consumes what. It seems like a fine system, but there is a problem in its core, and that is its dependency on a natural resources, mainly hydrocarbons.

Hydrocarbons are still abundant, but the cost of their use is increasing, and their use keeps increasing demand. Banks and arms traders causing economic crisi and wars can shift the remaining reserves to those that organize those crisi and wars only for so long. As the use of these reserves causes climate change soon we will reach a point where food and water supply drop below the lethal treshold even in the developed world.

The risks are enormous, and several. It is not just that any disruption of the fuel supply will make it impossible to move food (or fuel) around, it is also that the developed world has become used to being unproductive, in the sense that most jobs can only happen if resouces are  consumed.

Very few persons have jobs where at the end of the day they are left with more resources than at the beginning. Being an organic farmer is one example where that is the case. Most other jobs, as they are designed to be part of the ‘economy’ consume resources, resouces that economic thinking does not worry about replacing.

An economist will consider a person to be productive when he/she functions well in the economy

To a citizen of any western country that does not own land this should be a worrying thing. We all know the government is predominantly influenced by those that want to do economically interesting things (meaning enterprises that use a lot of fossil fuels), the builders, the bankers, the industrialists. Pointing to the benefit of this in terms of jobs and products that are offered for consumers misses the point of this piece, because no matter how pleasant our society looks and no matter how well our supermarket is stocked, it has no staying power.

Consumers are neccesarry destructive endpoints for production chains that use fossil fuels

So we have a society that exists based on resources that grow scarcer, consisting of citizen that can not add resources (forcibly, because the system wants you to be a good destructive end point for products and services). Soon the choice will be made by some to exclude citizen from access to credit and thus eliminate their ability to consume fossil fuels. They can become jobless, be excluded from social security. Almost everyone is a burden on the fossil fuel supply, so in theory almost everyone runs the risk of being cut off.

The ‘Usefullness’ question came up before WOII, leading to the coining of the term Eugenics

In the political arena those that want to go on with fossil fuel economics (who are the most powerfull still today) will preselect leaders that will accept exclusion of some groups of people to restrict natural resource consumption, even if it means these groups run a greater risk of dying early. Everyone is useless, and choices need to be made if one is secure the ‘economy’.

 A person that is really productive brings about the creation of natural resources such that at the end of each day there are more than at the beginning

These same pro fossil fuel, pro industry leaders will advocate the use of people to produce goods and services, without allowing them to be consumers of any significance. We now have these type of workers in far away countries, but they will be you and me. The tragic thing about this is that the trend towards slave labour (now mainly in prisons) will not take away problems, it will only buy time for those that organize this transformation from a free consumer economy to a class society that includes a slave class. One that will ultimately collapse.

The only way to break this dynamic is to come up with ways to replenish natural resources, and those ways now exist. Renewable energy adds ‘stuff’ to the reserves, wind electricity can add ammonia, methane, fresh water, recycled materials. They can stop the growing scarcity if they are applied with that goal in mind. They can be used to increase biomass in places we now consider unviable. At the same time they can show people that a citizen can be truely productive, without being a slave, by simply choosing a system which does not deplete resources including and using fossil fuels.

Extraeconomics thinks about how to use renewables to increase natural resources in zones that sustain their own population but do not form part of the wider economy

Not everyone can be productive even in a world run on renewable energy, but in such a scenario there is no competition for resources, a bit like during the fossil fuel glut in the western world, when social security was at its peak (because there where only advantages to having more consumers).

The danger however is that before we reach such a situation, people that are leaders of the fossil fuel scarcity economy will have started to talk about people’s usefullness, about how they must pull their weight, and have put them to work for slave wages. They will create a group of ‘haves’ that will do anything to not become one of the ‘have-nots’, even though no matter how hard they all try, a growing number will be pushed out into poverty and die.

Everyone can be ‘usefull’ in the true sense of the word, primarly by promoting and bringing about a world that only depends on renewable energy sources, and promoting and bringing about the creation of natural resources that are not immediately consumed. Not while serving the fossil fuel economy leaders but while activly undermining their agenda of continued use for an ever more conflicted, divided and desperate citizenry.

 

 

 

Netwerk versus Opslag

Er komt steeds meer zonne- en wind stroom. De spreker Peter Molengraaf in de video hieronder verwacht dat dit in 2023 tot grote probleem zal leiden, tenzij we oplossingen bedenken zoals opslag. Een andere manier om een impuls te geven om dit probleem oplossen is volgens deze man het flexibel prijzen van stroom, dwz lage prijs als er veel is en hoge prijs als er weinig is.

De soort praatjes als hierboven sturen ten eerste een mixed message. Want Peter praat bijna 6 minuten over de problemen die duurzame energie kan veroorzaken voor de bestaande centrales, waarbij het nog niet eens klopt wat hij zegt “De stoppen slaan door”, dat is onzin, zo zitten terugleverende omvormers niet in elkaar.

Peter Molengraaf is CEO van netbedrijf Alliander

Zijn pleidooi voor allerlei vormen van opslag lijkt de meest voor de hand liggende technologie te vergeten : Accus. Die zijn ivm genoemd waterstof (40% efficient) en Power-to-gas (stroom in methaan omzetten) met 92% ’round trip efficiency’ (zie Tesla Powerwall) het meest efficient. Het idee waterstof te gebruiken komt van de gaslobby, want waterstof wordt meestal met aardgas gemaakt (waarbij CO2 wordt uitgstoten). Power-to-gas zal het gasnet blijven gebruiken.

Peter wil dat we het netwerk blijven gebruiken

Hij blijft er op hameren dat met zon en veel wind er deze overvloed aan stroom zal zijn, maar zon en wind vullen elkaar goed aan. Er zijn niet veel heldere dagen met sterke wind, in de winter als de zon zwakker is waait het harder etc.

Wind is meer een ‘base load’ energie bron

 

 

 

Wave Energy Springs its Trap

There’s some interesting places where waves can deliver a lot of wealth

Something happened. Wave energy has been in the dumps for years. We observed this with great wonder, because as an energy source it is highly reliable and predictable. Yet companies like Pelamis went bankrupt. OceanLinx met the same fate.

Pelamis produced long tubes that turned wave action into hydraulic pressure.

Oceanlinx developed a system shown above that turns wave action into air pressure to drive a wind turbine.

Bobbing ‘shipping containers’, what could they cost..

Below we see how the Werpo/Blackbird system works, actually quite similar to the Pelamis system, but with different wave catchers, which have to be tied to something solid.

We made a list of all wave and tidal systems here (dutch, but the list is readable). Wave energy is a very reliable source of energy. It can be predicted days in advance, and waves are around day and night.  The energy in a wave is also considerable, because water is heavy compared to air. We think the slow adoption of this renewable energy source can only be attributed to resistance from fossil fuel interests, like we have seen with solar, wind and geothermal.

“Blackbird International Corporation (OTC: BBRD), a global leader in renewable sea wave energy technology(WERPO), is pleased to announce that it signed an agreement with the government of Guinea-Bissau for the development of a 500MW sea wave power plant along the coastline of Guinea-Bissau at a value of $500 Million Dollars.”

Now something seems to have changed, because suddenly there’s a $500 mln Wave energy project in Africa. Half a billion USD doesn’t usually get spend on immature technology. So this is a sign wave energy is here, and here to stay. The power from the Guinee=Bissau project will be a bit more expensive than from solar, $0.10 per kWh, but the nature of Wave energy is different, much more constant and available at night. And 500 MW is the size of a bigger modern coal power plant.

“Mr. Ovadia had dreamed about producing energy from sea waves over 40 years ago and in 1997 received the first patent for the system, approved by the U.S. Patent Office. Since then additional patents have been filed with applications for worldwide use, including many upcoming patents pending.” (werpo.us)

You can see by the video above that the Werpo design is pretty old. It also seems that the patents on some of his systems have expired, although Werpo now claims it owns them.

“WERPO aims to build power stations to generate electricity from ocean waves in every region in the world through local partners. Power plants built according to our technology are environmentally friendly and are built to last. The systems are easy to build, require little space on land and can be modified to fit on any coastal terrain with ease.”

When this plant is completed no bank can argue that this technology is not mature anymore (which they will try to do to protect fossil fuel interests that generate most of their cashflow). Hopefully this will make the technology mainstream and lower cost even more. A nice aspect of the Werpo design is that it can be build in less developed countries. Perhaps the hydraulics are something to import, but the welding of steel happens everywhere.

Yep, we could have build this 40 damn years ago!

In Norway a Wave energy plant gone live recently, build by Havkraft

Random : Onafhankelijke Journalistiek en Hoe Om Te Gaan met een Econoom

Luisterend naar een discussie tussen journalisten over verschillende ‘modellen’ (en wat te doen met banken) verbaas ik me over de rode lijnen die belangrijk worden gevonden. Fons van der Poel hield praatjes bij de ABN AMRO en dat kostte hem zijn baan. Waarom vraag ik mij af? Men veronderstelt dat hij de informatie over ABN AMRO beinvloedt? Als hij wordt ontslagen dan kunnen ze bij Nieuwsuur ook wel eens huishouden, want die hebben ook een paar merkbare blinde vlekken (op energie gebied met name). Journalistiek heeft een bias, dat is nu eenmaal zo. Zuivere journalistiek is die waarvan jij denkt dat het conformeert aan de realiteit, maar hoe goed ken je die zelf?

Maar het gesprek gaat door. Een van de sprekers heeft 160.000 Euro subsidie gekregen van het Rijk, dwz de belasting betaler. Heeft dat geen sturende werking? Nee wordt beweerd. Het geld is inmiddels op, er is voor Elsevier gewerkt (financiele katern). Maar er moet toch iets te verzinnen zijn dat journalistiek structureel loont? Hoe zit het dan met leden sites? Dat doen bepaalde websites, die hebben leden. Moet je die dan bekend maken, want ze geven geld? Misschien geannoniemiseerd?

In mijn oren klinkt dit als valse voorzichtigheid. Het heeft te maken met wat een journalist is. In mijn ogen is dat gewoon iemand die schrijft, beschrijft, wat zich voordoet of wat belangrijk is. Daarbij zijn onmiddelijk sturende factoren in het spel, de taal, de komaf, de kennis van de situatie waarover wordt geschreven, de schrijfkunst, de realiteitszin van de betreffende persoon (die afhangt van hoe actief hij/zij is).

Het is voortdurend een ontwikkeling, er is een mooi boek geschreven over bv. de ABN AMRO, dat het een wild west zootje was. Dat leest iedereen, dat vormt de mening van menig journalist, of in ieder geval plaatst het een bepaalde bril op zijn/haar neus. Iemand die een tijdje in de City heeft gewerkt zal een heel andere bril ophebben. Beide kunnen desalniettemin steevast geloven in geld en banken in het algemeen.

Mijn punt is dat een journalist iemand is met een afwijking. Om een of andere reden wil deze persoon iets aan de wereld meedelen. Misschien is het heldendrang en hoopt hij/zij boeiende vergezichten van ongekende oorden aan de wereld te schenken, blikverruimend. Mischien is er de drang een jammerklacht van een gekwetste stemloze minderheid onder de aandacht te brengen. Of misschien zoekt deze persoon naar een gesmeerde boterham door via een ledensite goed gelezen stukken te publiceren. De wereld zit niet te wachten op een journalist, de journalist wil zichzelf zijn en doet dat in principe ten koste van de wereld, want hij kan ook gaan afwassen en dan klaagt daar niemand over.

Dit maakt dat inkomsten uit journalistiek nul kunnen zijn. Men zit er net zo op te wachten als op die miljoenen ongelezen schrijvers wiens verhalen tegenwoordig in eindeloze miljoenen e-books op internet te vinden zijn of als stapels papier in enveloppen bij de uitgevers liggen te verstoffen. Journalistiek is een onvrijwillige lifestyle, een journalist is een kunstenaar.

Waar de heren het over hebben is politiek. Dat wil zeggen dat je een bepaalde groep die bepaalde doelen heeft door je onderzoek en schrijfwerk een bepaald moreel of praktisch overwicht geeft over een andere groep. Dat is een zeer invoelbaar aspect. De een is voor Wilders en schrijft dus stukken over de ellende die radicale islam (of de gewone) veroorzaakt. Journalistieke stukken. De ander is zeer links en schrijft over het basis inkomen, of vluchtelingen opvang, omdat mensen die begaan zijn met andere links zijn, en linkse mensen meer begaan zijn met anderen (is wetenschappelijk aangetoond).

De verwarring over bv Fons de Poel is dat hij natuurlijk de feiten probeert te melden. Als de ABN AMRO een persbericht produceert kun je dat alleen maar voorlezen. Als je dan ‘kritische vragen’ stelt in Brandpunt kun je op allerlei punten kritisch zijn, de beursgang, wanneer, waarom, waar blijft het geld. Is het zo belangrijk dat hij door de Bank in de watten is gelegd? Zit je niet al met je oogkleppen en lawaaidemper op naar BRANDPUNT te kijken, hopend op een verontwaardigd gevoel waarbij je zelf een moreel superieur standpunt kunt bedenken, zodat je lekker kunt gaan slapen?

Nou die Fons de Poel die heeft het geweten. Maar moet je dan eens naar deze ‘journalisten’ luisteren (typ de hele tijd bijna hournalisten). De spreker Eric Smit van FTM aan het woord. “Geld is een frequentie”. “Banken hebben een nutsfunctie, ze willen wel meer bijvoorbeeld een BEURSGANG (oeeeww)”,”In de crisis is de geldkraan naar het midden en klein bedrijf dichtgedraaid”. Aaron van Wirdum vraagt of banken zo wel hun nutsfunctie vervullen. Dat vindt Erik lastig. Maar het verlossende woord komt er al snel uit “Ik ben Econoom”. WTF. Dat is een politieke affiliatie. Dan heb je een aantal jaren indoctrinatie doorlopen die je in staat stelt de meest scherpe vragen te pareren met vage verwijzingen naar “frequenties”.

De aanvliegroutes die een econoom tegen het lijf loopt zijn in aantal beperkt en bekend in economische kringen. Economen praten met je om eventueel nieuwe te ontdekken. Het enige wat je wint bij het begrijpen van een econoom is een kans op een carriere als econoom

De standaard riedel van economen komt inderdaad uit de verf bij Erik. Hij is een propagandist voor het bestaande systeem, waarin banken een buitengewoon geldscheppend recht hebben en de maatschappij belasten voor het gebruiken van dit ruilmiddel. “Ik ben helemaal niet voor een staatsbank per se ” (echt?) “Die taken zullen worden uitgevoerd met bepaalde rendementseisen” (van wie? oh de banken!) Een econoom kan eindeloos elk soort perspectief uit zijn mouw schudden, tegelijk een gedeeld uitgangspunt bezettend (“Er is een kartel!”) en de belangen van banken in de gaten houden (“Er moet rendement zijn”). Paul Buitink en Aaron kunnen van alles zeggen, een goede econoom heeft overal een antwoord op.

De knieval van de econoom is  “Banken moeten kapot kunnen gaan”. Oh, maar dat doen ze al.

Aan de ene kant kan men zeggen dat banken al kapot gaan. Aan de andere kant kan men zeggen : Het financieel systeem mag niet kapot gaan ook als de banken er een spagetti van maken, simpelweg omdat onze voedseldistributie, energiedistributie, logistiek, medische zorg etc. etc. plaatsvind via de rekeningen van banken en met papier en krediet in het bankair systeem.

Een econoom verwacht dat mensen een markt scheppen, en dat ze alles wat los en vast zit naar die markt zullen slepen. Gebeurt dit niet dan valt hij/zij van zijn stoel, want hij/zij heeft geleerd dat mensen altijd zo suf zullen zijn om alles naar de door de econoom bewierookte markt te brengen

Dus 99% van de banken kunnen al kapot gaan, en de laatste 1% mag idd niet kapot gaan. Dit feit leidt echter tot een verkeerde attributie van macht en invloed richting banken, en daar maken de mensen in de banken gretig misbruik van. Macht.


Econoom die ziet dat mensen de bezittingen niet meer naar zijn markt brengen of met zijn geld ruilen

Deze ‘journalisten’ hebben nog geen notie van het onderwerp wat ze onder handen nemen want ze letten niet op de oorsprong van alle activiteit die we organiseren met krediet, bitcoins, whatever, namelijk energie. Wie is daar de eerste eigenaar van, en als jij en ik dat zijn, heeft een bank dan nog het recht dit te verdelen met zijn geld. Je moet eerst de productie kant van goederen en diensten in je macht hebben, dan kun je zelf je geld verzinnen. Nu is dat aspect het laatste waar men het over heeft.

Maar de les die ik zou dicteren is de volgende :

VRAAG EEN ECONOOM NIETS. HIJ GEEFT jE EEN KLUITJE EN STUURT JE IN HET RIET

De heren die geen econoom zijn zouden zich moeten realiseren dat ze een andere politiek richting in willen dan de econoom, en dat het dus geen enkele zin heeft om vragen te stellen of invloed proberen uit te oefenen. Je ziet dat iemand die zegt dat hij de antwoorden heeft prima in staat is om te zorgen dat niemand deze ooit vind, vooral omdat die er in het economisch systeem niet zijn, het is een bastion van geld scheppend privilege, beschermd met verkeerd geplaatsde emoties. Een symboolwaan waar een econoom je beroepsmatig in indoctrineren.

De ‘journalisten’ zouden hun  politieke kleur moeten vertalen in journalistiek werk met als doel het bekend maken van alternatieven, want die zijn er natuurlijk. En daar zullen ze vast ook voor beloond  worden.

 

Rapid Tree Planting, Part of the RoboEconomy

How to reforrest large areas is an interesitng challenge, one that if it can be met with succes can mean a serious advantage in CO2 emission related damage to life on Earth. We’ll collect a number of ideas.

The seedpellet drone seems a good idea, but drones have a limited range, so these activites should be in close range of people and charging opportunitees.

Tree planting Robots

Tumbleweed robot?