Month: March 2020

It seems the gas sector is trying to become indispensible as part of district heating solutions around the world. It reasons only with its own potential and a methane shortage is not on the horizon. Sadly banks are not making a choice for this industry, in fact banks seem to see it as their refuge now that coal is losing its Salonfähigkeit. What is someone who really wants to cut CO2 emissions to do?

Don’t start about Hydrogen please. As things stand Hydrogen is going to be produced from methane through steam reforming. In the unlikely case it is going to be produced from wind energy or solar it will waste nearly 60% of the energy, so your solar panel now has a yield of not 18% but 8% or your windpark is not generating 10GW but effectively 5GW. There is a Nitrogen infrastructure, for NH3 ammonia, but not any real one for H2. It is more efficient to ship power in batteries by rail to where it needs to go than to convert it to H2 and pipe it somewhere. H2 is a so called “Delay strategy” to protect Methane sales.

So what then? Heat, where do you get it? We say : Wind. How? Mechanical friction. Heat is the easiest thing to produce in the world, its has the lowest entropy of different kinds of energy. Compare these ideas :

Wind -> generator -> cable -> convert to H2 -> burn -> Heat

or

Wind -> Friction -> Heat. Then Move heat to consumer.

Of course it’s not that simple, especially when your turbines are at sea, the question is if they need to be but ok. We have a trick up our sleave and a role for H2 to play as well!

The above image is from a project run in Australia almost a decade ago, we came across it then. It was about storing solar heat by splitting ammonia into N2 and H2, to then recombine them later to generate heat. We have not calculated how you could do this with fricion heat from wind and how practical it is, but your heat can be generated and stored.

Another way to do it is to have smaller turbines by the coast (for The Hague for example) ones you place there only in winter when nobody is on the beach. There’s a lot of wind, you can use the mechanical force to generate heat in underground water basins (water is an excellent heat storage medium) and then pipe it to the city from there. We wrote about wind heatning systems here.

There are other examples of this idea and its execution. The major reason to do it is that it is very cheap. It does not require complex electrical systems or intricate mechanical parts. There are people who use a hydraulic pump or comperssor instead of a direct drive axle, which may be more cost effective and versatile (because now you have hydraulic pressure use any way you like). The major obstacle is the ability to place wind turbines on land against the right wing political will, but these turbines have no gears, so

Now if we are not mistaken the planet is heating up at a scary pace. So cooling solutions are likely more welcome in many parts of the world. Sadly hot air doesn’t usually have much wind, but you can have a Mistral or some kind of desert wind in specific places you can utilize for COOLING. Simply drive a heat pump with the mechanical or hydraulic force and you’re done. It is easier to store ice underground (or super cold liquids) than heat, as the cold naturally doesn’t cause upward convection but creates an insulating layer of cold air on top of it.

Wind cooling using hudraulics can in turn be used to extract water from the air. This is an actual company, even though we have seen the price rise. Read more about it here.

Another source of heat and cooling energy remains the Sun. We think the high efficiency solar thermal panels have not had a fair chance. These panels that maintain an ultra high vacuum are capable of reaching 500 Celsius in the dead of winter. But commonly, in most solar thermal applications in the middle of summer the panels are not used because they generate -too much- heat. For that period we need to see more cooling conversion systems.

The Coronavirus is a challenge to the system, one we would never invite but which the globalized economy kind of did. Many have said it would not be a question if, but when this kind of disease would break out of some biological niche. Now it did, and the origin is still uncertain.

Across the globe we have seen right wing dominated goverments being reluctant to respond adequately to stop contamination. The main reason is that in these governments people that think money is more important than human lives are in charge. Industry does not care about your life, this is a fundamental thing to understand. If human lives are not a factor in the bottom line, that bottom line can drive a lethal machine, as we have seen in the case of tobacco, DDT, Glyphosate, fossil fuels..

Now that right wing politicians realize they can not hide behind walls to protect themselves, in fact, their job and their denial of its seriousness exposes them almost maximally to this disease, they have come around with more sensible measures. Still loopholes are left, like in the UK somehow people should still visit pubs. in other places schools remain open. In Romania people recieved the holy communion en masse in spite of a lockdown.

But the production of goods and services is now seriously impeded, not only the frolicking around consuming fossil fuels (flying to sunny destinations for example). Production needs to restart somehow. As that is done contamination has to be checked because the disease can resurge when people start mingling again. We have not yet seen proposals on how to do this.

It seems a good test for immunity needs to be developed, so that immune people can be identified. There are alot of them, and they can commune and interact without problems (as far as we understand the situation). Creating a large group of uninfectuous immune individuals was behind the botched choice for “Herd immunity” of Boris Johnson and also the dutch PM. “Herd immunity” has to be build up by carefully and stricktly seprating the most vulnerable from the rest, and this is not what happened in the UK, there the assumption was that everyone would become infected so no use to take measures. Johnson can blame Cummings but ultimately he suggested to “take it on the chin”.

But “Herd immunity” is a thing, and in many places, at the cost of lives, it is developing. We hope the disease doesn’t mutate as regular flu does. If it doesn’t then immune people can be “let loose” to work again. It makes sense to us to make a plan on how to do that, but maybe this is even overkill. The main steps are:

1. Test people for immunity and certify them
2. Allow groups of immune people to work together
3. Keep separating the elderly and make strict rules on interaction
4. Perhaps select immune people to deal with the elderly as a “shield”
5. “Grow” uninfected communities around supermarkets or places they commune

One could look at “supermarket” communities in cities to test people. Great place to collect tests as well. Send an SMS code to people if they are tested which they can use to show they have been tested (rechallenge). A simple APP with photo id linked to the phone number will do.

It is shockingly clear that the industrially motivated policies that weakened the police, fire department, hospitals and care givers have increased the risk to the population, and those that drove these weakening policies are now known. Heads must roll. Also deep respect for those that are still risking their health because their work forces them to be close to infected people.

The economy has shown its true face, we don’t need to work for money, our debts don’t need to be payed, banks don’t contribute to society, as long as there is energy there is production of the essentials. Manual migrant labour shortages will become a problem and this calls for solidarity, we will need to work our own fields. Holland risks having to eat 7 times as much meat because of export restrictions (a joke of course), nobody will toil in the fields to produce for unnecessary exports. We hope some globalist aspects of the world economy will be reconsidered. We advise to prohibit any company to be affiliated or supply to customers beyond the real world horizon.

Update 17/5/2020 : Trails with dogs in the UK

Dogs have an exceptional sense of smell, many animals are better than humans in this respect, even though mothers can usually pick t-shirts worn by their children out of a pile. We all know dogs have been trained to detect heroin and other drugs, promting smugglers to hid them in coffee for instance.

From talking to dog training experts we learned that dogs can be trained for a lot of jobs, but always one job at a time, unless its natural behaviour. They trade performance on a detection job for play and attention, and what they will do shifts constantly dependent on what you reward with play.

Dogs can smell pathogens and diseases, some diseases cause our body to produce ammonia or aceton which is easy to detect, but diseases with less dramatic effect have also been detected, amongs others the flu. When we looked into this we found that dogs have been trained to detect bird flu (H1N1 or avian influenze) and could do it quite reliably:

“The dogs are performing at 97-98 percent accuracy as a group,”

Another disease dogs can detect is cancer. The most interesting aspect of this ability is the stage in which the cancer is present in the patient.

” One study found that dogs trained only to detect breast cancer were also able to detect melanoma and lung cancer, meaning that there may be a common odor signature across different types of cancer. “

Cancers are growths that are developing blood vessels and may be distressed causing them to emit a smell. It may be that the process of infection of the coronavirus also produces specific chemicals and protiens a dog can smell on our breath, or even from further away. The virus is breaking into cells, the cell will start making the virus and burst releasing the virus into the air.

There is a risk though that dogs actually contract the virus themselves. The question is then how contageous and affected would they be. Its also a question how long it would take to train a dog if it where possible or what the dog would be trained on, a real virus or a patient or a destroyed virus? It may not be as easy as we like but we think dogs may be a great patner in detecting infected people and help us stop the spread from infected but not sick patients.

Many people are calling for the fleecing of Billionairs. They are precieved as unjust hoarders of money that should be distributed amongst the people. They are made suspect as if you can’t earn a billion no matter what you do. Bloomberg is a billionair and buying the election! We think there is a good reason for this sentiment, and it is not because people are hurt by them, but because banks don’t like them. They make the world unpredictable for them.

“Nobody earns a billion” is a common way to make billionairs seem suspect. But of course this then goes for any business owner who has employees.

First of, what is a billionair exactly? Seems like a stupid question, its supposed to be a guy with a billion dollars or more. Not quite, is the money in his/her company or in the bank in cash? Elon Musk owns a billion dollar valuated company, 35 Billion to be precies, but can he access all that cash? Does he have any other plans than make more cars and rockets? It is common knowledge he made a high risk bet on the growth of Tesla, which would if not met mean no reward for him after all the hard work (and all the people he gave an exciting job).

 “Those holdings may be difficult or even impossible for Musk to quickly sell for cash, meaning it’s quite possible that he could face a liquidity crunch.” (source)

But maybe Musk is a bad example. Michael Bloomberg’s empire is said to be worth $62 Billion. That is also the value if he sold it, but of course he won’t. He’s running for president now and seems to have a lot of cash to spend on media, his expertise.

But there are other billionair companies, the poorest of the top 100 has $98 Billion. Apple is worth about $800 Billion. They are not considered Billionairs as far as we know. Why focus on a few individuals that have more than a Billion to allocate or have companies with such value, and not on the other hundreds of them?

Banks fleece Billionairs all the time with exclusive services, they like to feel different and there is many ways banks will give them that experience

We think the reason there is no riot against Apple to share some of its wealth with society, but there is a riot against (known) rich individuals, is that the whole movement is orchestrated by banks. This is because banks fear billionairs. Billionairs don’t need banks. Just like with all the hate that is incited, against immigrants etc. the hate against billionairs has a different purpose, it is the mob helping the banks get rid of enemies.

Elon Musk had about 160 Million in cash around 2009 and decided to build an electric car. Electric cars where demonstratively destroyed earlier in the 20th century, they existed, they made the owners happy, but they did not use fossil fuels. They reduced cashflow for fossil fuels. That is why the did not exist. A workshop of an EV builder was mysteriously burned to the ground. EVs where not hip then, nobody believed in them but a few and Elon Musk.

The money Elon had earned he put in Tesla, and SpaceX, until almost all of it was gone and there was nothing left. He did not get any help from banks, but the banks could not stop him. NASA and Mercedes helpt Tesla survive in the last minute. He is now ripping apart the entire industry, with brands admitting they can never catch up, dumping internal combustion engines and so sunsetting vehicle fuel cashflow which is a steady business for banks, reducing the need for maintenance, lubrication, brake fluid, brakes, etc. etc.

If Elon Musk did not have that money in cash, he could not have done this. He would have been discouraged by banks. We have followed the renewable industry for more than a decade now and heard first hand stories about banks trying to kill projects that meant less energy cashflow, like a personally owned wind turbine.

If a billionair had the mind he could build a giant floating solar power plant in the middle of Holland, and suddenly he would be selling energy against Euro’s, he would not be in debt, he would earn and earn and elsewhere owners of power plants would see energy prices having dropped, cashflow through banks would dry up. It would destroy the system of control over society banks have.

Billions give power that can break through harmfull barriers

A company could probably not do that, because a company is loaded with debt to the max already, it competes with other companies that have done the same, all so banks can both control and profit from them, a lot like a parasite. You can say “Now wait a minute, banks do the complicated stuff”. But who made the stuff so complicated? Who designed the ‘credit default swaps’ and other products that caused the crash in 2008? The essence of what banks need is control, and they have an incredibly powerfull tool to excert it, which is the right to create credit.

Whereas companies are beholden to shareholders and continuation of bank loans, as well as ratings by ‘independent’ rating agencies, flat out billionairs are not. Technically they control a tremendous amount of resources which they can direct towards a specific goal. If those billions where spread out in the hands of say one million people, these people would spend it on predictable things, things that would be unlikely to change the situation for banks. Elon Musk spend all his millions on the cars and rockets (and SolarCity) and he needed to to get going. He seemed to have worked to the top of his capacity and this created a change in society car companies, oil companies, banks fought hard to avoid.

So we should cherish the millionairs and billionairs that can think for themselves and have freed themselves from the clutches of banks. There are evil ones as well, such as the Koch Brother (one left) and the Mercers (father and daughter who sponsored Trumps fake persidential campaign using illegal Facebook data). If billionairs are the target, then so must be billionair companies who evade taxes, and probably those first. However, banks don’t like you to distub their racket, so they want you to focus on those they have no use for or feel threatened by.