The Roboeconomic Landgrab

There is only one way to fight the current addiction to higher numbers in bank accounts over real wealth and security. Even though it is obvious a number in a bank account can be faked, or the precieved value of an asset inflated (so called bubbles), still if you want to live in a city you need cash. How to get out from under this deadly and fatalistic tyranny?

The answer is to own stuff, land, and have costs the land can pay. Even farmers are no longer allowed to produce more value than they need to pay off their debts. It takes so much inputs to farm land (that is after decades of industrial abuse barely able to sustain life) that a farmer really feels lucky to be able to make ends meet. How can that be? A farm is a solar power plant, crops capture solar energy and make it available for human consumption. That is a net profit in real value because well fed humans can produce a lot of wealth. Something has been perverted in this formula:

Wealth = Energy (food) x Skills (human intelligence) x Materials

Clearly farms are constanly pushed by lobbied law and banks to scale up, to buy bigger ‘better’ equipment etc. But do they make more profit? Nope. Does the farmer achieve independence ? Nope, that is Verboten. All the producers and consumers in the economy are supossed to be captured and competing in it. Of course that does not mean banks, because those are always supported even if they lose trillions. Nor does it include energy companies. But everyone else uses both types of company in nearly every economic activity, and not because it’s really necessary, but because society has slowely been changed towards one where that is the case.

If you can own land and produce something you can trade off it to pay for it and it’s taxes and still keep money to buy more land, you are golden. This means you do not need a bank for credit at all and you can no longer be controlled by the banks willingness to give you credit or not. There are a lot of places where this can work today, but writing about how and where really isn’t smart because the general pattern is that if there’s anything on the fringe of the economy that allows people to escape it, banks will do something to plug the ‘leak’.

What is really going on is the need to conquer new land. To become new owners of land, as if there was no owner before. All things are not on the market yet, but eventually banks will want that to be the case, and it will be impossible to ever take land or territory definitively off the market. The least you can do is pay taxes, so short of waging war for land that is the least difficult to achieve goal.

A Roboeconomic Response to Carbon Warming

The Roboeconomy is the economy that is technologically advanced but does not use fossil fuels. It doesn’t use nuclear energy either, it basically does not soil its own nest or externalize lethal factors. It uses solar, wind, geothermal, wave energy, fusion maybe. It is different from the fossil credit economy we are in today, because there is no way to centralize power by centralizing the distribution of credit and energy.

The banks and centralized energy producers are mutually dependent and create the illusion that money buys anything anywhere. Even though this is not true (the money only buys stuff where it can be supplied) cash has a lot of power as a result. You can still use USD almost anywhere, the bills will find their way, flow towards places where they can be used to buy stuff, because they are usually more valuable than the local currency (which will flow in the opposite direction). In the Roboeconomy there will be no global currency, at least not in the beginning.

The roboeconomy is characterized by having and using less currency of any kind, simply because one of the primary reasons money flows will be eliminated. Right now when you buy a product you have to pay for the fossil ‘content’ of it, for the fossil consumption of whoever was involved in the production. If today you don’t pay in a currency that buys fossil fuels you simply can’t get the product or service. When less energy needs to be bought by the producers the costs drop and they will also require less payment.

Picture a solar electric logistic system that has barely any maintenance and does its job nearly automatically. That will drop the cost of shipping, of supplying to manufactureres, and thus the overal cashflow and need for currency. It will also be competitive in the ‘market’ but it will not make banks happy, because banks see less money flow, less need for credit. Eventually all need for credit and currency will dry up, as every step in the logistics system becomes renewable energy autonomous and fully automated (including maintenance).

Todays response of our economic system to this threat of losing returning (fossil fuel credit) customers is to propose to use another fuel, hydrogen or natural gas in the interim. Smart people skip that step and go electric, and invest in solar and battery storage. Simply because then you are closest to done for the next millenia and you can focus on optimization of a system you know. Of course we will see many innovations, the more when banks get weaker and can’t coordinate the suppression of disruptive patents anymore. But view all your production costs as something that can be eliminated by the application of renewable energy sources and you are a Roboeconomist.

The way to view the climate situation is to think “This is a great opportunity to use the solar radiation that will be abundant to bring comfort instead of drought and heat”. You are not supported by the current economic system in that thought. You are supposed to ignore it, buy a bigger airconditioner, go on holiday, shop till you drop. This is all simply an attempt to keep selling fossil fuel based products and services. If you know better you look for the golden lining, and not in cities, not in places where the concentration of money is high and leading, but in the other places.

Take the coast of Mauritania, its desolate and dry, it has some salt mines, pretty stubborn people who don’t like infidels. If you can keep potential ideologist at bay you can start a new city on the coast, you will have no problem desalinating the water with high efficiency (ionic, freeze) desalination methods. No shortage of sun to cool your compound, which you preferably build under ground or recessed. Can be out of the sand of the deserts you find there, the sun can melt that sand into anything you want. Can you grow crops in a partially shaded space? Sure. Can you maintain systems semi autonomously? Of course. Global logistics is a for profit activity, not a necessity!

If I had more cloud I would start pulling on thin film solar production. It is not happening, and it seems this is because silicon solar just generates more cashflow. Lithium batteries keep dominating because they generate more cashflow, this is evident. Using the lightest possible battery for home storage is a waste of its utility in vehicles. Roboeconomists must put pressure on companies, banks, industry, polticians to produce things in the most energy efficient way. Reverse Osmosis desalination is nonsense if you want to utilize the available energy optimally. You are pressing water through a sive to get out the salts, while if you freeze the water the salts will be pushed out by the watercrystals themselves. Saves 60%+ of the energy, so you can desalinate 40%+ more.

The above may sound like a list of random technologies but the author of this has had~15 years to observe new innovations being sidelined both by lack of investment and ‘over’ investment and by time, because people grow old and run out of steam. This has all been to protect products that performed well for the banks and energy companies (generated energy cashflow) but sucked for future generations and most life on Earth. Take the SUV, unweidy, unsafe. Basically just a way to extract more fuel profit from rich people. Same principle as “Hey you need a fidget spinner”. Nobody needed them, they waste metal, energy, time. But they generated profit for banks and producers.

To respond like a roboeconomist start making the factors for wealth operational : Produce energy, increase skills or automate, make materials available for others or recycle them for yourself.

The Fossil Energy Death Cult

We need to start thinking clearly about what we are dealing with. We may believe we can plead and demonstrate to change something about fossil fuel consumption, but it is a total waste of time. We have had an industry lie, pay people to lie, kill and pretend nothing is wrong for decades now.

Industry knew about climate change in the early 60’s. As the fossil industry always had the brightest minds there is no doubt they knew full well. Later it was even found in internal documents of Exxon and Shell. Activists where payed off, one very famous one in Holland, a member of the ‘Club of Rome’, who softened his attitude towards fossil fuel use in return for a couple of million.

We are dealing with a neat looking group of people that does not care what happens to future generations. A group that knows it is not going to end well. The line of people that knew what was going on runs all the way from the 60’s to today. A prominent member is Ronald Reagan, who weakened a report and said that as there had been a response to acid rain a response to climate change was too much.

We are thus clearly dealing with a death cult. A group of people that has accepted the destruction of our lifestyles to enjoy it now, and not think about tomorrow. This attitude is not posessed by the majority of people, but it is by the minority that also has great ambition to power. The desire to enjoy power and have riches now simply defeats caring about other things, like future generations. Death is a given, why worry about the deaths of people that you don’t know? People die all the time. Also why worry about the consequences of your actions. Take them. Win. Now. This attitude makes it easy to succeed, less complex. It also makes it easier to cooperate.

Sadly there is no way to divide the planet between people that want to preserve it and people that are hooked on riches and power. Because fossil energy multiplies the power of a single man, as does multi media communication, single individuals can drag entire communities into the abyss. Donald Trump is priming the US population for race warfare. Many people have already died because he is alive. He definitely does not care about anything that is not right in his face or makes his reelection unlikely. His luck is that lying is now automated.

We need to let the reality sink in : We are dealing with a death cult. A group of people that want billions of others to die and live in misery. It is starting in dry Africa now, in parched Middle East, in to hot and humid Asia. All that suffering is a willfull consequence of people who knew it would happen but choose their own lifestyle over the lifes of countless others.

It used to be that you got born and if you made it through the first 5 years you had the chance to live a life of toil and suffering. You had to be brave and run risks, fight for your life against others, diseases and animals. So a mentality that did not care about later but focussed on the now is not a strange evolutionary adaption. It is a backward attitude though. It seems that is why the pro-fossil leaders are almost always quite stupid. How to dea l with such people? Silence them. Remove them from power. You don’t want a suicidal pilot fying your plane. You don’t want these leaders to be left to do what they please.

The Duterte Strategy use in the US?

Dark as the title of this post may seem, it is just a result of seeking a rational behind the violence gainst blacks in the US. There are several reasons why that violence happens:

  1. Endemic racist attitudes in the police force
  2. Banks putting blacks into debt
  3. Banks enabling drug trade
  4. Banks enabling gun ownership
  5. Lack of opportunity (no class mobility)
  6. High exposure of cops to criminal blacks

This is a complex problem as always. The problem doesn’t really originate from the people rioting in the streets. However and cops and blacks faced with the current level of tension have few options other than leave the city or die at the hand of a cop.

There is a war going on..

The racist component seems very real, and may be a result of racist whites that want to ‘police’ black crime viewing the police force as a logical place to apply for a carreer. The next question then becomes : How do you behave as a cop to reduce the threat you identify, even if that threat is caused by external factors like banks profiting of debt and drug trade.

Cop : “We’re Shooting African Americans

Less Than We Probably Ought to Be”

The answer is intimidation. We may be missing the reality that cops actually think this way about their work. If they see a lot of black crime, even though it is not the fault of the black community, they may choose to intimidate that community. If they are not helped by a legal system that lets criminals go easily, or the danger is really high (as guns are so widely available), what do you do?

This is a story of an abandoned population, not only the blacks getting ‘executed’ but also the cops. Just like schoolchildren they are abandoned because selling weapons is more profitable than protecting kids or helping the black community out of poverty. In these abandoned communities stuck in the wider context logic can not force a way out. Short of constant open communication with all criminals and a ban on owning a bank account or money by whoever is involved or suspected of a crime.

How do you deal with this situation? Duterte set an example in the Phillipines. He acted like judge, jury and executioner. He managed the assasination of many guilty or innocent individuals that where sometimes only weakly linked to drug activities (also people pointed out by locals who may or may not have been right). He executed and is still doing it, in order to combat drug related activities. We don’t know if he is an actual drug kingpin himself, this may very well be.

Are the cops in the US doing the same? Are they simply executing the Duterte strategy? If you het killed if you’ve done nothing then what if are an obvious criminal?

The problem with crime in the US is that banks profit off it. Even in Holland banks had to pay a small fine because they managed billions of drug transactions for Amsterdam drug traders. If that is the case in the US it is unlikely a real strategy of suppression of drug crime is behind it. Then it becomes more likely it is just racist harrasment, and the police forces attract white racists who want to ‘protect’ the white community.

Public Taxes on Things People Hate

One of the recurring themes we write about is that industry cares not for human lives. It tries to keep workers safe (sometimes) but the quality of life of people is nowhere to be found in the financial statement, nor are the CO2 emissions. From examples like DDT and sigarettes we know that it can take enormous suffering before industry responds (and banks primarily) before some cashflow rich activities are halted.

How do we install a system that fixes this, because there really is no need to destroy ourselves in order to live a wealthy life. You could almost say that this is a remnant of evolving in an environment where zero sum was real, you eat the fruit, or someone else does, there is a finite amount of fruit to go around.

Renewable energy is not infinite but certainly MUCH more abundant than fossil energy. And if we eliminate banks who keep money tight because they want us to keep them in business (a worry born out of the same concept of scarcity and greed) we can enjoy free lives (albeit some population management has to happen).

We propose to introduce publicly controlled taxes. Taxes on products and services that will increase the price and thus its competitiveness in the market. This has been done with sigarettes, the tax flowed to the government, which caused a problem because now the government was counting on the money. These taxes had to be fought for because of the bank serving nature of government, you don’t really get ahead if you keep the banking mob happy. It is a real mob, an organization that funds and protects criminal and insane activities because they cause desired cashflow.

Simply make it possible for any product or service to be taxed specifically or by category. Put that money into programs people vote for through the same channel you create for them to impose taxes. Let them propose the programs or plans to invest in. Or create a credit bank based on the taxes with a fixed interest rate of 0%

We have a system in place that allows for direct democracy in our country, Holland, and most countries have digital identities for its citizen, where they can log in and supply info. Let’s use that system. That way not only banks can profit from cashflow, but also citizens. That way any product that sucks that we hate that we feel is hurting us can be taxed, say for instance gasoline or plastic lawn chairs or all kinds of crap.

There does not have to be a lower limit on the tax, if one citizen wants it, then its added. Also make the % relative to the sales of the product. Adding 1 Euro to the cost of a car won’t change much..

Of course this can go wrong with tabloid media lying to the public or spinning every damn fact into something sensational and damaging. So any mention of it in the press has to be banned. This way when a person gets annoyed with a product or service he/she can go to the public tax website and search for it, see if he/she is alone, and if not impose a tax.

This all goes for new products and services. Recycled of second hand services are probably much harder to administrate. But as we need a change in what is being produced anyway (less plastic, more local, more sustainable) this is a good start.

When will peak Civilisation happen?

We live in an accomplished world today. In the developed world you can recieve medical care second to none in known history. We can (with some drawbacks) fly anywhere, although the umbrella of security once enforced by the USA seems to be degrading fast. One can say that in the period that the International court of Justice and human rights enjoyed wide support we have seen the best we will achieve. From now on, due to climate change and peak fossil fuels, nature’s degradation etc. it is all going to be downhill.

Quite a depressing thought that Millenials might be the generation that grew up in the peak of what humanity had to offer. Quite arrogant also to pretend to be able to determine that. There are many who do. They argue we are to much people on this planet, we need to throttle back. They see resources running out, as do we, but why do they not see the clear dawn of something better than we can imagine today?

Technology is not at its peak, especially technology that can make the use of fossil fuels redundant. They flared up after the oil crisis and because of alarming analysis regarding the climate in the 70’s. The first large scale solar power plants where being build. Since then big oil and banks have steadily burried all kinds of technology, from low energy desalination to alkaline metal solar thermal power generation. You won’t know, but we do. Even today the breakthrough for shipping is the application of Lithium Ion batteries. Of course ships don’t need light batteries, but heavier Potassium Ion batteries have been burried or moved to research limbo.

So one reason to expect improvement (if we can beat fossil and banks) is because we have technology we are not using. If we use the technology a lot becomes possible, near zero cost desalination and irrigation for instance.

Another reason why we think we are not near the peak of human civilization is that there is so much more energy to harvest from renewable sources than we squeeze out of fossil fuels today. It is 2500 times as much each year. We can run 2500 world economies in terms of manipulation, logistics, internet, construction etc. etc. And we are only doing one (1) now, and a very inefficent one for that matter.

Another reason is that robotic systems are developing at an accelerated pace, due to advanced modelling, 3d printing, neodynium magnets etc. AI is a component of that, better understanding of engineering and materials is another. We are close to mass production of usefull robots, not toys, with inbuild safe behaviour and easy interfaces.

Other technologies like quantum computing and pharmaceutical labs on a chip are not even needed to improve the lives of billions. The main obstacle is that there is no goal to do so, there is reasoning from a ‘100% renewables’ perspective in 2050 maybe, because the fossil fuel industry and banks keep politics ‘well oiled’ and humanity impatient or distracted. The fossil industry and banks are not only the problem because they keep us from responding to climate change faster and stronger, they also push forwards, maybe even out of our lifetimes, the benefit of plentifull renewables.

We can see clearly that EVs are now much better than combustion cars, and we also know that GM killed its EV program 20 years ago. What if it hadn’t? Where would we be now. How much faster would LithiumIon batteries have dropped in price? What would that have meant for the world economy? Electric trucks? Not only less emissions, but also less running costs. More wealth per human manhour spend toiling (which may be a good performance indicator, even though its a subjective one).

If we are pessimistic about the future it is because we do not know what our options are. Once we do we can see we need to get this fossil industry under strict control or it will keep delaying improvements in our lives we need. We need energy to deal with climate change, we need energy to produce food and comfort for the elderly. Fossil fuels are like an annoying guest that never leaves, a bad family member that guilt trips you with all kinds of social issues to distract you from seeing them out the door.

Renewables are dropping in price so fast that some calculate the US could be on 90% solar and wind in 2035. But why not 200%? Also you have to make them with renewables, not with fossil fuel, to be absolutely sure.

The position should be : Good al this luxury and fine you want me to consume etc. But lets also maximize the growth of the renewable energy sector and use batteries, solar and wind at every turn. The more we do the less everything will cost, at least, if you keep fossil and banks out of cooking the numbers!

Een Welzijnsmeter via DigId

We letten te weinig op het welzijn van mensen en te veel op geld. Banken zorgen hiervoor, zij lenen ons geld, zij winnen aan macht als we geld nodig hebben en hebben ons geleerd winst en geld als goede indicatoren van succes te zien.

Geschatte kosten van deze feature is zo’n 20.000 Euro, email frits@rincker.nl als u ons die opdracht wil geven.

Hierin zit een denkfout, als wij winst maken en dit op onze rekening zien zullen we inderdaad ons geluk kunnen vergroten, op vakantie met de kids, een nieuwe motorfiets etc. Dit komt omdat we vrij zijn de producten en diensten te kiezen met ons geld. Onze kwalitatieve ervaring bepaalt dit, en onze smaak is nauwelijks in cijfers uit te drukken. Hoewel het aardig lukt mensen via reclame, films etc. te programmeren zodat het koopgedrag voorspelbaar wordt, is het geen perfecte situatie, getuige de vele fringe groepen, hobbies en trends.

Mensen willen dat er rekening met ze wordt gehouden. Arme mensen zijn onzichtbaar in de economie, dus zul je hen vaker en directer moeten benaderen.

Een groot gat zit ook tussen wat er met onze omgeving gebeurt en wat we graag zouden zien. Van oudsher bouwde je als rijke handelaar een “mooi” pand, met werklui uit je eigen stad, waarmee je aanzien verwierf. Tegenwoordig is het bijna tegenovergesteld, je bouwt (gechargeerd) Capelle Scholevaar om de dromen van mensen kapot te maken, zodat ze geloven dat ze gelukkig zijn in de fabriek en achter de treurbuis.

Glorieus Capelle Schollevaar

Hoe kunnen we onze smaak tav het bestuur en inrichting van ons land doen blijken? Via politieke partijen? Dat is voor de naieven. De enige partij die een ziel lijkt te hebben in DH is de Partij van de Dieren, de rest let alleen op Geld Geld Geld. Groen Links is voor biomassa waar mensen ziek van worden. Op basis van geld kun je zelf wel keuzes maken, je kunt het bedrijven naar de zin maken, maar zo kun je de kwaliteit van mensenlevens niet optimaliseren.

De oplossing is simpel : Vraag mensen hoe ze zich voelen. Maak hier een landelijke kaart van. Waar mensen ongelukkig zijn is het zinvol om te kijken wat ze gelukkiger zou kunnen maken. De vragen hierover zouden via de kamer als motie kunnen worden ingediend. Het medium om dit vast te stellen is beschikbaar : DigId. We hebben allemaal een DigId, we kunnen allemaal inloggen. Er kan makkelijk een scherm bij of een paragraaf waarin je een aantal vragen kunt beantwoorden op een schaal van 1-5 sterren bv.

  1. Woon je goed
  2. Eet je goed
  3. Heb je genoeg gezelschap
  4. Voel je je vrij
  5. Voel je je veilig
  6. Is je omgeving gezond
  7. Heb je genoeg kansen
  8. etc.

Het aantal vragen met beperkt zijn zodat iedereen de tijd heeft ze te beantwoorden, of speciefiek voor een bepaald doel (met dezelfde privacy als een verkiezings stem). Dit weergeven in een kaart die constant openbaar is. Dan heb je feedback tav je beleid waar je de financiele aspecten tegen kunt waarderen. Onder de VVD is ons land eens stuk ongelukkiger geworden, en de strategie is uitzichtsloos tav het klimaat. Het wordt dus tijd de mensen weer voorop te stellen, niet partijen of wensen, maar hoe ze zich werkelijk voelen.

Drijvende Zonnepanelen, wat scheelt dat?

Trouw kopt een artikel over Oceans of Energy op de gebruikelijke misleidende manier. Titels van krantenartikelen of stukken zijn vaak zo in elkaar gezet dat ze de werkelijke boodschap beter doen beklijven dan waar het over gaat. Een simpel principe is dat we het begin en eind van een tekst altijd beter onthouden. Dus als je een tekst begint met “Hoewel Shell de 20e eeuw voor een groot deel mogelijk heeft gemaakt” en dan uitlegt dat als gevolg van de ijver van Shell onze Aarde in Venus zou kunnen veranderen, heb je gefaalt.

Oceans of Energy website

Het stuk in Trouw gaat over zonnepanelen op zee. We kunnen ons afvragen wat het voordeel is van panelen op zee. Er is veel ruimte, dat is een groot voordeel, maar de zee is ver weg (voor het grootste deel) en dat is een nadeel. Stel je wil energie op zee opwekken, dan heb je lage landkosten, maar hogere transport kosten (of Roboeconomisch gezegd, verliezen).

Als je stroom van drijvende panelen op de Noordzee komt heb je ook tussenpersonen nodig, namelijk een energie bedrijf en en financieel systeem, of iig een manier om de stroom op de markt te bregen. Daar zijn dan bedrijven bij betrokke, geen burgers (de meeste mensen verwachten dit), hoewel je natuurlijk ook een drijvend zonnepark in burger eigendom kunt hebben.

Zou je zonnepaneel meer opbrengen op zee? Dat is mogelijk maar niet waarschijnlijk. De opbrengst van een paneel hangt van een paar factoren af

  1. Orientatie tov de Zon
  2. Hoeveelheid zonuren
  3. Temperatuur

Een drijvend paneel zoals in Trouw bedoelt wordt ligt plat op het water. Onze grond in Nederland en het water op de Noordzee bevind zich in een hoek van ongeveer 35 graden tov de zon. De zon staat in NL nooit recht boven ons. Een paneel dat plat op de grond ligt brengt dus minder op dan een paneel dat in een hoek van 35 graden tov de zon staat opgesteld, vandaar dat je dat bij zonneparken doorgaans ziet. Het kan zo’n 30% in opbrengst schelen. Daken hebben vaak een scherpere hoek, op platte daken kun je kiezen welke hoek je de panelen geeft, ivm met de wind die ze kunnen vangen en de ballast die dan nodig is.

Effect van de paneel hoek op de opbrengst. Valt op dat plat dus 13% scheelt, en dat gevel panelen 31% minder opbrengen. Beide worden in de pers gepromoot!

Hoeveelheid zonuren op zee zal verschillen van die op land. Aan de kust van NL is het zonniger. Er zijn natuurlijk grote delen van onze oceanen die constant in zonlicht baden. Daar is de opbrengst net als in de woestijnen groter. Dit merken we ook aan als een grote kans om nuttig werk te doen op die plaatsen, nuttig voor het klimaat en het leven op aarde, nuttig voor de logistiek op electriciteit.

De temperatuur van zonnepanelen beinvloed de opbrengst. De fotonen die de electronen uit het silicon over de halfgeleiderbarierre ‘kaatsen’ worden tegen gewerkt door warmte, die de electronen weer ‘terugkaatst’. Deste warmer het paneel, deste vaker de electronen terugkomen en deste lager de opbrengst. Dit effect is bekend voor elk paneel en verschilt weinig omdat het vrij fundamenteel is. De zogenaamde “Power Temperature Coefficient” van een typisch paneel is -0.29%. Dat betekent dat met elke graad Celcius boven de ijktemperatuur (waarop de performance van het paneel is gemeten) de opbrengst met 0.29% daalt.

Plat drijvende panelen brengen bij gelijke temperatuur als op land even veel op als panelen op een schuin dak

Panelen worden getest bij 25 graden Celsius, en ze worden op daken flink warm, tot wel 60 Graden of warmer. Dus dat kan 10% in opbrengst schelen. De vraag is of dat op zee anders is. De panelen drijven op een met lucht of schuim oid gevulde basis, en die basis isoleert dus minstens zo goed als een dak. Bovendien zit er altijd ruimte tussen het dak en het paneel zodat de warme lucht die achter het paneel ontstaat weg kan. Alleen als je (zee) water gaat circuleren tegen het paneel kun je ze koel houden, en dan kun je als opbrengst winnen. De werkelijke temperaturen van de panelen in het artikel in de Trouw zijn echter niet bekend.

” De uitkomst liegt er niet om: drijvende zonnepanelen presteren veel beter dan zonnecellen aan vaste wal. Per jaar kunnen ze 13 procent meer stroom produceren, ontdekte Van Sark. En in sommige maanden zelfs 18 procent. De verklaring: ­koeling. “Het rendement van zonnepanelen neemt af als ze te heet worden”, zegt Van Sark. “Door ze te plaatsen op koel zeewater krijg je het optimale rendement.” Op zonovergoten dagen warmt zeewater slechts traag op, zoals bekend. En dan staat er vaak ook nog een bries die extra afkoeling geeft. “

Wat je hierboven leest kan waar zijn, ook al is er vaak geen bries bij warm weer, ook al liggen de panelen niet op zeewater maar op hun drijvers. De zee onder de panelen warmt nauwelijks op omdat de panelen alle warmte absorberen. Als dat 13% oplevert is het mooi, maar ze liggen plat en dat kost ook 13% (zie overzicht hierboven) en transport van de stroom lijdt tot verliezen dus dit is geen selling point.

Feit is dat het niet zoveel uitmaakt hoeveel het meer of minder opbrengt. Zonnepanelen, zelfs de zware onhandige silicon panelen die nu de wereldmarkt domineren en met 30% belast worden in de EU, worden spotgoedkoop. Energie is weelde, zie beneden, met meer energie help je de economie, NIET met meer geld om ergens fossiele energie te kopen.

We zijn groot voorstander van zonnepanelen op zee, maar tevens groot voorstander van zonnepanelen op daken. We promoten ook zonnepanelen en huizen op het Markermeer. Het punt is dat we moeten waken voor manieren van stroom opwekken waardoor we afhankelijk blijven van private centralisatie en distributie van stroom. Die macht is ons nu funest aan het worden omdat het niet wil stoppen met het verkopen van gas, olie, kolen etc. Die macht kost ons zoveel hulpbronnen, omdat ze is verweven met de banken en hun manier van kredietverstrekking, die tot allerlei destructie leidt.

De krachten van fossiel zijn nog lang niet weg, ze nemen alleen steeds andere vormen aan. De huidige vorm is om de opbrengst van panelen te minimaliseren en mensen zoveel mogelijk geld te laten uitgeven aan alles behalve meer optimaal ingezette duurzame energiebronnen. Om meer controle over deze duurzame (en voor banken verlies veroorzakende) energiebronnen te krijgen moeten ze zo ver mogelijk weg worden gehouden van de mensen die ze nodig hebben, dus ver op zee. Dat is al met windturbines gelukt, en nu zullen ook zonnepanelen aan de buurt zijn.

We zitten met traditionele spelers die NIET WILLEN. Er staat dat ” TenneT is hartstikke druk met de grote windturbineparken” en er is geen subsidie voor zon op zee en er is geen vergunning voor kabels naar drijvende zonneparken, kortom de lobby heeft het danwel dichtgereguleert, danwel zal het in eigen beheer gaan exploiteren. Wat dat betreft is onze economie 100% dysfunctioneel, wat zeer schadelijk is voor onze welvaart. Weelde = energie x skills x materialen, maar we mogen energie in NL slechts met grote moeite opwekken. Banken staat zeker niet te springen voor zonnepanelen met een rendement van 8% wat ook laat zien dat ze totaal dysfunctioneel zijn. Vandaar ons pleidooi voor de Roboeconomie.

Laten we regels maken die zeggen dat iedereen die stroom wil opwekken met duurzame middelen (zon, wind, geothermisch, golf) in NL dit mag organiseren, of het een gemeente is, een hockeyvereniging, een bedrijfsschap of bank. Willen ze het op zee dan zijn het een soort vissers, energie vissers. Moet er een kabel naartoe dan kan IEDEREEN dit leggen. Moet er een veerdienst met batterijen gaan varen dan MAG DAT OOK. Willen ze er waterstof van maken dan moet wel gekeken worden naar de EROEI, dwz wat is het werkelijke energie rendement voor ons land van het plan. Tennet en andere falende clubs moeten meedingen naar kansen, niet als een dikke idioot op de wipwap zitten en de boel voor anderen verpesten.

Het is overduidelijk dat Nederland wordt gedomineerd door een leger fossiele lakeien en slakken die niet snappen waar welvaart vandaan komt, en het wordt tijd dat we daar maatregelen tegen treffen, want het kost ons ons levensgeluk.

AI, Artificial Recognition and Parameterized Generation

The writer of this finished AI at Utrecht University and worked at the UvA building neural network simulations of the mechanism of emotions in humans, and is up to date with much of AI’s current methods.

The AI field suffers from the same weakness as every other field with high “magic” content : Overpromising and exhageration of what is achieved. When “magic” plays a role in a field, meaning when it is hard for non-experts to understand what is being claimed, some ‘experts’ will start to exploit this space usually to increase revenue or draw attention. AI today really is not close to what I would call human intelligence, and that is not because of the lack of depth of knowledge, but of the basic mechanism by which ‘AI’ is achieved.

I would like to split up the idea of AI so that it becomes more clear what we are talking about. Some will argue I a are guilty of moving the goal posts, as has happened a lot in the history of AI development. Every time some new milestone was achieved (like a chess match being won) some would say “But this is not real AI!” and the field would have to start over. This is not a critique like that. We argue that real AI has certain qualities that are not even approximated by current algorithms, and only once they are can we speak of real AI.

The hype of today in AI is ‘Deep learning’. This is field of training a new type of neural network (LSTM) consisting of so called Long Short Term Memory nodes on datasets. This kind of system do two things : Recognizing and Generating. When used as a recognizer the LSTM network learns during multiple small adaptions based on data what output to generate in response to certain input. The nice thing about these networks is that you can provide any input and output, even whith unknown correlation, and as long as there is some consistency between the two the network will capture it eventually. This we would call Artificial Recognition (AR but sadly that clashes a bit with Augmented Reality).

The field of Artificial Recognition is highly dynamic and new methods are developed and published continously. Another proces that we would separate out from AI/Deep Learning is Parameterized Generation. What happens is that a LSTM network is build that takes in a video feed and sharpens the image. This is done by first providing a video feed that has been blurred as input and the original feed as output. The network will first compress the data in the video feed to a minimal set (depends on the image quality you wish to accomplish) and then it will take that minimal set and translate it back into an image. Another example is to increase the lighting in images. This is done by providing images that are artificially dimmed as input, and undimmed images as output. The same compression and expansion is learned by the network.

The expansion part, from a minimal set of values towards an image, is parameterized generation. If you change the start values you can generate a variety of images. Of course they will all be in the trained image space, so if your images where cats you will generate all kinds of wierd cats by varying the start values. Of course it is possible to make a system that can generate all images of a certain size, but it would be extremely large and hard to train.

Another type of Parameterized Generation occurs in 3D modelling, where an avatar or human figure is not specified completely, but simply has parameters like arm length, waist, head size etc. Most ‘Deepfake’ videos use a network that has internalized a parametric model of a face or body, and the challenge becomes to find the parameters that make the body image match a video feed, which is a much smaller challenge than learing how the pixels correlate. Neural networks, LSTM and Deep Learning algorithms can do this. The variety of examples is similar to that possible with binary representation in computers. If you ask what you can represent with bits of zero and one the answer is “Everything”.

But Artificial Recognition and Parameterized Generation are not Artificial Intelligence. The mistake made is that the process of arriving at the algorithms would require smarts in a human, a proces of changes towards a perfect output involves rejection of false outcomes, checking etc. To understand the process this is what our mind projects on the algorithms, and this is correct, but the algorithm is not intelligent. It is adaptive, to a highly detailed level we can barely comprehend (and some say we should not try to).

What is real AI then? Real AI involves action. The ‘dataset’ is not static, it is generated by the AI through its output, its movements. A real AI has internal drives, so it does not stop or start like any tool humans use. It certainly uses recognition and generation mechanisms but not the type Deep Learing is used to. They are too inflexible. Real AI gets angry. I wrote about this, a real AI system will have to push ahead with an action in spite of not having enough information to know it is safe. It will push ahead with an action when it believes it is safe but it can be wrong. Humans use a lot of energy to avoid harm to others and to themselves. The AI will have to be able to. So you can define a task like “Spot the tank in the field” and use Artifical Recognition and use the output to instruct a Warthog A-10 plane into action. You can not let the Warthog decide for itself where to fly and where to find tanks. That becomes way to complicated super fast and the software needed to make it work would be slow and unreliable.

Now it is possible to do small tasks and task repertoires with less ‘insight’ and not surprisingly this is how our society is organized. After all if you talk about real AI you talk about what humans do. The capacity of a brain is limited, its learning capacity is as well. Evolutionary mechanisms cause it to learn less quickly as you age. A real AI can at first only be allowed to work in a confined space on a specific task, or it has to be pysically very weak.

A striking feature of our memory is that one moment can be recorded in a split second, an impressive experience, an accident or moment of recognition, and then be available to us for a lifetime. This feature was one of the real braincrackers for me when I was studying the brain. How is that even possible? LSTM networks can’t do it. They also can not progress towards algorithms that can, because key aspects of it prevent it. From recent research I can claim that theoretically we are not far off, but even then the hardware is going to be a challenge. For now we may have to accept systems of recognizers, parameterized generators and ordinary code is the best we can do.

Deserts Need Not Be Deserts

Just take a minute to watch this report on growing in the desert..