As a life-long student of history with particular a interest in military history, and having witnessed and participated in the explosion of the technologically driven “Information Age” since the 1960s, I am naturally driven to a tendency to take a long view of events and inventions. Not an inventor myself, I am always none-the-less fascinated by new ideas, inventions and technological developments, with a long-term view of how they will affect historic trends and history-shaping milestones. Thus my attraction to technology during a lifetime in which it has re-shaped an entire culture and way of life in the western, and now increasingly in the eastern, parts of human civilization.
One need only look back 62 years, my lifespan to this point, to see the vast acceleration of technology and it’s impact upon our lives and our cultures. When I was born, the first two crude nuclear weapons had just been used in anger on Japan. Radar had only come into widespread use in warfare and the jet engine was almost a monopoly of the losing side in that war. State-of-the art communications was AM radio and electric distribution was only about half a century old and had not yet penetrated all areas of the United States, much less the rest of the world. It only came to the very rural part of Tennessee where I was born in the early 1950s, and I personally recall its arrival. My homework in the first and part of the second grades was done by the light of kerosene lantern.
While the steam engine certainly enabled the industrial revolution, electricity enabled most of the advances since then. It was ubiquitous electricity that enabled the telegraph, the internal combustion engine, home appliances, computers, space travel, the ARPANET, the Internet, and the information age. It is electricity that has shaped the culture of the United States that we know today, with it’s good and bad elements. (Television certainly is a mixed blessing, with it’s ability to inform, but also its heavy cooption by the inane, the corrupt, the crass, the venal and the vile. Much of what it contains today legitimately can be classed as propaganda of one nature or another, mostly from the left.) Those few who, like me, avoid it almost completely probably do so with a net intellectual gain. At least with the Internet you still, mostly, can choose what you see or allow to be seen in your home.
As a student of history, I’m well aware that it will be decades, even centuries, before an evaluation of our age can be made and the nature of that evaluation will be entirely dependant upon the intellectual and moral precepts of future historians. Ours may be viewed as a “golden age,” or as the “beginning of the end,” or even as “the end of the beginning.” I do believe, however, that certain trends clearly evident today do presage a significant turning point, one way or another, that likely will be marked by future historians. Looking only at the technological trends, not the political ones, the following trends seem evident to me:
· The age of low-cost, ubiquitous electricity seems to be drawing to a close. Political, environmental, economic and technological forces seem poised to drive the price of electricity out-of-reach for the average citizen of this country (not to mention most other nations). Already, governmental agencies and regulators are working to impose rationing of supply under the sobriquet “demand response.”
· Innovation in electrical supply and demand systems increasingly is being removed from the hands of entrepreneurs and private development and into governmental bureaucracy and funding. Thomas Edison didn’t work for the government, nor did it fund him. While governments are very good at developing technology for war—no one counts how much money is being thrown at the problem then—in periods of relative peace, or only minor wars, government bureaucracies shouldn’t be counted upon for major breakthroughs
· Economies “managed” by government are highly inflationary by removing ever higher percentages of resources and funding from the private sector, distorting the value and prices of everything and leading to an inevitable economic collapse and depression. Technological innovation that cannot stand on its own feet economically, without government subsidy, probably wasn’t worth building in the first place. Most “renewable” energy systems are not economically viable without government subsidy, especially in a vastly inflated economy.
· In a period of deflation, or recession/depression, technological advance is slowed by lack of capital. Recession/depression seems just around the corner, with the demise of ubiquitous, low-cost electricity likely to accelerate the process.
The demise of low-cost electricity likely will usher in a difficult age of competition for an increasingly scarce resource. But it won’t be the only resource in scarcity as the population continues to put pressure on food production, fossil fuels become more scarce and nuclear energy is abandoned by political decision.
I missed the first "Great Depression" by generational happenstance. I may miss most of the next one by virtue of age, though I do expect to see its beginning, and soon. My sincere sympathies to those less age-challenged than me. When electricity no longer is generlly available, it likely will begin. It doesn't take a prophet to see the handwriting on the wall, only a student of history.
Solar thermal can be made to win over the energy markets, at first with some gov help (wishful, because we are wasting money by funding more expensive PV instead, unless priority teck gets an emenent domain, make a highway from the solar printing press, not just a few gadget items or even just a million roofs!)
Solar thermal, on a large scale, say 2/5ths of a Desert, will actualy help reflect some of its (not nearly all, though) light back into space thus countering the negative albedo effect so as to slow the melting icecaps (we need to do that anyway, even if we didn't cause GW, heard of ocean anoxia. I like to call it OIL for ocean inoxic legacy, for those of us who believe that it iiiis raising CO2 levels).
Solar thermal can incorporate PV, uses heat (or both?)
My math is elementary, based upon 20% efficiency and 7/10th space left for habitat (and shadow spacing), that a sq ft = .08kW for 25% of the year. The Mohave is said to be 50,000 sq mi.
Somehow, we need to tax ourselves on every thing we use to pay the few dollar a day (5.4 trillion dollars over 30 years) expendature.
Most people just don't get it, that's why the gov doesn't care either, there's more in fossils.
Yes we need a better battery, but it's been known that solar thermal can heat a fluid for night time generation. If we don't do this (or something better) we will succumb to post oil crisis (and global warming?). If we do this thing (or something better) wouldn't we have the greatest economic growth ever (because of the shear size of RE)! Enough to even revearse GW by affording billions of mirrors to reflect the sky and by forestation and soil (that traps CO2)!
The new utility needs to start building the electric RE infrastructure NOW while we still have the oil to do so! ...
fireofenergy