Ode To The Blue Marble

Perhaps the greatest and least visible form of impoverishment caused by the Corporate State is the destruction of community.
Charles A. Reich, The Greening of America, Chapter VII, "It's Just Like Living", p. 181

The only thing worse than realizing that this planet is fucked, is knowing that there is no rational excuse for it being  this way. A good place to start on this train wreck of thought is the March 19, 2011, Report on Business  Cover Story; Section B, p. B-1. A very interesting article by Nathan Vanderklippe covers the history of the Fischer Tropsch process, that can turn natural gas into Diesel fuel and those nice and valuable natural gas liquids. Or turn coal dust into various grades of hydrocarbons.  Or wood chips and why not, garbage, into gas. The lads at I. G. Farben jumped on it right away during World War II. And the South Africans survived for years on it and are today the world leaders in on the ground implementation.

The Blue Marble...

I first heard about it in high school chemistry in the early 1970's! But for the life of me I can't understand why there is not at least one of these units in every commercial oil refinery in North America? And especially Valero! These guys are the cutting edge...they make a fortune by buying that bunker C garbage from the gulf and bringing it to America and converting it to high octane gas! Nice racket! But I have never heard of them incorporating the Fischer Tropsch process in their refineries. Think of the endless and $profitable$ possibilities! Now mix in the Haber- Bosch  Process and we are rocking? A really good book to look into if you are interested in the endless possibilities is any edition of "Perry's Chemical Engineers Handbook". It is a great book to have if you are also a do-it-yourself stock picker... From what I can gather in my endless thumb thru's of these books is why is no one really running with it? It soon becomes obvious that the greedheads and pocket rapers are at it again.

It was all brought home to me (again) recently with the events in Japan. Japan has over 50 nuclear reactors! They were down one sight of four producing reactors. Rolling blackouts? How can that possibly be? What about the HVDC inter tie to South Korea? The inter tie to main land China? Much to my surprise and utter amazement these ties do not seem to exist! This inter continent tie system was first proposed by Buckminster Fuller way back in the 1960's! I vividly remember him seeing Prime Minister Trudeau about when I was in grade school! It would, if fully built, double the electricity capacity of the world without building another generating  facility.. think about it.. load factors... the world is round... yes.. yes.. and it rotates. Get it?

Russia(left), USA(right) Distance-85km-

 One of the first ways that we could really get this going is by building the Bering Strait inter tie. The distance here (85 km) is no where near the worlds longest HVDC submarine inter tie!  Plus the finger of God even got into this one by actually putting a couple of honking large islands half way across! And it is nice and shallow! I still daydream as an old fart of the economic possibilities of this one..... Every marginal desert area in Alberta and the whole mid west of the United States would bloom.. Ponder that.

But, (pop!), who am I kidding? In Ontario Canada we can hardly get a inter-provincial tie built, let alone an inter continental one! If we had an inter-provincial tie to Manitoba and Quebec we could feather the reactors down to .... Ohhhhhh! Now I get it!  

Check out the Global Energy Network Institute.  The only reason your home hydro meter should be connected to the internet is to provide data for load studies, not to be ripped off by the utility that is supposed to serve you, (not screw you)...