Hot As The Sun  

Wired News has a report on the booming solar industry.

WorldChanging has a couple of solar posts up - the first, on ""Power Glass" and the Plastic Solar Future" looks at the use of transparent plastic photovoltaic layer laminated onto window glass.

We've written frequently about building-integrated photovoltaics (BIPV), the concept of putting solar power generation capabilities into building materials, rather than as bolt-on additions. While we imagine the potential of "spray-on" photovoltaics to turn every sun-facing surface into a power source, the most common manifestation of BIPV has been "solar shingles" for home rooftops. Now comes word (via Inhabitat and Treehugger) of another BIPV concept, "Power Glass." Manufactured by San Diego-area company XsunX, Power Glass puts a transparent, thin-film polymer photovoltaic layer onto window glass.

Also from WorldChanging, the "$600 solution" on cheap solar solutions at home.

Six hundred dollars -- not pocket change, but not hugely expensive for most folks in the West -- is enough to put together a solar photovoltaic system able to run a variety of useful appliances and electric/electronic devices for a usable amount of time on a week's worth of sunlight. The system encompasses a 32 watt photovoltaic panel, a couple of sealed gel batteries, and a few components to make sure that the pv and the batteries get along with whatever you're plugging in:

...the usable power stored in the two batteries is roughly equal to a week’s output from the single 32-watt PV module, so each week you’ll have around one kilowatt-hour of stored sunlight at your disposal. What can you do with it? One kWh will run a 20-inch tv for 20 hours, a portable stereo for 100 hours, a laptop computer for 40 hours, or a 12-watt compact-fluorescent light bulb for 80 hours.

The 800-watt inverter (with a 2,000-watt surge capacity) will run a small vacuum cleaner, a drill or a small drill press, a sander, a jigsaw or small band saw, but not a large circular saw. It will handle many toasters and coffee makers, but not all. A blender would be child’s play for this inverter, a microwave an impossibility. A hair dryer on low, yes; on high, forget it.

$600 isn't enough to convert one's entire life to off-grid solar living, but it's a functional start. Moreover, it makes an interesting moving target: as organic photovoltaics and other forms of plastic solar come on the market, and as more money goes into making this technology more approachable for non-technical folks, we should start to see what's possible with $600 worth of gear improve in short order. And it's not just improvements in photovoltaic technologies that will make a difference here -- better batteries, cheaper high-capacity inverters, even more efficient "wall warts" would help (after all, many power supplies for consumer electronics only pass along 20-40% of the electricity they draw to the devices they power!).

TreeHugger reports that the Whole Foods chain has "gone biodiesel".

Whole Foods ($4.5 billion in sales last year, biggest retailer of natural and organic food in the world) has made its Midwest distribution center switch to B20 (a blend of 20% biodiesel and 80% regular diesel). The delivery trucks based there service a 5 state area and burn 8,000 gallons of fuel every week. This is only a fraction of the Whole Foods fleet, but the use of biodiesel could eventually propagate to the whole company. "Because Whole Foods operates in a relatively decentralized manner, an initiative such as this starts out regionally and then can propagate, according to a company spokesperson.

Alexander's Gas and Oil has a report on a Greenpeace proposal for the EU to "lead the way into the clean energy future".

PeakOil.com has posts on the possibility of a US led global recession (the Hoston Chronicle has a report saying that US companies haven't been in such bad shape since the Depression and there is widespread speculation about GM going bankrupt) and one from the "smells like 1914" genre on the US being on a collision course with China (the much feared Machiavelli vs Sun Tzu deathmatch). No wonder gold is soaring.

The peak oil meme continues to spread to unusual areas - even the real estate industry has heard of it (the article is a typical beginner piece, but I did find the idea of real estate agents avidly reading the words of Mike Ruppert quite amusing).

...having seen a number of interviews over the past year with Matt Simmons on this subject, I can tell you that he appears to be a man who is very sincere in his concern about what all of this could mean to our world economies. He's been a crusader on this subject for years now along with top petroleum geologists, but until recently they've had a tough time getting anyone including the petroleum companies to listen to them. But people are now beginning to listen to them more and more.

And incidentally, I learned about Matt's quote regarding the potential $10.00 a gallon gasoline prices in the coming months in an article written by Jeanne Klobnak-Ball on the From the Wilderness website. If you're not familiar with From the Wilderness, they've developed such a solid reputation in recent years for uncovering important national and international news stories that their e-newsletter and printed newsletter are now read by both the House and Senate Intelligence Committees of the United States Congress.

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One thing I find interesting about Matt Simmons mentioning the possibility of us experiencing $10.00 a gallon gasoline prices in the months ahead is the fact that about two years ago he mentioned that he saw the price of gasoline eventually rising up to be about $7.00/gallon, but that it would take a number of years for this to happen.

So I have to believe that for a man of his stature in the petroleum industry to revise his estimate upward by $3.00 a gallon at this time, he must be seeing some very strong indicators in the marketplace that are causing him to do so. People with his reputation don't make predictions like this unless they feel there's a solid reason to do it. And in looking at the price of gasoline, even if it rises up to $4.00 to $5.00 a gallon over the next 12-18 months, the impact this could have on our economy and on our real estate markets could be huge.

And in moving forward, there's a quote I heard from the great hockey player Wayne Gretzky years ago that I've always thought was appropriate to apply to the most successful people in business. When asked what made him so much better than all the other players in the game he replied, "Most players skate to where the puck is. But I skate to where the puck is going to be."

As an expert agent advising your clients, you want to be able to tell them where the puck is going to be in real estate. The future may not always look rosy, but the better you are at recognizing where the market is headed, and the better you are at persuasively communicating this to your clients, the better off your clients will be and the more money you'll make in the process.

So do some Internet searches under the term "Peak Oil" and do your own research. While I certainly hope that these experts are wrong and that we'll be experiencing great economic times for many years to come, I must tell you that the case they're making is very compelling. So much so that I've heard of at least two major real estate investment companies who are now making changes to their portfolios because they see it coming also.

More evidence of the topsy turby political world we have entered has appeared, with one time Reaganite Paul Craig Roberts appearing in the pages of Counterpunch. Is it normal for Lew Rockwell style Libertarians to appear in the journals of the far left (I'm not a regular Counterpunch reader) or is this a new development ? Mr Roberts considers the death of civil liberties in the US (with us colonies tagging along close behind).

Police states are easier to acquire than Americans appreciate.

The hysterical aftermath of September 11 has put into place the main components of a police state.

Habeas corpus is the greatest protection Americans have against a police state. Habeas corpus ensures that Americans can only be detained by law. They must be charged with offenses, given access to attorneys, and brought to trial. Habeas corpus prevents the despotic practice of picking up a person and holding him indefinitely.

President Bush claims the power to set aside habeas corpus and to dispense with warrants for arrest and with procedures that guarantee court appearance and trial without undue delay. Today in the US, the executive branch claims the power to arrest a citizen on its own initiative and hold the citizen indefinitely. Thus, Americans are no longer protected from arbitrary arrest and indefinite detention.

These new "seize and hold" powers strip the accused of the protective aspects of law and give rein to selectivity and arbitrariness. No warrant is required for arrest, no charges have to be presented before a judge, and no case has to be put before a jury. As the police are unaccountable, whoever is selected for arrest is at the mercy of arbitrariness.

The judiciary has to some extent defended habeas corpus against Bush's attack, but the protection that the principle offers against arbitrary seizure and detention has been breeched. Whether courts can fully restore habeas corpus or whether it continues in weakened form or passes by the wayside remains to be determined.

Americans may be unaware of what it means to be stripped of the protection of habeas corpus, or they may think police authorities would never make a mistake or ever use their unbridled power against the innocent. Americans might think that the police state will only use its powers against terrorists or "enemy combatants".

But "terrorist" is an elastic and legally undefined category. When the President of the United States declares: "You are with us or against us," the police may perceive a terrorist in a dissenter from the government's policies. Political opponents may be regarded as "against us" and thereby fall in the suspect category. Or a police officer may simply have his eye on another man's attractive wife or wish to settle some old score. An enemy combatant might simply be an American who happens to be in a foreign country when the US invades. In times before our own when people were properly educated, they understood the injustices that caused the English Parliament to pass the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679 prohibiting the arbitrary powers that are now being claimed for the executive branch in the US.

Some MP's here (both Federal Liberal backbenchers and State Labor backbenchers) are mounting a rearguard action to soften our new detention without charge laws. Good to see some people have a bit of respect for western democratic traditions even if our leaders are determined to abolish them.

The draft legislation, incorporating some stronger safeguards, will go to the states today for approval.

In the meantime, the letter from NSW Government backbenchers Paul Lynch and Paul Pearce has been sent to all state Labor MPs and the issue is expected to be hotly debated at a caucus meeting today.

It calls the proposed introduction of detention without charge for 14 days for terrorist suspects a "fundamental assault upon basic protection for Australian citizens".

The legal profession isn't too keen on these laws either (I never thought I'd say this, but - well done the lawyers).

And to close, some weird news about the recent peace rally in Washington, where traces of a bioweapon were found - tinfoil stuff perhaps, but it did get reported in the Washington Post as well...