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Counter-intuitive impacts to climate due to man-made clouds. Not what you’d expect. Basically, smog is saving us from much worse global warming impacts.

Human greenhouse impacts add 2.6-3.0 W/m^2^

Smog (global dimming) has reduced it by 1.5 W/m^2^

Smog has saved us! Reducing smog without removing greenhouse gases will be the worst thing we can do.

Of course, this is all from PBS, so we probably can’t trust it.

Contrails over Southeastern USA

Total Home and Car Energy Electric/Hydrogen Hybrid Car

Why?

1. Most trips and daily needs can be filled by an all electric vehicle
2. Occasionally and for longer trips, the need for extended range and less than 5 minute fill ups is required.
3. The car ’’must’’ have everything a current generation car has with similar performance and safety.

Ok, so most of the time an electric car is fine. The great thing about electric cars is that you’ve decoupled the power source from the car! All electric cars have very little maintenance required – there’s no engine oil or oil filter to change, no air filter to ahcnge and no transmission to fail. Recall the GM EV1 from a few years ago? According to lessors, they had no maintenance costs over a 3 year period. Nice.

With an electric car, whatever the most efficient electric power generation device is can be added to the vehicle to charge the batteries. It simply needs to fit into the place they last generator was.

Why hydrogen?

1. Highly efficient electrical generation. The Fuel Cell is a highly efficient method of converting hydrogen + oxygen into electricity. Creating hydrogen is ‘’very inefficient’’ that’s why hydrogen created by solar energy is really the only answer. Centrally produced hydrogen is just another way for oil companies to overcharge us for something that isn’t any easier to mine or create than what you and I can do at home – over the long term.
2. Local Storage – a couple 3000 psi tanks
3. Simple and cheap raw materials – water
4. Quick refill – less than 5 minutes to fill your car
5. Can be used for portable, home or car electricity generation

[[Total Home and Car Energy]] | [[THCE Components]]

Total Home, Car Energy Components:

1. Highly insulated home – being half buried in the side of a hill would really help with insulation. R-38 roof; R-21 walls ; Zero Energy Home is interesting.
2. Efficient lighting and appliances
3. Solar Panels (5kW for an average home) Boston, MA home
4. Solar Power Controller (when all batteries and hydrogen tanks are full, push excess energy onto the electric grid for others
5. Heat pump with ground source heating/cooling; sometimes called horizontal loop geothermal heat pump system
6. Hydrogen Generation System – car and portable needs
7. Power Inverter for AC power
8. Hydrogen Storage System – a tankful for the car + 7 days worth for the household energy needs
9. Electric/Hydrogen Car – ideally, most trips don’t touch any H2, just electric power is used.
10. Car Power Charger

As an engineer, I’ve always been interested in efficient energy use. As gasoline prices increase more and more, I’ve become more interested in efficient automobiles. Between household and auto energy needs, and each of us trying to reduce our C02 footprint, it is clear to me that local energy generation is the only answer.
What do I mean by local energy generation?

• Within our house lots, each of us should create, store and convert whatever energy is needed for our homes, A/C, appliances, heating, hot water, and most importantly automobiles for daily use.
• there are exceptions where external energy needs to be provided, but generally we should each take responsibility for our energy needs locally.
• With local generation, there is no ‘’one solution for everyone’’. It depends on what energy is easiest to create locally.

Some things are assumed:

• natural gas will be used for central heating, unless another alternative becomes more efficient or is a common by-product of another necessary process.
• natural gas will be used for water heating, unless another alternative becomes more efficient or is a common by-product of another necessary process.
• wind energy isn’t a viable solution – I happen to live in the SE USA. Not much wind here.
• hybrid automobile is required – electric + hydrogen
• hydrogen must be produced locally (either convert natural gas or from electrolysis) from renewable energy sources.
• potable water is available

Ok, let’s lay out the solution:

1. Solar energy and batteries are used for household energy needs [[THCE Solar House]]
2. electric + hydrogen hybrid cars are needed [[THCE e + H2 Car]]
3. Batteries and/or converted hydrogen will be used for non-solar power generation [[THCE Batteries]]
4. Hydrogen will be used for portable energy needs, local storage is needed. [[THCE H2]]

See the [[THCE Components]].

A few months ago, I wrote in my [[Thoughts On Energy]] that locally created hydrogen would be needed to convert cars from gasoline to hydrogen, even for commuter-only cars. Seems I wasn’t the first to have this idea. A few articles:

• honda home energy station
• Honda
• Wikipedia
• NY Times Article
• Business Week Article
  The short version is they take natural gas in and provide these outputs:
• hydrogen for the car ($600/month lease)
• hot water for the house
• electricity for a normal house (4+kW)
  Overall, about 30% less carbon is released than a normal house, water heater and car would require. C|Net did a very short story on this. I’d really like to see the natural gas not be the main method of conversion … perhaps solar panels & H2O could be inputs instead?

My only remaining question? Where to I sign up and how much does it cost? Sadly, the Honda FCX isn’t available where I live.

Toyota has a FCHV, but their trials seem limited to Japan.
What are US car makers doing?

Here’s a guy who decided to use Solar and Hydrogen similar to the way I suggested a few months ago.

I came across this article from my insurance company today that has tables and graphs the percentage of income that should be saved based on your age and approximate annual income.

The tables don’t cover all income levels and don’t address income increases over the years.

Many financial planners use 80% of your income as the target for retirement needs. People that plan to travel will need more. Quick summary for 80% replacement:

Basically, if you haven’t started saving 20% of your income by age 35, then you are in BIG trouble!!! Plan on working until you’re dead, since kids and mortgages will prevent you from saving what is needed.

Table 3 in the article has the Assets Needed when you’re 65 to provide 80% cash flow. The table is in todays dollars and it assumes Social Security is paid and it is only for 1 person.

I’m worried that I over simplified this article, so take 10 minutes to read it.

I was listening to a podcast today where they discussed eBooks. That got me thinking about what I want in an eBook Reader ….
A Kindle ?

• Inexpensive – less than the cost of 10 paperback books and it needs to include 10 books with the device – less than $100
• Small – smaller than a paperback book with 100 pages – think of all those pads on StarTrek, yep that’s the size.
• Light weight – it should weigh about the same as a paperback scifi book
• Beautiful reading screen – I don’t know how to explain this – but I know it when I see it.
• Control of font sizes – 6pt.-32pt. At least 10 different sizes.
• Open platform – support both the proprietary and open document formats. HTML/CSS, TXT, common MS-Office files, Open Office files, PDF. Minimal graphics.
• MP3 player – I suppose a case could be made for AAC and WMA protected formats, but that has nothing to do with my personally ripped CDs. This should be an option based on the extra memory to hold 200, 500, 500,000 MP3s.
• Reasonable Battery life – rechargeable in under 3 hours and it should work 4 days for reading only; standard USB cable used as a charger, not some stupid proprietary cable.
• Enough memory to hold 5-10 books; I don’t need 200 books.
• Back light, but it will eat the battery, big time.
• Looks like a HD when connected to a PC, OS-X or Linux device – definitely not MTP.
• USB connect to full sized keyboard and mice
• Quiet; auto-off if the page isn’t turned within a timeout period.
• 1-handed use. Handy buttons and scrolling designed by a human factors engineer, not some other type of engineer or software developer. Customization of the button use would be nice, esp for left/right handed use.
• Quick startup and back-to-bookmark; pagination shouldn’t impact my reading. Do it in the background.
• Auto-sync documents with a folder on a computer
• Password protected.

Ok, those are the basics, but I’d like a little more …

• cell phone – GSM or CDMA; I should bring my own cell plan
• Email / Contact manager; think CrackBerry with all that it provides
• wifi for web browsing w/ WPA; minimal browsing
• EDGE, UMTA, EVDO, 3G or faster wireless data
• if the MP3 player is included, add a voice recorder (MP3/MP4, not WAV)
• GPS – well, why not?

Most importantly, I don’t want to pay for a book twice. No checking back to a central server for post-purchase validation. No expiration of the content, books don’t expire. Transfer of the ownership – or loaning it out must be allowed. No matter what, 70 years later or until the copyright expires, I should still be able to read the book. Tagging bought books with personal information embedded in the book DRM is fine – name, address, email, and credit card number. This will cause folks to be careful with each book.

Ok, so when we’re all done,

• you still pay for books
• you don’t need a different cell phone device
• you don’t need a different music device
• you don’t need a special charger, any USB charger will work

After writing all this down, it seems converting a BlackBerry into an eBook reader would be easier than adding email, calendar, and internet connectivity to an eBook.

Someone on /. recommended this @ $130.

According to Shelly, God has a hit list.

This is simply sad.

10 Open Source Software that you need

Ok, the USA is a nation of immigrants. My grandparents were not born in this country, yet both of my parents were able to go to college and almost all of their children did as well. Many of my cousins also went to college too. A few of my siblings have advanced degrees. Not bad for a family living in small-town North Dakota, if you ask me. I like immigrants with this caveat – legal immigrants. In fact, I worked for a company that was founded by a foreigner that hired both foreigners and US citizens. To my knowledge, each was in the USA legally and I have no reason to think they were not. I count them among my friends. These people were Egyptian, Israeli, Turkish, Chinese, Australian, Swedish, Vietnamese, Taiwanese, Indonesian, Indian and from the USA.

But there are a few problems. Some would-be immigrants have been taking advantage of our country’s good nature. Our free public education for anyone, our free medical care for anyone in need, our country’s capitalistic ideals and our historical love for immigrants (US citizenship is available to anyone born on USA “soil”).

Now onto the thoughts … what ought to be changed to remove the incentives for illegal immigration and honestly to make that immigration difficult or impossible.

• Change the citizenship requirements such that only children born of parents (2) here legally are automatically USA citizens. Children born from a single citizen can stay, but only become citizens upon turning 18 and passing the normal citizenship exam. Children born here my illegal immigrants are exported with the parents to the parent’s country of origin.
• Remove the health care incentive. Triage is provided to all, but once stabilized, illegal immigrants are deplored to their country of origin.
• Remove the education incentive. If you aren’t here legally – parents and children, public education at any level is denied. That’s primary, secondary, and colleges, period. English as a second language classes are removed from all public institutions. Private schools are free to do as they like, of course, provided that no public funds are provided for those programs.
• Remove the ability to be employed illegally. Fine heavily any company who employs anyone here illegally. Make the law have a penalty clause, say $50k per person (inflation adjusted) and have a significant amount of the penalty be turned over to any non-government person, here legally, to encourage disclosure of illegal immigrants or anyone who has overstayed their visa.
• Remove the ability to rent or sell property to illegal immigrants or anyone who has overstayed their visa. Fine heavily any company or person who provides housing to anyone here illegally. Make the law have a penalty clause, say $50k per person and have a significant amount of the penalty be turned over to any non-government person – here legally, to encourage disclosure of illegal immigrants or anyone who has overstayed their visa.
• Remove the ability for illegal immigrants to own a US-based company or do business from inside the USA with our companies. No bank accounts with addresses outside the USA, no PO Boxes. This will be a difficult element to craft so that foreign businesses aren’t penalized, but people in the country illegally are prevented from gaining access to our banking system.
• Remove the ability for illegal immigrants to have a State provided drivers license or other identification documents. Fine countries that provide diplomatic paperwork beyond the “normal” number required for a diplomatic purpose. International drivers’ licenses are probably fine, unless abused.
• Remove the ability for money earned in the USA to be sent easily out of the country. Tax at least 25% of cash sent overseas that is sent outside the banking system by non-corporate accounts when 1 side isn’t a USA-based company.
• Any illegal uncovered by any government entity must be deported. If they are found committing a crime – immediate deportation and the laws of their country for the crime should be applied, provided it is a crime in the US state too. Anyone not here illegally should be rewarded for turning in someone here illegally.
• Bill for services to originating countries. The countries that help their people illegally get into the USA should be sent a bill for every hospital visit, every prescription drug, and every hour of public schooling provided. If they refuse to pay for the use of our infrastructure services, we freeze their banking accounts and apply tariffs against trade with those countries products.
• The current ability for citizens to sponsor their family for immigration needs to be carefully revisited.
• Requirements for immigration should include the ability to write and speak English to some defined level, perhaps speak at a 1st grade level and write at a 4th grade level? Language is our culture and different languages fracture our combined culture. Sadly, I’m afraid we need a law that states English is the official language for all government paperwork.
• Enact the [[FairTax]] system. This method of revenue generation hits anyone here illegally with additional consumption taxes since they wouldn’t receive the rebate meant to offset taxes for food every month.

Ok, what happens with all of these items deployed? Housekeeping, lawn care, and other menial jobs now cost more. As wages for these jobs increase, more and more legal immigrants and lower end households will take those jobs. When a lettuce picker earns the same as a truck driver, we’ll know that lettuce is properly priced. Teenagers will also learn about hard work – I washed dishes and my friends worked detasseling corn. Hard work both, but wages will increase due to the removal of the underclass that are illegal immigrants.

I’m realistic. The people here illegally already need to become legal or leave. With the road blocks listed above, folks here illegally will have a very hard time and anyone that gets caught housing/employing will . There needs to be a way for them to stay, but it must not be easy. Based on the age of the person, their wife, and number of children, a scale – not progressive – needs to be determined whereby they pay their back social security taxes, their back Medicare taxes, their back income taxes and all other taxes (state, import, etc.). The path should be towards legal immigration, not rewarding folks who are already here that broke the law when they entered. Basically, these payments should be high enough to encourage folks already here to leave and come back legally, within the quota for their country.

Some of these ideas are really terrible, even scary. There has to be a better way, but we need to make it difficult and unprofitable for anyone or any other country to support illegal immigration into our country. Perhaps some other thoughts will hit me over the next few days.

Summary: legal immigrants help our country and reinvigorate our capitalistic society. We like legal immigrants. Illegal immigrants are a drain on our society and destroy the belief in fair play that our country stands for. Jumping out of line isn’t fair.

We aren’t at war today, but soon, we will be from the inside.

Boortz has some interesting thoughts on immigration too