In the wild, hummingbirds get along pretty well. But if you put up a
feeder, you create a concentrated resource which soon comes to be
dominated and struggled over by the alpha males.
If you maintain the feeder for several years, the progeny of alphas
get more food and you have more alphas and more aggression. If you put
up two feeders, as I have, far enuf apart that no single male can
watch and dominate both, now you see a kind of Christian/Moslem
balance of terror in which the two dominant males chase back and forth
between the resource bases which lets the rest of the flock feed.
But its a pretty high stress lifestyle with each bird having to watch
out for attack from any other higher in the pecking order. In their
own natural habitat, the resource to support a high energy lifestyle
is too dispersed for any alpha male to control and significant portion
of it.
Which is why the hominid alpha males in charge of the power structures
have not been able to develop alternative energy. They instinctively
get it, that the resulting dispersal of power would disempower them.
Nowhere is this more obvious than in wind power. Last year, with the
new generation of aeronautic software designed turbines, the 10 year
amortized cost of a 20 megawatt wind tower was $0.04/kwhr. Nukes,
which concentrate power, without hidden government subsidy like
insurance, can not amortize the initial investment in 20 years; and
while the recent rise in oil/gas prices has driven up both the value
of the electricity produced, and the cost of installation, wind power
construction costs have not risen as fast as nuclear.
And while it takes a decade to bring a nuke online, you can bring a
wind turbine online in 10 months. So why dont we see the rise in
investment?
Well, for one, the alpha male financial industry thot they understood
mortgages and the housing market, so they threw money at it. The had
the typical "not invented here" attitude to windpower, which they
regard as yet another geeky kook idea.
With a nuke, they use river front property in dense industrial zones,
which have dramatically high real estate prices they think they know
well and can profit from. With wind, its only a couple thousand for an
acre way the fuck out in the boonies, and small farmers get to profit.
Well, there's no cream in this to skim; we cant have that.
Their argument has always been that the wind stops blowing. Ignoring
the fact that if the grid covers enuf territory, the wind will always
be blowing on some part of it. They admit there are security concerns
with nukes, but they say they can handle that. Course, they dont say
we get to pay them for doing that.
We also get to pay them for drilling for oil ever deeper in ever more
remote and difficult locations on a pretty much cost plus basis. It
was also reported to a congressional hearing that while Big Oil gets
the lion's share of the money on the basis they will invest in new
recovery, its the small independent operators that are actually doing
that. It has been lots easier for Big Oil to let the small fry find
it, then hire the lawyers to make offers they cant refuse to sell out.
Since Big Oil also owns the courts from Scalia and Roberts on down,
its an easy sell.
Its not about creating more power for progress, its about controlling
the power that is already here. That effort is about to unravel.
Either thru total global economic collapse, or the redirection of
funds from speculation driving the cost of oil up to innovation like
combining wind power with the new aluminum alloy hydrogen generator.
http://www.chemistrytimes.com/research/Aluminum_Alloys_for_Hydrogen_Generation.asp
http://www.purdue.edu/uns/x/2008a/080219WoodallAluminum.html
These sources are not kooks but competent scientists who have
something. Like an aluminum alloy that costs 15$/kg. When exposed to
water, it gives off hydrogen which can fuel an engine. For 15$ worth
of aluminum a small car can go 600 miles. Then, the aluminum canister
can be plugged in and recharged. With electricity from a wind grid
that goes for less than a dime a kilowatt. Since 25kw will push your
car down the freeway at 70mph, it works out equal to gasoline at $1.25
gallon.
We could pull our troops out of the Mid East; we wont need their oil,
and we can quit sending our boys over as targets. JR Lowel:"When
firmly seated in power, a man comes to think that security, and not
progress, is the highest form of statecraft." From GW Bush thru the
generals on down thru all the bureaucrats in the wars on drugs and
terrorism, they think they understand how to deliver security, but
have no fucking clue as to what progress is.
The last thing they want is the dispersal of power that comes as a
result of alternative energy.
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