Scientists at Stanford have made a prototype solar energy cell that uses a process called “photon enhanced thermionic emission,” or PETE. The process promises to surpass the efficiency of existing photovoltaic and thermal conversion technologies. In short it will get at least twice existing returns and can be made from cheap materials, competing on price with oil and gas.
Technology will change our lives. What we need to speed up is our dull culture. Instead of getting ourselves organised in sustainable communities worth living in, we prat about with bureaucracy that leads to 10 cops on the street when 50 are needed and 1000 more doing nothing relevant to what is needed. There is little entertainment about I actually want, but a total flood of crud I have no time for. We are mad and the only hope is that machines may rise to save us from ourselves.
PETE is an example of how slow we are. We’d probably have installations all over if we were at war. We’d have cops back on the beat and half the rest doing something purposeful (like erecting PETE structures?). We’d probably make some decent films. What stops us engaging with change without war?
Allcoppedout's Blog 
I’ve often wondered this…
Ever seen the Ealing movie ‘The man in the White Suit’?
That will give you the reason why governments are not too interested in renewable energy…
They won’t invest because the golden goose of fuel duty is a difficult animal to kill…
I mean, look at trains… they could make a big difference to our carbon footprint, but… to ge to a place where it’s a serious rival to cars, they must be more frequent and VERY much cheaper…
That’s a pipe-dream… the gove would need to spend millions in investment for the rail network infrastructure and… they would loose lots of lovely tax money…
I really am on your side with this one… but it won’t happen until there is an actual need to do it…
Most energy production claims make news and some have been exciting and dramatic. Does anyone recall the cold fusion announcements of the eighties and the press conferences around a beaker of water and electrodes? And who could forget those encouraging wind power calculations for the UK?
The hardened cynic in me recalls a long list of these contenders where exaggeration of their merits has been de rigueur. It is high time for one idea to deliver cost effective applications and I trust WW3 will not be required as an incentive.
The encouraging thing about this one is that it’s clever and basic. Cold fusion first appeared in Nature in 1949. The experiments are now thought to work and there is a claim that fusion traces have been found. This solar stuff might be in roof sheeting in a couple of years.
It should be policy to have all new builds fitted with photo-voltaic panels.
This is the best time as it’s cheaper to install etc.
This isn’t the problem though.. Technology isn’t the issue here, it’s economics.
The biggest buyer of new patents with renewable energy solutions are the oil companies.
Turkeys don’t vote for Xmas…
There is already a technology that requires liitle conversion which could reduce our carbon print.. Diesel engines.
They run happily on sunflower oil. We grow the sunflowers (they capture carbon from the air to grow) and then the diesel cars put it back out, no net increase though..
Anyway.
I agree with you Shijuro.
It is the corruption of vested interests that is holding back the right kind of progress with clean energy systems. The lies of the government and politicians when they claim that nuclear power is a viable green energy, reveals just how barking mad they really are.
I saw in the press recently an article about a
plane that was powered by a solar panel.
Is that the ‘PETE’ technology you mention Allcoppedout?
I suppose the deep point is how we bring about a focus away from the general consuming madness.
The only answers I can think are: education and providing alternate solutions…
The first part of my new degree was paleontology and the early Earth… The thing that struck me most was the carbon balance and how easy it is to upset it. Also, the devastating effects a carbon imbalance causes…
The cynical and selfish way that people have sought to discredit climate models has made people sceptical about global warming…
My take on it is simple: the coal and oil we use today was deposited (in the main) during the Carbonifeous period. It was the trees and plankton capturing carbon over 20-million years… We have released almost all of that carbon in 200-years… Yet people are still sceptical …
Worrying…
Yes I agree, Shijuro.
Education is in a mess though, especially after primary school.
We rarely seem to be able to do what I would call practical reasoning. There are some deep issues from Kant if we could be bothered – but generally do a lot of teaching (say) around spotting signs of child abuse in families, but the real situation is one in which budgets are limited and even recommending fostering is going to cost £24-£54K p.a. and the real decision will be made on whether that can be afforded and even decisions on what to disclose on some of the worst kids to get them in (decisions that may place fosterers’ own kids in danger). We tend to teach as though the ideal is possible. This particular system, stretched beyond capacity already, is now,post Baby P, under much more demand pressure and pressure to cut.
Education needs to help with real problems, but this is much more expensive than using books or electronic alternatives, so we are pressured not to. The kids themselves (18 plus in my case) rarely learn to get into the real stuff as they can pass well with the trite. Good education yes, but not most of what is now being served up.
There has to be balance between the pragmatic and so called ‘luxury’ subjects like Philosophy…
Having a system too much in favour of one will not help us.
I suppose I was lucky, when I was at school we did both…
No matter what, the Earth will roll on… It may be without us though…
So, you think “we” don’t have a future then?
Indeed SNGD – most miss the fact that humankind is optional.
Oh yes, we are not the owners, only the tennants…
We are not the tennants but the GUARDIANS and the caretakers of this fragile earth so many have abused.
I like the Guardian idea in this sense, but suspect the tenant idea is nearer the truth.
No future generation will think of us as guardians or tenants for as long as there are words like ‘squatters’.
Tennants generally do not have much responsibility for keeping the structure of the dwelling in good order.
Sorry to disagree guys, but we ARE the Guardians of this planet at the moment. The responsibility lays with the human species to NOT wreck the dwelling and leave it so damaged and contaminated as to render it uninhabitable.
To claim we are only ‘tennants’ on earth, is to imply that we, the humans, who are at the top of the life form chain, should let some other life form sort out the mess humanity has made on this planet, our only home.
Perhaps the elephants have the answers and solutions!
Hey Shijuro, this earth will only ‘roll on’ IF the Doomsday Machine, the Large Hadron Collider is NOT allowed to continue operating. Foretold knowledge of this machine warned that when first used it would disrupt the world’s weather patterns causing extreme weather and severe flooding all over the globe. This has happened.
IF governments don’t STOP this damn nachine, and it is used at full speed, there will be a terrible catastrophe which will end in the destruction of this planet.
Also foretold, people would laugh at the warning, take not a scrap of notice and just carry on regardless, because the scientists ‘assured’ everyone that their crazy
EXPERIMENT was quite ‘safe’. But it is not…….
Lol do you even know what a hadron is?
The LHC won’t create black holes. Even if it did the mass would be so tiny, it would evaporate due to Hawking radiation a long time (relatively speaking) before any damage is done.
The weather disruption is due to the Earth getting hotter – nothing to do with a machine that colides sub-atomic particles…
For flips sake do some reading…
The man-created blackholes stuff largely concerns work with lasers at really tiny energies. We can probably manipulate and hence build with individual atoms, though such work as has been done is with inert materials. I’m not sure we fully believe in Hawking radiation, though if it exists it would fry us at ‘warp-speed’ – simpler physics suggests energy we are more sure about would get us before light speed. The Frankenstein effect, as SNGD points out is everywhere in the common appreciation of science.
Ah yes, the font of all knowledge Shijuro, or so you assume….
I don’t need to do some ‘reading’ Shijuro, but the government certainly does of Security Service records.
Thing is intel, the world has survived much worse problems than us… But at a cost. We won’t be the dominant species then as we will bf gone…
My I remind you that a number of species have been dominant in the 4.5 billion years of Earth history.
In fact I’m not sure we are dominant now… The micro world is probably in charge… They comprise the vast bulk of the biospheres life and will be here ling after we have gone…
Interesting just what humanity is once one is prepared to think like this SNGD.
Well since the average human has about half a kilo if micro-organisms in/on them that have nothing to do with our evolution, I guess you could say we are colonies…
Humans worry me… Too much brain not enough morality…
Too much confusion of one with the other too.
The world certainly will NOT SURVIVE unless the
scientists are STOPPED from using the Large
Hadron Collider. All your scientific theory is
exactly that, theory and unproven theory.
Historical Intelligence warnings in security
service records, that have been proven accurate and credible on numerous serious incidents, ALSO give
a clear and very strong warning to NOT allow the
Large Hadron Collider to be used. Same Intel also
warns against the continued use of nuclear power
stations for energy, and weapons.
If government are allowed to carry on ignoring the
Intelligence warnings, humanity will be destroyed.
Operation Beelzebub – codename Lawrence -1957-58.
I have a strong sense that there is a perverse non-logic behind much going on in society Intel. I doubt the Frankenstein version of the LHC, mostly because every complex lab experiment I tried died when grounded outside the special conditions I created. Secrecy remains a big problem though.
Governments have indeed gone mad. They are not using common sense, nor logic, nor integrity, nor honesty.
If foretold Intelligence predicted in 1957 the rise in Mulim fanatics and terrorism, plus 9-11, Madrid, 7-7, Bali, Lahore [numerous attacks] Mumbai and loads of others that have been prevented or have failed, including plots against Blair and Brown, plus a 9-11 style attack on the Palace of Westminster, AND the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics…..then one would EXPECT the governments of the world and especially the UK politicians to actually take notice of the Intel warnings about nuclear weapons, power stations and especially about the Large Hadron Collider. This is very serious.
I have no time nor interest in the scientific arguments people put forward to justify the continued use of the LHC. I KNOW that the Intel is accurate and I see the predicted extreme weather and the flooding happening now.
There was also an historical warning about global warming and the danger to the planet from transport, power stations and other industry emmissions, and from intense cattle farming. This was forgotten about for many years by the security service. The government left it to the last minute to try and do something to reduce the gasses, and even that was sabotaged by stupid ignorant people.
It is enough to make one weep…….
I’m not sure the LHC itself is the problem Intel – I’ve been struck for a long time that we have no morality within which to understand science. People who rack on about warnings from ancient text or creationism are no help, nor ones who depict the science like Disney (Gore). We have a chronic religion hidden from many even though it’s in plain sight. It’s the ideology that we must proceed by ‘dirty hands’ – the ideology of this rather than practice.
Well I am sure about the extreme danger from the LHC.
As sure as eggs are eggs.
It is those who try to dismiss the Intelligence warnings [ALL of which have been proved accurate so far] who are the problem Allcoppedout, and dangerous with it too.
There isn’t any more to say on this matter really, because I KNOW that I am right about it, regardless of whatever scientific justifications some may come up with to pull the wool over people’s eyes, whilst they carry on with their mad experiment. I have no wish to be proved right on this one, because if I was placed in the position of saying “I told you so”…..that would mean disaster for this planet and humanity.
There have been far too many foretold incidents that have actually happened, to not take the warnings seriously.
That really is the bottom line ACO.
I’m not sure what you mean by a ‘chronic religion hidden from many even though it’s in plain sight’. Freemasonry?
Druids? Or something else?