Global Economy Bursting?

[Big ole Boy]

Obamanus Speed

.... here is an under-whelming but profound statement ..... I read in Mark Steins' new book "After America" ....

...... "if something can not go on forever, it will eventually stop." ...

... in his new book ..... he mentions that the coming collapse will be much quicker when it hits America .......

... in "Spaceballs" ... (stealing some experts from the book) ..... there is "warp speed" and then "Ludicrus Speed" .......

..... the coming collapse is in "Obamanus Speed" ......

 

[Riick]

It would be hard to put the genie back in the bottle.
But I do think we are going to have to face the absolute necessity of reducing our energy footprint
...far bigger issue in the future than worrying about our "carbon" footprint
...though one would reduce the other.

What about that big ball of yellow light that comes up over the eastern horizon and lights up the world?
It produces as much energy as we're liable to need - at least for the next few thousand years.

Put a satellite into a geosynchronous orbit (stays over one spot) that has a steam engine, or other device that can use the heat of solar radiation to ultimately make microwaves.
Aim microwaves down to antenna farm on ground, and turn that energy into electricity.

Solar radiation at our distance from sun is some 1,370 watts/sq.meter x 2.55 million sq.meters in 1 square mile) = some 3,500 megawatts of power = about 5 typical coal-fired electric plants. (my math may be messed up here, but point is, lots of power to be found)

All the energy we need is just a couple hundred miles overhead.
We "just" need to develop an everyday technology that lets us get there and harvest it.

WIKI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power

OTHER:http://dawn.com/2011/11/14/orbital-solar-power-plants-touted-for-energy-needs/


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[Big ole Boy]

What about that big ball of yellow light that comes up over the eastern horizon and lights up the world?
It produces as much energy as we're liable to need - at least for the next few thousand years.

Put a satellite into a geosynchronous orbit (stays over one spot) that has a steam engine, or other device that can use the heat of solar radiation to ultimately make microwaves.
Aim microwaves down to antenna farm on ground, and turn that energy into electricity.

Solar radiation at our distance from sun is some 1,370 watts/sq.meter x 2.55 million sq.meters in 1 square mile) = some 3,500 megawatts of power = about 5 typical coal-fired electric plants. (my math may be messed up here, but point is, lots of power to be found)

All the energy we need is just a couple hundred miles overhead.
We "just" need to develop an everyday technology that lets us get there and harvest it.

WIKI: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space-based_solar_power

OTHER:http://dawn.com/2011/11/14/orbital-solar-power-plants-touted-for-energy-needs/


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... oil is probably a by-product of solar energy already ..... why don't we just use oil?

 

[Riick]

... oil is probably a by-product of solar energy already ..... why don't we just use oil?

• Because Mr. Obama wants us to cut our carbon footprint?
• Because the oil will run out in less than a few billion years?
• Because our future is not on this one world, and this will begin to get us up, and out.

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[Randolph Kinney]

State approves Baja California wind contract

Green jobs exported to Mexico

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/mar/22/state-approves-baja-california-wind-contract/

A contract to provide San Diego with electricity from a future wind farm in Baja California was approved Thursday by state utilities regulators, despite concerns about pricing.

The Energia Sierra Juarez wind power plant would provide enough electricity to power the equivalent of about 65,000 homes within San Diego Gas & Electric territory.

A 20-year, $820 million power purchase agreement between project developer Sempra U.S. Gas & Power and corporate affiliate SDG&E was approved by a 4-1 vote of the California Public Utilities Commission. SDG&E customers will pay for the electricity.

Several hurdles remain for the wind farm, including presidential approval for a cross-border tie-in line and construction of a substation to access U.S. transmission lines. The project is the first stage of more extensive plans by Sempra to install turbines along a hundred-mile stretch of windswept highlands atop the Sierra Juárez in Baja California.

The Sierra Juarez contract offered a rare glimpse of current pricing for green energy. The terms of most power agreements remain confidential for years under rules designed to ensure competitive bidding, but deals between corporate affiliates -- in this case two subsidiaries of utility holding company Sempra Energy -- are made public before approval.

Dissenting Commissioner Mike Florio said the contract's $106.50-per-megawatt price was too high for wind energy and warned that the cost of expanding the state's renewable energy portfolio eventually could lead to a public backlash.

"Sooner or later the costs of these contracts that we're approving are going to come home to roost," Florio said.

Approval of the project's cross-border tie-in line is opposed by labor unions in the United States, environmental groups on both sides of the border and California state legislators who say it would export potential U.S. jobs to Mexico.

__________

As a side note, as the price of electricity goes up, businesses that are sensitive to electricity rates will leave the state and go where the cost of doing business is cheaper. Individuals suffer a double-whammy as they pay twice; once for themselves and again as the cost is passed on when they buy goods and services.

 

[Randolph Kinney]

'Real' trading in U.S. markets is down to 16 percent; the rest is machines

http://www.gata.org/node/11288

NEW YORK -- Trading by "real" investors is taking up the smallest share of US stock market volumes in more than a decade, according to a recent study.

The findings highlight how US trading activity is increasingly being fuelled by fast turnover of shares by independent firms and the market-making desks of brokerages, many using high-frequency trading engines.

Though many argue that such trading lowers costs by narrowing spreads, critics insist that it makes it more difficult for institutional investors to trade larger positions, in turn fueling a rise in the use of off-exchange "dark pools" and more complex algorithmic trading techniques.

The proportion of US trading activity represented by buy and sell orders from mutual funds, hedge funds, pensions, and brokerages, referred to as "real money" or institutional investors, accounted for just 16 per cent of total market volume in the form of buying, and 13 per cent via selling in the final quarter of last year, according to analysis by Morgan Stanley's Quantitative and Derivative Strategies group.

That has fallen from an average of 27 per cent for institutional buys from 2001 to 2006, and 20 per cent for sells over the same period. The highs were at the beginning of 2001, as far back as Morgan Stanley's analysis goes, when buys and sells were some 35 per cent and 25 per cent, respectively.

 

[Terrel L. Shields]

Put a satellite into a geosynchronous orbit (stays over one spot) that has a steam engine, or other device that can use the heat of solar radiation to ultimately make microwaves. Aim microwaves down to antenna farm on ground, and turn that energy into electricity.

And the cost? Therein lies the rub....I don't want a $1000 a month electric bill but that, of course, would save me money because I'd have to wipe the dust off my kerosene lantern and start trying to built a wood fired still to produce methanol or ethanol to run them... Maybe restore an old DELCO windcharger....and the Electric company would cut off the juice.

As far as I can see the carbon dioxide scare is just that...I see no real science there. Geologically far more CO2 existed eons ago. We can deal with a warmer climate far better than we can a return of the Ice Ages which Covered most all of northern states and Canada was basically uninhabitable except along the coasts similar to Greenland.

by "real" investors is taking up the smallest share of US stock market volumes in more than a decade, according to a recent study.

Trading by retail investors is down because most have lost their shirt and recognize that 1% return (which is less than zero return considering inflation) beats losing 40% of your IRA in 3 months like most of us did in the first 3 months of 2009 and last 3 months of 2008. And if you got caught in the "Flash Crash" - which hasn't resulted in anyone having their head handed to them yet- you could basically have your portfolio savaged. It is clear that the culprits are still alive and well on Wall Street.

Tonight I watched a CITI advertisement. It zoomed from one thing to another. If you had turned off the sound, the images suggested that CITI - (claiming 200 years of existance if you unmorph all the changes) built the Panamal Canal, funded the Space Shuttle, calmed hurricanes, and killed the crabgrass on your lawn....go figure. Wall Street feels entitled to fund America and we taxpayers should be happy to bail them out when they "slip up a little." As a commentator said tonight, the industry used to be called the "Financial Services" industry...now they are just the "Financial Industry" that thinks it is creating wealth when, in fact, it can only trade and to trade it needs to create volatility in order to arbitrage the spread. They separate the weak from their money and claim it is an "industry."

 

[Randolph Kinney]

'Gaia' scientist James Lovelock: I was 'alarmist' about climate change

http://worldnews.msnbc.msn.com/_new...lovelock-i-was-alarmist-about-climate-change?

James Lovelock, the maverick scientist who became a guru to the environmental movement with his “Gaia” theory of the Earth as a single organism, has admitted to being “alarmist” about climate change and says other environmental commentators, such as Al Gore, were too.

“The problem is we don’t know what the climate is doing. We thought we knew 20 years ago. That led to some alarmist books – mine included – because it looked clear-cut, but it hasn’t happened,” Lovelock said.

“The climate is doing its usual tricks. There’s nothing much really happening yet. We were supposed to be halfway toward a frying world now,” he said.

“The world has not warmed up very much since the millennium. Twelve years is a reasonable time… it (the temperature) has stayed almost constant, whereas it should have been rising -- carbon dioxide is rising, no question about that,” he added.

He pointed to Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and Tim Flannery’s “The Weather Makers” as other examples of “alarmist” forecasts of the future.

Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring and attribution at the U.K.’s respected Met Office Hadley Centre, agreed Lovelock had been too alarmist with claims about people having to live in the Arctic by 2100.

And he also agreed with Lovelock that the rate of warming in recent years had been less than expected by the climate models.

 

[Terrel L. Shields]

Dr. Willaim Gray predicted that weather patterns (which he relates somewhat to cylical Sunspot activity) would be back to cooler temperatures by 2012. He made that prediction about 2003 or so. He continues to make it and has debated "true believers" like Kevin Trenberth and continues to do so though in his 80s.

The problem with both is that by taking the debates public they lose their credibility as dispassionate researchers - seeking truth without a bias. And the overall issue is serious, should be taken serious, but we need "cooler heads" to prevail and take a real look at what can be done.

I have a problem as basically a math dummy to know little about statistics but the variation in temperature day to day is vast year to year. The "average" temperature from year to year and area to area therefore, varies greatly. Last year was incredibly hot. This spring and winter ditto but 2 winters in a row were record cold here. But that is all "antedotal" evidence...not science.

But I still have a core "problem" with the notion that we can determine minute changes in average temperatures year to year, when such small changes are clearly well within the margin of error from year to year readings....in fact, the changes are so small on average, there is even an issue of how accurate are the reading stations. Many of the weather stations where we have data from say 1950 were in a cow pasture on the campus of some university. Now 60 years later that station sits on an island of grass surrounded by dorms and classrooms and paved parking lots.

When is the last time you saw a parking lot on a University that was not paved? I was looking through my old slides from college days and it dawned on me that the parking lots at my dorm and our science building were gravel not pavement.

 

[Randolph Kinney]

Half of new graduates are jobless or underemployed

How worthless is a college degree?

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-04-22/college-grads-jobless/54473426/1

The U.S. college class of 2012 is in for a rude welcome to the world of work.

A weak labor market already has left half of young college graduates either jobless or underemployed in positions that don't fully use their skills and knowledge.

Young adults with bachelor's degrees are increasingly scraping by in lower-wage jobs — waiter or waitress, bartender, retail clerk or receptionist, for example — and that's confounding their hopes a degree would pay off despite higher tuition and mounting student loans.

While there's strong demand in science, education and health fields, arts and humanities flounder. Median wages for those with bachelor's degrees are down from 2000, hit by technological changes that are eliminating midlevel jobs such as bank tellers. Most future job openings are projected to be in lower-skilled positions such as home health aides, who can provide personalized attention as the U.S. population ages.

Taking underemployment into consideration, the job prospects for bachelor's degree holders fell last year to the lowest level in more than a decade.

About 1.5 million, or 53.6%, of bachelor's degree-holders under the age of 25 last year were jobless or underemployed, the highest share in at least 11 years. In 2000, the share was at a low of 41%, before the dot-com bust erased job gains for college graduates in the telecommunications and IT fields.

Out of the 1.5 million who languished in the job market, about half were underemployed, an increase from the previous year.

Broken down by occupation, young college graduates were heavily represented in jobs that require a high school diploma or less.

According to government projections released last month, only three of the 30 occupations with the largest projected number of job openings by 2020 will require a bachelor's degree or higher to fill the position — teachers, college professors and accountants. Most job openings are in professions such as retail sales, fast food and truck driving, jobs which aren't easily replaced by computers.