Disclaimer

I’m not an economist and I do not have extended knowledge renewable energy. Research I did for this short article is very much on-the-surface (front page results only) but figures I’m stating are not optimistic. If two options were presented, I chose the more pessimistic one.

What to do with lots of money

Cost of the war in Iraq (for the US) is roughly $500 billion so far. That’s an insane amount of money. But not really surprising. Taking how long it’s taken to fail in achieving peace, this number will continue to go up.

Hypotheses: The main aim of the war is to secure status-quo (from the US point of view) in the Middle East so that oil production is not jeopardized in the region.

Oil is basically energy in a very portable and efficient form. It can be used to power cars, airplanes, ships and to create electricity. This brings in an interesting question. How else could the US have spent that money to secure large amounts of energy?

In the research I did I found that in the end of 2006, the UK government gave green light to building two large off-shore wind farms, enough to generate energy for 1 million households. Estimated cost of this is £2 billion. That amounts to about £2000 ($4000) per household. As I said before, my figures are pessimistic, I would imagine that building wind farms on land is a lot cheaper. But I’ll use this figure to make sure I’m not being too optimistic.

There are 110 million households (actually a bit less) in the US. 110 million times $4000 is $440 billion. Interesting. So, the price of this war could have been used to provide enough energy to power every single home in the US.

Taking that every single (or almost) home is already powered by other sources of energy, this would most likely leave enough surplus energy to power every single car, train, street light, metro, ship and Google data center. Airplanes are a bit more difficult as you can’t fly while being plugged in and batteries are quite heavy. (Perhaps use the remaining $60 billion to fund research on developing more efficient laptop batteries that can be used as energy source for airplanes?)

Of course, as with every string theory, there is a hole in the middle. Big one in this case. Constructing that many wind mills would be an impossible task. I mean, where would you find enough work force to build them? You’d need at least an army of men to do it.

–kristian

This must be due to the fact that it’s quite rare these days to spot penguins south of 64 degrees*. It makes sense really; polar bears are famous for feasting on small mammals like penguins and then withdrawing themselves under the ever-frost to digest. If there’s no penguins or ever-frost, they must either move somewhere else or die. Full National Geographic story here, including a video.

–kristian

*This is my own personal observation, I have no scientific data to back it up but my old neighbor agrees with me.

Lighten up people, life isn’t all about computers, computer peripherals, computer hardware and over priced computer software. Life is also about life and death. And life in captivity. See this poor panda for exsample:

[update: I stand corrcted, example doesn't need an s]

Panda Demands Abortion

[seems like theonion embed isn't working]

How sad is that?

Peace out,

kristian

Right, so I was in Canary Wharf this weekend for the first time. And it is a mad place. Here’s two things I noticed.

First, and most importantly, look at this:

Canary Wharf at 2:40AM

And I thought that me turning off lights when leaving the room makes a difference. No, it doesn’t. It doesn’t make any difference. According to statistics from BBC, the demand for electricity in the UK is about 358 bn kWh. That is a lot. So me turning off my lights doesn’t make any difference in the big picture. It can help two things though, first it’ll lower my electricity bills. And second, my actions might convince others to turn their light off as well, starting a snowball effect – which is the opposite of the rolling stone effect – in the end leading everybody to turn their lights off.

That picture was taken when we arrived to Canary Wharf. In the morning, I woke up at eight, which was quite early taking that we spent the last night drinking until two. Since everyone else was still sleeping I decided to go and walk around the area. It’s really strange to be outside as late as eight and seeing another soul, and this is London. Well, I saw this:

Ha ha, it’s the last hatch of DHARMA Initiative and it’s in Canary Wharf. That is seriously cool. I bet they have rationed electricity usage better down there than above ground.

Anyhow, serious again. So, I’m a bit worried about all the lights left on and all what were doing to environment. To do something about this, I’ll challenge all the bankers of London. Challenge is to turn off your lights when you leave home to work AND your work lights off when you leave to home. In return, I’ll give an energy saving light-bulb to a person of your choice.

To claim for this, just leave a comment below and I’ll get in touch with you.

Thank you for reading,

admin