One thing is for certain, the age of crude oil is on its way out. People still use gasoline, but electric cars have certainly caught up in terms of power and performance, and have crossed the threshold of cost...they are cheaper to own than gasoline powered cars.
Even with the hikes in power costs across the board, it's still costing less than 3 cents per mile to charge a car battery at home, while it's 3 or 4 times that at the pump, at least.
More people are buying electric cars now, basically every automotive manufacturer is selling whatever they can make, and pre-orders are running in the years for some models.
It's all in the battery technology discovered as a result of the booming cell phone and other portable electronic device market. New technologies sped to market in an extremely competitive field, thus massively increasing power storage on a small scale. Today, cell phones go months without needing to be charged, and laptop computers can run for days.
It was only natural for this to work to automobiles...for in one voice during the oil spike of 2008, and further cemented in 2011 the automotive manufacturers said they were done with oil. They saw the small, light batteries providing such power, and did the math.
It's also caused a boom in the battery and electric motor markets. Lawn mowers, weed wackers, snow blowers, all kinds of things became cheaper to run with equal power.
The cars are great, more powerful than any car I've ever driven, and quiet. In some areas like San Francisco, you can actually hear conversations on the street in heavy traffic.
If the pace keeps us as it's going now...the United States will be a net exporter of oil before the decade is out.
It hasn't been without its problems...for the US has experienced brownouts across the nation as more and more automobiles are plugged into the grid each night...but the rates have gotten so high in many areas solar panels and wind generators pay for themselves, so people install them until the price begins to ease finally.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
12/22/12
Today is the first of a new era, a new age. The change is going to be spectacular and the pace frenzied as we embark into a new frontier.
All of the 20th century has done nothing but prepare us for the monsterous steps we are about to take. We thought that the silicone age brought us the greatness of internet pornography and Ebay, of online chat and text messaging.
Our current usage of the computers we have is akin to cavemen racing stone wheels down a hill...it's nonsense playing around with a life changing technology. It's not useless, not by a mile, because the games we are playing is giving massive monetary injections into the computer industry, creating more and more powerful things.
Since we are so enamored with our new toys, we are willing to trade hundreds or even thousands of hours of our labor for new computers, which provides a massive profit motive for them to make them ever more powerful, compact, and complex.
By this date, machines have become powerful enough to be useful on a scale much greater than we currently view. Computers have added to, or at best multiplied mankind's abilities. We can build things much faster, design things much greater, and communicated our ideas at much greater ease...but these things have only enhanced what we are already able to do.
This date will begin to bring change with exponential speed and greatness. If you are young enough to live to see the changes that today will bring, you are indeed lucky.
The silicone age was but a short transition to the new age beginning today!
All of the 20th century has done nothing but prepare us for the monsterous steps we are about to take. We thought that the silicone age brought us the greatness of internet pornography and Ebay, of online chat and text messaging.
Our current usage of the computers we have is akin to cavemen racing stone wheels down a hill...it's nonsense playing around with a life changing technology. It's not useless, not by a mile, because the games we are playing is giving massive monetary injections into the computer industry, creating more and more powerful things.
Since we are so enamored with our new toys, we are willing to trade hundreds or even thousands of hours of our labor for new computers, which provides a massive profit motive for them to make them ever more powerful, compact, and complex.
By this date, machines have become powerful enough to be useful on a scale much greater than we currently view. Computers have added to, or at best multiplied mankind's abilities. We can build things much faster, design things much greater, and communicated our ideas at much greater ease...but these things have only enhanced what we are already able to do.
This date will begin to bring change with exponential speed and greatness. If you are young enough to live to see the changes that today will bring, you are indeed lucky.
The silicone age was but a short transition to the new age beginning today!
12/21/12
Today was quite a red letter day for mankind. The end of an era, the birth of another. Today ends the Mayan Calendar, but what it really signifies is the cross of the equitorial plane of the galaxy.
It's a little hard to explain, but think of the galactic plane as a clock that the center of the galaxy and the sun make. On this date, the clock strikes midnight and a new "day" begins. This is the day that the path of the sun travels directly perpendicular to the plane of the Milky Way Galaxy.
What will this day mean for mankind? Other than some anticipation of some great celestial event, some significant moment, nothing will be different. There will be no booming voice from the sky...for the celestial clock does not chime like Big Ben.
An event of great significance will occur on this day, but it will be several generations before we will even know what it is.
There will be great dissapointment on this day, for no one knows the single event that will change our lives forever.
It's a little hard to explain, but think of the galactic plane as a clock that the center of the galaxy and the sun make. On this date, the clock strikes midnight and a new "day" begins. This is the day that the path of the sun travels directly perpendicular to the plane of the Milky Way Galaxy.
What will this day mean for mankind? Other than some anticipation of some great celestial event, some significant moment, nothing will be different. There will be no booming voice from the sky...for the celestial clock does not chime like Big Ben.
An event of great significance will occur on this day, but it will be several generations before we will even know what it is.
There will be great dissapointment on this day, for no one knows the single event that will change our lives forever.
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