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31 Oct 2009 00:22
October 30. Today, energy links. First, Wind powered factories: the history and future of industrial windmills:
In the 1930s and 1940s, decades after steam engines had made wind power obsolete, Dutch researchers obstinately kept improving the traditional windmill. The results were spectacular, and there is no doubt that today an army of ecogeeks could improve them even further. Would it make sense to revive the industrial windmill and again convert kinetic energy directly into mechanical energy?
The best advantage of all-mechanical windmills is that the energy can't be centralized. With electricity-generating windmills, it's possible for a central authority to suck up all the power and dispense it selectively to the obedient. Because that's not possible with mechanical windmills, they are allied to a more decentralized society. Next, an open letter to Steve Levitt, in which one of the Freakonomics authors gets his ass handed to him by simple math, over his argument that solar panels radiate heat and add to warming. I was groping for a good pejorative to call the Freakonomics guys, and realized that the English language doesn't have one. They're not assholes because they're quite friendly. They're not idiots because they have plenty of brainpower. But on the issue of climate change they are using their brainpower to support moral laziness. They caper around pulling facts out of hats and doing tricks with them, and they seem to be increasingly playing to an audience that wants excuses to not make any sacrifices or care about anything.
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