Drive OPEC nuts! Drive Big Oil nuts! Drive Hugo Chavez nuts!

By Si Dunn

According to a recent Christian Science Monitor opinion column, the "patriotic answer" to $4-a-gallon gas is: "Drive less, and slow down."

That simple strategy worked during World War II, when gasoline was rationed and speed limits were lowered. And it worked during the panic-driven 1979 energy crisis, when gasoline again had to be rationed and speed limits had to be lowered to bring demand back into balance with supply.

It isn't rocket science to suggest that making heavier use of the Internet, email and telephones also can help conserve gasoline. More people working from home at least one day a week will lower gasoline consumption and also ease gasoline-wasting traffic jams. Furthermore, having a workforce able to continue business away from the office is a good survival strategy for companies suddenly hit by a disaster, such as an earthquake or fire. Californians have demonstrated the success of this strategy over and over in recent few decades.

The next President of the United States (and it would have to be Obama, not McCain) will need to give Americans a patriotic challenge: Slow down, drive less, and use every technical and common-sense means at your disposal to help push down our nation's thirst for oil. Our nation needs your help.

Congress may have to have the courage to impose some restrictions on highway speeds or higher taxes on gasoline sales (and use the money to fund mass-transit improvements).

American automakers may have to move economical vehicle designs off their back shelves and into showrooms at breakneck speed.

Motorcycles, motorscooters and bicycles may become even more trendy and numerous on the roads.

Perhaps civilian Hummers and oversized SUVs can be donated to the military in return for a tax break and refurbished for combat or for duty as live-fire training targets for pilots, drone operators and artillery crews. We aren't likely to see many solar-powered Hummers festooned with peace symbols and flower-power slogans buzzing down the road.

Speculators and oil executives aside, gasoline prices mainly are a matter of supply and demand. The less we demand, the more supply will remain in the pipeline. And prices will drop.

It should become both patriotic and socially trendy to use mass transit and to shop closer to home and to work closer to home or at home. We also should recall how to walk or ride a bicycle or hitch a ride from friendly neighbors when making short trips.

Neighbors may need to step away from their big-screen TVs long enough to get to know each other and work out schedules for carpooling to shopping centers or grocery stores.

More goods can be ordered online, even from local companies, and carried to you via the U.S. Postal Service, which already is delivering in your neighborhood. Local businesses may have to hire more bicycle delivery riders. You may have to walk a half mile to your next haircut and actually get some beneficial exercise.

The basic goal should be to "Drive OPEC Nuts! Drive Big Oil Nuts! Drive Hugo Chavez Nuts!" by driving less and spending less on gasoline. And this new lifestyle should become a permanent fixture in American culture, even as gasoline supplies once again rise and new energy alternatives such as wind power, solar power and hydrogen power increasingly come on line.

Drive OPEC nuts. Drive Big Oil nuts. Drive Hugo Chavez nuts. We know exactly how to do this, if we will just have the courage of our conniptions. We are rebels and innovators at heart. Instead of Don't Tread on Me, we can fly flags that proclaim Gasoline??? We don't need no stinkin' gasoline! and Let them eat oil!

If we do this, we won't be driving tanks, Hummers, mine-resistant behemoths, and thousands of our young men and young women into any more trillion-dollar battles for sand and Middle Eastern oil.

#

Power from Space: Come Fry With Me…

By Si Dunn

CNN recently has trumpeted a plan by an Indian engineer with Space Island Group to gather solar power from a gigantic orbiting satellite and beam it down to Earth to provide cheap electricity to rural villages in India.

According to CNN, “American scientist Peter Glaser introduced the idea of space solar power in 1968.” Since then, the concept has been studied several times by several agencies and shelved each time mainly because of potentially massive costs.

But the Space Frontier Foundation, “a group promoting public access to space,” thinks this latest scheme to draw electric power from space basically is peachy keen, CNN adds.

Not to sound like a Luddite here, but there is one fundamental problem with this grand plan, which the CNN article makes sound so simple: “The satellites would electromagnetically beam gigawatts of solar energy back to ground-based receivers, where it would then be converted to electricity and transferred to power grids.”

Here’s the problem. The only way you can “electromagnetically beam gigawatts of solar energy” anywhere is via a microwave radio signal or something even higher in frequency, such as a laser beam. And, no matter how narrowly you try to focus an electromagnetic beam, you’re going to get signal spreading and side lobes of energy--maybe only a few gigawatts or so--shooting down at Earth and hitting people, places, animals and random things outside the energy capture areas.

Hey, and what if your giant energy satellite gets hit by a space rock big enough to knock it slightly off course. Then the main beam will shine down on people, places, animals and random things rather than on the intended capture area. And what if radio communications to the errant satellite are lost and it just starts shooting the energy beam randomly at points on Earth until it can be taken out with nuclear missiles or restored to equilibrium by astronauts?

Gigawatts of power hitting you directly from space probably might be a bit more intense than sticking your head inside a microwave oven for the TV-dinner cycle. But even mere megawatts passing through you over long periods of time possibly could have some very serious medical consequences. People are advised to not stand in front of radar antennas for a reason: The antennas radiate brief pulses of microwave radio power measured in gigawatts, and the pulses can cook you or kill you. A similar technique would have to be used to send energy down from space orbit.

Hey, Jack, need some power for your isolated village? Here, have a couple of minutes of brain-frying microwave radio signals. They were supposed to be received only via the special antennas a hundred miles east of you. But the beast is loose, so the power is free. Capture all you can before the satellite wobbles a bit more and cooks the next village, too.

Instead of spending trillions to put more junk into space, why don't we just spend billions on learning how to live with lower energy consumption and route the saved energy to the rural villages that don't have enough power?

#