George W. Bush Foreign Policy Triumph

I just read a great article by Duncan Currie of National Review magazine, I thought I'd pass along some of the highlights.....I wont get into details about U.S.-India relations in 2000-2008 but you can do the research yourself if you are interested.

"Shortly before George W. Bush left office, Harvard historian Sugata Bose told me that strengthening U.S. relations with India 'may turn out to be the most significant foreign policy achievement of the Bush administration.' It is an achievement that Indians greatly appreciate: in mid February [2009], a spokesman for the ruling Congress party said that Bush deserves India's top civilian award, the Bharat Ratna ("Jewel of India"), an honor rarely conferred on non-indians."

"The most historic element of Bush's India policy was a bilateral civilian nuclear agreement, which received final approval from U.S. lawmakers in the fall of 2008."

"The U.S. and India share a host of values and interests. Both are wary of [communist] China, and both are fighting Islamist terrorism that emanates from Pakistan. The Indian diaspora has bolstered cultural linkages, and in recent years bilateral economic cooperation has flourished. Stephen Cohen, a South Asia specialist at the Brookings Institute, reckons that U.S.-India economic connections are 'so strong that they stabilize the overall relationship.'

"In June 2005 [under the Bush administration] U.S. and Indian officials signed a joint defense framework that stated 'as the world's two largest democracies, the U.S. and India agree on the vital importance of political and economic freedom, democracy, the rule of law, security, and opportunity around the world."

"Bush's India outreach was part of a broader Asia strategy that involved engaging China while boosting relations with democracy powers such as India, Japan, and Australia. These countries conducted a joint relief mission with the U.S. following the 2004 Asian tsunami. In 2007 these 4 democracies along with Singapore held [joint] naval excercises."

"In his 2008 book Rivals, former Economist editor [...] Bill Emmott writes that Bush's 'bold initiative' to enhance U.S.-India relations 'may eventually be judged by historians as a move of great strategic importance and imagination.'

Milton Friedman on the old Donahue Show

Milton Friedman on the Donahue Show, just a small segment:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p31-xQ2Rrz4&feature=player_embedded

Tennis racquet frame selection

Tennis racquets are made in many different models and come in different specifications. Finding out which specs best suit your swing style and swing speed is something only you can ultimately determine. Learn about specs and demo (test out) different frames. Always keep track of the specs of the frames you use (i switch frames every 3 years or so). To learn more about specs, learn about racquet tables such as those at http://www.nothingbuttennis.com/ (see links at bottom of their homepage).

Will renewable energy save us?

You may have heard over the past few years the term "smart grid" used by pundits on TV. The term typically refers to installing small computer-thermostats in every home to measure electricity use remotely (as opposed to a meter reader having to visit every property to record meter readings). Access to immediate electrical use information will allow utility companies or government controlled utility entities to alter rates hour by hour, charging higher rates at peak times and lower rates at low demand times to encourage a more distributed use of electricity. The hope is that people will postpone chores like running dishwashers until off-peak hours like the evening. The "smart grid" centralized data program, however, will not solve the supply-and-demand problem, it just tries to encourage spreading out the demand over the 24-hour day.

To increase power supply, you need new power plants. With Democrats in power, power plants such as coal, natural gas (fossil fuel), and nuclear are off the table because they believe in utopian concepts of energy use and consumption. So what does that leave us? Wind and solar and thermal. Thermal is expensive to setup so i wont go into that here, maybe in another post. But the concept is interesting and involves heating water down in the earth to generate steam that can power turbines at the surface to produce electricity. I will comment on solar and wind only for now.

The first problem with trying to develop renewable energy sources is the electrical grid system. You have to be able to transport electricity from the power plant to the consumer, and electricity has to be used as it is produced. If electricity supply drops by more than 5%, blackouts or brownouts can occur. If it goes up by 5%, it can damage electrical equipment. Power plants produce finite electricity but do not produce it like a manufacturing plant. Wind and solar energy is intermittent, the wind does not blow all the time and the sun does not shine all the time (night and overcast conditions). The huge mismatch between supply and demand during certain conditions is the big problem. Estimates are that the typical electric grid cannot have more than 20% coming from a wind power plant because it cannot handle the fluctuations in supply.

Wind and solar power plants have to be built in remote areas where there is lots of raw land and no neighbors or environmental groups to complain. But alas solar arrays or wind turbine towers are all ugly (poor aesthetics) and destroy quite a bit of real-estate, so therein lies a perennial battle.

There is currently one practical technology for storing electricity called "pumped storage". It uses hydrodynamics by pumping water uphill during low demand periods, then when demand is high the water flows down and drives hydroelectric turbines to produce electricity to meet peak demand levels. There are limited sites where this can be done however so this is not widescale product that can solve our problem.

Transporting electricity from solar or wind power plants to the urban grids is a problem. After 300 miles transmission lines start exhibiting serious losses, so the voltage of the lines would have to be increased by 2 (demolish existing lines and build new ones, talk about an expensive undertaking). The cost on a nationwide scale would be in the trillions of $.

In 2008, the Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto, CA, estimated that even with smart grid leveling of demand and even with a potential reduction of current and voltage (from 120V to 114V), electricity use by 2030 would only be 7% less than currently projected. Compared with the cost to install household monitoring, the savings just do not appear to come close to matching the cost.

One possible solution is developing a combination of new nuclear power plants and new solar arrays. Nuclear power can handle the base load, while peak demand is met with the help of solar power during the hot summer days when ACs are running. This solution would not require a costly new grid or costly home monitoring systems. Small solar arrays can be built near urban centers, and today's technology can install a nuclear reactor the size of a garage into a small power plant facility.

The current hype is to "go green" and be energy independent by using solar and wind sources. Nice thought, but we live in the real world, not la-la land, and have to obey the laws of physics and economics. Solar and wind can provide us with at most 30% of what we need, the rest will have to come from somewhere else unless you want to live with daily power outages (no AC, no computers, no internet access, no lights) and high electric bills. Natural gas and oil are still available in abundance here in the USA, clean coal concepts are being developed (still need work), and new nuclear power plants should be considered. When someone invents solar panels that are affordable enough to put on everyone's roof, durable enough to resist hail damage, and with durable batteries in the home, then the equation might change, but by how much, and until then?