Positive aspects to our economic state

Well I am certain that there are many people out there right now that are facing hardship in these difficult times. My heart goes out to each and everyone of you who may be struggling day by day. I try to think towards the positive side of things. Let’s start to consider for a few minutes the positive aspect to our situation though. I stress the “our” part strongly because we are in this together, and not just the United States but all people alike. For many years prior to the current Obama administration we’ve heard about our environment and how if we fail to change our ways we will continue to have a negative impact on the environment.

When I first started to pay attention to the media, blogs, etc… a few years back about the environment and what’s going on with it I think there was a lot of folks out there that took it with a grain of salt, many of which probably still are. I did not, I read, listened and understood as much as I possible could in my limited time. Understanding that what we have to do is not simple by any means, it will be challenging in many different aspects. We are hearing reports of record job loss of ~2.6 million jobs since WWII and manufacturing down to its lowest levels in 28 years. I can’t help but to think about how this reduction in manufacturing and this outstanding number of job losses is helping the environment out. 2.6 million fewer jobs, so are those people not driving back and forth to work now? I’m sure they are still driving around, but I bet not as much. On to the manufacturing down to the lowest in 28 years. Well, what impact is that having on the environment? All these manufacturing plants operating less than they were which results in less CO2 emmisions into the atmosphere.

Now moving on to the future a bit. I’ve been hearing “Green Collar” a bit lately, this has me excited in a number of different ways. It’s sounds kind of cool. First off we are at a point where manufacturing in the United States is at its lowest level in 28 years and yet we have this term “Green Collar” starting to pick up in popularity. Right now I pondering how to get out in words what I’m actually thinking and its sort of tough so I’m just going to wing it and talk automotive for a minute.

We are at the cusp of a technology change over from the standard petrol based engines to alternative options for powerplants on the vehicles. Sure its been slow going for a number of years now with the hybrids. It has to be introduced slowly for a number of different reasons that I won’t get into now. Moving ahead we are going to see more and more all electric vehicles introduced. It will happen slow for a number of years but it will happen. This new breed of electric based vehicles is certainly going to create new jobs in the manufacturing sector. What about the high tech aspect though? Electric vehicles will certainly going to have software embedded all over the place for various purposes. Again this will add different types of jobs requiring different skill sets from the development to the software right to the installation on the vehicle to the training for the technicians for how to troubleshoot the vehicle. 

Oh, the little ones crying. have to go be a dad for a few. brb….

$306 Million in agriculture grants for developing parts of the world

It’s nothing for most of us to walk into the local supermarket and pick up our weekly household food requirements. In many parts of the world this may not be the case and families starve, this hinders their development. As these developing parts of the world continue to mature it is important that the poverty and hunger come to an end. It is commitments like this from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that bring significant opportunities to these developing parts of the world.

Complete article – http://www.gatesfoundation.org/GlobalDevelopment/Announcements/Announce-070125.htm

This gets me thinking about the transportation of foods back and forth to different areas of the world on a global scale right down to the transportation of food locally to smaller regions. As I write this what comes to mind is how we need to map and document our food distributions and consumption. As we understand the data better we will see a clear picture as to where we should focus our attention to improve the deliver of foods to various parts of the world.  Now I’m not necessarily talking about specialty chocolates and frozen pizza’s, what I am talking about are a determined set of foods that are determined to be critical to health of humanity. In some cases that may mean to open new processing plants or distribution centers and in other cases increase the workload of various farms to grow more fruits or vegetables. Sometimes I get the impression looking down at the whole situation that we are not thinking when it comes to delivery of these foods and in some cases it is more about profitability than sustainability. I am certainly not trying to indicate that the companies that take part in this do it for free. It is understood that there are associated costs.

More to come 2/18/2009

Energy consumption and generation

In this ever evolving world of technology we take some things for granted. Let’s discuss for a minute the future of Energy, Energy consumption and Energy generation. As we continue to pay increased prices for Energy (fuel, electricity ect…) we have to take some things into consideration. Now let me remind you that I am not an expert by any means in any of the content that I blog about, I simply have thoughts on how and why things are happening the way they are and at the time they are happening.

We often hear about how we have known for some time about how hydrogen power systems. How the electric vehicles have been around for some time. Solar power is way too expensive for the average home owner to install on their house. If we have known about some of this for a while then why have we not implemented it into the main stream quicker?

Many countries depend on oil from other parts of the world. These countries that sell the oil depend on that sale of oil for their economy. If changes to the worlds dependency on oil happens at a sharp rate it could result in a negative economic impact. The rate at which the world backs off its dependency on oil needs to happen in a controlled manor so that negative affects are avoided as much as possible. Solar power is great, I hear so many good things about it. If solar systems were so cheap to install everyone would do it in a heartbeat. Right? Well, if everyone went out and installed solar panels on their home and eliminated the need for oil and coal power over night, that drastic dependency change on the oil and coal would have negative effects for those economies depending on the sale. In turn the individuals that work in those industries would experience a sudden change and maybe lose their jobs in addition to many other factors.

Hybrid / Hydrogen vehicles are making a big hit and will continue to increase in popularity for years to come. If we made such a sudden change to the automotive industry where as over a short period of time we no longer required the volume of fuel that we currently do, that change would also have an impact on other economies around the world. It simply cannot happen overnight if you think about ever aspect of the industry. The thought might occur that gas stations around the world would no longer be required. What would happen if all these gas stations went away over night? They couldn’t. Maybe you’re thinking that these gas stations should be converted to hydrogen filling stations? Not a bad idea but again, a conversion to hydrogen could not happen over night. Now switch it around a bit and think about this from the perspective of the mechanics that work on the vehicles. We have new technology in these vehicles that will require the technicians that perform maintenance and work on the vehicles. These mechanics will require a skill set that allows them to work on the hybrid or hydrogen powered vehicles, which will come over time.

What we will see continue to happen will be various solutions used to generate energy deployed through out the world. From large wind farm systems that may power cities and vertical farms in rural areas to solar towers that provide power to cities and homes closer to desert areas. It makes sense to implement a larger number of smaller scale systems so that we are no longer dependant on a one type of energy. The systems implemented in the different areas will vary depending on the environment. All of this will bring new job opportunities for the communities surrounding. Now keep in mind that I am not only talking about the US here, but all countries around the world. If you consider that scale then the work opportunities only increase as engineers, R&D, training as well as many other skill-sets will be required.

I did allot of rambling on in this one, I’ll circle back to this later run spell check and all that good stuff…