How can a competitor who trails in delegates, popular votes, and states won have the unmitigated nerve to propose to that the front runner serve as her Vice President? One good thing about the long primary contest is that it really does expose candidates for what they are and Mrs. Clinton, you’re suffering from exposure. Obama is not a perfect candidate, no one is. Could he be more experienced? You bet. But of the democratic contenders, one is a leader and one craves power. It’s clear which is which and this is on plain display for anyone who cares to notice.

Given that there is only one viable candidate now, this is the official call for Mrs. Clinton to concede. Continuing to fight all the way down is good for no one, you lost on Super Tuesday and it’s highly unlikely that you’ll be able to recover. The only thing continued campaigning does is provide the opposition with data on what works and doesn’t work. They’re smart enough, they don’t need the help. Therefore, if you want to help your country, concede. It’s time. You might be a good technician, perhaps a Secretary of State or Attorney General, but the Oval Office is not in your future. It’s time to concede.

As the price at the pump continues to rise, the transportation segment looks for more ways to reduce cost of fuel. It is possible that there are a few very simple things we can do that will reduce our gasoline consumption by as much as 10%. Most are simple, most are common sense, and most are very inexpensive. Here are some simple ideas to increase fuel efficiency:

• Remove Unnecessary Mass – Each reduction of 45kg (100lbs) will increase fuel efficiency as much as 2%. “Another good reason to diet.”
• Proper Tire Inflation – This simple item can increase fuel efficiency as much as 3%. Even if you must pay for air, you’ll get a return on your investment.
• Tune Up – Having the right grade and fresh motor oil along with a clean air filter can increase fuel efficiency as much as 5%.
• Drive Sensibly – Interestingly, the thing that is right in our control is the thing that we least frequently do. Drive the speed limit, avoid hot rod starts and stops, and try to use your brakes as little as possible. Depending on your driving technique, this can yield 5-33% better fuel economy.
• Combine Trips – This pre-planning makes it possible to reduce overall driving and fuel demand.
• Don’t Idle – Any stop longer than a traffic light and you should consider switching your engine off; idling simply burns fuel with no forward momentum.
• Alter the Commute – There are several ways to do this including biking to work, taking public transit, telecommuting, and even shifting your work schedule to spend less time simply sitting in traffic.

Try some or all of the techniques above and see how your fuel efficiency changes. Most importantly though, measure your consumption. Before you change anything, establish a baseline consumption level, once that is calculated, make one change and observe the result. Then make the next change and observe the result. In this way, you can make a 10% difference and know which items have the most impact in your situation.

Here are some inviolable rules that people should know:

• Never start a land war in Asia Minor. If you’ve played Risk you know why. Obviously, Bush, Congress, and their lackeys never played Risk.
• Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line. With apologies to Vizzini…
• Crusaders shouldn’t sin. They always get caught.

Somehow I take more pleasure in the scandals when it’s wide stance Senators in men’s rooms, sacrosanct family-first Senator’s visiting prostitutes, or Florida politicians offering money for blow jobs. But turnabout is fair play and few crusaders have been asking for it more than NY Governor Eliot Spitzer. What were you thinking about? It clearly wasn’t that virtually anyone would blow the whistle on him for virtually anything. Apparently he was distracted by high-end tail (one companion’s rate was $5,500 per hour.)

Now that we’re talking about this, where does a public servant get that kind of discretionary income? I think we’ve not heard the last of this particular scandal…The Republican’s love you Spitzer for taking the focus off their faux pas.

Eliot Spitzer signals his largess

This is an old story, but it’s important because it underlines all that is wrong with the last 7 years of executive branch “leadership” in this country. Here’s a timeline to remind us of the events:

• November 7, 2005 – George Bush states flatly “We do not torture.”
• January 25, 2008 – It is disclosed that the CIA waterboarded at least 3 detainees.
• March 7, 2008 – Bush vetoes anti-torture legislation.

It’s clear that either a) the administration has a collective IQ less than room temperature or b) they simply don’t care and will lie at every turn or perhaps c) all of the above. If torture ever produced good results, that would be one thing (it still would be wrong, but at least reasonably sane humans could understand some bit of the inclination to attempt it) but it’s crystal clear that the victims of torture will say anything to stop the torture.

To the Bush administration and anyone else who claims “yeah, but waterboarding isn’t torture.” I extend the following challenge: If you are willing to submit to the practice in question for an extended period of time as practiced in these so-called enhanced interrogations and come out the other end of the process still believing the practice is not torture, I’ll listen to your opinion and consider the possibility that it is not torture. Until that time, there’s no question, it’s torture, plain and simple.

I don’t see any of the defenders of the practice lined up to take the challenge. That must mean it’s unpleasant at a minimum. Terrorists torture. Dictators torture. That’s not what this country is about and we need to get back on the straight and narrow road here regarding basic human rights and rule of law.

We’ve been tracking solar thermal for some time as it is intended to be part of our Sou Hills project in due course. One of the more interesting players to enter the fray is Ausra, an Australian company transplanted to the US and the recipient of substantial funding from Khosla Ventures. Recently, David Mills and Robert Morgan, principals in Ausra, published a paper in which the claim is made that solar thermal could account for the entire US energy supply. Here’s a link to their paper.

It’s not lost on most people that the Sun does not shine 24×7 and, in fact, that it doesn’t shine every day even in a desert environment. Thus the stunningly low capacity factors delivered by solar solutions, both thermal and PV. However, with the advent of storage (water, pumped water, capacitors, and molten salts) this is beginning to change somewhat. The thesis advanced by Mills and Morgan is that an oversized solar array matched with a huge storage system sufficient for 16 hours of operation would be able to produce at baseload levels.

The “catch” to this whole approach is that to make the system work at baseload, a developer has the added cost of sizing the solar array 3x larger than normal and installing a huge storage system. Nevada Solar One is a 64MWe project that cost somewhere north of $250M in capital to complete. That’s around $3.9M/MWe at normal sizing. If we consider that the storage system is “free” and up the size 3x, that’s $750M+ capital cost to get 64MWe baseload generation, or $11.7M/MWe. To put this in perspective, a natural gas fired plant is on the order of $1M/MWe, clean coal is $3M/MWe, geothermal is $3M/MWe.

That’s not to say that the economics won’t change, as solar thermal becomes higher volume in production, the price should drop. If the price drops by 2/3, then there is an interesting discussion to be had, because sunshine is an underutilized resource. Also, we found the discussion about oil in the paper to be specious, less than 2% of the US energy load is generated with petroleum based products. If the authors wish to be taken seriously, they would address the technology vs. coal, nuclear, and natural gas generation as they are the top 3 producers of electricity in the US.

Nevertheless, it is an interesting assertion and it’s clear we can and should do more with solar thermal harvest than is happening today. Let’s hope Ausra and their cohorts can change the economic model to make this option viable.