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    Interesting article by L. Fletcher Prouty. Archived Message

    Posted by Rich on June 15, 2019, 8:27 am

    CITIZEN POWER THYSELF

    Government of the people, by the people, and for the people is one of the fondest hopes of mankind and one of its greatest myths. "Government is always the enemy of the individual."

    Richard Harris wrote recently, adding that "all governments in all places and at all times try to increase their power at the expense of the individual." The recent history of the Energy Crisis bears this out. Government joined with the super monopolies of the Oil Barons to rape the public for the pleasure and profit of billions. Despite the industry propaganda about oil costs and price rises brought about by the scarcity of oil, it still costs no more than twelve to twenty cents to bring a barrel of oil (forty-two gallons) to the surface in most Middle East countries. Nothing has changed at the production end. What is more important is that known petroleum reserves guarantee plenty of oil for a long time to come. In fact, the internal corporate officer's handbook of ARAMCO, the consortium of big Western oil companies, indicates that the big problem is to get the oil out of the ground and sold before other energy sources, such as nuclear power, make it worthless. In addition, oil discoveries in such places as the North Sea, Nigeria, and Alaska have opened vast new fields to compete with Middle East Oil.

    Things have been rigged so that today 77 percent of the energy we consume comes from oil and gas, and 18 percent comes from coal. That is 95 percent of our total energy consumption.

    The Big Seven (British Petroleum, Royal Dutch Shell, Exxon, Texaco, Gulf, Mobil, and Standard Oil of California) own or control most of the oil, much of the coal, and many of the utilizes that burn those fuels and which are attempting to convert to nuclear-power. They have an almost total stranglehold on us. But these companies, big as they are, could not have done all of this themselves. They have had to gain a certain control over the activity of the United States government and of many foreign governments. Right before our eyes our government has become a huge bureaucratic machine which runs by itself and which is subject to control by those forces that have learned how to use it. This is the story of how to beat that greed-driven machine, and attain individual energy independence.

    While commissions and committees have been looking into the history of the CIA to find out how that agency has managed to operate virtually without external controls, they seem ignorant of the fact that it is the nature of our entire government to run by itself, so that none of us knows what is going on.

    If there is anyone who does not think this is the case, let him weigh carefully what we have been subjected to under the guise of an Energy Crisis. In the spring of 1972, the top leaders of the federal government met with more than fifteen hundred of this country's business and intellectual leaders in a great conference, "A Look at Business in 1990". In that conference, attended by leaders of many of the world's largest oil companies; the subject of energy came up only briefly. All of those leaders of government, industry, and academia knew that between 1972 and 1990 energy was not going to cause them any problem. What they were really concerned with was getting Nixon re-elected.

    Less than six months after that conclave, we had Watergate. Then, in the beginning of 1973, certain inside operators began to "program" the government for the coming Energy Crisis.

    Transportation is one of the biggest users of petroleum. As early as March 1973, the prestigious transportation associations began to inform their members that trouble was ahead. One by one, airlines were notified that their long-term contracts for fuel would not be renewed. The procurement arm of the federal government, the General Services Administration, was told as early as February 1973 that the cost of gasoline for its more than four hundred thousand federal automobiles would go up not less than 5O percent by the winter of 1973.

    And then, in October, the Egyptians attacked the Israelis across the Suez Canal and the Arabs established a boycott of oil, just as they had done after the Middle East wars of 1956 and 1967. Only this one was more effective.

    Within weeks Americans were out in the street in long lines at every gas station trying to buy enough gas to get to work. Elderly people died in the cold for lack of heating fuel. Truck drivers began shooting at each other in hostilities inspired by the rapid increase in the price of fuel.

    As the cold, fuel less winter ran on, prices shot upwards until, finally and from out of nowhere, gasoline and fuel oil became plentiful again. Prices had reached a major high. More than $100 billion had been siphoned off into the coffers of oil producers and oil companies, and the shortage ended with almost no corrective action having taken place. Money did it all. Greed did it all.

    In 1974, Senator Frank Church's Foreign Relations Subcommittee on multinational Corporations called in Howard Page, a retired executive Vice-President and Middle East coordinator of the Exxon corporation. Senator Clifford Case asked whether there had been a conscious effort by intelligent men to bring about an increase in the output of oil. Howard Page replied that "the people in the field" had pumped as much oil as they could, but that "when the tanks got full they shut back."

    Senator Case found it hard to believe that the outlying operations just ran by themselves, so he phrased his question differently, asking whether the flow of oil was determined by "the demand estimated by the companies". And then Page gave the real answer to why you and I stood out in the cold at seven in the morning trying to get gasoline. Page replied, "No sir, it was the ships that came in to load the oil." It was not the Arabs who had turned off the oil. It was not the men in the field who had been unable to pump enough oil. It was not even the threat of the Israelis, or any other factor of the war that had shut off the oil. It was the action of those moguls who controlled those huge tankers. The only way oil from the Middle East can reach the markets of Europe and the Western Hemisphere is in those tankers, and the few men who controlled them controlled all of the oil that winter until the prices had reached a point which assured them hundreds of billions of dollars in clear profit in the next decade. And for this we had our Energy Crisis.

    How do we know there is no shortage of oil? The Department of the Treasury publishes a lavish house organ, Treasury Papers. In the August 1975 issue, the Secretary of the Treasury, William Simon, who once headed the Federal Energy Office, announced: Oil production today is nearly five hundred thousand barrels a day below last year's rate and about one minion barrels a day below 1973." In other words, there is a glut on the market, and Simon of all people ought to know that. Or read the new book, Making Democracy Safe for Oil (Atlantic-Little Brown) by Christopher Rand. The whole oil embargo, "energy crisis," and gas pump minuet was directed by men who knew how to control essential areas of government to put over the biggest heist in American history.

    The picture of Arab sheiks putting all of those billions into their own pockets is propaganda. When the Big Seven buy oil from the producing companies they buy from closed corporations such as ARAMCO, which have been created for that purpose alone.

    ARAMCO is the most profitable company ever created by the American free enterprise system. Of course, some of the money paid for that oil does go to the Arab governments, but only a part of it stays there. Some Arabs get rich, but the oil moguls get richer. When you buy gas, your money goes to the oil companies. Then they take some of that money and buy Arab oil, which they distribute at a big profit. The Arabs turn around and buy billions in armaments and that money ends up in the pockets of the defense contractors.

    The Oil Moguls WIN. The Arabs WIN. The Defense Contractors WIN, We LOSE.

    But all is not lost; we've learned something from this disaster. Americans have always been resilient, self-reliant, and independent. We are on the brink of a major breakthrough that would do more to change our lives than the development of the automobile.

    Looking back, we see that the automobile has completely changed our way of life, mostly for the better. But the internal combustion engine as it is now developed has not. That is something that can be changed.

    We have invested more than Five hundred billion dollars in roads and highways since 1920. Our homes have garages and driveways: our schools, churches, and theaters have acres of parking lots: our apartment buildings and office buildings have three and four subterranean floors devoted to parking space. Shopping centers all over the land are paved with acres of asphalt for parking space. We are entrenched in this way of life and now the oil barons, aided by elements of our government, want to beat hundreds of billions of dollars more out of us in tribute to oil. They are not going to get away with it.

    From within the government itself, from the Federal Energy Administration, comes a paper that can change our lives and help us whip the oil barons at the same time. This paper puts forth an array of "Decentralized energy Systems" for the conservation of energy and for conversion to alternative sources. And that is the secret of breaking the grip the oil barons have on us - use of alternative sources. Not just one, but in combination.

    Right now, our households use 20 percent of the energy consumed in this country, and our automobiles use 12 percent. What if each household were energy-independent, and could generate enough energy for normal use of an automobile at the same time? All the components of such a system exist today. Each house could have its own complete energy system for electricity and for heating and cooling functions, in addition to the generation of power for an automobile.

    The basic component of this independent system is a heat storage unit. Energy can be stored as the heat of the fusion in eutectic (melted) mixtures of fluoride salts, some of which have the highest known heat capacity per unit volume and weight. (Fluoride salts are easily available materials.)

    Heat storage acts like a huge battery for heat, just as dry cells are for electricity. With heavy insulation, storage periods of several weeks or even months are possible. Therefore, if a simple solar source is used, focused to one thousand or fifteen hundred degrees, enough heat can be stored each sunny day to carry not only through the night, but from day to day; and once the storage unit is fully charged, it will retain enough heat to drive a generator to produce electricity.

    Thus, solar heat, other heat if readily available, and commercial heat (used as an alternative backup, but not as the main system) are used to prime the heat storage unit. The solar reflector need be no more than twenty to twenty-five square yards. In some installations this could be built into the attic of the house. The fifteen-hundred-degree heat is then transmitted through a heat pipe to the storage unit, which is well insulated and usually situated underground. The fluoride salts do not spoil or deteriorate and may be used for the life of the unit.

    The next major element in this system is a neat breakthrough. Although several alternatives are possible, the most desirable one is the Stirling cycle engine. This unique, non-polluting external combustion engine was invented in 1815 and has been used in fairly large numbers in stationary installations.

    During the past decade, several developers have been working with the Stirling, chief among them is the huge Philips Company of the Netherlands. Under an agreement with the Ford Motor Company, automotive-size Stirlings are operating in a few Torinos this year. (1976)

    The key to the Stirling in this independent household system is that it is pollution-free: it can run independently under normal conditions, and it will run on any heat source of more than eight hundred degrees.

    Thus, heat coming from a simple solar collector is piped to the storage unit, still at approximately fifteen hundred degrees, and then to the Stirling engine. The Stirling then runs the heat pump for heating and cooling, and it runs a generator or alternator to produce electricity. Up to this point, sun-light alone will provide heat, cooling, and electrical power for lighting, cooking, and water heating. The water heater may actually run off the heat of the Stirling engine.

    The versatility of the heat-storage unit is such that it may be used to charge heat-storage cells for automotive use with a smaller Stirling engine in the car, or to charge batteries through the household unit for thermal battery-powered automobiles. In other words, once the basic unit has been installed, most of the energy requirements of the average household will be taken care of.

    So, if the sun does not keep the heat storage unit fully charged, one can simply switch on the standby commercial power - electricity, gas, or oil. In special linkups it might be possible to augment solar power with wind power or geothermal power (steam from the earth's interior). Although people living in northern latitudes get less sun power than in the south, there is plenty of sunlight available for most normal requirements.

    The solar reflector may have to be larger in the north and can be much smaller in the south. Of course, the houses should be well insulated to assure that all energy stored is used fully.

    In this connection, it would take a very poor installation to be as bad as most commercial, central power-generating stations are today. Most of these waste more than two thirds of the fuel they consume, and the customer pays for all of that lost fuel. When you use the energy of one gallon of oil, you pay for three.

    The simplicity of this alternative system and its relative low cost commend it more than anything else. Estimates of first costs for a house of average quality constructed in 1973, measuring fifteen hundred square feet, and reasonably well insulated, is well under ten thousand dollars. Let's look at some of the specific prices.

    For a simple, flat-plate solar collector system (nothing but flat sheets on a roof), overall commercial energy consumption would be reduced to one half or even a bit less for a first cost of five thousand to nine thousand dollars. By contrast, the conventional, fuel-powered system with a heat pump will reduce overall commercial energy consumption to one third for a cost of two thousand five hundred dollars, and to one fifth for about three thousand five hundred dollars. With a solar assist for the heat pump (and this has been computed for cold estimates, where the heating load is 50 percent above average), a combined fuel and solar system will reduce commercial fuel consumption to less than one tenth and will cost about seven thousand dollars. Going all the way to zero consumption with solar heat alone would entail a slightly higher initial cost of perhaps eight thousand dollars.

    Keep in mind that these items all replace furnace, water heater, central air conditioning, and costly chimney. Since all of these things are well within the present state of the art, there is no problem with estimating operational effectiveness. However, since they are not now in mass production, their costs are presently higher. Not too many years ago, the air-conditioning industry began with crude and expensive items

    Today, they are skillfully and cheaply packaged. The same is true for television and pocket calculators. The next major industry in this country will be devoted to independent household energy units.

    This is only a beginning. The American way of life has always favored independence and self-reliance. Now that the suburban and semi-rural way of life is a fact, the next step is household independence from pipes, wires, trucks and bills. With adequate figures available, it will be easy to provide homes with well water, clean and non-polluted, and to rig up all other accessories as desired. The sun and the wind are there to be used. Most systems depicted to date have been dependent on direct solar heat. They have not visualized the complementary use of the efficient heat storage units and the storing cycle or similar engines.

    We are going to have to work hard to get this system past big government and the oil moguls. Just think, the Stirling cycle engine is one hundred and sixty years old, but our benevolent manufacturers have not seen fit to put it in our hands.

    With the publication of this article, more than a million people will now know about this combined system, which has been effectively bottled up for years. More than a million people can generate the demand to get something done about it. We don't need the Ford-Rockefeller Energy Independence Agency with its hundred-billion-dollar budget to get this simple idea off the ground. It is here. All we need do is demand that it be made available to all who want it, at a reasonable price and without delay.

    Then we can let industrialists use oil as God intended it to he used - as a simple lubricant. The Arabs can pour it all over the rusting armaments your gas pump purchase money bought for them.

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