consuming to invest 15

CONSUMING TO INVEST 15

PV Panels & LED’s

If you aren’t off-grid, PV panels can be a hard sell.  Here you are, paying fifteen cents a kilowatt hour, perhaps twenty in really hard up areas, the whole reason you overpaid by a factor of four for your home was the nearby school and oh yeah, as a bonus you don’t have to live like a bare assed savage and you have city water and sewage and a power pole right outside on the sidewalk, and it just seems beyond retarded to buy a redundant system that performs poorly and costs a lot more.  Until that day that even fifty cents a kilowatt hour suddenly becomes a long ago historic deal unmatched by today’s numbers, which is a little harder to pay for on your reduced wages.  There is always inflation, if nothing else.  But the “something else” is Peak Oil, the frack gas bust, Petro-Dollar end, decaying infrastructure and economic decline.  Inflation ain’t going away, and will get worse.  If I have to write much more to convince you of that, you ain’t no survivalist.  Go back to feeling secure with your two cases of MRE’s and your AR-15, and do nothing else.  It must be nice, living in Prepper Lite Land where nothing really bad will ever happen.  Peak Oil is a rearview occurrence, easily discernable by the plateau of production the last ten years ( and, with “all other liquids” mixed with the “conventional crude” to even make that level stay flat rather than decline-it is more Peak Affordable Oil than just Peak Oil.  If it ain’t nearly free, our economy and even civilization hasn’t been set up to survive on it ). 

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I’m still to this day six months or so later laughing my flat pasty white dimpled ass off  over the fracking oil/gas industry bust.  No one who had seriously studied the issue-and that took only about an hour which just goes to show you how thin this bubble was- ever had any delusion it was ever going to amount to anything.  Just like the quick face plant by the Ethanol Miracle ( the miracle is that we have any corn left for actual biologic consumption ), fracking, a decades old “new technology” ( okay, granted, the “new” part was horizontal drilling, but that didn’t make fracking economical, just LESS of a money pit.  It increased the net gain of energy slightly.  Our industrial economy was built based on Texas crude with a net energy return of nearly 100 to 1.  Fracking isn’t but about 5 to 1.  Without horizontal drilling, less.  Oh, and ethanol?  Only about 2 or 3 to 1 ) is nothing more than scraping the bottom of the civilization’s energy barrel.  Not hot crap new miracle sources.  The Petro-Dollar end is already nigh.  Remember what we had just talked about.  The worlds number two consumer of oil and the worlds number two producer are already trading without dollars.  And both have nuclear arsenals, so no American president is going to say “boo”.  And others countries are already under their orbit.  At the same time, our grip on the middle east fades and the Saudi’s are slowly but surely being left on their own.  How long before the Saudi’s also join the new bosses?  Or, how long before Saudi Arabian oil production is vaporized in a “misplaced” old Soviet nuke explosion?  I wonder who that would benefit?  The New World Order waiting in the wings, perhaps?  It is a miracle it hasn’t already happened. 

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You have to be blind not to notice the entire countries infrastructure collapse.  And, no, it isn’t just the lack of money.  If it was, we would just re-do the Great Depression and rebuild everything while employing everyone.  It is lack of resources, both mineral and energy.  Do you remember the amount of airplanes we built in WWII?  Sixty thousand.  Remember how long it took to build Hoover Dam?  Three years, on budget.  They churned out naval ships in a WEEK.  Nothing is as it was.  Adapt and overcome.  My point here is that all of our crap we built is past its expiration date, and it will NOT be replaced-if we get lucky it is patched.  To include all those hydroelectric dams.  Even if they weren’t all raggedy and decrepit, you still have that little problem of drought.  And weather change bringing far more rain and far less snow.  Granted, dams even out water delivery.  But they can’t produce extra moisture ( the weather changes bringing more evaporating heat ).  And don’t you worry about that silt build up in those dams?  As for economic decline, kicking the can down the road with more debt at this point is, granted, the only choice, but obviously fatal.  The local political units will be right back at 2009 before you know it- broke and desperate for revenue.  Assuming the power is still going, there will be added taxes to it.  Perhaps a lot of taxes ( under the excuse of saving the Earth, obviously.  Nationally the carbon tax probably won’t fly, but locals will introduce their version ).  And the private companies that bring the electric?  Always pushing for rate hikes, always letting maintenance slid to increase this quarters profits.  Guaranteed.  

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Now, after all that, isn’t a few hundred on solar panels seeming like wonderful insurance?  They will pay for themselves ( and their batteries ) quite quickly once any or all of these forces push prices up.  Then, you have free electricity.  Panels are going to be saving you a lot, as long as you buy now as they are practically giving them away from China, before the rate hikes.  You’ll need panels, marine batteries ( I would advise ONLY buying for lighting, not to run the energy pig appliances.  Illumination by solar-real light, not crappy flashlight or camping lantern illumination- is affordable by everyone.  Whole house electric, NOT ) and charge controllers, as well as 12 volt LED bulbs ( now in auto parts stores.  Not all stores sell the white light bulbs, however, so beware what you are buying ).  The regular household LED bulbs, the 110 volt types, are now quite affordable.  When you replace all your incandescent and especially the disaster of compact florescent bulbs,  you will most likely never need to buy another one.  LED’s last forever ( or, until a solar flare, whichever comes first ).  The energy saving on top of that is just icing on the cake. 

END

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