More than Hot Air

While the Schiavo wingers put on a spectacle that calls on us taxpayers to drill in pristine areas rather than use a tire gauge, there are people of real merit out there working to give us sustainable energy. One group has come up with inexpensive solar units that presently they are teaching needy people in S.America to build and use.

There is a great deal of concern about heating northern houses this winter, and this would go a lot farther than all the wingers' hot air.

In spring 2007, University of California Berkeley Energy and Resources Group professor Ashok Gadgil challenged students in his Design for Sustainable Communities class to come up with an affordable and efficient solar water heater that could be used in low-income households.

The heaters installed in Guatemala have made an important impact on peoples' lives, student says.

The heaters installed in Guatemala have made an important impact on peoples' lives, student says.

Now, a little more than a year later, one team of students has already installed solar water heaters on the roofs of several homes in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala.

They have been so beneficial to the recipients that there are already plans to mass produce the heaters locally.

The team of UC Berkeley graduate students and alumni said they are planning to enter their heater design into a national competition in October.

Though the heater has only been tested in middle- and lower-class residential homes in Quetzaltenango, the team hopes to extend the technology to other developing countries in Latin America, Africa and Southern Asia, said Kenneth Armijo, a mechanical engineering doctoral student currently in Guatemala.

"The more we advance with the project, the more we realize it has an important impact on the life of people and it has a great potential to be replicated in other places around the world," said team member Ernesto Rodriguez, who is working toward a masters in business administration.

Armijo said the team hopes the heaters will stimulate local economies.

"This is a crucial step to not only integrate technologies into the third world for beneficial resources, but to make these resources available sustainably," said Armijo.

Energy can be produced by many ways, and the technology is ready when obstructionists stop promoting the oil industry.

Healthy sources can be found, and are ready and waiting, while the winger reps are still desperately trying to convince the public that they need to keep using the tried and untrue methods that have led us into the present disaster. Listening to Washington Journal this morning, I was amused to hear Rep. Musgrave, (R-CO), insist that the 60 vote requirement in the Senate had been frustrating her for the past 7+ years. She must not have been around much, since we are all well aware that only when Dems took control in 2006 did that 60-vote rule, tantamount to a filibuster, become operative.

As I pointed out yesterday, and previously, lies are all the right wingers have to offer, since the facts refute all their talking points. At one point I did say that leasing increased amounts of land for drilling was the problem, not the solution. Add to that, the right wing too, it's the problem and, most definitely, not the solution. So far they haven't been able to open their minds to the solutions that exist.

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Today is the scheduled date for execution of Jose Medellin.