Modern technical innovations operate unlike the traditional, pre-industrial advances: they too have their phases of gradual improvements based on tinkering and everyday experiences with running a machine or a process. But the initial accomplishments result almost invariably from deliberate and systematic pursuits of theoretical understanding. Only once that knowledge is sufficiently mastered the process moves to its next stage of experimental design followed by eventual commercialization.
That is precisely how Charles Parsons, Rudolf Diesel, and their collaborators/successors invented and commercialized the two machines that work–unseen and unsung–as the two most important prime movers of modern economies:
steam turbo-generators, which still generate most of the world’s electricity and
diesel engines, which power every tanker and every container ship besides energizing most of the trucks and freight trains.
The process of process is also how we got gas turbines (jet engines) and nuclear reactors, and many other taken-for-granted converters and processes.…
Continue ReadingMy recent post at MasterResource, Climategate: Here Comes Courage!, has been picked up in the blogosphere (such as at WattsUpWithThat) and has received several thousand views at MasterResource.
In my post, I profiled three individuals in the Houston area who in the post-Climategate environment have spoken up more forcefully against climate alarmism:
This post by Richard Schlesinger of EnergyBizInsider is reproduced with permission. The problem of rent-seeking by corporations (political capitalism) has been explored previously at MasterResource.
Although the electric industry has endorsed the concept of cap-and-trade as the least onerous approach to carbon regulation, at least one major company endorses it with unalloyed enthusiasm. Exelon not only supports the idea, it stated in a second-quarter conference call to analysts, which it posted to its Web site, that it expects to see a “$1.1 billion and growing annual upside to Exelon revenues from implementation of Waxman-Markey.” Is that number real or simply wishful thinking? Does Exelon know something that’s escaped the rest of us?
Actually, if one makes a couple of assumptions, the potential earnings boost is very real. Here’s how it works.…
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