I have a new headline to suggest for the financial pages.
“Too Panicked To Panic.”
Trying to get my head into any broker/banker’s cranium; that’s how it hits me. Man, there is nowhere to turn, nowhere to invest – nothing for it but to keep finding new ways to pretend it’s all going just fine. Face reality? Disaster. Panic? Disaster. Keep pretending, and do everything possible to keep others pretending? Only choice there is.
Wind power- I’m intimately familiar. I killed 3 wind generators before understanding the problem; stupid engineers (my father was an engineering professor, so I’m familiar there, too.) Industrial design is typically focused on “optimizing’ use of materials – calculate real mechanical needs, then specify the minimum materials and strength to meet those needs.
Except. Oh, that darned real world. Always has some factors you forgot to put into the equations; like – salt spray/corrosion (really happens) – and – storm winds/waves that are higher than expected – by just a little bit. The industry finally caught on to some of that, and now designs wind machines to be stronger “than they have to be” – because; they have to be. They work. We can learn more on that point.
This is where “wave” power and similar projects are stuck at the moment – storm force is spectacular, we’re just not used to designing for it. And unlike air; water is not compressible – so force is different. We might learn.
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