The Indie Top 50 Vol. 21

The Indie Top 50 Vol. 21 | Mixtapes | DJ CANNON BANYON (@djcannonbanyon) | Coast 2 Coast DJs


Featuring: Stickman, Various Artists


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Surface Area Required To Fuel The World With Solar

We are not addicted to oil because of a lack of other options, its the obesity epidemic it's causing to "important" peoples pockets. ~Inflewence

According to the US Department of Energy (Energy Information Administration), the world consumption of energy in all of its forms (barrels of petroleum, cubic meters of natural gas, watts of hydro power, etc.) is projected to reach 678 quadrillion Btu (or 7.15 exajoules) by 2030 – a 44% increase over 2008 levels (levels for 1980 were 283 quadrillion Btu and we stand at around 500 quadrillion Btu today).

I wondered what surface area would be required and what type of infrastructural investment would be required to supply that amount of power by using only solar panels. To create fuel that can be used in vehicles and equipment I am assuming that some of the electricity generated would be used to create hydrogen. We should all start wondering about these things since we will have really no other choice* by the turn of the next century.

So to find this out we start with the big number 678,000,000,000,000,000 Btu.

Converting this to KW•h [1 Btu = .0002931 kW•h (kilowatt hours)] makes 198,721,800,000,000 kW•h (199,721 TW•h). This is for an entire year. As a comparison, the average household uses approximately 18,000 kW•h per year (1/11 billion of the total world usage).

We can figure a capacity of .2KW per SM of land (an efficiency of 20% of the 1000 watts that strikes the surface in each SM of land).

So now we know the capacity of each square meter and what our goal is. We have our capacity in KW so in order to figure out how much area we'll need, we have to multiply it by the number of hours that we can expect each of those square meters of photovoltaic panel to be outputting the .2KW capacity (kilowatts x hours = kW•h).

Using 70% as the average sunshine days per year (large parts of the world like upper Africa and the Arabian peninsula see 90-95% – so this number is more than fair), we can say that there will be 250 sun days per year at 8 hours of daylight on average. That's 2,000 hours per year of direct sunlight.

Therefore, we can multiply each square meter by 2,000 to arrive at a yearly kW•h capacity per square meter of 400 kW•h.

Dividing the global yearly demand by 400 kW•h per square meter (198,721,800,000,000 / 400) and we arrive at 496,804,500,000 square meters or 496,805 square kilometers (191,817 square miles) as the area required to power the world with solar panels. This is roughly equal to the area of Spain. At first that sounds like a lot and it is. But we should put this in perspective.

If divided into 5,000 super-site installations around the world (average of 25 per country), it would measure less than 10km a side for each. The UAE has plans to construct 1,500MW of capacity by 2020 which will require a space of 3 km per side. If the UAE constructed the other 7 km per side of that area, it would be able to power itself as a nation completely with solar energy. The USA would require a much larger area and approximately 1,000 of these super-sites.

According to the United Nations 170,000 square kilometers of forest is destroyed each year. If we constructed solar farms at the same rate, we would be finished in 3 years.

There are 1.2 million square kilometers of farmland in China. This is 2 1/2 times the area of solar farm required to power the world in 2030.

Compare it to the Saharan Desert:

The Saharan Desert is 9,064,958 square kilometers, or 18 times the total required area to fuel the world.

By another measure, "the unpopulated area of the Sahara desert is over 9 million km², which if covered with solar panels would provide 630 terawatts total power. The Earth's current energy consumption rate is around 13.5 TW at any given moment (including oil, gas, coal, nuclear, and hydroelectric)." This measure arrives at a multiplier of 46 times the area needed and shows that my numbers are very conservative.

Compare it to highways:

At a density ratio of 800km per 1000 square kilometers and a total length of 75,440km, the overall area of the US interstate highway system (constructed entirely between 1956 and 1991 – 35 years) is 94,000 square kilometers, or 20% of the overall required area for the world. The US also consumes about 20% of the world's energy. (if the efficiency of conversion from solar to electricity was 100%, the area of USA highway would be equal to exactly that required to run the world). Indeed if every nation were to embark on a state program of the scale of the US highway system we could be finished with the required infrastructure in 20-40 years.

Compare it to golf courses:

The typical golf course covers about a square kilometer. We have 40,000 of them around the world being meticulously maintained. If the same could be said for solar farms we would be almost 10% of the way there.

Also remember that we are working here with a worst case scenario based on projections for the year 2030 that assume a lot about growth. What could we do to lower the overall Btu load? And what other sources of clean energy could contribute to lower the area needed for solar panels?

Wave:

World wave energy potential = 2,100,000,000,000 KW•h (2,100 TW•h) or 1% of the required load.

Wind:

A 5 MW turbine can be expected to produce 17 GWh per year (they are 40% effective from their peak rated capacity – 5 MW x 365 x 24 = 43.8 GWh). Therefore, it would require 11,748,294 of the 5 MW capacity turbines to create the same yearly output. There are 500 million cars in the world so it's not like that's an unattainable goal from a manufacturing standpoint. And each 5 MW turbine is a 30 year lifespan money making machine for whoever buys it. The same can not be said for my car. But if we can build 90,000 Cape Wind size installations, we would be there on wind alone. Based on that installation, each turbine requires 1/2 square mile of area for offshore sites. This would require 5.85 million square kilometers for 2030 world energy needs.

Here is a graphic for wind based on the notes above. The area in the North Sea is taken directly from the OMA proposal by Rem Koolhaas the pdf of which can be seen here.

Existing Hydroelectric:

I say existing hydroelectric because it would be damaging to the environment to construct more dams on rivers. Such designs have been shown conclusively to have a deleterious effects on the ecosystems of the watersheds that are fed by the existing river.

As of 2004, hydroelectric power accounted for 6% of the energy production in the world. A conversion of this percentage into energy capacity makes 28 quadrillion Btu (492 quadrillion Btu x 6%). As a percentage of 2030 levels and accounting, this would be more like 4% and accounting for a hopeful decommissioning of existing dams, let's assume 2%.

So these other sources together have the potential to reduce the area required by 5% – 25% based on the amount of wind power we tap into. Solar panels are really going to have to do the vast majority of the work but a sustainable solution is going to require a great mix of solutions that are diversified as much as possible.

The technologies are improving and the efficiencies are getting greater. We must make it our goal to by the end of this century construct the area required by at the same time reducing our demand and by starting the necessary infrastructure projects today everywhere around the world. Otherwise the consequences are unthinkable.

*As for nuclear power, it currently produces 2.5% of the world's energy or 10 quadrillion Btu per year. In 2008, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) predicted that nuclear power capacity could double by 2030, though that would not be enough to increase nuclear's share of electricity generation. As for the non-renewable resource of uranium, according to the nuclear industry's own estimation:

Current usage is about 65,000 tU/yr. Thus the world's present measured resources of uranium (5.5 Mt) in the cost category somewhat below present spot prices and used only in conventional reactors, are enough to last for over 80 years.

80 years does not equal sustainable. And this is only assuming current use rates (the 5% of world energy needs).

An average plant puts out 3 cubic meters of spent fuel each year. Assuming 1000 plants operating around the world (there are 500 today), that would makes 3,000 cubic meters per year. Over those 80 years this would create a volume of 240,000 cubic meters or a cube of 60 meters on each side (bigger than the Pantheon and roughly equivalent to the volume of the Gol Gumbaz Mausoleum. What do we do with that amount of dangerous radioactive material that has a half life of 2 million years?

Updates:

• Many comments have to do with the distribution of energy. I reiterate that I am in favor of a maximizing of diversity of clean energy technologies and of points of generation. For example, if we use the figure of 6 billion people in the world, and if over the course of each person's lifetime they would be responsible for creating a panel to use their equal share of the worldwide demand (never mind the non-equal distribution) then we would each be in for a 9m x 9m square, or something that gives off 33,000 kW•h per year. With a typical home roof installation that assumes 15 kW capacity. Obviously this extreme localization is also not ideal — what is needed is a plan that captures the best balance of centralized/localized and best mix of renewable and clean resources.
• SES technology would bring down the solar area required to 315,000 square kilometers (based on the 629 kW•h per square meter listed on the site sourced as from Southern California Edison and Sandia National Laboratories). This is a 40% reduction just on efficiency of the capturing device. The technology will continue to get better and better…

Source: http://www.landartgenerator.org/blagi/archives/127

Open Letter from Guru's brother (RIP guru)

Harry Elam Jr., Harry Elam Sr., and Keith ("Guru'') Elam on Cape Cod in the 1970s.



EDITOR’S NOTE: Boston-born Keith Elam, who rose to fame as Guru, founder of the rap group Gang Starr and a person who sought to merge rap and jazz,died earlier this week. His brother, Harry, a distinguished professor of drama at Stanford, has written this remembrance).


Harry Elam

“Positivity, that’s how I’m livin..’” So goes the lyric from my brother’s early hip-hop song, “Positivity.” My brother Keith Elam, the hip-hop artist known as GURU—Gifted Unlimited Rhymes Universal—died this week at the too-young age of 48 because of complications from cancer. ‘Positivity’ was what he sought to bring to the music and to his life, and for me that will be a large part of his legacy.

In February of this year, my brother went into a coma, and I traveled across the country from my home in California to see him. At his bedside, I stood and stared at his overly frail frame, his head that he had kept clean-shaven for the last 20 years uncommonly covered with hair, his body connected to a sea of tubes and wires. I listened to the whirl of machines around us and took his hand. As I did, my mind flashed back to now-distant times, so many memories. And I saw us as teenagers at the beach on Cape Cod playing in the water together. And I saw us as boys, driving to school. My brother was five years younger than me, so we attended the same school only for one year — my senior year, his seventh-grade year — at Noble and Greenough School, and I would often drive us both to school. Invariably, I made us late, yet my brother, never as stressed as me, was always impressively calm. At school he endured the jests and teasing from the other boys about being my “little brother.” I was president of the school and had charted a certain path at Nobles. But my brother found his own creative route at school, as he would throughout his life. His journey was never easy, never direct, but inventive. Through it all he remained fiercely determined with a clear and strong sense of self.

Over the years I had proudly watched my brother perform in a wide variety of contexts. While at Nobles, we had a black theatre troupe known as “the Family.” In 1973, we put on a play entitled ”A Medal for Willie,” by William Branch, and because he was only in the seventh grade, Keith played only a small role, but even then you could see his flair for performance, his comfort on the stage. At home, our older sister Patricia would teach him the latest dances, and he would execute them with verve as I watched from the sidelines, impressed with his moves, and not without a few twinges of jealousy since I’ve always had two left feet. As a teenager he raced as a speed skater. I do not remember how he became involved in the sport; I only remember traveling with my family to watch his meets in the suburbs of Boston. I do not remember if he won or lost, I do know that he always competed with great ferocity and commitment.

When he announced to me that he was dropping out of graduate school at the Fashion Institute of Technology to pursue a career in rap, I thought he was making a grave mistake and warned him against it. But as always he was determined, and in the end he would succeed beyond perhaps what even he had imagined. Early on in his rap journey, he visited me in Washington., D.C., over a Thanksgiving weekend. I was teaching at the University of Maryland then, and we went to what was perhaps the most dreadful party we had ever attended. As we hastened out the door, I apologized for bringing him to this party. My brother replied “let’s write a rap song about it,” and we did. The lyrics made us laugh as we collaborated on the rhyme scheme and rode off into the D.C. night. It is one of my fondest memories, this spontaneous brotherly moment of collaboration and play.

Keith’s big break came with Spike Lee’s film ”Mo’ Better Blues,” with his song “A Jazz Thing” underscoring the credits. I watched that film over and over again just to hear my brother at its end. Soon he was on to creating his first Jazzmatazz album with others to follow, and he became credited for creating a fusion between jazz and hip hop. To be sure, that fusion owes something to our grandfather Edward Clark and Keith’s godfather, George Johnson, who introduced Keith to jazz by playing their favorite albums for him. He credits them both on his first Jazzmatazz. That first Jazzmatazz album featured musical heroes of my youth, Roy Ayers, and Donald Byrd, and here was my brother featuring them on his album. And with this success, came tours. I have seen him perform all over the world, and each time he would give a shout out from the stage to his brother and my wife, Michele. And I was so proud. It sometimes struck me with awe that all these people were there to see my brother. I watched him deal out magic; he was in his element feeling the crowd, and them responding to his groove. This was my baby brother, the kid with whom I once shared a room. The kid whose asthma would cause him to hack and cough and wheeze at night keeping me up. But when I would complain, my parents would send me out of the room. The message was clear: Love your siblings, whatever their frailties. Shorter than me and slighter of build, my brother suffered from asthma and allergies his whole life, but he was always a survivor.

Back in 1993, when he played at Stanford University, I was in perhaps my third year as a professor there. As I walked into the auditorium that night, the assembled audience of students looked at me with a new awareness, “that’s the Guru’s brother,” not that’s Professor Elam, but the Guru’s brother.

And I was, and am, the Guru’s brother. I admired and loved him deeply, my little brother. And I was and am so proud of him, and how he made his dreams reality . And with the outpouring of love that has crowded my e-mail with his passing, I know that he touched so many with his music. My brother cared deeply about family. He raps of my parents in more than one song. They are featured on his video “Ex girl to next girl.” It was one thing seeing my brother on MTV; it was another seeing my parents. His son K.C. was the joy of his was the joy of his life.

The doctors told me back in February that there was not much chance of my brother recovering from the coma. But my brother has always been a fighter, always been one to overcome surprising adversities, so this seemed just one more. We prayed that he would again prevail. But it was not to be. Still his drive, his spirit, his energy, his positivity will live on, and so will his music. “that’s how I’m livin…”

Harry J. Elam Jr. is the chairman of the drama department at Stanford University and the author of several books, including “The Past as Present in the Drama of August Wilson.”


http://www.boston.com

Stop Living In a Bubble...R.I.P. Derrion Albert

These are not my words below, but never the less words that I feel are needed and need to be read by everyone, especially black people! As written by Author Moses Miller:

LIVING IN A BUBBLE

I sometimes wonder if many of us are living in a fragile little bubble, so caught up in our own lives that we fail to realize what's really going on around us. Our kids are killing one another at an alarming rate, but some of us only seem to care when it's one of our own who are victimized. Many of our communities are becoming dangerous wastelands, compelling the vast majority of us to strive to move out and never look back. I wonder, does that make us any better than those Caucasians who vacate a community as soon as a minority family moves in?

Countless school districts (partly) responsible for educating our children are inadequate, but what do we do? Most do nothing. A few complain and blame the overburdened teachers, while some others who can afford it go the private school route. I wonder how many of us recognize a need and educate our own children at home, sacrificing our own time and energy to ensure their success? How many of us mentor a child who isn't our own but has a need for guidance, in order to give someone else a chance at success?

Many parents today don't know the first thing about raising a child. A lady told me the other day that she wouldn't be able to get her son to put down his videogames long enough to read my book, The Barack in Me. Meanwhile, when she was talking to me, she was clutching a Game Stop bag in her hand, with more videogames tucked inside. Who's the parent? Who's determining what's vital in your young child's development? Derrion Albert was an honor student who was murdered for no reason whatsoever, by four children. These four children will undoubtedly get charged as men and spend a good portion of their lives rotting away in prison like so many other African American boys.

However, between now and when (not if) the next Derrion Albert is killed, we need to honestly ask ourselves some questions. What are we doing to keep our own children safe? Are we playing an active role in their development? Are we willing to be hard on them if it is for their own good, or do we defer to them when a tough decision has to be made? Also, are we actively engaging other children and young adults who desperately need our guidance?

Our communities were once built on the concept that it takes a village to raise a child. Where's the village? Where are the leaders? As a matter of fact, where are the black owned businesses in our neighborhoods-another issue altogether, but a burdening concern nonetheless.

Hopefully none of our children will be impacted by violence brought upon them by a child who belonged to someone else. Hopefully none of us will ever have to wonder what we could have done differently, what we could have said, or what more we should have done? Five lives ended on the day Derrion Albert was killed. One was lost involuntarily. Four other misguided children figuratively committed suicide that day as well, when they took his life. Sure, they will live on, but trust me, their lives are over. Where were their parents? Where were their advocates and mentors when they needed them? Hopefully the day will never come when we're sitting in a room teary-eyed asking these same questions and receiving no response.

The unfortunate reality is that unless we figure out a way to restore our village through hard work and commitment on all of our parts, one or more of us may be faced with the same pain Derrion's loved ones are undoubtedly plagued with now. A child's life taken by the child of someone else. When will we realize that they're all our children? When will more of us step up and play our part in helping to mentor and guide them all? Today more than ever, it takes a village to raise a child. Please, stop living in a bubble.

Moses Miller

Mind Candy, LLC.

www.MindCandyMedia.com