While searching the web to find out what the latest developments in solar technology were, I ran across this article relating to Shell Oils rather disgusting approach to solar power.

In South Africa, Shell International Renewables Limited and Eskom are working on a system to provide electricity to customers in rural and remote areas using solar power collected on their roofs.

So far doesn’t sound too bad does it? But here’s the rub, they’ve designed this system so that the panels and batteries can’t be connected to any other device and only work with their controllers which have a metering unit, security device, token reading unit, and pre-payment device. The unit can not be activated without a compatible magnetic card or token.

I guess it comes as no big surprise that if anyone could find a way to meter the Sun, it would be an oil company.

We made it past June 6, 2006, or 06/06/06.

Here is another interpretation of the meaning of the number.

First, a little background. Some versions of the Bible say the number is 666, some spell out six hundred and sixty six, and still others say that it is three sixes.

There is actually scriptural support for all these interpretations and for the number being 616 rather than 666. The scrolls found from the time of Nero use the number 666, the scrolls found during the time of Caligula use the number 616, and apparently there is a way you can manipulate their names to come up with these numbers. But ancient Greek scrolls have the number written out as three occurrences of the letter that represents six, and since they did not use the Arabic numeric system, this does not equate to six hundred sixty six.

I’m going run with the three sixes interpretation because it is the earliest and I’ve found a meaning in it.

The most abundant and stable isotope of carbon is carbon 12. Carbon 12 has six protons, six neutrons, and six electrons. Carbon 12 has three sixes.

If you look at the major problems of the world today, most relate to carbon, wars being fought, countries being occupied, populations repressed, for one thing, oil. What is oil? Oil is a mixture of hydrocarbon molecules. These are carbon chains with hydrogen atoms attached to the carbon backbone.

Global warming, it’s caused by Carbon Dioxide, which is what we get when we burn any hydrocarbon, oil, natural gas, coal, etc.

So carbon could justifiably be referred to as “the beast”. We are presently utterly dependent upon it, and it is destroying us.

And what of 666 also being the number of man? We are a carbon based life form. So we are largely made of the same carbon, upon which we’ve become dependent, and which is destroying us.

We need to recognize the beast and free ourselves from dependence before it destroys us.

On his syndicated radio show, Matt Drudge was objecting to the news media coverage of the Israeli attack on Lebanon. In particular he was upset with the showing the bloody mangled bodies of Lebanese civilians whom Israel has bombed. The reality is grim. Suggesting that the news media should not cover it is burying our heads in the sand.

We should change that reality rather than ignoring the horror of it. When we invaded Iraq, we invaded a country that had nothing to do with the attack on our nation, a country that did not have weapons of mass destruction, but it was a country that had the second largest oil reserves in the middle east after Saudi Arabia. Our preemptive strike set a rather bad example.

Our presence in the middle east and our bad example has emboldened Israel to pursue the same policy. If you can’t get back at the people who attack you, just kill a bunch of innocent civilians.

An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth only gives you blind toothless people. The present situation is even worse, the Israeli response was not only misdirected, as was our response against Iraq, like our response against Iraq, it was totally disproportionate and has resulted in the injury and deaths of a large number of innocent people.

We need to eliminate our reliance upon foreign petroleum in order to have the possibility of a balanced middle eastern foreign policy.

We also have to get out of this mode of living in fear, whether it is fear of attack or fear of shortages of resources. If we had spent the money that we wasted during the very first year of our occupation of Iraq on wind power instead, we would have displaced the energy equivalent of all of the oil we import from the middle east.

If you are thinking yes, but grid power is not equivalent to liquid fuels, it is true that they are not directly equivalent. However, we generate a large percentage of our electricity by burning natural gas. If we displace the electricity coming from natural gas with electricity from wind, that natural gas can then be reformed into liquid fuels. And actually synthetic oil from natural gas is far cleaner than natural crude in that it lacks any impurities such as sulfur.

All that revenge accomplishes is the perpetuation of human suffering.

We need to evolve spiritually and reconnect with all that is.

We need to change our world view. Without doing this there is absolutely no hope for a better sustainable world. We view ourselves as disconnected individuals competing with everyone and everything for the resources that we believe we need.

We are all part of the same whole. When our actions affect the whole negatively, they affect us negatively. We may see some apparent short term gains, but in the long run our fate is the fate of the whole, everything that is.

We need to shift our focus towards the well being of everything that is, for the entire universe, and then for our planet, and then for our country, and then for our local community, and then for our families, and then for ourselves.

The Bibles’ Genesis story describes the separation of man from God. When Adam disobeyed God, he was afraid and embarrassed. This story is metaphorical. When we do something that in some way harms other beings, we feel embarrassed to admit what we have done, especially to those we have harmed. We feel afraid of retribution. We build a psychic barrier between ourselves and all that is.

This process is self-reinforcing. Isolated from all that is, isolated from spiritual sustenance, we feel empty and hungry. We acquire to feel secure. This drives us to take actions without considering the well being of others.

Isolation from all that is isolates us from each other. We are not isolated physically, but emotionally. We do not feel what others feel. We can not empathize and are more willing to inflict pain on others. We would not willingly inflict pain if we felt the pain we inflicted. We do not feel the joy of others. We are missing so much joy.

Reconnecting is a challenge. In order to be willing to drop the psychic barrier that separates us from all that is, we have to feel that we do not have anything to hide. That can only happen if we are 100% honest with each other and willing to admit and ask forgiveness for our misdeeds. The fear of retribution and social ostracism makes this extremely difficult.

We can make it easier for each other by being non-judgmental and forgiving. This allows others to feel safe and removes the need for a psychic barrier. The more heinous the crime against us, the more we need to forgive. Allowing those individuals to reconnect with all that is, will allow them to feel their victims pain. This will be a more effective deterrent to doing harm than any physical punishment we could humanly inflict.

This will be difficult. Our survival depends upon it. Without reconnecting with all that is, we will not be able to fully adopt the world view that is necessary to achieve a sustainable future.

We need to address population and poverty.

The earth has a finite carrying capacity. It can only support so many human beings at one time. Exceeding the earths’ carrying capacity is harmful to all living things. It is not a sustainable condition and will eventually lead to a painful population crash via starvation and disease.

Population and poverty go hand in hand. With the exception of immigration, all developed countries have a negative population growth. Population is still growing in developing countries where poverty is epidemic.

The global elimination of poverty will result in global negative population growth. The human population will begin to decline globally naturally. Couples will simply have fewer than the 2.1 children that are necessary to replace them and as a result the population will shrink.

The elimination of poverty globally requires a combination of a more equitable distribution of resources and growth of the global economy. Growth of the economy is traditionally tied to an equal growth in energy consumption however there are some exceptions. Energy is one major issue we have to successfully address in order to achieve a sustainable future.

We need to address energy needs with conservation and renewables.

Energy production has to shift from non-renewable polluting fossil fuels such as coal, oil, and gas, to sustainable non-polluting energy sources such as wind power, solar power, geo-thermal power, tidal power, wave power, ocean thermal power, ocean current power, hydro electric power, and bio-fuels.

Energy conservation can reduce the size and expense of this task and shorten the time frame to its’ completion. Energy conservation can take many forms, energy efficient building designs, more efficient transportation, designing our cities to be more energy efficient.

For example, more compact cities with less urban sprawl reduce the transportation energy costs. Designing mixed residential-business neighborhoods, rather than segregating residential and business into separate zones, reduces transportation energy costs by allowing goods and services to be produced and distributed where they are consumed.

One way this may be accomplished is to design apartment buildings with a mixture of residential, office space, and retail space. Put the retail space at street level, office space directly above the retail space, and then living space above the office space. This allows the office space to serve as a noise buffer between retail and other business activity on the street level and affords residents at least a third story view.

Heat produced by lighting or equipment in the business space and office space can be readily vented to the exterior during the summer but allowed to rise in the winter reducing the residential heating costs. The residential units above the office space act as insulation reducing the office space and retail heating costs.

Until our energy production is 100% renewable and non-polluting, there will be a trade-off between the needs of reducing poverty to reign in population expansion and environmental harm caused by utilizing polluting energy sources. We must eliminate poverty and stop population growth as soon as possible, even if it means some increase in energy production and pollution in the short term.

Between 1974 and 2006, the ratio of economic output to energy consumption doubled in the United States. Japan still produces twice as much economic output per unit of energy consumption than does the United States, so there is still much room for improvement in the United States.

Many of the renewable energy sources available to us are intermittent in nature. Germany has invested heavily in solar and wind generation. What they have found is that the geographical distribution of wind generation capacity and solar has provided overall reliable generating capacity. We have a much larger land area here in the United States, so there is even more opportunity to exploit geographical diversity.

The electric power grid must be upgraded in order to make heavy use of renewable energy sources. Converting to ultra high voltage DC transmission can rectify many of the existing grid deficiencies.

To do so we must substantially upgrade our power grid. Using ultra-high voltage DC transmission instead of high voltage AC transmission greatly reduces power transmission line cost and losses while improving capacity and reliability. It also allows the non-synchronous interconnection of grids.

Power transmission lines experience two primary sources of loss. The resistance of the wire causes the wire to heat up and the voltage to drop and power to be lost as heat. These losses are often referred to as “copper losses” even though most transmission lines utilize aluminum conductors. The second loss is via electromagnetic radiation.

A third source of power loss is via coronal discharge but this loss is negligible compared to copper and radiative losses in AC high voltage power transmission lines.

With AC power transmission, radiative losses increase with frequency and voltage. Copper losses decrease with voltage. Thus the design operating voltage of an AC transmission line is a trade-off between copper losses and radiative losses. Losses are also higher in 60 Hz transmission lines used in North America as compared to 50 Hz transmission lines used in some other parts of the world.

With DC transmission there are no radiative losses. This allows the voltages to be raised higher reducing copper losses. Line capacity is higher with a DC transmission line because the average voltage equals the peak voltage. With AC transmission the peak voltage is 1.414 times the average voltage and so the line must be operated at a lower voltage level, equating to lower capacity.

Another advantage of DC lines is there are no losses related to power factor. With AC lines, the load can cause the current to be somewhat out of phase with the voltage. This lowers the power that can be transferred. With DC lines, no power factor issues exist. DC current can’t be out of phase with voltage because there are no phases.

DC transmission is also less affected by space weather. Solar activity induces ultra low frequency current in transmission lines that can destroy transformers at the substations on either end of an AC line. However, in a DC line, these very low frequency currents do not adversely affect the DC/AC conversion equipment at the substations and thus the lines are much less vulnerable to space weather.

Given that the Earth’s magnetic field, which protects us to a degree, is declining in strength, converting our power infrastructure to DC transmission lines now can avoid outages during a future magnetic reversal which is likely to occur.

DC lines also lend themselves well to intercontinental power transmission. The radiative losses of AC lines are extremely high when they are run for long distances under oceans because the conductive salt water acts like a partially shorted secondary winding of a transformer. DC lines suffer no radiative losses and this is particularly significant for undersea power cables.

At voltages above 2 megavolts, coronal discharge losses increase to a level where they compete with copper losses. It is not advantageous to operate DC lines above two megavolts. Sweden operates the worlds highest voltage DC transmission line at 1.6 megavolts.

We should convert our transmission lines to ultra high-voltage DC, interconnect the east and west continental grid via DC transmission lines and consider intercontinental connections. A high voltage undersea transmission line would be practical across the bearing straight.

DC interconnections do not have the problems with cascading grid collapse that plague AC lines because the DC/AC conversion equipment can adjust voltage, phase, and power levels instantaneously. Thus interconnecting the eastern and western grids in this manner would not decrease grid reliability. Converting the entire transmission system to DC transmission would greatly enhance reliability and capacity.

In order to utilize renewables to meet our energy needs, we need increased capacity and reliability of the grid system. It is needed to provide geographical diversity to offset the intermittent nature of solar and wind power generation. Increased capacity will also be required as renewable generated electricity displaces fossil fuels in many applications such as home heating and providing heat for industrial processes.

Load leveling facilities will be required to cover the variable nature of electricity generation from renewable sources.

The switch to renewables will require load leveling facilities. Pumped hydro and Redox Flow cells are potential solutions. Pumped hydro involves pumping water from a low reservoir to a higher reservoir during periods of excess power production, and then allowing that water to flow through turbines to generate power when demand exceeds production. A Redox flow cell is a type of battery in which rather than having solid electrodes and a liquid electrolyte, there are essentially liquid electrodes and a solid ionic membrane acting as the ion transport medium. Redox flow cells use electrodes of liquid vanadium-sulfate in different oxidation states. The power capacity of the cell can be scaled to megawatts. Storage capacity is determined by the size of the vanadium-sulfate storage tanks. This makes this type of cell a practical battery for utility load leveling.

Other options involve the use of smart meters and variable rates so that individuals and businesses have financial incentive to defer loads which can be deferred during high demand periods. Smart appliances which can communicate with the utility can make this more effective than relying on human adjustment alone. Many energy intensive industrial processes can be scheduled for off-peak times and interrupted during a power emergency via automatic load shedding facilities.

We need to re-explore the nuclear option. Fast spectrum reactors can burn existing long term nuclear wastes. New technologies can address safety issues.

The rate at which renewables can be scaled up is not infinite. We need to consider other non-renewable energy sources that might be less harmful than burning fossil fuels with the attendant increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and resulting global climate change, acidification of the oceans, and other negative environmental consequences.

We have created a huge amount of long lasting nuclear waste. We owe it to future generations to eliminate this waste rather than leaving an ecological disaster that future generations will have to address. 95% of the energy generation potential of the original uranium ore is still present in nuclear waste. The spent fuel, laden with transuranic elements will need to be isolated from the environment for at least 20,000 years.

Fast spectrum reactors can greatly reduce the volume waste, extract the remaining energy content, and reduce the time that the waste must be isolated from 20,000 years to 300 years.

Conventional light water moderated reactors generate transuranics during their operation and burn only a small percentage of their fuel. Only select nuclear isotopes can fission through the absorption of slow “thermal” neutrons. Uranium-235 and Plutonium-239 are the most common fissile elements. All transuranics can be fissioned with fast neutrons.

Fast spectrum reactors can burn the transuranics and extract the energy potential remaining in existing spent fuel. Transuranics are the portion of nuclear waste that has a long half-life. Fission products have a short half-life. This is how this process transforms a 20,000 year problem into a 300 year problem. Extracting 19 times the amount of energy from the waste as we did from the initial uranium fuel eliminates the need to mine additional uranium.

A controllable “safe” fast spectrum reactor design exists.

Conventional fast spectrum reactors are difficult to control. Accelerator driven reactors eliminate the potential for a runaway reaction by operating at subcriticality. The reactor is designed so that the neutron gain is 97% of that required for criticality. Remaining neutrons are supplied by a particle accelerator.

The output of the accelerator does not increase with reaction rates. There is no potential for a runaway nuclear reaction. If power is lost the reaction stops.

A fast spectrum reactor with on-site pyrometallic fuel reprocessing eliminates transportation of high-level nuclear waste. Uranium, plutonium, and other transuranics are not separated from each other. They are made into fuel and re-used in the reactor on-site. There is no isotopic purity of the uranium and plutonium. The potential for fuel to be diverted to weapons is eliminated.

The fast spectrum / pyrometallic reprocessing fuel cycle extracts nearly 100% of the uranium or thorium ore energy potential. All of the transuranic isotopes can be used. U-238 can be burnt as well as U-235 and Thorium-232. All existing transuranic waste elements can be burnt.

High grade uranium ores can provide energy for several hundred years with conventional reactor technology. The fast spectrum pyrometallic fuel cycle can extend that to several thousand years. Using lower grade ores, economical with this fuel cycle, can extend nuclear fissions usefulness to millions of years.

Controlled nuclear fusion is the Holy Grail of energy production.

The Holy Grail of energy production is controlled nuclear fusion. There is no melt-down potential, no potential for the large scale release of radioactive materials. Minor releases of tritium is the worst case scenario for a fusion power plant accident. Enough deuterium exists in the earths oceans to provide power for the next 15 billion years.

Science problems associated with controlled hydrogen fusion have been solved. Engineering, financial, and political problems remain. Nuclear fusion plants breed tritium from lithium. There is some question regarding whether the worlds lithium supplies are adequate.

Existing fusion reactor designs utilize deuterium and tritium. These elements are relatively easy to fuse. There are advanced fuel cycles that do not create neutrons and which can produce electricity directly rather than requiring thermal conversion, however, these fuel cycles require higher temperatures and densities than we can presently produce.

Energy production is the human activity most damaging to our environment. Energy is also the predominant limiting factor to economic growth. For both of these reasons clean renewable energy production should be our highest priority.

Most current food production is also not sustainable and environmentally damaging.

We pave over fertile flood plains for housing and commercial development. Then we burn or cut down forests and irrigate deserts to grow food. We over-water and leach minerals out of the soil. We over-fertilize using petroleum derived fertilizers, and turn streams, rivers, and river deltas into huge oxygen depleted death zones extending hundreds of miles out to sea.

Flood plains are fertile because past floods have deposited minerals from weathered rocks upstream. Flood plains will flood again. Rich soil of flood plains should be farmed.

Farmers often grow the same crop year after year which depletes the soil. Over-watering further damages the soil by leaching out minerals. Petroleum derived fertilizers replace lost minerals, a practice which is not sustainable. The leached minerals and fertilizers flow into streams and rivers causing surface algae blooms which deplete oxygen below the surface. We eat the food we grow or feed it to animals, produce waste which usually is inadequately processed, dumping more nutrients into the streams, rivers, and oceans.

We must use our land intelligently. Farm land that is suitable for farming such as flood plains instead of converting forests and deserts into farms. Rich naturally irrigated soil reduces the need to fertilize and irrigate. More complete processing of our sewage can allow the reuse of minerals. We need to stop animal waste from livestock from entering streams and rivers.

Drip irrigation is used in Israel where water is scarce and expensive. Water sensors are buried at a depth corresponding with the depth of the crop roots. When the soil is sufficiently dry to require irrigation, water is dripped into the soil until the sensors detect it and then it is shut off. Dripping rather than spraying reduces evaporative losses. Watering to root depth prevents minerals from being leached out of the soil reducing the need for fertilizers.

Soil can be rebuilt through the use of compost, mulch, manure, and other organic fertilizers. Nitrogen fixing crops such as alpha or clover can be grown and then plowed back into the soil.

Meat production is extremely land intensive and environmentally damaging. We need to raise animals in a way that limits the harm to the environment. The greenhouse effects of methane , cow farts, are two hundred times more potent than carbon dioxide.

We need to minimize environmental damage caused by resource extraction.

Extraction of resources environmentally damaging. We do additional damage when we discard the products produced from those materials. We need to eliminate our waste streams and reduce resource extraction by recycling everything. Recycling is often energy intensive. That limits the degree to which we can recycle. Addressing our energy supply needs will make it possible to increase the percentage of recycled materials and reduce environmental harm.

We need to consider the environmental costs of resource extraction and minimize the damage to the environment and use the extracted materials as efficiently as possible.

This article was intended to be a summary statement of the major problems we must overcome on the road to sustainability and to present some potential solutions.

This article was not intended to be specific, detailed, or exhaustive. I will elaborate on problems and technological or procedural solutions in future articles.

The single biggest challenge we face is to change our world view from one of being isolated individuals competing for limited resources, to a connected focus on the well being of all living things.

Many people oppose movement towards sustainability because they believe it means we must lead a simplified marginal life. In my studies of the issues I have come to the conclusion that all of the resources we need to live a full comfortable life in a sustainable manner exist.

After more than three decades of being immersed in technology, there are things to be said for a simpler life style. Complexity takes away from the human experience of interacting.

I took this picture with a 35 mm Mamiya DTL1000 camera in 1998. It’s not particular relevant to this post except that it’s a pretty picture that seemed in a way kind of dreamy and the setting sun seemed to relate somehow. Click on the image for a larger version.

This is the last dream-centric post before I get into the real meat, what we can do and why we must do it. In this post I am going to relate some dreams that relate to the future. Some of these have come to me like slices of time out of the future, others are more ordinary and probably just the results of some sort of mental extrapolation process. Even dreams involving mental extrapolation are of value because only a small portion of the information processing we do is conscious. Far more mental processing occurs on a subconscious level. Dreams afford us one avenue of awareness of that subconscious processing.

One of the earliest dreams I had that seemed to portray a future event was back during the summer after graduating from high school. This one was more like a normal dream than the “slice of time” format most of my predictive dreams take, but it seems either predictive or psychic.

I was also operating a bootleg AM radio station recently prior to this. After narrowly escaping capture by the FCC, I had shut it down, but memories were still fresh. I dreamt that I sitting playing records and I played an Elvis Presley record and announced it as, “The Late Great Elvis Presley”. When I awoke, this struck me as odd on two accounts. First, I wasn’t a big Presley fan, I think Elvis Presley was good, but not great, Roy Orbison was great. Second, as far as I knew, Elvis Presley was still alive.

At work, I was still troubled by this dream. I told a bunch of my coworkers about it. Around 10:30 AM they announced over the PA system that Elvis Presley had passed away the previous afternoon. He was dead when I had the dream, but it wasn’t on the media yet, or at least any that I was exposed to, until later the morning of the following day.

In a previous post I mentioned a lucid dream in which Germany was re-unified. I had that dream around 1985, the Berlin wall fell in 1989, Germany was officially re-unified in October of 1990.

I had a vision when I was around 16 years old. I’m sitting on my bed down in my room, and all of the sudden I was 40 walking around my current house. This was a short slice of time. It is this form that most of my predictive dreams take. When I was actually 40, I lived the time that I had previously dreamt. I recognized it and knew exactly what would take place.

I’ve had many Deja Vu experiences and I wonder how many of them were dreams like this that I did not consciously remember. I have disproved the hemi-desynch theory.

Brain hemisphere de-synch theory postulates that one hemisphere comprehends an event before the other and as a result the other knows something will happen before it comprehends it’s happening but not before it really happened. That isn’t the case for my Deja Vu experiences. To test this theory, one time I was listening to a talk radio show, and all the suddenly I had one of these Deja Vu flashes and knew exactly what the announcer would say. I spoke it before the announcer. And I heard my own voice before the announcer, disproving, at least in my case, the hemi-desynch theory of Deja Vu.

Since I was very young I’ve had a lot of dreams involving volcanic activity on the west coast, activity that starts out small and builds, and builds, and builds. In one dream, in a location about a half mile away from where I am presently living, there is a short earthquake and a crack opens up in the middle of a culdesac nearby. There is a rushing sound and small rocks and gravel fly up out of the crack. This continues and in a short while there is a cone of rock and gravel tossed up that is about eight feet high.

I’ve had many dreams of being in small towns along the I-90 corridor. In many of these dreams the ground becomes hot, magma oozes out of cracks in the ground, there are small earthquakes, there are volcanic eruptions in the surrounding areas, lava flows threaten towns and force evacuations.

One takes place east of cascades, near where I-82 goes south towards Yakima. Although I-97 is in my mind for some reason even though I don’t think I’ve ever actually driven on that highway. A small town in that area that is north of I-90, looking further north you can see an area that is relative flat and desert like. There is a huge lava flow in that area, it’s become almost like a cauldron, except it’s not so much a collapsed area but rather a large flow that covered a large area of land to the north. It’s still hot, glowing red, and there is a north/south hill like structure and near the base of this structure is where the lava is oozing out, it’s not a violent explosive eruption, the lava is hot and flows easily, not like the thick viscous cooler lavas of subducted continental plate re-melt fed volcanoes that are typical of the Pacific Northwest.

In this small town this large lava flow is visible to the north but does not appear to immediately threaten the town. I am out walking on a sidewalk. It is an old concrete sidewalk with sections broken by tree roots or misaligned by being raised up by roots. There is a sulfurous smell in the air. I reach down and feel the sidewalk for some reason and it is warm to the touch. Then I see magma oozing out of a crack between the sidewalk and pavement and realize that magma is rising to the surface right under the town and it needs to be evacuated immediately. I inform the town leadership which starts an evacuation and then I go to get my stuff and get out of there, and by that time, shrubs and plants are spontaneously catching fire from the heat. I barely get out of the building I was staying in before it is consumed.

In another, volcanoes are exploding along the west coast, not only known extinct volcanoes but mountains along I-90 that weren’t even believed to be volcanic. New volcanic vents are forming all over the place. Again, as with the previous dreams, these eruptions are not like typical northwest volcanoes. They are like hot-spot volcanoes of Hawaii or Iceland. There are no explosions, there is a lot of hot flowing lava, yellow hot at times.

I am trying to escape. I’m in a car heading east on I-90, and I’m just getting past the foothills. There is activity to the south and north visible even in the foothills. My car conks out. I get out on foot because I know I’m dead if I stay where I am. I am following the highway but it has become covered in something that is not small ash but gravel sized volcanic rock. There is lava flowing all over, and I am walking on a volcanic gravel covered highway with lava flows on either side. They rejoin behind me and I become trapped on an island between lava flows, and the lava is rising. The lava flows are too wide for me to jump and I realize that without some divine intervention I will die soon.

Speaking of divine intervention, I don’t know that it won’t happen. I had an event when I was in junior high school that I feel I should relate.

I used to have to walk about two miles to school. I know it was two miles because in order to ride the school bus you had to be two miles away from the school. I lived on the northeast corner of 15th Ave and 90th St NE in Seattle. People on the southwest corner of the intersection got a free bus ride, I did not. I was right on the border of that two mile requirement.

I liked to stay up late and sleep late, a pattern that hasn’t changed even to the present. I’d be ready for school about ten minutes before I had to be there. I ran downhill most of the two miles. The route I would take would be to go down 90th from 15th to 17th, walk 17th to 94th, cut through a park (the one that was previously the clay-mud field where my encounter occurred), then through the Sacajawea playground which would take me to 20th and 96th. I’d go down 20th Ave to 98th St, follow 98th to Lake City way which was a four lane arterial, cross at a cross-walk there, follow Lake City down to Fischer Place, go down Fischer Place to Ravenna, and follow it to 113th which ran between Jane Adams Jr. High and Nathan Hale high schools.

90th Street from 15th to 17th was a long block and down a fair grade. About 50 feet before 17th there was a fire hydrant, and always I’d do a long jump at that fire hydrant. Ordinarily it wasn’t anything exceptional. One day I got a particularly good launch. I pulled my legs tight under me. When I reached the apex of the jump something strange happened. Instead of coming back down, I just kept going at about the same height above the ground, all the way across 17th Ave. When I got to the other side, where the hill drops away a little more rapidly, I started to gain altitude and became frightened that I would just keep going up into the sky and disappear. As soon as that fear hit, I started falling again. I came down to the ground. Then I had to walk back up the hill to 17th.

This happened in 7th grade. I tried for years to reproduce that event and never was able to achieve anything beyond the ordinary again. I believe this was a lesson. It was saying something along the lines of the famous quote, with God all things are possible. Physics do not place as many constraints on our reality as many people believe. The universe is more malleable than most of us know. And if this long jump was possible for no other reason than to provide me with a lesson, then perhaps when I am trapped on an island between lava flows, it will again be possible.

Another dream was set south of I-90, north of Yakima. In this dream, like the previous dream, there was heavy volcanic activity and a large flow north of I-90.

There was a massive underground military facility. A large area immediately below the ground was equipped with living space and military operations facilities. It was provisioned with necessary supplies and facilities to sustain an underground population for a long time. Approximately 500 feet below this installation there was a nuclear reactor which provided power for the facility.

Access to the reactor area was via a large corkscrew like tunnel that was paved with a large road that went down at perhaps a 3% grade. This allowed supplies and materials to be trucked in and out of the reactor area. The tunnel distance of many miles provided a buffer against radioactive contamination in the event of a reactor accident. In an emergency, this space could be used for additional people.

This facility was part of a program to provide continuity of government in the event of a nuclear attack or a natural disaster such as an asteroid strike. It was setup to sustain a population underground for years if need be.

With heavy volcanic activity all around, they were evacuating ordinary people into this facility. People with technical backgrounds were given jobs to do having to do with the maintenance of the reactor or life support systems. I was assigned reactor duty. They would provide on-site training and took me and others who were volunteered for this job down this long corkscrew tunnel road. I awoke before I reached the bottom.

If I had to evacuate from Shoreline, I would have a choice of going south down I-5, east via I-90 or I-2, or north via I-5. It is possible to go west via ferry or south to Tacoma and then west via the hood canal bridge. Both western routes would be unusable during an evacuation. The ferry service would stop or be severely congested. The hood canal bridge is congested under normal circumstances.

In these dreams, a military presence to the south preventing citizens from going that direction. They are serious, equipped with automatic weapons and shooting on sight. I don’t know why US forces would be so bent on preventing people from evacuating as to shoot at them.

I’ve had quite a few dreams of this genre. The dreams differ in terms of specific geographical location, it’s always somewhere in the Pacific Northwest. The route to the south is always blocked. The route to the east is treacherous at best. Going north is never considered.

These dreams are logically consistent, and spatially and temporally contiguous like normal waking life. They lack the “slice of time” property. I believe they are showing potential paths rather than a future written in stone.

Another set of dreams parallels these but they are quite different. Like these dreams, they do involve large scale volcanic activity. They differ in that this activity is predictable and non-threatening. We even benefit from it. We build ski resorts with hot springs that people can soak in after a day on the slopes and utilize geothermal heat for energy generation.

In these dreams, winters are colder than normal. We have regular deep snow in the Pacific Northwest. We adapt ok. My dreams with destructive volcanism are free of snow and rain.

I believe earth is going through a period of rapid change. How earth treats us is a function of how we treat the earth, each other, and every living thing. These changes are getting underway.

I also have dreams involving things leading up to heavier activity. Changes occur to our atmosphere and magnetic field. Extreme auroral displays are so bright that they are visible during twilight and when the sky starts to get light before sunrise. Pre-dawn and post-sunset displays are so bright they rival daylight. As with present day auroral displays, they take many forms, but they are far more intense.

The earths magnetic field is weakening. Minor magnetic poles are becoming more prominent making the field more complex. The weakening of the poles and the emerging prominence of the minor poles is responsible for intense displays. Now, aurora displays at this latitude are usually not intense. They peak between about 10:00 PM and 2:00 AM. Sometimes they last longer but their intensity diminishes. In these dreams they peak just after sunset and before sunrise.

In these dreams I’ve seen substantial atmospheric refraction events. Normally, the sun appears to set somewhat after it physically sets because the atmosphere bends the light slightly. Temperatures differences in the atmosphere can dramatically increase this effect. Mirages become more common and more pronounced. At times the sky will get light much earlier than sunrise, or remain light much longer than normal after sunset.

So far I have written about dreams leading up to major activity and the different paths that activity can take. Now I will speak of what I see after everything has settled down and recovered.

Everything I’ve seen is in the Pacific Northwest, so I don’t have any national maps, nor do I even have a totally coherent picture of this area, but what I have seen involves substantial geographical change. Most notable is a change to puget sound and the land to the west of it, the kitsap and olympic peninsulas and various islands are replaced by north-west/south east fingers of land and water all of the way out to the Pacific Ocean. Most of this land is relatively low altitude and relatively flat, but some of the larger fingers have hills. There are lakes that drain out into these fingers of water. Even the narrow fingers are reasonably navigable which is favorable to shipping and transportation.

Inland from about Seattle’s present shoreline eastward to the foothills is relatively unchanged, the land farther in is flatter but then the mountains where they start are more rugged. The area between Seattle and farther east before the flat area, there are more rolling hills.

Seasons are not significant in the Pacific Northwest. The temperature stays between about 65 degrees at night and 80 degrees in the day. There is quite a lot of rainfall, especially in the mountains, considerably more than we presently get in the Pacific Northwest. The rain tends to dump late at night. The seasons aren’t pronounced this side of the Cascades. There is annual variability of rainfall in the cascades, there is snow in the winter. Overall a more robust hydrological cycle. There are many new rivers and streams. Fresh water is abundant. The new land forms many natural reservoirs. Plants flourish in the moderate temperatures and the increased rainfall.

Cars exist but they are used sparingly. Freeways are non-existent. Surface streets are not particularly well maintained. Since cars at this point are more of a novelty than a mainstay of transportation, it doesn’t matter.

Society is radically different than it is now. People do not spend their time in front of televisions and computer screens, people spend a lot more time interacting with each other and in outside activities. Consumerism does not exist; people consume what they need rather than acquiring countless gadgets that are presently “needed” because the marketers say so.

The Internet and telephone infrastructure is not required for people to communicate. We are no longer cut off from the all that is. As such we all feel what others feel. We can exchange thoughts telepathically. We think in terms of the common good, the all that is. Instead of wearing Ipods, we get together and make live music.

Fences no longer make good neighbors, good neighbors make good neighbors. There is an overall sense of trust and caring between people and there is no crime or war or police or military or jails. Everybody feels everyone else’s pain, and joy, therefore we inflict only joy.

We create only what is necessary for our own needs. Many people grow much of their own food. Considerably less human labor is involved in the maintenance of civilization. We have more time to spend with each other. Goods and services are allocated and distributed equally. People not only leave doors unlocked, they often leave them wide open.

No heating or cooling is required in this region, the temperatures remain comfortable. If you like it cooler, you just live closer to the mountains.

The interesting aspect of these dreams is that over a period of close to four decades, the landscape, roads that exist, type of housing people live in and the society, the vegetation, the climate, have remain consistent.

I don’t know how much of this will happen. I am sure of the “time slice” dreams, but they are only a portion of what I have described. But much of the rest I don’t know if it is all physical or if represents a metaphorical transformation of society rather than physical transformation. There are hints in present geological activity that does suggest we are going to see some kind of increase in geological volcanic and seismic.

This will be my last post about the dreams in this blog unless something comes to mind that is very relevant to the topic at hand. From this point forward I will be concentrating on how we can transform things, how we can create a sustainable positive future.

I welcome any input you may have. If you have similar dreams then perhaps that will be brought up again to discuss the commonalities. The bulk of this blog from this point forward will be dedicated to the getting to a sustainable future.

I really am going to get to the topic of what we can do towards the end goal of living in a sustainable manner. It is important to provide background so that you can understand my thoughts and motivations. This post deals with dreams. If you are not interested, skip to newer posts. If there are none newer this this, come back later, there will be!

About the time of my strange encounter, from about ten years old up until current times, I have had dreams of future life. I do not know if these dreams are the result of something planted in my mind during that encounter, some sort of psychic phenomena, or mental extrapolation. In at least in some cases, mental extrapolation is not a plausible explanation.

These dreams are qualitatively different than most other dreams. Most of my dreams are not logically consistent, time is not contiguous, and space is not contiguous. An ordinary dream might start out in the third party where I am watching a character in the dream and then somehow morph into first person where I become the character. A normal dream will jump from time to time with no intervening period, or from place to place without transversing the space inbetween. The space itself may even be impossible.

When I have dreams involving the future they are qualitatively quite different from ordinary dreams. Predictive dreams are logically consistent. I always experience them first person. They are experienced exactly as waking life.

The point in the future may be anywhere from hours to multiple decades, maybe even longer as I do not know how far out some of the events I’ve dreamt will occur.

Infrequently, I will have lucid dreams. Lucid dreams are dreams in which you become aware that you are dreaming. Usually once I become aware that I am dreaming, I can go anywhere or anywhen, just by thinking about it.

Lucid dreams started in my teens. They were relatively common through my mid 20’s. They have been exceedingly rare since that time. I have never been able to intentionally induce them. I have tried many techniques suggested by people who claim they do so regularly.

I wanted to know if I could get valid information via lucid dreams. I intentionally went some place I had not been but that I could easily drive to. I observed the area in the dream and tried to remember unique aspects of the area. The next day I drove to the location to find it to be 100% exactly as I had seen it in the dream.

I didn’t immediately realize I could go places in time as well as space. In one lucid dream I thought, I wonder if I can go back in time? I experienced something different than I ever had experienced.

As soon as I thought about going into the past, I felt this tremendous backwards acceleration as if I were falling backwards rapidly. Ordinary things in the world flew past me. I experienced traveling backwards in time as if I was falling backwards through a physical dimension. I saw things go by in three dimensions in addition to the motion of travel through time. I saw the universe in four dimensions as if time were a physical dimension. I was able to comprehend my vision of it this way even though I’ve never experienced anything like it. Sounds also passed by as I fell backwards through time.

After what seemed like fifteen seconds, I found myself standing on a brick road at night. There was a telephone pole with a large clear glass incandescent light with a metal reflector over it. To the right on the side of the road a chain link fence with old bi-plane prop planes behind it. They were painted aviation orange and white. To the left a brick building with a light over the entrance that was a small version of the street light.

I feared I may not be able to return to my own time. As soon as I had this thought, I felt myself rushing forward through time. It was just like falling backwards except in the opposite direction and I woke up in my bed.

After I realized I could travel backwards in time, I wondered about going forward. It took a long time to get up the courage to go into the future. I feared seeing my own or humanities demise. The first time I went into the future one week. I looked in the financial section of the newspaper for stocks or commodities that had taken a sudden change in value. When I opened it to the page with the stock numbers were, the numbers changed dynamically as I looked at them.

The next time I went farther into the future. I found myself standing in this big cement plaza of sorts which had stores around the border and some sort of railed transport. In order to determine the date, I tried to look at the date on a newspaper in a paper stand. Like the stock market numbers, the date kept morphing continuously, even the written month kept changing. The headline, rock solid, clear, and bold was:

Great Quake Devastates Berlin, Germany

This was before the Berlin wall came down. Berlin was never referred to as just “Berlin” but rather “East Berlin” and “West Berlin”. Germany was referred to as East and West Germany. The ramifications were clear, German re-unification was going to happen sometime prior to a large earthquake hitting Berlin.

When I related the dream to people, they all said that re-unification of East and West Germany would not happen in our lifetime. Not long after the wall came down. The great quake has not happened, but I believe that it will. The headline was solid and fixed.

That was the last lucid dream in which I traveled in time. I did have lucid dreams after that but traveled to other planets. I went to the moon, Mars, a planet that was 40,000 light-years from earth, and to a planet with two suns.

On the moon, I was surprised that I could breath even though the moon has no air. I wondered why I needed to breath without my body. The moon looked more beautiful than I expected. The stark contrast between the bright surface and the darkness of space was surreal.

On Mars I discovered an old adobe building similar to structures in Arizona. It had open windows and open doors and a dirt floor and no furniture. Outside this building appeared to be high enough for two floors. The door opening appeared to be a normal human height.

Inside, the ceiling appeared to be perhaps seven feet high. I went to the end of the room furthest from the door and wondered how they used the second floor since there was no stairs inside and no openings outside.

I felt myself dissolving as if in a Star Trek transporter beam. I thought to myself, “Aha! This is how they get to the second floor”! The room faded and I was in a dark void. I realized that they were intentionally holding me in this state. I became very angry, “You bastards!”… And with that thought I awoke, or rematerialized, in my bed.

On the next lucid dream, I wanted to explore a planet that had intelligent life. I knew I was going to a planet 40,000 light-years away. Unlike going to relatively nearby places like other planets in the solar system, this was not instantaneous. As with traveling in time, this seemed to take a period of about 15 seconds to go 40,000 light years.

Travel in lucid dream over great distances takes time. I call this speed the speed of thought, and I have calculated that it is approximately 8.4 x 10 to the 10th power times the speed of light. Traveling at the speed of thought takes approximately the same amount of time to travel 40,000 light-years distance as it does to travel 40 years in time.

I found an ecologically devastated planet with ground covered with a short perfect grass like a golf coarse green. There was only one species of trees similar to oak or maple in structure.

Circular huts were scattered. Walls looked like corrugated aluminum. The roof was blue-black and had the same appearance as a monocrystaline contiguous conical solar cell.

An intelligent technologically advanced species destroyed the natural ecology but created a simple primitive ecology that sustained them. They, grass, and the trees, were all the life that remained. I felt great sadness for a dying planet being kept alive artificially.

In the last lucid dream I have had, I visited a nearby planet with two suns. They appeared red and blue in the sky. They were a close binary star system with a planet orbiting their center of gravity. This planet was very dry and desert like with extreme day/night temperature swings. I saw no animal life, only cactus like plants. The cactus cast two shadows, one red and one blue.

I had one waking OBE that was very similar in quality in that I could go places just by thinking about it. I was trying a relaxation technique which works like this: Start with your toes. Feel your toes and be aware of them. Clench them tight as you can and feel the tension, then release and feel the relaxation of the muscles in your toes. Work your way up your entire body, even up to the muscles in your scalp.

I went unaware that anything extraordinary had happened. I stood up and walked down the hall, past my daughters room. I said something to her and she did not acknowledge me. I thought that was very odd, then I looked back at the bed I was sitting on, and I was still sitting. I became aware I was out of my body. I had not experienced an this in the waking state. I had read a about it and heard other people describe being able to go somewhere just by thinking about it, and so I decided that I wanted to go find intelligent life on another planet.

Uncomfortable with the idea of going that far on the first excursion out of my body, I found myself in a sunken basement with windows near the top of the wall in window wells. There was a man sitting on the carpeted floor at a coffee table meditating. There was a telepathic conversation and I knew that he wanted to do the same thing. Next, I am hovering over the fourth planet around Alpha Centauri at a distance similar to the distance of a geosynchronous satellites from earth.

Similar to earth in appearance, it was about three quarters ocean and one quarter land. It did not have polar caps. It had clouds like earth but the planet was much larger, three to four times the size of earth. When you look at a view of the earth from space, the atmosphere appears paper thin. But on this planet the visible atmosphere was perhaps 5% of the apparent diameter of the planet. Clouds at various heights took on a very three dimensional appearance.

I wanted to go to the surface and see what life forms were there, but I felt something calling me back and so returned home to my body. I returned in a sitting up position and my daughter was fighting with my youngest son. A fight which I had to intervene in before blood was spilt.

I wanted to know if Alpha Centauri might be capable of hosting such a planet and life. Alpha Centauri is about 1.05 solar masses. It is believed to be about a billion years older than our sun, and has nearly identical surface temperature and spectral distribution.

Alpha Centauri is part of a two or three star system. The third star is far away and small. It is not known if it is gravitationally bound to Alpha and Beta Centauri. The orbits of Alpha and Beta Centauri are sufficiently distant that stable orbits out to about the distance mid-way between Mars and Jupiter where liquid water, considered necessary for life, can exist.

My next post will deal with the specifics of dreams set in future times.

The purpose of this blog is to help us collectively move towards a better future with a minimum of collective harm along the path. Towards that end I will try to present information about the future as I see it, potential paths we may take to arrive, and technologies and living practices that can help.

I hope that this will be a two-way exchange. Please utilize the comments feature to provide your own input. I will read and respond to comments. I will make available information that you provide that I believe can be beneficial.

Ultimately, what will exist on this earth is a totally sustainable biosphere, a totally sustainable human economy, a change in the focus of our lives from acquisition and survival to meaningful interactions with friends and family. It will be a time of peace and contentment. A time of love and friendship absent of the hatred, violence, and exploitation of today’s world. I am confident this world is coming.

What is in question is the path that we take. The path can be one of relative comfort, love, adventure, fun, zestful living. It can be one of hatred, suffering, struggle, desperation, death. I know which path I would like to take, but it is a collective decision that we are making.

I’m hoping I can convince you to opt for the better path, and you’ll tell two friends, and they’ll tell two friends, and so on and so on… Ok I have seen too many old television commercials. But you get the idea.

There are spiritual aspects to our choice of paths. Our collective intent determines our direction. We need to experience the connectivity of all that is on an intuitive gut feeling level. When we do so, we will realize it is not us against the world, it is all that is choosing what and how to be.

There are practical physical aspects to consider. We have to make choices that are consistent with the greater good. We need to get away from polluting, limited, and unsustainable fossil fuel energy sources and move towards environmentally benign, expandable, and sustainable energy sources. We have to have to be more intelligent in deciding how to use our resources, our land, the oceans, so that we create the best possible world for all living things and a world which is sustainable.

Please check back frequently, participate through the comments, and you can also e-mail any relevant information that you believe will be beneficial.

Thank you.