News about and excerpts from the latest edition of a new book on energy. - Updated September 21, 2007

“A CONVENIENT SOLUTION!”

HOW AMERICANS CAN SOLVE THE ENERGY CRISIS, SAVE OUR ECONOMY, AND HELP REDUCE GLOBAL WARMING IN TEN YEARS.


By Howard Johnson

NOTE: This book should be released by the publisher around the end of February 2008 and be available in bookstores and on the Internet. In the mean time, prepublication copies will be made available to media people who ask for them.

WHAT THIS BOOK IS ABOUT

It is part of a mission I have been on for several years. That mission is to write and speak about practical ways to save us– the US and the world– from the ravages of the petroleum dragon including the pending economic disaster. I will do my utmost to make everyone aware of available options for safe, affordable energy generation and use. I will also try to motivate everyone to demand we adopt these options. The options described in this book are real and practical alternatives to fossil fuels that will:

1) Replace the use of petroleum and coal-based fuels with renewable, non polluting fuels.

2) Build an American energy system that will stop the hemorrhaging of billions of US dollars, mostly to despotic nations that preach our destruction.

3) Build an American energy industry that boosts our economy and provides good jobs for many Americans.

4) Stop the growth of atmospheric carbon dioxide and that possible link to global warming.

5) Accomplish most of this within just the next ten years.

This book describes and promotes several effective new fuel/energy systems to replace the existing petroleum-based system with one that does not use fossil fuels. It describes the benefits of such a system, benefits which are many, varied and have far reaching positive attributes. These include immeasurable economic and political benefits for the citizens of any state or country that adopts such a system and environmental benefits for the entire world. There are powerful and deeply entrenched economic and political forces all over the world that would oppose such a system as it would challenge their power and control over energy. I trust our nation will overcome this opposition and lead the world by becoming the first to adopt such a system.

This new book should interest all of you, regardless of your political or social leanings or agenda. It contains a broad range of information about energy, fuels, power generation, their environmental impact, and associated subjects. It also provides some real answers to the basic questions about this important subject. These answers are ready to implement NOW! Not in decades, but maybe even months. Some are even in use as I write.

This Information should give you some idea what is in the book. Starting with the table of contents, it then highlights some significant excerpts from the book.

VERY IMPORTANT: If you are at all concerned with the energy/fuel crisis or the growing emissions of carbon dioxide and its possible impact on global warming, here’s a way to help!

While I will continue to send copies of this book to any interested individual, group or government agency I can find, I desperately need many more people to provide appropriate recipients. Should any reader of this blog want a hard copy of my book please email me at hobarb@yahoo.com . I would also like you to send me information– address, email, etc.– of any media person, celebrity or politician you might know who might be interested in the energy industry or environment, especially anyone with whom you are acquainted and could get to look at my book. It would be doubly helpful if you could write a letter or send an email using your good name. I would even be willing to write the letter for you to send– or at least provide you with a finished package to sign and send. I would certainly give you total control over any type of contact.

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PLEASE NOTE: I have prepared a lecture on the same subject as the book. I propose to give this lecture to any group interested in learning about the economic and environmental benefits the systems described in the book provide. For information about the lecture, goto http://www.hjacslect.blogspot.com/. Information on how to arrange for me to lecture to your group or organization is also available in this blog.

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EXCITING NEWS: The microturbine power system described in the introductory story, “A day in the Life of a Tribrid Car,” has already become a practical reality and is in use. This proven system provides fuel flexibility impossible with others as it can be fueled by: gasoline, diesel, methanol, ethanol, butanol, natural gas, bio-diesel, propane and even hydrogen. No other currently supported technology can come even close to making this statement. With fuel efficiency more than twice that of more conventional piston engines, low maintenance costs, long life, quiet operation, extremely low emissions and many other advantages, this proven power system could easily be the wave of the future and they are already in production and use. This encouraging development is described in the book with more information to be included as it is received from the developers of this proven technology. Don’t gas turbines dominate aircraft propulsion? This could certainly portend the same for ground transportation in the very near future as quantity production and creative development lower costs and improve performance.

MORE GREAT NEWS: PHEVs (Plug in hybrid electric vehicles) and PEVs (Plug in electric vehicles) are now showing greatly increased interest, development and production, mostly by independent entrepreneurs. Thank you creative technical and business people! While the government spends billions on boondogles and reams of research reports, independent entrepreneurs are actually doing something concrete with real vehicles and real systems for energy storage and distribution. NOTE: This is being done with private money and with little or no tax dollars. Several new and exciting concepts have come to this writer's attention recently and are described in the addendum at the end of the book. More information about batteries and EVs has also been added to the body of the book.

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PLEASE NOTE: The name of this book has been changed several times over my years of research and creative effort put into it. When I read Al Gore’s book, “An Inconvenient Truth” I realized that my book provided the real, concrete answers to important questions he posed and to which he provided no specific answers. I then decided to rename it “A Convenient Solution!” because of the significant answers it provides and of the relations to many of his claims.

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A CONVENIENT SOLUTION! – CONTENTS: (titles may change)

INTRODUCTION AND AUTHOR’S COMMENTS

The Purpose and Background of this Idea and Book
The Hydrogen Economy and the Optimal Energy Economy
This is really about the energy crisis and what we must do about it.
The Optimal Energy Economy - What it is and what it could do
Hydrogen Vehicle Won’t be Viable Soon, Study Says
An Interesting scenario - A day in the Life of a Tribrid© Car
What this scenario could point to
The turbine powered Tribrid© car is here! Well, almost
Off-the-shelf micro-turbines are now ready
Another Scenario of the Future
The Hydrogen Fuel-cell System - lots of hype
Why the hydrogen fuel-cell vehicle may not be all it’s cracked up to be.
A New Process - Hydrogen from Aluminum and Water

ALTERNATIVES TO THE HYDROGEN ECONOMY
Alternate Fuels - Fuels for the Future
Renewable or "RN" Fuel: Economic Boon

OVERVIEW OF MODERN ENERGY SYSTEMS
I Fuels
II Fueled power systems
III Electric power plants

THE TRIBRID VEHICLE OR PHEV
Alternatives to the Hydrogen Fuel-cell Vehicle
The RN Fuel/Electric Economy - Results
Power sources for generators in tribrid© vehicles
Types of Engines, their fuels and generators
Summary of Power Devices & Fuel
A Case for a Gradual Transition - Evolutionary
Where will we get the Required RN Fuel?
The problem of Lack of Glamour & Lack of Cost
Summary and a call to Action
References to further reading
Bibliography and list of Internet links to more information

ADDENDUM: Related articles from the Internet and links to their web sites

National Fuel-cell Research Center at UC Irvine to test new, efficient and clean power generation technology
An Investigation of the Feasibility of Coal-based Methanol for Application in Transportation Fuel-cell Systems
GM Volt Concept Car - Press Release
Tesla roadster - From EP to VP
Japan to set up Public/Private EV Program
Fire fly battery - a radically new lead-acid battery
Back from the Dead – The Future of EV powered Cars
The Electric Vehicles of Today and Tomorrow
GM’s Chevy S-10 Electric - Was it cancelled because it was too Good?
NiMH - Nickle/Metal Hydride Batteries - Why are they not being used?
Altair Nanotechnologies Achieves Breakthrough in Battery Materials
A123Systems Receives $40 Million Investment to Expand Product Portfolio and Scale Manufacturing of Hybrid and Plug-In Hybrid Batteries
Nano technology...Why It Could Be the Biggest Payoff Since the Advent of the Steam Engine
Key word: Nano technology, information technology, industrial processes.
The Nano technology Revolution
Ex-Environmental Leaders Tout Nuclear Energy
New Process generates hydrogen from aluminum alloy
DMF - high energy liquid fuel from sugar, much like gasoline
Ultra capacitors, Dark Horse in the race to Power Hybrid Cars
Ethanol may not be so good for the environment
GM to road test its latest Chevrolet Volt PHEV
EVs and PEVs - Electric vehicle Specs and Web sites.

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A CONVENIENT SOLUTION! – the book – some significant excerpts:

Title page: Some radical, but practical ideas for designing a system to solve our energy problem by replacing all fossil fuels with renewable fuels. This system, from raw material to fuel in vehicles, would also be a huge economic boon and even help solve some of our vexing environmental problems.

Purpose, Page i: The purpose is to propose an effective new fuel/energy system to replace the existing petroleum based system with one that does not use fossil fuels. The benefits of such a system are many, varied and have far reaching positive possibilities including immeasurable economic and political benefits for any country that adopts such a system and environmental benefits for the entire world. I hope the US will be the first to do so.

Page ii: I believe the systems I describe and have outlined in this book to be far better than the hydrogen fuel-cell system in virtually every aspect. These systems will be:

1. Relatively inexpensive to utilize.
2. Far easier, simpler and less expensive to implement than the hydrogen system.
3. Adaptable to and can use most of existing infrastructures.
4. Based on raw materials we already have or can be developed here.
5. Applicable to existing vehicles with relatively minor upgrading.
6. Applicable to existing IC engines of all type with minor upgrading.
7. Developed using existing, evolving technology.
8. A net zero contributor of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.
9. An evolutionary as opposed to revolutionary change - a good start to becoming a constantly improving, adapting system driving a growing and improving technology.
10. An America-based industry with many substantial benefits, social, political and economic.

While the main thrust of such a system is to provide a new, better, less expensive and less environmentally intrusive system for energy and transportation, there are many benefits other than just getting away from fossil fuels. These include positive effects to four of the first seven of the top twenty-two “most serious concerns of the American public” as shown in a public survey conducted by MIT and cited later in this book

Nbr 1 Terrorism - cut off the billions in oil money now going to so many despotic regimes and into funding of terrorism, chiefly to Islamic fundamentalist terrorists, and their fangs would be effectively pulled.

Nbr 3 The Economy - An American fuel industry would be an enormous boon to our economy if it only shut off the hemorrhaging of oil money.

Nbr 4 Unemployment - thousands of new, high paying jobs would be created right here.

Nbr 7 Federal Budget deficit - profits from this new industry would pour billions into the federal treasury - money now going out overseas.

Nbr 13 The Environment - may be far down the list of public concerns, but net carbon dioxide emissions would be greatly reduced if not eliminated.

It might even be a plus for Nbr 2 Health care. The greatly increased stay-at-home revenue could provide funds for better health care.

Page 5: Purpose - to propose timely, affordable and practical solutions to many components of the energy crisis facing our nation including:

1. The growing consumption and dwindling supply of petroleum based fuels in the entire world. This is aggravated by the now rapidly expanding economies of the huge nations of China and India among many others.

2 The growing amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and its link to global warming.

3 The increasingly dangerous transfer of huge amounts of money from the US (and many other free-world countries) to totalitarian regimes that threaten, indeed promise, our destruction.

Page 5: This section proposes solutions in years, instead of decades, with little infrastructure changes using existing technologies.

In short, adopting these concepts and new technologies will:

1. Almost completely replace fossil fuels, petroleum and coal, for transportation and electrical power.

2. Stop the rapid increase of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere.

3. Stem the drastic hemorrhage of money now going mostly to totalitarian nations that vow our destruction.

4. Provide an immense growth in our economy with many high-paying jobs right here in the US. It could very easily be the biggest opportunity for growth in our economy ever and a real answer to many environmental concerns.

Page 9: THE HYDROGEN ECONOMY AND THE OPTIMAL ENERGY ECONOMY
The Optimal Energy Economy is my own name for what is actually the subject of this book. It is the economy that would result from the adoption of the most efficient combination of the systems described herein and other systems yet to be designed and described. The name comes from what I believe to be the heart of any successful system, that being the optimal use and conversion of energy. No matter how you look at it, the entire system is all about energy, its capture, distribution and use.

Energy, like matter, cannot be created or destroyed, only converted from one state or form into another and always on a slightly lower level. Even nuclear energy is merely the conversion of mass, a form of "captured" energy, into "free" or useable energy, usually in the form of heat. In modern nuclear power plants that heat is first transferred to liquid sodium or some other high temperature medium which carries it through very high temperature pipes to a water boiler where it generates high pressure steam. The steam goes through a turbine which is connected to an electric generator. The turbine generator converts the heat from the steam into electricity which is transported into the grid which distributes the energy to end users from factories and municipalities to homes and offices. There the energy that started as nuclear was converted to heat in the steam and then converted into mechanical energy by the turbine and finally into electrical energy by the generator and distributed by the electric grid. It is then converted into light and mechanical energy in tools including everything from arc furnaces for steel to kitchen mechanical mixers, to office computers, to the charger in a few new battery powered electrical vehicles. In coal fired power plants the heat is supplied by the combustion of coal but the turbines and generators are virtually identical, The advantage of nuclear over coal fired boilers include, lower cost, higher safety, lower pollution and no CO2 emission.

Whether it is to light a city, power a factory, move a family car, pump irrigation water or heat a home, it is all energy. Whether it comes from an electric outlet, a tank of fuel, a trainload of coal, a battery or group of batteries, a fuel cell, a solar cell, a hydroelectric turbine or a wind-driven generator, it is all energy. Whether measured in kilowatts or horsepower, it is all energy. That’s what we all pay for one way or another. Generally, the more power we use, the more we pay. With gasoline costs around three dollars a gallon most people pay about sixteen cents per mile for liquid fuel. The exact same amount of energy from your household outlet would cost somewhere in the neighborhood of four cents. That’s one fourth the cost of liquid fuel. The problem is to get energy from the electric generator into a practical vehicle, economically and efficiently and to give that vehicle sufficient range to satisfy those who use the vehicles. In effect, that is the real point of this book: to examine as many ways as possible of providing portable energy in a practical way and at reasonable cost to the traveling public.

There are many possible ways to power mobile vehicles other than the way we are now using almost exclusively– gasoline or diesel powered internal combustion engines. Using nuclear power to generate electricity and developing a practical method of putting that energy into a vehicle which can use it seems to this writer to be one of the best and least expensive alternatives to the present system and best for the environment in the long run. Whether it involves hydrogen and fuel cells, innovative new batteries, converting hydrogen into methanol for use as or in a fuel blend, or technologies yet to be invented, remains to be seen.

Why? We are running out of cheap oil which currently adds large amounts of CO2 to the atmosphere, coal fired generators would add even more massive amounts of CO2 to the atmosphere, crop based fuels would have a major negative effect on the food supply, and other sources of electric power all have serious drawbacks. Nuclear energy is the safest, least intrusive, and least expensive source of energy apt to be available in the foreseeable future in sufficient quantities to satisfy our growing need.

Page 13: “Big Oil can sleep easy for another decade or two should we wait for hydrogen fuel-cells to wean the west off its addiction to oil. Hydrogen Vehicle Won't Be Viable Soon, Study Says” - by Nancy Stauffer
Spokesperson for Laboratory for Energy and the Environment of MIT - Boston - Mar 07, 2003

Page 18: Micro turbine powered hybrid electric buses, trolleys and other transit vehicles today deliver benefits unattainable through conventional approaches. Partnering power generation with electricity storage:

1, Achieves dramatically lower nitrogen oxide emissions with no pollution controls.

2. Cuts operational and maintenance costs.

3. Maximizes in-service availability.

4. Enables vehicle size, payload and operating range capabilities impossible with electric-only vehicles.

5. Provides fuel flexibility impossible with others as it can be fueled by: gasoline, diesel, methanol, ethanol, natural gas, bio-fuels, propane and even hydrogen. No other currently supported technology can come even close to making this statement.

Page 32: In the May 2004 issue of Scientific American, Mathew L.Wald writes:

“President Bush has called hydrogen the ‘freedom fuel,’ but hydrogen is not free, in either dollars or environmental damage. The hydrogen fuel-cell costs nearly 100 times as much per unit of power produced as an internal combustion engine. ‘To be price competitive, you’ve got to be at a nickel a watt and we’re at $4 a watt,’ says Tom R. Dawsey, a research associate at Eastman Chemical Company, which makes polymers for fuel-cells. Hydrogen is also about five times as expensive, per unit of useable energy, as gasoline. Simple dollars are only one speed bump on the road to the hydrogen economy. Another is that supplying the energy required to make pure hydrogen may itself cause pollution. Even if that energy is from a renewable source, like the sun or wind, it may have more environmentally sound uses than the production of hydrogen. Distribution and storage of hydrogen—the least dense gas in the universe—are other technological and infrastructure difficulties. So is the safe handling of the gas. Any practical proposal for a hydrogen economy will have to address all these issues.”

Page 38: There are a number of alternative fuels already being used in growing quantities and with vehicles designed to use them. These include methanol, ethanol, E85, M85, bio-diesel, methane and propane. Ethanol has been blended successfully up to 10% in gasoline for several years. Butanol and DMF (dimethyl furan) are both newcomers to the liquid fuel mix. They are both so much like gasoline they will work in virtually any engine that now runs on gasoline.


Page 48: Most of the infrastructure required for the methanol economy as proposed by the author would be directly applicable to the RN fuel economy and even to a hydrogen economy. Should developing technology ever make the hydrogen economy a practical reality, all of the infrastructure required to manufacture hydrogen would already be in place. Not only that, but micro turbine vehicles would run equally well on hydrogen as on other fuels. There would not have to be “two major infrastructure changes.” Since any “portable” energy source could be used for transportation, both the proposed methanol and hydrogen economies are merely distribution systems to move the energy generated in electric power plants to the vehicles needing that power.

Page 56: The Benefits of Changing to a methanol Economy - There are many substantial benefits to be gained by switching to the methanol economy as described in this article. Besides making us energy independent, those benefits include:

1. Reduction in the amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide and its greenhouse effects.

2. Reduction in air pollution.

3. Major improvement in the electric power grid with downward pressure on energy prices.

4. Continued use of existing transport, storage and distributions systems with little modification.
5. Increased fuel efficiency over gasoline.

6. Remove our foreign oil requirements.

7. Retain energy money within the US creating a major economic boom.

8. Provide many new, well-paying jobs for Americans.

9. Reduce or eliminate our national interest in the turbulent middle east.

10. Reduce or completely eliminate our indirect financing of Islamic terrorists.

Page 61: NOTE: If the author’s method of energy conversion to methanol is utilized, methanol could be much cheaper than gasoline. This is particularly true now that unleaded gasoline has been fluctuating between $2 and $3 per gallon at the pump and is headed for $4.

Page 73: Gas turbine/electric combinations are used in power plants for increasing numbers of buildings and remote locations with costs lower than that of power from the electric grid. This includes small, even portable power plants. Growing in popularity with bus and truck owners, “microturbine” powered hybrid vehicles are showing up all over the world in increasing numbers.

NOTE: As this is written, I am preparing once again to contact my representatives, media personalities and others who have the public’s attention with the latest information as contained in the current edition of this book.

I could really use some help here. If you are at all concerned about fuel costs, global warming, or pollution of the environment by fuel use byproducts, please help me with this mission or at least give me names of those I might contact. Also, let me know of any group or organization that might be interested in having me lecture to them on the subject of the book.

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THE LECTURE I have prepared on the same subject as the book is available to virtually any group or organization interested in learning about the economic and environmental benefits the systems described in the book provide. For information about the lecture, goto http://www.hjacslect.blogspot.com/. Information on how to arrange for me to give the lecture to your group or organization is also available in this blog or by contacting me at hobarb@yahoo.com.

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If you are at all concerned with the energy/fuel crisis or the growing emissions of carbon dioxide and its possible impact on global warming, here’s another way to help!

While I will continue to send copies of this book to any interested individual, group or government agency I can find, I desperately need many more people to provide appropriate recipients. Should any reader of this blog want a hard copy of my book please email me at hobarb@netscape.com or hobarb@yahoo.com I would also like you to send me information– address, email, etc.– of any media person, celebrity or politician you might know who might be interested in the energy industry or environment, especially anyone with whom you are acquainted and could get to look at my book. It would be doubly helpful if you could write a letter or send an email using your good name. I would even be willing to write the letter for you to send– or at least provide you with a finished package to sign and send. I would certainly give you total control over any type of contact.

To return to the HJ Solutions blog, click on http://www.hjsolutions.blogspot.com/