The Journey Begins

Good company in a journey makes the way seem shorter – Izaak Walton

I recently read a book, written by a gentleman from the UK, called Sustainable Energy Without Hot Air. I have to acknowledge that this is one of the best books that I have seen on this topic. It is well written, accurate and candidly, the messages that it delivers are extremely important to us all.

The best part of the book is that the author wrote it, intending to give it to readers at no cost, and it is available at http://www.withouthotair.com/cft.pdf . It is a real gift, and so I have created a blog, that reflects many of the same types of issues that are occurring.

I am an engineer. Without revealing my age, I received an engineering degree in 1967, a Masters degree in 1970, and I am currently working toward a PhD. My background has been largely focused on energy, having worked at two utilities, and a major oil company. After retirement, I started a small company, hoping to ski 3 mornings each week and work three afternoons. Like my retirement, that failed as well. The company now has about 50 employees and is a leader in its field. While I continue to work for the company, we now have an outstanding management team that are taking it into many exciting projects that will contribute well to our future.

This all sounds good, but in fact, I have become very frustrated at decisions that I am seeing, driven by “experts” with a very poor overall understanding of the issues ahead. And that is one of the reasons that I was so impressed with the book.

I have created this blog, and I will post many thoughts and ideas, and I would encourage anyone to either write a blog post of their own – which I will post, or make comments. A healthy discussion of people, both in agreement and in total disagreement with what I present, would be a great benefit. I have always believed that I learn a lot more from people that I do not agree with than those that I agree with. So please feel free to comment or write your own thoughts for this page. Hopefully it will be fun and informative.