Author's PDF of Full Cover Story

Author's Briefing

This article by two young scholars is a very good one, very provocative and persuasive.  It lacks reference to other giants that have gone before, but stands as the best effort we have seen since WIRED did its own cover story on alternative and renewable energies in 2001, coming out the very week that Dick Cheney was meeting secretly with Enron and Exxon to discuss the elective war on Iraq.  Also available from the lead author:

Online interactive version (link)

More detailed analysis (pdf)

E&ES article on ranking energy solutions to global warming, air pollution, and energy security (link)

Report on matching hourly and peak demand by combining different renewables (pdf)

October 30, 2009 Presentation (pdf)

Return to mark Jacobson’s Home Page

Phi Beta Iota: We are often irritated by the young who represent their triumphant ideas as if arrived at by immaculate conception.  No discussion of this topic is credible without reference to, at a minimum, Buckminster Fuller, Herman Daly, and Paul Hawken, among many others.  Below are just three books among the many we have received pertaining to sustainable design, zero waste, and green to gold, and the most recent book to put all of this into proper perspective.

Review: Critical Path

Review: Ecological Economics: Principles And Applications

Review: Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution

Review: The Resilient Earth–Science, Global Warming and the Future of Humanity

If one takes the “battlefield” to include all challenges, not just the challenge of a battle in a singular time and place, then this search is the mother of all searches.

We like to use the analogy of sailboat racing, something we learned from a video,  DVD: THE ART OF RACING SAILING.  This DVD begins with an inspection of the hull of the sailboat out of the water and the point is that the race is often won or lost BEFORE THE RACE EVEN BEGINS.  If you have failed to assure a correct hull; if you have failed to train, equip, and organize the right forces for the right mission, if you have failed to understand the historical, cultural, and geographical reality you are entering into a context with; then no amount of excellence on the field itself will prevail.

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Citizen Intelligence

Police chiefs endorse anti-terror community watch

By EILEEN SULLIVAN and P. SOLOMON BANDA (AP)

4 October 2009

DENVER — A store clerk’s curiosity about why Najibullah Zazi was buying large quantities of beauty supply products indicated that something about the transaction wasn’t quite right — and it’s an example of the kind of citizen vigilance that can combat terror, a police commander said Saturday.

Phi Beta Iota: This new initiative is precisely as recommended by Congressman Rob Simmons (R-CT-02), then a very active member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, and author of the Foreword to the book, The Smart Nation Act: Public Intelligence in the Public Interest. Included in his vision is a 411 number for calling in suspicious information, and a similar Internet address that delivers the information to the right precinct. Congressman Simmons has always been a decade or more ahead of the government bureaucracy in recognizing the value of first Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), of which he is the only Member pioneer, and then Public Intelligence in the Public Interest, of which is also the sole Member pioneer.

As Europe contemplates the creation of a Mutlinational Information-Sharing and Sense-Making Network, and Singapore and South Africa among others think about expanding the over-the-horizon and continent-wide networks, only one major power remains deliberately deaf, dumb, and blind to the 80% or more of the information that cannot be stolen but can be acquired freely from open sources in 183 languages we do not speak: the United STATES of America.

As Members begin thinking about how they are going to deal with the virulently angry public between now and 2010, there are two legislative proposals that have been on the table for over a decade–some would say two decades, both eminently sensible, eminently patriotic, and perhaps–if executed inelligently–the only thing that might fireproof those Members who now fear they will not be re-elected.

Electoral Reform Act

The books and articles on the failure of Congress to honor Article 1 of the Constitution, and the failure of Members to honor their constituencies by eschewing “party line” voting, are now legion.  Congress has been tarred and feathered; Independents are now 43% of the eligible voters and rising; and the 70% that did not vote for this Administration in 2008 is likely to come back to the polls in 2010 with an “anything but” mind-set.

Time to think really big thoughts, strategic thoughts, thoughts that benefit the public which is the heart and soul of the Republic and has been living with a stake in its heart all these years, a dysfunctional dishonest electoral system.

This act, eight measures, four for 2010 and the other four for 2012, restores the Republic.

Smart Nation - Safe Nation Act

Restoring the primacy of the public and the legitimacy of the electoral system is not enough.  America is coming off fifty years of mortal failure across all its paradigms, and only the creation of a Smart Nation – Safe Nation that connects the public to all possible information and Congress to both the public and all possible information, will restore the survivability and prosperity of the Republic.  The second act, created in service to Congressman Rob Simmons (R-CT-02), now running for the Senate, does that.

Full Story Online

Seats for Sale

Thursday, September 24, 2009

By FCW Editorial

What’s so revealing about the 50 is not how rich they are — combined, they are worth a total of $1.3 billion, which is down $171 million from last year’s list — but how new so many of them are.

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In the interest of helping Defense Intelligence catch up with state of the art thinking on Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), the below two briefings have been created and made available to USD(I) and DIOSPO.

They are also being made available to all military attaches, who are being invited by a European government to plan for and attend a global multinational information-sharing and sense-making conference in Europe in November 2010.

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In the process of sorting through 20 years of documents pertaining to Open Source Intelligence (OSINT), all free to the public, we came across the original language from the Authorization Bill in 2006 that directed the Department of Defense (DoD) to respond with a report outlining how it would establish and enhance OSINT as a separate discipline, inclusive of strategies, plans, capabilities development and so on.

Lo and behold, it appears that DoD has not answered this requirement, which has been faxed to the Staff Directors of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligennce and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Follow the Frog to the 2006 posting of both the Congressional language and a short Defense News Daily report summarizing what the Authorizors want….

What Authorizers Want...

This is an updated version of the Smart Nation Act that appears in the book by that title.  While it was originally developed in consultation with Congressman Rob Simmons (R-CT-02), whose Foreword to the book provides a brilliant context for understanding why this is so essential to the future of America and the world, this specific document has morphed so much that it is better to say that it is inspired by Congressman Simmons rather than endorsed by him–if and when he returns to the Hill as a Senator, he will surely have his own priorities consistent with the needs of his constituents in Connecticut who have suffered so much from the “rule by secrecy” of Wall Street and the two parties serving Wall Street.

Smart-Safe Nation Act

Kent Bye

Echo Chamber Project: Interviews at OSS ’06

Praise for this effort

Overview Video

Michael Andregg on Secrecy and Insanity

Stephen E Arnold on Technology

Mats Bjore on Globalization

Peter Morville on Ambient Findability

Robert Young Pelton on Hearing all Sides

Ralph Peters on Wars of Blood and Faith

Rob Simmons on the Big Picture for America

Robert Steele on Washington Running on 2%

Carolyn Stewart on Information Operations

Below links directly to the Simmons interview, use the photograph link above to select any of the others.  NOTE: the video portion appears to have been disabled for all of them, you get audio only right now, we are working on this with Kent, it is vastly better to see these individuals in full multi-media form.

Rob Simmons