THE LAST WHALER

My son Tim came up to visit and we talked again about the DVD we watched together last year when he was here, “The Heart of the Sea”. It is a Ron Howard movie based on the Herman Melville book “Moby Dick”. “Heart of the Sea” shows what really happened when then the whale attacked that ship and sank it. It really happened to the Essex.   What sparked this little essay was the last scene of the movie as Melville was leaving the home of the last living whaler he’d been interviewing for his book.  Melville said “Oh, you know that in Pennsylvania they drilled a hole in the ground and got oil.”

The old whaler, who thought that to supply lamp oil to the public…light their homes and such…50 men would have to go out sailing for two and a half years, killing numerous whales, boil down their flesh for the oil before returning to the east coast with their “catch”. It was a major industry in those days with a whaling fleet of U.S. ships numbering over 700. The Pennsylvania oil find occurred in 1859. By the end of the civil war the fleet was disappearing at an unbelievable rate. All those ships became useless and those whalers lost their livelihoods.  The old whaler could only shake his head; “They just drilled a hole in the ground?”

Shortly after, you could see the last whaler, a short fat guy named Cecil, paddling around the harbor in a row boat, armed with a lug wrench for bonking a whale in the head. He was last seen paddling furiously for the shore with a startled look on his face and what looked like a lug wrench sticking out of his ass. Ah, the end of an era.

On a happier note, finding a petroleum source, refine it and create ways to distribute it is the economic backbone of the world.  The world’s oilers chorused “Thank God” in unison, there is no alternative for oil.

Here’s what’s gonna happen: A gradual coexistence over the power generation will be the least disruptive to the population and the world economy. 

Nuclear fusion is the holy grail of nuclear power generation.  Senator Tuberville encourages thorium reactors; natural resource found in abundance domestically produces clean safe energy. We have a thousand year supply. Apparently, the government has known about thorium for generations but since you can’t make a bomb out of in, there’s no practical use for it. No “boom”- no fun. Hidden benefit, it eats nuclear fission scraps off the table. Read about it for yourself in the linked articles. The point is this: It ain’t an “all-or-nothing” deal. It will take a long time to comply with Senator Tuberville’s vision of a thorium reactor in each county of the country.

Here's an expansion of a popular technology: Solar panels made out of clear glass. Yep… Tohoku University in Japan developed a 79% clear glass panel using indium tin oxide (ITO). It is nearly transparent as clear glass (interesting engineering.com). so anywhere there is glass, can generate its own electricity. Just this week Tim read where the same outfit increased it’s solar/electricity capability by about a thousand times, too.

I’m not predicting that you’ll see the president of Exxon, a short fat guy named Cecil, any time soon wandering through deserted drilling rigs armed with a lug wrench, but I’m not dismissing it either.