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Written by Joe DiRosa
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The other day my company was asked to be a corporate partner in an action to stop global warming. The action is appropriately titled Stop Global Warming Virtual March which I was happy to sign up for.. Later that night I was contemplating what the cause was.. Was it to stop Global Warming or to get people to sign up for the cause of stopping global warming? Obviously the first would be much more ideal but it seemed like the later idea was the real cause. Then I started to think what is the real cause of 'Global Warming' was..Co2 gas emitted by vehicle exhaust is generally considered the main cause so obviously the end of combustible engines depending on fossil fuels would be the way to stop global warming.. Well big auto makers and several others have been tooling around with that problem for years and except for the short lived electric car which was refreshed in my mind by the new film coming out about the death of such vehicles by auto makers. I wasn't really privy to the information that electric cars had been discontinued completely so that surprised me somewhat and somewhere along my journey to enlightenment I realized that we simply have a resource utilization problem or possibly a massive HR problem. We simply have the wrong people doing the wrong things.
Activists have been lobbying auto makers which to some debate may or may not be in bed with big oil companies to create an electric battery or fuel cell to solve the energy problems posed by long distance travel. Smaller commuting was somewhat solved by the original electric car. I stress somewhat. Now earlier in the week, and I stress the importance of reading the news here because this is where my epiphany came from, I saw an article about Intel's new plant in Arizona which cost over 2 billion dollars and which is the result of over 25 Billion in research done over the last 5 years. They are producing chips which are the size of a pinky nail and hold 151 million transistors with the circuits being 65 nano meters in size. The article goes on to say that 100 transistors would fit into a single human blood cell. Now these new chips again the size of a pink and holding 151 million transistors also use 40% less power than the previous chips.. Obviously Intel has been dealing with design and power issues which way exceed the complexity of a car power cell. They also have plenty of capital to spend of R&D and I'm sure their current technology will have enormous value in designing a feasible safe and reusable fuel cell for an automobile.
SImply Intel should be designing new car fuel cells and activists if they are serious about solving the issue and not just raising awareness should lobbying Intel to do so. In fact it's that sort of out of the box thinking that will eventually solve many of our current problems. A reusable fuel cell could sell to auto makers for thousands of dollars each and with the millions of cars sold each year that turns into billions in profits for Intel. Consumers would have no problem with financing a bit more if it means they save $2.50 a gallon on gas every 25 miles or so.. Auto makers pass on the costs, consumers save, Intel makes billions and only the people who are drilling big unsafe, unclean holes in our planet suffer. The production of the new cells would produce as many jobs as the oil industry lost and to put it simply it should put an end to Global Warming.
Obviously if the auto makers are in bed with the oil companies then we can't expect them to solve our problems but if we were to hand them an undeniable solution then they would have no choice.
Several issues could be solved with a bit of out of the box thinking.. I actually have one to help stop global starvation across the world but it needs some work and I may still approach a venture company or someone about launching a start up.. Here's a thought though.. We pay people not to farm crops here and people are starving all across the world.. Give it a little thought.
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