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July 31, 2005 - Art Bell
02:31:06
Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Jim Bell - Renewable Energy - Ed Dames - The Space Shuttle
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Uh, the Bell, to update you, the Bell family barnyard is well.
Our little bird, Tower, thrives and is a beef eater, among other things.
And feeding it about eight times a day, of course, is Ramona.
But, uh, but Tower's growing!
Tower's happy!
Tower's flying!
Tower's...
Pack Tower escaped the cage during a cleaning yesterday and my cat Yeti went running in as if to swallow that bird in one bite.
And so I gave him a swat on the backside and he promptly pouted and was depressed for two hours.
Just a little.
I mean, I've done it playfully harder, but he knew that I was saying, don't eat the bird.
Now we've tried water guns, there's a swat on the tail end, so these cats, I tell you, they have personalities that really make you wonder.
Our little new cat, Dusty, is the subject of tonight's webcam photograph.
You will see a listener made that giant panda bear for our cats.
And we had no takers.
But then along came Dusty.
And you can see how Dusty has grown.
That's a big panda, let me tell you.
And that's one long Dusty Bell.
So, all are well in the barnyard.
NASA?
Actually, the headline is kind of worrisome.
What exactly is the headline?
It's Discovery May Need Unprecedented Repair.
That might be a little strong.
NASA is saying it's discovered yet another problem on the Space Shuttle Discovery.
Engineers are still trying to determine what kind of repairs to make.
They're looking at a couple of dangling strips on the belly of the shuttle.
The strips are filler material of a felt-like material and ceramics.
They fill the space between thermal tiles.
Now, flapping loose, the strips present a big potential risk of overheating during re-entry.
So everybody's scared.
NASA Flight Director Paul Hill said Sunday, such material has come loose on previous flights and posed no harm then, but, you know, there's a lot of sensitivity at NASA right now.
They say, Eileen Collins, the commander, says, there's definitely not a big concern of me right now.
On Monday, NASA is going to decide whether to have two spacewalks cut the dangling strips Or, perhaps, shove the material back into the cracks between the tiles.
Such tricks could involve the Canadian-supplied arm and would mean an astronaut standing at the arm's end to reach the underside of the shuttle.
And, you know, there are complications in possibly doing that.
In other words, they could actually do more damage with the arm.
So, yes, this strange confluence of events, and that'll have Ed Dames here shortly.
There was a downpour that struck Bombay Tuesday.
500 people died.
Did you know it?
This is from whitleystrebersunknowncountry.com.
500 dead.
Maybe more.
Parts of the state of Masurata received 37 inches of rain over a very short time and Bombay got 26 inches of rain.
Can you imagine that?
It was, of course, a record rainfall for India and one of the great deluges of history.
Very strong monsoon storms.
And by the way, here in the desert, we're also now experiencing of the monsoons at their height every single day we wake up to crash boom lightning everywhere and thunders big thunderstorms and yet the 13 bell towers to date despite many close hits remain as yet untouched but it's bad we're really getting monsoons here
Now, apparently, our government is considering changing daylight savings time.
The idiots.
They're going to change daylight savings time by a month, and I got somebody who sent me an email who points out, doesn't anybody realize, there are probably going to be hundreds of millions of gadgets.
Including, for example, VCRs, computers, digital clocks that automatically change their time setting for a DST.
None of these change according to some mystical vibration from the ether.
Well, there are a few VCRs that do that, you know, but otherwise all are programmed to change the readings on specific dates, and so there could be I suppose a mini Y2K type disaster.
These will all show the wrong time, and for at least a month each year, causing much confusion.
Missed appointments, showing up late for work, and now there's a good excuse, actually, if you do show up late for work, blame it on the government.
What the hell?
The United States would like to end the link between time and our sun.
So time again is in the news.
Time to change the way we measure time according to a U.S.
government proposal that businesses favor, astronomers abominate, and Britain sees as a threat to its venerable Greenwich Mean Time.
Huh.
Word of the U.S.
proposal made secretly in the United Nations body figures began leaking to scientists earlier this month.
The plan would simplify the world's timekeeping by simply making each day last exactly 24 hours.
Right now that's not always the case.
Every now and then you'll recall they add a leap second to correct things.
They want to change all of this so they don't have to Add the leap second anymore, so we're going to mess with time.
Great.
Oh, a word from Susan, you remember?
Our older lady in a sailboat alone in the Pacific.
Susan writes to me, really surprised to hear you Art on 3840.
That's where we hang out on shortwave.
I tune in quite a bit but never hear a signal, but tonight at 1130 in the morning it came up out of nowhere very strongly.
And then you're hearing me on 40 watts and a backstage antenna on 75 meters from Hawaii.
Wow.
Propagation from Hawaii, she says, is terrible.
Can hear the mainland only from 5 to 8 p.m.
on 20 meters.
All bands dead otherwise.
Ham radio here is big on Saturday.
Because everybody's working.
Now she goes on to say, I should be leaving here.
Now this is a surprise.
As soon as my autopilot is returned from repairs on the mainland, I normally sail with the wind vane, but to raise and lower my sails, I use the autopilot to keep headed into the wind.
My next destination is an atoll in the Marshall Islands, hopefully to teach basic electronics and tutor in navigation at their high school.
So, be looking for you, Susan, as you leave Hawaii somewhat earlier than I think you had planned.
For the Marshall Islands.
That lady... You know, at 70-something, taking off by yourself across the Pacific in a sailboat, leaving your home, going to find a new home somewhere on the South Pacific.
Can you imagine that?
Hey, we found a tenth planet.
Well, I guess it is.
You know, it's supposedly bigger than Pluto.
Haven't named it yet.
But there's another one out there.
It's in the Kuiper Belt, along with a lot of other stuff.
I mean, it's a lot bigger.
Big enough, I guess, to be considered to be a planet.
We just had an X-class flare.
As a matter of fact, a couple of days ago, Sun let go of a giant X-class flare, writes Jim in Riverside.
It was Major Danes, wasn't it, who warned of the kill shot, said that We should be on the alert when a solar flare is emitted around the time of a scrubbed space launch.
Both conditions have now been met.
How about a little word from Ed?
In light, here's another one, in light of the fact that we're having extraordinary solar activity, coupled with the fact that the shuttle is going to be returning around the time of the annual meteor shower, I would rather think that you should have Ed Dames on for at least a short time Sunday to get his view on that.
All right?
In a moment, we'll do exactly that.
Major Ed Dames, indeed, has predicted an awful lot of what appears to be going on right now.
So, at the beginning of the week, I called him.
I saw it all, and I called him, and he said, eh, no, maybe not.
And then he called my producer and said, well, no, maybe we should do an hour.
So he's got something on his mind coming up in a moment.
He would appear on every single list of the loved, most loved and most hated guests that
I ever have on the air.
The world's foremost remote viewing teacher, Edward A. Dames, major U.S.
Army, retired.
I've got his complete military record.
It's all real.
He's a decorated military intelligence officer, original member of the U.S.
Army Prototype Remote Viewing Training Program, served as training and operations officer for the DIA's intelligence collection unit, currently serves as executive director for the Matrix Intelligence Agency, a private consulting group, the technical consultant for the feature film Suspect Zero, A good movie.
Tom Cruise, you may have seen it.
Ed Koch does her Ben Kingsley for that.
Played the role of an FBI remote viewing instructor in the movie as well.
And Ed, welcome to the program.
Thank you, Art.
I'm curious.
From my own curiosity, Ed, I did place a call to you, you recall, and you said, no, you know, no.
And then I found from my producer you apparently had changed your mind and decided you did want some air time tonight for, I guess, to sort of update people because of this confluence of events.
Correct.
I wanted to make a statement based on some follow-up remote viewing that I did.
And that's why I'm here.
Good.
And I hope it's good news.
It's not, and I'm not going to be pulling any punches except for one that I'll talk about later.
It's not good news.
Bam.
Yeah.
All right, well, let's review a little bit.
You had remote-viewed catastrophe involving a space shuttle which would be caught in some sort of meteor shower and should we see that space shuttle returning to Earth or being forced down by a meteor shower?
That would indicate the kill shot, this awful life extinguishing event from the Sun was close at hand.
Is that about right?
That's about right.
That's about right, Art.
What's changed?
Nothing has actually changed, it's just that it's here.
I mean, as a predictive tool, remote viewing can be pretty powerful in the hands of professionals.
And as you know, for the last eight years, we've been looking at this thing over the horizon.
Remember, we called it discontinuity because we didn't really know what it was.
It just... Like some giant wall you could not see past nor understand.
It was like the Great Darkness, or something that really put the kibosh on cultural evolution on Earth.
And over the years, we checked and double-checked and triple-checked and found out that it was our own sun that does something, and that something is that it begins to produce some very catastrophic solar flares.
In terms of catastrophes, you might remember on your January 1st show that I predicted that there would be yet another earthquake in Indonesia?
You did, yes.
A 9 plus.
That turned out to be an 8.7.
I said it would be in March.
It was March 28th.
I had the exact latitude, but the longitude was off.
And it was off about .3 on a Richter scale.
That's kind of like the degree of error that all experts have.
Even the pros at NASA got the tile problem wrong and they tried their best.
So all experts or knowledgeable people have that little error rate.
But it's small in the case of expertise.
They're talking about adding an extra day now to the shuttle, but even with that, Ed, there's still, I think, going to come down two days before the official start of the Meteor Shower.
Yes?
The shower peaks on my birthday, August 11th, 12th, and it starts, it begins, though, a couple of days before that, every year.
So we've got, it's so close, temporarily.
And approximately to what we've been seeing as the Harbinger event, the beginning of the kill shot sequence.
And because of the very, very interesting solar activity last week on the back side of the sun.
Very severe solar flares.
And watch out this week.
Just watch it.
So it is a confluence of events.
That accurately described it.
We have the sun, and it is going berserk.
We just had a whopper of an X, and there's some big bad stuff on the other side.
So we've got that.
We've got the space shuttle up with a lot of troubles.
We've got the space shuttle very close to a meteor shower, if not in it, what, a day or so?
What's the most dangerous period?
Is it very close to the time they're coming home, Ed?
The only danger that exists, remember the event that we described as the predictive event, the harbinger event, the event that's closest to the sequence is this ensemble that you see now.
It's not the Indy 500.
For instance, last year I did a show for Japanese TV.
They wanted to know when the next catastrophic earthquake would be in Tokyo.
And the event that preceded that, the closest recognizable event, was an international kite festival in southern Japan.
In this case, for the beginning of the kill shot sequence, we have these elements in place.
We have a meteor shower, we have a shuttle up, and we have a shuttle coming back down.
Remember, I didn't say it lands.
I said it's coming back down.
Yes.
I never said land.
That's where I'm going to pull a punch on this show.
Well, that's a pretty big punch because the implication of this is that it doesn't land, that something catastrophic occurs.
Or it doesn't pull out.
But the point is that we have seen it pulling out.
And all I'm saying now, when I say I'm pulling a punch, is say a prayer for this crew.
That's all I'm saying.
Well, I've been doing that right along.
We all need to say more, because they need it.
They're going to need it this time.
But the danger to both the space station and the shuttle, if it's still docked, is that You may have unprecedented solar flares, and remember the shot across the bow that I predicted would happen two weeks prior to its prediction to its occurrence at the end of 2003.
What's something that NASA could never predict?
And that's the value of remote viewing.
Nobody could have predicted it.
The scientists who had satellites up there with equipment to measure what they thought could be the largest event from the sun ever, it went right off that calibration, maybe by double or even more.
We have no idea.
That was such a big flare.
If it had come toward the Earth, Ed, we'd have been pretty well scorched.
They had to reconfigure the SOHO monitoring satellite.
That's a fact.
They had to actually re-architecture them.
So you can depend on it, Ed.
A lot of my friends have been calling me and they're concerned about this.
I mean really concerned.
Concerned as in getting ready to get in a car and get out of Dodge concerned.
I think we have two years max is my call, and that's not as a remote viewer.
It's a gut feeling that this thing will start slowly, that we'll have a series of hot flares and strong flares.
Okay, well that's interesting.
I was ready for doomsday here.
Now you're saying maybe a couple of years?
In other words, the worst unfolds over a two-year period?
Possibly, because what we know as remote viewers looking over the horizon is the worst does not occur.
Until the magnetosphere of the Earth collapses, and then we get the full brunt of any solar flare.
That's when it really, when many, many people die, actually die.
Prior to that, you have atmospheric heating, and a lot of climate change, drastic climate change, very rapid, but none of this instantaneous I mean, that's such an unthinkable thing.
I was wondering how quickly it would occur.
I mean, if this shuttle, awful shuttle stuff, you know, should unfold, the rest of it then, maybe two years, huh?
Not tomorrow.
race. I mean that's such an unthinkable thing. I was wondering how quickly it
would occur. I mean if this shuttle, awful shuttle stuff, you know, should unfold the
rest of it then maybe two years, huh? Not tomorrow. No, I think that's my guess,
but then again, we just don't know. I mean only recently, only
Only recently have we developed the advanced remote viewing techniques to put a date on things.
So my partners and I will be working that out in terms of the peak or the worst case events along this trajectory.
We were kind of taken by surprise by this particular ensemble.
How many people are involved in this specific prediction, Ed?
Well, the kill shot, we've got many, many remote viewers over a number of years, as you know.
But in terms of putting dates on the very, very big flares, you've only got three people who are really experts that can do this.
And the reason is because the techniques are proprietary to us.
And we haven't taught them to other people.
However, I'm going to sit down with my business partners and suggest that maybe now people will use these techniques to look at their own survival sanctuaries and places like that, because the techniques can pinpoint not only places in time, but places in space geographically where an individual should go to be safe.
Yes, I knew that you had certain, oh I don't know, specific proprietary techniques for nailing down dates and times.
It is a very dire prediction.
A prediction that we appear to be, possibly, very close to being right in the middle of.
You know, he called it, he called it, and now he's calling it, and I'm a little worried that it's a little close to what he's calling.
But I never remote view, and I don't do that because I don't want to know what's coming.
I really don't.
There are a lot of people who do.
I'm hoping for the error.
I'm hoping to be able to talk to Ed in a month or two or a year and say, hey Ed, you got that one wrong.
What happened?
So that's me.
I don't want to know and I'm hopeful.
So if you need a little bit of cheer in light of the news that he's giving us, that's about
the best I can do.
Let's try this approach.
Ed, look, enough has already happened with the sun and the shuttle and the timing and the, you know, the meteor shower and all the rest of it that we could call this some kind of a hit.
Is there any possibility that It's like close but no cigar, that events might not unfold exactly and the shuttle might come home just fine and for some period of time everything would be okay because you had it wrong.
What percentage of possibility is there of that?
We look at likelihoods in my business the same as in the intelligence business.
The shuttle could indeed make it back.
Safely?
It could indeed make it back.
But what I'm saying is these elements are all lining up.
I know, I see that.
That point exactly to this Harbinger event.
I know, that much acknowledged though, Ed.
Is it possible?
Is it possible, even though it seems, I grant you, unlikely, given what's already happened, but how possible is it that it could be wrong?
I would put probably an 80-85% likelihood based upon my own 21 years of experience in error rates.
A maximum of 15% that it would be wrong.
I'm going to cling to that.
Yeah, I'm going to hold to that.
Assuming that these events continue to unfold and the shuttle is forced down, worst case by a meteor shower or there's a catastrophic event, is there anything that we can do collectively to prevent it?
I think prayer works.
I mean, it doesn't have to be the clock in your... You can see what focused consciousness can do.
The problem that we have with us, Homo sapiens, is that we're not united, and we're not congruent when we pray.
The heart doesn't match the head, so that's a big problem.
Otherwise, I think we could pull it off, I believe, that much in human potential.
Well, based on just that statement alone, there's plenty of people who will begin concentrating, whether I tell them to or not, on averting this event.
Well, we're looking at a possible... Right now, my focus is on the shuttle.
I see no way of preventing a geophysical event, no way whatsoever.
I mean, even if we were all united, I'm not sure we could pull that one off.
But as far as the shuttle goes, I'm hopeful, in terms of prayer at least.
I wonder, Ed, if time travel was real and you could do whatever it took to prevent the shuttle situation, such as whatever it's going to be, from happening, whether that would then prevent the rest of the... it would stop the rest of the events that otherwise would unfold or change the timetable in some way.
Negative.
Negative.
What we would then come up with as remote viewers is another event that would be the closest preceding recognizable event, and that might be anything.
This particular Art Bell Show, or a presidential election of some type, that kind of thing.
The geophysical sequence is so big.
It's such a huge cosmic thing that I just can't see, and at least using my puny brain to look ahead, any way to prevent it.
That's why remote viewing can see these geophysical events so clearly.
The signals are so big, and unconscious does its best to protect its ward, the human being, the body.
It always does that.
I'm protected by keeping my head straight in the sand.
Yeah, sure, I can go with that.
So anyway, I'm kind of getting close to retirement too, so I would encourage a lot of people to learn remote viewing.
Really, really learn it and keep themselves safe.
Okay, here we've got a little hitch.
Right?
Now, I know that you produce remote-viewing materials so people can learn to remote-view themselves.
And I offer unlimited follow-on training, too.
At least I will be for the next whatever.
You see what I'm referring to with the hitch.
I mean, what is the point of somebody buying remote-viewing materials if you have just told them that the size of the catastrophic rotisserie event, well, Well, in the Killshot DVD that I put out with all the detailed information, it outlines the survival zones, the very good survival zones, because the entire Earth is not going to be cooked.
It's just belts that will be cooked at certain times.
The general areas are outlined there, but learning remote viewing for yourself, and it's easy to learn, it's just that you have to practice it.
That's why there's a sense of urgency here.
Alright, you're in California.
By looking at the area code, I'd say, well, where are you in California?
I'm in Santa Barbara.
Santa Barbara, okay.
I was going to say Central California somewhere.
Are you going to remove yourself from Central California?
Yes, but only for personal reasons, not safety reasons.
For safety reasons, not protective reasons.
Is the area you're in now a safe area?
No, not necessarily.
It's not.
See, I'm looking for what you're doing.
If you firmly believe this, then let me ask you.
All the areas in the DVDs, I'm sure I sent you a kill shot.
Yeah, you did.
What we do is we point out something very interesting, and the remote viewing supports this thesis.
Those areas where crop circles have been produced, the center of mass for those areas are the safest areas.
And so that answers, presumably, the whole question about crop circles.
These are marks placed there by extraterrestrial something.
Or extras.
What's it called?
A higher intelligence.
A higher intelligence of some kind to warn us and to tell us where these safe, so-called safe areas are.
Correct.
Correct.
But you have to have the consciousness tool to know what they are.
What they're saying is this area is, there's no message in the crop circles.
What they're saying is the area itself is the message.
And without being a trained remote viewer, you would not be able to get behind that superficial illusion and see the meaning That's why remote viewing is so powerful, and why I think it's the lingua franca out there in the Federation.
How many people are going to survive this catastrophic event, Ed, percentage-wise?
How many will it take?
How many will survive?
I think we're probably going to lose 20 billion people, a whole bunch.
We're probably going to lose a third of the folks.
A third?
Yeah.
Over time, a six-month period, maybe.
And again, folks, this is from a series of events from our own sun that begin to hit and hit and hit until finally our protection is gone.
And then, of course, once that's gone, you literally are in a rotisserie, turning and being scorched.
I think this is actually a cyclic event.
My guess is that 11,500 years ago or thereabouts, the same thing happened.
Pre-recorded history.
That's based upon our work.
This is not the first time it's happened.
So you believe the Sun does this on a regularly scheduled basis?
I think it has a long cycle.
And it has an angry cycle.
Sort of like PMS or something like that.
The Sun has PMS?
Again, it would seem... I mean, who are you selling to at this point?
What I'm doing is, and the reason I looked at the next global catastrophe, earthquakes and things like that, is to be able to act as a herald, to tell people to get ready and trust your own consciousness.
Learn how to use it, trust it, or at least find somebody that knows how to use it and tell you where to go to save yourself and your family.
That's all.
Or to get out of the way.
For instance, you know, Predicting an earthquake, not everybody's going to leave their home next to, let's say, a volcanic eruption.
We've got one scheduled for North Island, New Zealand.
But a few people might, and that saves a few lives.
But you have to build up a track record first.
Kind of like Luke used the force.
Yep.
In terms of human potential, there's a lot of force to use, but we don't do it.
We're too focused on other things.
Even in my line of work, remote viewing, People want to use these precision tools to win the lottery, and they always can rationalize it somehow.
I've got all kinds of winning lottery tickets on my LearnRV website, but now I think the priorities better change fast, because you can't take it with you.
Okay.
Assuming one was a survivor of this catastrophe, in the world afterwards, would remote viewing continue to be an important skill?
Absolutely.
I'm trying to help you sell here.
Absolutely.
It'll help you find water.
It'll help you find food, right?
It'll help you find other human beings to communicate with if you're cut off.
It'll help you know which medicines or which natural medicines to do if a member of your family is hurt or you are.
That's what we use it for now.
Where will you be when it hits the fan, Ed?
I don't know.
I will probably be in Eastern Europe because of personal reasons, but I'll want to be in any case next to the people I love.
I've considered strongly Whitefish, Montana because I know that, as I've mentioned before on your show, that's a very good survival spot.
But it sounds like you're going to be, and I know this to be true folks, he's going to be in Russia, well actually Ukraine, right?
Right.
Ukraine.
And you're in Ukraine for... Two years.
Personal reasons.
Correct.
Gotta follow my heart.
I just recently learned how to do that.
I've been rolling my head all these years.
Alright, well then an obvious question is, how does Ukraine shape up in the coming lesser times?
Actually, the northern part of the country, Russia, the people stick together for the most part, and you do have crop circles up there.
Heck, I may start a little community.
Whitefish will be my sister city.
All right.
Let's risk a couple of, you know, on-screen calls and just see what people say.
All right?
Wild Caroline, you're on the air with Major Ed Dames and Art Bell.
Good morning.
Good morning, Mark.
I have a two-part question, if I may, for y'all.
Sure.
Okay.
The first one would be for Ed.
And Ed is a well-committed astronaut.
I'm going to hope, like Eric, that you're wrong about the shuttle.
Me too.
But my question for you is, realistically, Critically or easily, can somebody pick up remote viewing?
And I say that from the experience of a jaded, cynical engineer who could never learn a foreign language.
Yeah, good question.
If you really bored down on it, Ed, and went, you know... Oh, I used to only teach engineers, scientists, and doctors.
In fact, I've taught some of the best in the world.
An engineer, despite any beliefs of that nature, can learn this in about three months.
But you're going to need about another six months to one year, depending on how much practice you have, to really master the skills.
I and my team of professionals teach that.
We do not charge.
It's unlimited instruction online.
We're there all the time.
That's an engineering background and I guess the logical, cynical nature of it wouldn't get in the way.
No, not at all, because it's a skill.
It's a skill.
It takes an innate ability.
Let's say I was teaching you how to ice skate, and you look at those ice skates and you say, there's no way that anybody can stand on slippery ice with those skinny little things.
And then a good coach can say, yep, you can believe whatever you want, but you'll still be ice skating.
I would think, you know, as an engineer, you've got analytical abilities, and that would help.
Okay.
And Art, my second part of the question is for you, if I may.
Sure.
You have a guest coming up here in the next hour that'll be talking about terrorism and a few other things.
And a few other... sustainable energy, that kind of thing, yes.
And I was wondering if you might consider a roundtable thing about terrorism and al-Qaeda in general, perhaps with Steve Wynn and Michael Schur, the guy that was head of the Osama bin Laden unit at the CIA, and maybe even your next hour's guest?
Well, we'll see, and we'll see what next hour's guest has to say.
In the meantime, east of the Rockies, you're on the air with Major Ed Dames and Art Belheim.
A subway and a tunnel system in Boston that have got a bad name recently.
Would these be a temporary shelter for what he's talking about?
That's a good question, actually.
And Ed himself was, a long time ago, was talking about a cave in the Hawaiian Islands.
Actually, you have to.
One, it gets real bad, and the belts that are really hot, you are going to have to seek shelter underground.
There's no ifs, ands, or buts about it.
So a subway would be probably, obviously, not bad.
As long as you have water, yes.
Huh.
You also mentioned, of course, over the years, Ed, seeing many people underground.
You've gone back to that again and again and again.
That applies to this situation, right?
When the atmosphere really begins to heat up and when protons start coming down to the deck and x-rays in the out years, you have to be underground for periods of time.
Not forever, but you have to sit out storms.
Well, you're going to have vicious winds, too, because the atmosphere is going to change drastically.
Well, our weather clearly has been in terrible flux.
I mean, just terrible flux.
Anybody can see.
You don't have to be a weather guy to see that things are very much in flux.
We are just not going to be able to grow crops the way we have used to.
I said that eight years ago on your show, and that's when it's going to come down too fast.
We're not going to be able to grow crops the way we used to, exposed to the vicissitudes of these climate changes.
Okay, listen.
When can I have you... It'll be two weeks, Ed, until I'm back on the air after tonight.
That's my new arrangement.
I do a couple Sundays a month.
So, two weeks from now, will we... either this will have begun to have been fulfilled or already be fulfilled, or in two weeks it will not.
Is that a fair statement?
I think what's fair is that we'll probably see something solar-wise in the next I'd say max month and a half to two months, but possibly as early as the next two hours, depending on what's going on with Sunspot 0762, I believe.
I hear that, but no, I'm talking about the shuttle situation.
Within two weeks it's obviously going to be resolved one way or the other, right?
Correct.
So if I have you on in two weeks and the shuttle has returned safely without any problems, no encounter with meteors, not driven out of Back to Earth by Meteor Shower or whatever, in two weeks would you come back on and say, well look, maybe we're headed in a slightly different direction because it didn't happen?
No, I would never say that.
Because again, we've got an ensemble of elements that have lined up here.
I know, but what if it doesn't come to pass?
You're still saying the rest of it will.
I'm saying that with the With what you're calling a confluence of events, these particular elements, yes.
I still hang my hat on the 85% likelihood that we're in the beginning of this massive series that I call the kill shot.
Okay, but if the shuttle is not forced to Earth by meteors, would you come on in a couple weeks and say, thank God I was wrong, or what?
It's not going to be, that is an analytical call, because when, as viewers, we saw a meteor shower and the shuttle flying, that That was my call, saying it looks like it's in trouble.
And we felt that it was in trouble, but I jumped to the conclusion that it was trouble because of the meteor shower, which I think is incorrect now.
...on all kinds of subjects, renewable energy, the way we make it through, if we make it through, and so much more.
Jim Bell actually is an internationally recognized expert On life supports sustaining development and has more than 40 years experience in the design and construction industry.
He attended Palomar College, Long Beach State University, and graduated from SDSU with a bachelor's degree in art and art sciences.
He speaks to many groups each year, is often interviewed on television, radio, and written press.
He's the author of Achieving Economic Security on Spaceship Earth and numerous other articles and papers on creating sustainable economies.
Jim currently serves as director of the Ecological Life Systems Institute and the San Diego Center for Appropriate Technology.
He also is board member of Ocean Beach People's Food Co-op, has recently been working with
the San Diego Apollo Project.
During the late 60s and early 70s, Jim became concerned about the impacts of human activities
on the environment and our quality of life.
He became increasingly convinced that there were smarter ways to conduct our lives, smarter
ways to build our communities that would just simply minimize negative impacts, making it
at least a little bit better.
in a moment, Jim Bell.
Writing a book is an interesting affair.
A number of years ago I saw a confluence of events around me.
I was doing a talk show every single day, five or six hours a day, six days a week, and you read every speck of news.
You know most of the important things that are going on in the world.
And it began to occur to me that in every field, in our economic dealings, in our social dealings, In our ecology, things were beginning to speed up.
Things were beginning to speed up exponentially, and that's when I wrote The Quickening.
It's not one of those things you concoct.
It's something that's in you.
You feel it, you know it, and you write it.
That's the kind of book The Quickening was.
And I guess Jim knows of that book because the first question is, how does your work relate to The Quickening?
And, can the quickening be positive?
Both really good questions, actually.
Jim, welcome to the program.
Thank you very much.
Where are you located?
I'm in San Diego, California in the community of Ocean Beach.
Ocean Beach.
Beautiful area.
No question about it.
This is kind of the, you know, this is like where the co-ops are and things like that.
Oh yeah, it's like eternal springtime there.
It's one of the best climates in the world, I guess.
Yeah, and I've been hearing about, well we have been having some pretty high temperatures in the backcountry, but nothing compared to what you guys are dealing with.
Well, actually, just over the mountains, you are having some similar temperatures.
Now, my area has been going on a somewhat regular basis, Jim, to 117.
Wow.
Of course, we're out in the desert, where one has that expectation, but it's been particularly brutal this year.
And, in fact, all over the country, it's been brutal this summer, hasn't it?
Well, you know, they keep talking about more and more severe hurricanes.
I mean, like, I don't want to spend a whole lot of time talking about all the horror stories, because, you know, we've already, we've heard them.
The ocean waters are warming.
Yeah, it's like we're numb, we're almost like numb to them.
And what I, what I decided to do is say, hey, look, obviously, if we continue as now, we're going to, we're going to damage our planet's life support system so severely it's going to fail in some fundamental way.
I mean, whether it's global warming or, you know, too much soaking up too much pesticides or whatever it happens to be.
I think the point is, well, gee, if we haven't reached that point yet, let's redesign how we do things so that we have good, strong, prosperous economies.
There's actually a pretty good argument about that, whether we've already gone too far.
Now, I don't want to invalidate the rest of what you have to say, but I should ask you about that.
How much of a possibility is there that whatever it is that might get us already is unstoppable?
It's, you know, you're familiar with many of the theories that I'm familiar with, and there's all kinds of things, you know, that seem to be able to happen.
You know, reverberations of the weather, you start going one way and it turns the other way because of climatic effects like that.
But I just said, well, you know, we can get, you know, we can get all involved in those things and wonder about them and all that.
But really, if we do have time, the best thing to do is develop Life support, sustaining economy.
Okay, once again though, to focus on the question itself, which was rather direct.
I think it's too far.
We've gone too far.
Have we gone too far already?
Is it too late?
Well, you know, I've been in this field for over 30 years and I, you know, I think when I first got in it I was like, you know, young and, or younger anyway, and you know, like, wow, look how bad things are.
But our planet's life support system has been Remarkable in terms of its ability not to collapse under the constant onslaught of humans.
It's not just like pointing fingers.
We were born into this.
We didn't make it up.
So you're saying very possibly not too late.
I think anybody who's going to try to work in this area has to assume that it isn't too late.
Only because it's better to be positive.
Yeah, and it feels a lot better.
I don't know how strong an endorsement that is.
No, it's not too late, but we'll proceed anyway, because I'm like you.
I want to be optimistic about things, and there are things... Well, why don't we come back to this?
Okay.
After I get to make my case a little bit.
Well, that's true.
It's the kind of thing you do at the end of the show.
Okay.
Sorry, all this didn't mean anything.
We're doomed.
No, I know.
I know, but there's... I mean, they're actually in our society, because I talk with a lot of young people, and most of them are pretty pessimistic, you know, and there's... Well, they've got some cause, Jim.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, as long as we're kicking and breathing and we can communicate with each other, I think there's still hope.
The human family has done amazing things when it understood what was necessary and how we had to get together and pull together.
There's a really good question, all by itself, and that is, if it's not too late, are we in fact waking up In other words, how awake are we right now?
Well, I know I'm sure awake.
Well, I know you are.
That's obvious.
Or we better do it. In other words, how awake are we right now?
Well, I know I'm sure awake. Well, I know you are.
But I mean, that's obvious. But instead of, you know, it's almost like my job or I mean
this is really about consciousness on some level and and you know, I'm like a plumber.
Yeah, but you use the word.
What I'll talk about is how do we produce all our energy in a way that isn't polluting.
Sure, but you used the word numb a little while ago.
I think that's true too, but maybe a better word is bruised.
We all feel so beat about the head and shoulders by the life that's coming at us.
Uh, you know, down, you know, we're, this area in San Diego is sort of a, you know, it's not a high income, though the cost of living here is certainly going up.
Uh, but, uh, you know, I think people here, you know, they're working two jobs, or three jobs, or they got fired, or whatever, and they're, you know, people are living with other people in houses, even in my own building here.
It's a 2,500 square foot building, got two people living here.
We had a big fundraising party last night.
You know, we're, you know, we're working in the community, and we're trying to, You know, shed light instead of heat.
Got it.
Alright, so we have this quickening going on and the question is, what can we do to affect the way it's going to proceed from here?
Well, the key thing is energy.
I know you said you have enough solar out there to run all your equipment.
I do.
You're in even a better place than we are here.
But what I've done, I'm sorry to say, Jim, is not necessarily economically a reasonable thing for people to do.
It cost a lot of money.
No, and that's what I want to address.
That's what I'm addressing in the book, is a plan where, you know, people are going to pay money, but instead of having to come up with up-front money or going to, you know, going to Hawk or something like that, all they would have to do is just continuing their paying their utility bill, and the bill would actually gradually start going down, and the solar might not even be on the roof, but it might be in a parking lot over a shopping center down the street.
But their house would be made as energy efficient as possible.
Maybe even putting in the most efficient refrigerator and better lighting and skylights where it makes sense to take advantage of daylighting.
You know, all the things that... Well, all these things are kind of at the margin of what you can do.
You can do quite a bit.
But again, it depends on how many people out there are really awake.
Well that's, you know, and that's the wonderful thing about your show.
You know, every night, practically you and George and whoever else you have on, you're basically saying, hey, we're all trying to wake up.
I don't know, I don't have all the answers.
Let's wake up.
There's a theory now, Jim, that the oil, the first easy-to-get half of the oil is now gone.
And we're at a point where we've got still a lot of oil to get out of the ground, but it's the second half, the hard-to-get, very expensive-to-get oil.
In other words, we're at peak oil.
Do you believe that?
I think there's definitely an excellent case for it, and there's been a lot of people who I respect who have talked about it, including some Republicans.
I can't think of his name off the top of my head, but he's back east.
He's a Republican representative, or as Roscoe Bartlett, I think it is, and he's been talking about peak oil for a long time, trying to get the Republicans to, you know, hey, get it.
We've got to do something quick.
So this is on one level, it's kind of mainstream, and I've even seen exon studies that are where they're saying, you know, it's coming, it's coming.
I'm hoping it doesn't come as fast as a lot of these people are saying, because if it does, it'll make what I'm proposing more difficult, because we lose the energy or the fossil fuel bridge we now have to move to, you know, the next way.
I mean, let me just give you one example.
If we covered only 18% of existing buildings and parking lots in San Diego County, we could be completely energy self-sufficient.
I mean, replace gasoline, diesel, natural gas, all imported electricity.
Right.
But Jim, I don't see it happening.
Not in San Diego.
In fact, actually, not anywhere.
Do you?
Well, I'm planning to live out my life here, so I'm going to work You mentioned the Apollo Project, which I've been working with.
you know we have a of there's a few other you mentioned the apollo project which
i which i've been working with and of
it's it's a group of it's it consists of labor
uh... community groups and environmental groups and we're we're actually meeting the uh... in the electrician's
hall uh...
you know here are in the the united brotherhood of electrical workers hall
I apologize for the hall, I don't know what the number is.
And the whole idea behind the Apollo Project is to put the same kind of muscle we did in trying to get somebody to the moon into making our country renewable energy self-sufficient.
You know, starting community by community.
I'm with you.
I mean, if the situation is as we have described, then why isn't there some kind of Manhattan-style emergency project to make America, not just San Diego, but America, energy-sufficient?
To put solar cells and wind machines up everywhere?
I don't see that happening yet.
Do you?
No, you're definitely right, but there's sure a lot of... I mean, like, I just saw something In the news report about the governors, no, it was the mayors, the National Association of Mayors, had come out, supposedly and unanimously, to try to reduce global warming in their own cities.
And here, I'm in San Diego, San Diego's done some pretty good things.
As you say, and I agree with you 100%, if PICO happens, it won't matter who.
It's just not big, significant enough to really make any difference.
But we have the capability, you know, if we recognize it as a real danger and we've got our businesses and our military and really everybody, you know, on board with doing it.
And actually in San Diego, the military, the Navy has a 750 kilowatt solar system over a parking lot.
Right.
You know, so, you know, there's things happening and people are dabbling in it.
You know, it's kind of like the Emperor's New Clothes story where you I guess I'm like the little kid who's saying, hey, the emperor's naked, you know?
Yes, well, everything's money, Jim.
Everything's money.
The plan that I'm proposing, and I'm working with the Apollo Project more or less on, basically says, hey, look, there are companies out there called energy service companies.
Have you heard of those companies?
Yes.
Yeah, okay.
Well, they just love to bid a proof-of-concept project, say, for the city of San Diego, that would be That would match the energy profile use of the city of San Diego.
You know, some commercial, some industrial.
Yeah, but who pays for it, Jim?
Well, they invest, they do their business right now.
They'll come into your factory, they'll come into your hotel complex or whatever, and they'll invest upfront money to do the retrofit, and then they share in the savings.
That's how they get their money.
And then they share in the savings.
Yeah, and then once they've got all their profit and their initial investment out of it, with a healthy interest rate, you know, it's yours.
Uh, and, you know, things like if you put in double-glazed windows, they don't, you know, they don't stop working after you've paid them off.
They continue working as long as... So then you're telling me, uh, going in and doing these steps to, say, a factory, whether it's doubling windows or putting solar cells on or whatever you can do to get really green.
You're saying it's profitable enough that this company will come in uh... change the factory around
based and do all the uh... capital investment likely for just a share of
the savings will be but they
you there's we are so energy inefficient there's just huge amounts of money to
the way i i i i i totally there i believe it would happen is
It almost sounds too good to be true.
That's when it usually is, Jim.
I've had several experiences with it.
The San Diego Police Department just did it, and they're tickled pink, and they included solar in it.
How did it turn out?
In other words, how much did it cost to install at the police department, and how much money are they saving?
What happens in these deals, well, in every experience that I have had with it, is that what the energy service company guarantees the police department or whoever they're working with, a positive cash flow day one, once things are installed.
And they're real conservative about it, too, because they're looking mostly to get the low-hanging fruit.
Yeah, it's pretty impressive.
Again, for example, can you quote dollars?
Do you know how much it costs to go into the San Diego Police Department and change it all around?
I wasn't privy to the budget, but it has been touted.
And there was another building that was done even earlier.
About 10 years ago called the Environmental Services Building and it was all retrofitted existing building next door to another building that that was identical.
And you're saying an energy company?
Called Energy Service Company.
Is the one that put up all the money?
Yes.
I don't know if it's specific in that deal but according to our local utility that Energy Services Building has been generating a 25 percent return per year since it was Impressive.
It is impressive, but I mean that's probably gone up because the cost of energy has gone up, so that means that payback happens even faster.
Yeah, it's a good point.
You see, I didn't think there was anything really profitable there yet in alternative energy, and you're telling me, oh yeah, there is.
Yeah, and it's kind of like, you know, you can do something stupidly or you can do it intelligently.
And basically what I said, I said, well what does everybody have in common in, you know, in the city or in the region?
at least in the county and well one way or another they all pay utility bills
they all go to the you know gasoline gas station and buy gas right
you know and all this and and when when we do that in our region right now
all the money leaves the region I mean we import 90 percent of our energy so
we're extra vulnerable. That's an awfully good point
If your dollars are staying there in the community, that means a lot, doesn't it?
It does mean a lot.
Sure, you're right.
All energy, or most of our energy, is coming from elsewhere.
That means, ultimately, the dollars flow from your pocket to, I don't know, Saudi Arabia?
Yeah, or Venezuela, or even to another state other than yours.
Certainly not your county, where most of the things happen that affect your life.
That's a very good point.
Here in San Diego County, you know, the figure fluctuates a lot because it depends on what the price of energy is.
But I've kind of said, well, more or less $6 billion a year we export each year just to pay for the energy we import.
Did you say $6 billion?
$6 billion.
In your area alone?
Well, San Diego County, 3 million people.
Man, that's a lot of money, Jim.
I have no illusions about energy in any way at all.
I've taken a number of steps myself, as many of you know.
I have enough solar power and wind power here to power my house.
I have batteries, inverters, you know, I went the whole magilla.
And I know, and I can tell you, that when I did it several years ago, and so the situation might have changed, and we'll ask Jim about that, but when I did it, it was so expensive.
That I really wouldn't see the return in my lifetime.
So obviously I did it for other reasons.
I wanted uninterruptible power.
I wanted pure power.
There are a lot of reasons that I did it, not all of which are necessarily green.
They're just things that I wanted.
And I wanted to be able to see if I could do it, frankly.
But it cost far too much money, and I'll be dead and gone by the time the payoff occurs.
And that's just fact, or was a fact, when I did it.
Now, Jim, you should know that as I do the program, and people are listening to you, and they listen, believe me, to every word you and I say, I get computer messages from the audience.
The audience can be cruel, Jim.
Don in Tallahassee is a little cruel. He says, look, how can your guest say he's
an expert in the field and yet not be specific on anything? He can say that so-and-so
company saved X number of dollars or percent of money or something, but he can't give any
specifics. I also cannot find any company named Energy Services Company. It's a class of companies. A
class of companies. Yeah.
Is there any specific company involved in what you've been talking about tonight that you'd like to name?
Well, I don't want to tout any particular company.
Why not?
I don't have a problem with that.
You know, making money on saving energy, I want to know about it, so does everybody else.
I mean, this is such common knowledge in the field that I'm surprised there's even questions about it, just like, you know, It's not common knowledge to me.
I know of energy companies, Shell, Mobil, BP.
Well, energy service companies actually get their money, I don't know if they get it from BP, but they get money, their upfront money that they invest comes from a utility consortium.
Basically, they use that money.
But I did give the example of the energy services company here in the city of San Diego.
And this is, you know, city of San Diego record.
And according to San Diego Gas and Electric, which has no vested interest in showing the wonderful, you know, the performance of this building... Well, if anything, they would have the opposite.
But they published that this building... But there's good people.
There's some good people in SDG&E, too.
It's not money.
I hear you.
So they said what?
They said that this building has been returning 25% on the investment in the efficiency improvement.
That's damn good.
Day one.
Okay.
And where did San Diego Gas and Electric make that statement?
In the newspaper or what?
I believe it was in the newspaper because it's been a big deal.
It's actually been one of the first, because I've been somewhat involved in politics here and one of the frustrating things is they had this building showing this wonderful return and I was going, asking the mayor why aren't Why aren't you doing all the buildings?
I mean, this is a positive cash flow deal.
And the answer to that was?
I don't know.
We've had a lot of scandals here.
I call it the quagmire of intrigue down at City Hall.
Well, that goes on everywhere, Jim.
That's just the way the world works.
When you're involved in energy, Jim, you are in politics, buddy.
you know what i what i'm trying to i guess what i'm trying to say is there
you know there are ways i mean for example in the in the in the economic
model that i'm that i present in my book and if they're involved with note and
everything else uh... it basically shows that initially you would invest
ninety seven percent of the money
you know that the energy service company would put up or even after even
a fee you know the city was going to put it up it
actually better if the city did because they get they get a lower interest rate
than the energy service company and do you do some kind of private
no public partnership that would be more lucrative for everybody really
but uh... basically put the money up and began to investing in efficiency and and
and the the parameters are that you're going to you're going to
save every kilowatt of capacity that you can save
per thousand dollars per kilowatt of capacity saved uh... assuming uh... you know buildings being used ten
hours a day Governments are rarely into saving money, they just spend other people's money, taxpayers' money.
But if money is to be made, Jim, then you're correct.
I mean, if a company can go in, make an investment, and then reap enough profit, then it's going to happen all over the place.
The marketplace will take care of it.
You don't need government involved.
Some energy service person out there in that business listening who will fast forward to your email because there's actually a National Association of Energy Service Companies.
People aren't necessarily doubting you, Jim.
They just want specifics.
I think the best thing is just to listen to what I'm saying.
When I say we could be completely renewable energy self-sufficient in San Diego County by covering only 18% of existing buildings and parking lots, I'm assuming, and I've got data for this, 500 square miles of buildings and parking lots, and 2 square meters per day per kilowatt hour of energy produced.
And then basically doing the math.
No, I had to eliminate that.
Full of, you know, baloney.
Dog poo.
They get it.
So, you're saying you're not full of that stuff.
I think if people give my book a fair read, and I'm offering the book free to the world.
No, there is something to that.
You're offering, you're going to go broke Doing that actually, Jim?
Well, what I figured out, it doesn't really cost me anything, and if the ideas get out and it changes consciousness and people say, hey, we don't have to wait for San Diego to do it, we'll do it in our own city, our own community.
You know, nobody has to wait for us.
I mean, it's almost like I think if any region on the planet really begins to do this seriously.
Alright, I'm interested.
What's the name of your book?
It's titled, Creating a Sustainable Economy and Future on Our Planet.
And it's free?
Yeah, and the subtitle is of the San Diego to Juana region, a case study.
A case study.
And so all your work is in that specific area.
You certainly keep referring to that.
That's fine.
Well, I did actually, because somebody said, well, you know, people kept saying, well, gee, that's good for us here because we've got plenty of sunshine here.
But, you know, what about Seattle?
So I did run the numbers for Seattle.
Whereas we have to cover 18% of our buildings and parking lots, and I didn't do a survey per capita of buildings and parking lots in Seattle, but I said, well, if there's the same number of buildings and parking lots per person in Seattle They'd only have to cover 28 percent.
28 percent?
Gee, I figured people living in Seattle would have to walk around with solar-powered hats.
No, huh?
Might happen there.
But no, it's like, whereas we need two square meters per kilowatt hour per day on average, you know, for production, and we only get five hours of sunlight a day, so that's why the energy savings is so much better, because you get to save energy longer.
Well, do you know where I live, Jim?
Yeah.
I live in Pahrump, Nevada.
I can't even count them.
We have so many days of really strong sun here.
The first thing you want to do, though, is to find all the ways you can save energy and maintain your comfort.
Well, that's a bit of a problem.
You see, in areas where it gets to be 117 degrees, you depend on a compressor operating properly, Jim, and that sucks energy just like a cow does whatever it is a cow eats.
Well, like in your area, though, doing something underground would make perfect sense because you're not going to have to worry about water getting into your basement.
But down there, the Earth will help keep you cool.
Well, that is true.
How far into the Earth must one go to reach a somewhat neutral temperature?
Do you know?
About five feet.
Five feet, so if people... Maybe six feet there, you know.
Maybe six.
So if people built homes, literally, in the ground, at five or six feet, the temperature would fall to a steady what?
It would be about 65 degrees.
65 degrees?
You would basically be heating it with outside air a little bit.
Actually having to heat it in a land where it gets up to 117 degrees?
Yeah, maybe you wouldn't have to heat it, but you would certainly save on your compressor wear and tear if you can have a place Well, actually 65 is just a very comfortable temperature for me.
Well, but you're fighting the 117 on the outside, and if your house was really well insulated, or you could, you know, go down there and kind of shove it off from the rest of the house.
Yes.
But the idea is you design the building so that it's functional to you.
You can make changes in different times of the year when the weather conditions are different.
Do you know offhand whether anybody out here in the desert actually has done that?
I've heard of some pretty weird things.
Has anybody actually put a house underground here?
They actually have done it here in San Diego, which I wouldn't recommend it in San Diego in most cases.
Well, maybe out in the desert part of San Diego, but not in the regular part.
But just because of water, if you get a real heavy rainfall year, you might have a situation.
Yeah, you look up at your living room wall and it's pouring through.
Yeah.
There is that.
Yeah.
But, you know, if you do with a little attention, like, you know, I mean, what I do professionally is I'm an ecological designer.
So when I get my paid job, when I have one, it's basically helping people do whatever they're trying to do in ways that are Well, to me, this is about our children and future generations.
It's about us.
I mean, I don't know how old you are.
they're going to be relatively easy to recycle.
Do you understand the implications of giving away a free book, Jim?
Well, to me, this is about our children and future generations.
It's about us. I mean, I don't know how old you are. I'm 63, so I figure if I live another 20 years, I've had a pretty
good ride.
I'll be darned. I'm 60.
Yeah. So, you know, we're...
And it's like, gee, you look around and I see little children and I think, wow, what a world we're creating for them.
But when I say the implications of giving away your book, I'm saying a lot of people are going to go for a free offer like that, and can you handle it?
As long as the website doesn't crash, you know.
Well, it's going to crash, Jim.
As a matter of fact, we should give out the website number so we can get on with crashing it.
So it's simple, right?
www.jimbell.com?
That's correct.
J-I-M-B-E-L-L dot com.
And on that website, what do people have to do to get the free book?
On the left-hand side of the screen, they're going to see a little Click on buttons, and the second one is going to say, Jim's new book.
So you just click on that.
Yes.
And then the title will come up, and there'll be a click here under that title.
And it'll come up in the PDF format, which is 50 pages, including the covers.
And if you're on the dial, it's going to take a while to get it to go down.
But if you're on cable of some sort, it doesn't take very long at all.
So your book, then, is in Smart Jim.
It's in a PDF format, available on the web.
Yes.
So, you were right.
People will be able to get it until your website crashes, which will be... Well, I bet it's going down right now, Jim, and I'm not even checking.
Well, my server... I talked to my server and he said he could handle it.
We'll see.
I've had a lot of server guys say, hey, we can handle it.
Big corporations, Jim.
But maybe your guy's really good.
Yeah, well, I've noticed... I've listened to your show enough to know that a lot of people's websites Yes.
All right, folks.
So once again, for your free book in Adobe format, you simply go to www.jimbell.com.
And you said about 80 pages, something like that?
50.
50?
Including the cover.
It comes out in kind of like a magazine format.
That's a smart way to have done it, Jim.
And I guess after the crash.
People can then slowly go in the next day or two, and when your website recovers, they'll get it.
It's going to be there, and really everything on my website is free, so it doesn't really matter to me.
This is coming from your heart.
Yeah, and like if somebody would maybe look at my life and say, I don't think I would like to live there, but I do like to live where I live, and it's actually comfortable, and I have good friends, and I think we're doing some important things, and I have a lot of fun.
You wouldn't go as far as to say you live a sort of a commune-type life, right?
It's not really anything formal at all.
Your website's down, Jim.
I'll talk with my server in the morning.
At least that's what people are saying here, so we'll see.
Maybe it's just stunned temporarily.
Patience with it.
Alright, so in this book you can learn how to do what has been done in San Diego.
Is that a fair statement?
I give examples.
A third of the book is footnotes.
So there's a lot of explanation that go with everything that's said in the book.
But it's not fair to say that a third of what you've said here is footnotes.
What we need are some of those footnotes, Jim.
Well, I mean, they're footnotes to validate the calculations that were done and all that.
Alright, here's a question for you, out of left field.
You heard what I said at the bottom of the hour, Jim.
I actually went out and bought all the stuff I needed.
You know, solar panels, wind energy, inverters, battery banks.
Oh my God, I went crazy!
And probably when you did it, a solar panel was costing maybe ten bucks a peak watt.
Plus, you're kind of out there sort of remote, so somebody had to haul everything out there.
All of that's true.
In fact, I'll level with you.
I spent $50,000, maybe $60,000 on the operation, Jim.
Well, I mean, it's horrible.
I mean, people, even regular residential people that are doing this, if they were really going to pay the whole freight without the subsidies and things like that, it would be at least $20,000 or $25,000.
But my question to you is, today, right now, If I lived in California where they do have some kind of program, although they might be ending it.
I heard rumors, by the way, they were ending the subsidies.
Is that true?
It very well may be true because they've been cutting them down, I think, 40 cents every three months or something like that.
No kidding.
For quite a while.
Really?
But there's this whole million dollar, million roof solar program in the state of California that actually Governor Schwarzenegger has been pushing.
That has passed in some form.
Why would they cut the subsidies down, Jim?
Well, it's the usual argument of, well, you know, if it's being subsidized, it's not free market and it's not fair.
You know, other people point out that, well, gee, the oil companies are subsidized and the nuclear power companies are subsidized, and we subsidize them by breathing in their pollution and all that kind of stuff, too.
I mean, when we pay our doctor bill, they don't sign a check.
But I mean, you know, we're going to inevitably be talking about politics, Jim, whether it's at your local San Diego level or at the national level.
And that's a political decision to begin ending subsidies that would encourage people to put in solar power.
Well, with my plan, you don't really need subsidies.
Your plan?
You know, the plan that I present in the book.
Yes, but... Because it basically makes a free market argument that if you... See, initially, when you, you know, say you were going to do a float a municipal bond or something like that to fund this for your city or for your region.
Right.
You're still going to have to pay some interest on it, but you'll probably get something less than 5%, which is a pretty good interest, whereas the energy service company is probably going to get 12% on their money.
So it means some opportunities are not going to be as cost-effective as they would be if the money was cheaper.
But you invest in the efficiency initially, that pays back very fast, so you get completely out of debt, and now you're basically rolling that money over and continuing to invest it.
You know, you have economy of scale production, you have crews that are trained, that are basically just going right down the block.
Well, this is very attractive, if it's really true.
I mean, people have to get together and they have to figure it out.
I'm not trying to say that my idea is the only idea, or even the best idea, but it's the best idea I've come up with.
Well, if your idea is a profitable idea, then it's a good idea, Jim.
Yeah.
It's a very profitable idea, and because it brings the money back into the economy, it benefits everybody.
Plus, it cleans up the environment.
And another thing that happens is you get energy security insurance at no extra cost, and that's what you got.
That's what you did when you put your system in.
I got what?
I'm sorry.
Security insurance at no extra cost.
Well, I don't know about no extra cost.
I don't know about no extra cost.
That's part of the reason I actually did it.
A big entity can do it.
Very green things and end up making money.
And making money is the only way that all of this is ever going to come to pass.
Otherwise, it is nothing but a pipe dream.
There are still things that stand in the way of doing this, even if you do make money doing it.
And those things are in the political world.
We're going to ask a little bit about that and more about what Jim says can be done.
If it's real, it's important.
His book is free.
So go to his website and decide for yourself.
A lot of people are looking for answers.
Jim Bell claims to have one of them.
So, whatever else you think, do go to his website, www.jimbell.com, download his book, And see for yourself if he's right.
If he is, well that means a lot.
Sound of explosion.
Music.
We certainly need people like Jim.
With what we're facing, we need people like Jim.
And I'm curious, Jim, all things said, won't be no country music, won't be no rock and roll.
What they really mean is that, you know, we're toast.
Yeah, you got that.
We're toast.
Straight ahead.
So my question is, how dire are the signs that we have right now?
I mean, we do have weather changes, Jim.
We have Problems with our atmosphere.
We have concerns about the sun.
Just our general environmental situation appears to be dire.
How dire?
Well, we can't do anything about the sun, but we can do something about the earth.
And it is very dire.
I mean, I'm not trying to soft pedal it or say, hey, you know, it's not as bad as we think.
I think it's probably worse than we think.
probably worse than we think. But you know our planet, our life support system has
you know it's been amazingly, you know, resilient.
Resilient, I mean just when you really begin to think about it, it's
it's just amazing. I mean the millions, I mean like you're quite right Jim, but is there a point, oh there will
be, yeah.
You know, where it's like somebody throws a switch.
The human beings are on this planet and exist in a very narrow margin, actually.
It wouldn't take very many degrees one way or the other to virtually make life not sustainable in many areas.
Sure.
So, a lot of people believe that one little thing Not like the butterfly effect will be done, just sending everything over the top and causing some terrible climate catastrophe or something ecologically that, you know, will really hurt us.
Well, you know, like the ozone layer was only discovered, you know, that it was being reduced, was only discovered by accident.
That's right.
I mean, there's probably 10 things going on that we don't even know about yet, but it's like We, you know, that's what happens is maybe part of our malady as human creatures is we get stuck there.
And what I'm trying to say, you know, let's not get stuck there.
Let's go to the next level.
Let's, you know, as long as we, as long as we're kicking and breathing, you know, like if we were, you know, attacked by, you know, some people in our community, we, you know, definitely would defend ourselves.
Yes.
Going to the next level, Jim, is going to absolutely require either a plan like yours that is so obviously profitable that people just do it because people do what saves them money, and no doubt it would also, since it's probably so late, it's going to require some very difficult decisions by our national politicians.
Well, if they were making the right decisions, it would certainly be a lot easier.
But there's, you know, I think I mentioned Roscoe Bartlett.
You know, he's a Republican.
He's been in office for many years, something like that, and he's trumpeting peak oil.
And I didn't talk with him, but I talked with his second-in-command, a woman by the name of, I believe, Lisa.
You know, they're very on it, and they're sending me emails about new developments all the time.
So it's a great source of information.
I'm sure people like yourself do the calculations, Jim.
And I watch the price of gasoline and the price of oil.
And it steadily jumps up two or three jumps, and then goes back one, and everybody goes, oh man, cool, it's going down.
But then it goes up two or three more jumps.
So, you know, it's slowly going up, up, up, up, up, up.
Where, how high does it have to get Jim before people begin to do drastic things and take
drastic steps?
Well you know, as it goes up more people do.
It just doesn't make the news.
We're more interested in Michael Jackson or something like that.
Or at least the media is more interested in it.
Well, yes.
I have no answer for that.
I don't answer for the media.
I don't know what they're doing.
Some crazy things.
Um, but at some point, $3, $5, $6, $7 for a gallon of gasoline, at some point, the world changes.
Somewhere before that $7 mark, the world changes.
You know, it's like the frog in the pot.
Yes, yes, yes.
Well, there's actually a guy who actually helped me on the book.
He's a noted economist here in San Diego.
His name is Dr. Alan Jennings.
He's a professor at USD University, and I came to him with this idea, and I don't even know how to do a spreadsheet on a computer, and so he basically plotted in the numbers to the spreadsheet to represent what we were talking about, and also Dr. Heather Horne, who's Her specialty is marketing, but she has a Ph.D.
in economics at San Diego State University.
These people are basically volunteering their time.
I'm so honored that they would put the time in.
Well, I'm glad they did.
Did they make any such prediction about, as we continue to cascade up, where all of this takes off?
How I first met Dr. Jen was, It was quoted in the newspaper that every 10 cent rise in the price of gasoline meant $7 million left our county economy each month.
Do that again.
Every... For every 10 cent rise in the price of gasoline, $7 million was exported out of our county's economy each month.
Wow.
So when you look at rises of 50 cents and stuff like that, it's starting to talk about big dollars here.
Yeah, there's never been any question about that.
And then there's this oil thing, Jim.
Let's talk a little bit about the oil thing.
Right now we have an economy that runs on oil.
If we were to attach a number to it, I'll bet you... I don't know.
Well, I believe oil is definitely close to 50%, if not 50%.
And natural gas is the other bigger, you know, the other big.
And I think coal is edging up because of oil going up.
But all of these things?
Those three things are really the whole ball of wax.
I think when the final history of nuclear power is written, it's going to turn out to be a net thermodynamic energy loss.
You really think so?
I really think so.
And in my first book, I cited some scientists who were I'm saying the very same thing.
I guess people that feel that way are a minority, but when you look at a waste that's going to be around 10,000 years and there's never been peace on the planet.
There is that problem, yes.
For two days.
And you think, well, we're taking that risk for future generations just to power our televisions?
Well, our TVs are important, Jim.
Well, I watch it.
And I use the same thing for a computer or whatever.
You know, I mean, we're all sinners, I guess.
Yes, and you know, it's big of you to admit that.
In other words, you... How about a car?
Do you have a car?
I drive a 1989 Geo Metro, but still with the car.
Oh, you're a Geo Metro fan?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, I have Geos.
That's where we do 95% of our driving.
Only very occasionally do we use any of the... Three-cylinder?
Yeah, as a matter of fact.
XM-I, yeah.
Mine has almost just edging up to 200,000 miles, and I've never had to do anything to the engine.
Well, I've been suspicious about this, Jim.
Actually, I own two GeoMetros, and I must tell you that, well, the three-cylinder version, what kind of mileage do you think you get, Jim?
I think I'm still getting close to 40, you know, after all these years.
Yeah, you can get even quite a bit more than that, depending on what kind of driving you do.
I was always suspicious, Jim, that the Geo Metro is no longer sold.
I'm very suspicious about that.
How about you?
Yeah, well, no, it was definitely a wonderful, wonderful, you know, and I'm six foot four and there's more room for me to sit in that car and, you know, drive than there is in most... Maybe, you know, maybe somebody just said they're a little too good.
You're not making enough money on them.
Could that be true?
I mean, a car that goes a couple hundred thousand miles, a car that gets 40 or 50 miles or even 60 to the gallon, well, I guess we just can't have that.
This gets into the whole issue of does our economy even create wealth?
Does it increase the material energy wealth of our planet?
And the answer is no.
It's because it's all dependent on these fossil fuels and basically a non-renewable world.
And all you have to do is go to a landfill.
You know, watch what's happening there for five minutes.
Well, I guess what I'm getting at is there's a lot of people making a lot of money on these fossil fuels.
There are entire industries and lives and careers based on these fossil fuels and the whole infrastructure that delivers them and lets us burn them.
And that's not going to be given up easily, Jim.
Well, I mean, but there is Shell Solar and BP Solar.
I mean, they've got their hand in it.
Well, then let me ask you a hardball question.
Right now, in the United States, what percentage of our energy is derived from alternative methods, anywhere from solar to wind to geothermal to whatever?
What percentage?
I don't know the exact number, but I would say even if you threw in hydropower, it's Well, that's not right.
We've got commercial dams.
Alright, go ahead, throw in hydro power.
I think it's only like 5 or 6 percent.
5 or 6 percent.
The rest of it is all fossil fuel.
So, these are the folks that you're up against.
Well, but, see, the idea is not to be against them, but to show them a business opportunity.
I mean, if they embrace what I'm saying, you know, it could happen much faster.
And I don't have any problem with them making profits.
Imagine making profits doing something everybody would be applauding you for doing.
But you see, I'm not sure that at the end of the day what you're talking about would be a profit for Shell or Exxon or those kind of companies.
It would be profitable, but not to the end service energy companies.
Well, you know, it's up to them.
They have the investment capital.
I invite them to invest in this.
They really hate it when they don't make money.
They just hate it.
Hopefully, in the book, they'll read it and look at it, and they'll see that they can make a lot more money doing the right thing than doing the wrong thing.
Well, at some level, I think that you're correct.
But again, I don't think these larger fossil fuel energy companies would look at it the way you're looking at it, Jim.
Well, that gets back to consciousness.
And, well, it also gets back to politics.
In other words, those big companies have a lot of money.
They influence the people that are in elected office.
Well, one thing I've been in favor of is publicly financed campaigns on all levels.
I mean, here there's a group that's promoting it, and I think it's about three or four dollars a year per voter, and you get to run candidates who are beholding to the voters instead of beholding to special interests.
I think we need to move more.
Common Cause and groups like that are talking about these kinds of things.
We have a wonderful Constitution.
Unfortunately, people are trying to shut it down in a lot of cases now.
I've had a lot of guests on the program, Jim, who recognize the trouble we're in, but they say, realistically, our only understood workable savior right now is the nuclear power industry.
And you're not one of those people, are you?
No, I think it's just like, it almost shows, you know, we're a very clever species, but we're not very wise.
And this was one of the least wise things we've ever done.
Because when you start leaving things behind after you're dead and gone and long forgotten, That are going to be dangerous to people for maybe a thousand generations or ten thousand generations.
Not to mention that it's going to be moving through the food chain.
Once you put things like that into the world, there's really no escaping them.
We should not be doing that.
We should be more humble or more cautious or try to become wiser.
Think of our own little... In other words, this is one of those areas where, in a sense, it's already too late.
We already have so much waste that has got to be stored, that we're going to be doing that no matter what, Jim.
We're going to be storing it.
That's a done deal, man.
But let's not make any more if we have to.
And yeah, we're going to have to bite the bullet on that.
We're going to have to bite the bullet on a lot of toxic waste.
Not to bite the bullet on a lot of things, if we really care about future generations.
And speaking of bullets, let's for a second find out what you think about the war in Iraq.
Probably get you into a little trouble here, but do you believe the oil in Iraq was based on energy?
Well, it certainly was a big issue, I think, in the picture.
And people have found lots of other ways to make money on the war, so it isn't just the oil.
I think they thought they'd make a lot more money on the oil, but they're making money in other ways anyway.
And it's causing a lot of resentment from what I hear in the military.
They are?
It seems like we're spending a lot of money on this war.
I don't know that there's been much return so far.
What I've heard is, yeah, no, well, there's, I mean, like, you know, Halburton and, you know, there's some big companies.
Oh, I'm sure, yes, Halburton, I'm sure they're doing all right.
But I mean, basically, nationally, we're spending a pretty big chunk of change.
Huge.
Huge, yeah.
Well, you know, and when you think about this and you say, well, okay, what What triggered this?
Well, if you go back and back and back and back, you'll see... What triggered it?
That's a big debate, Jim.
It wasn't weapons of mass destruction, I don't think.
Yeah, well, I think we were probably first on the block with those things.
Bad intelligence?
I don't know.
People say a lot of things.
But we're there now, so I mean, the big question is... Well, let's just start with 9-11, because that was the big emotional thing that happened there.
Well, I'm not sure 9-11...
Yeah, it was emotional, you're right.
But I'm not sure that 9-11 is any sort of reason for the Iraq War.
Are you?
Well, what I thought about this, and what I was kind of hoping that President Bush would do, was to treat this as a criminal act as it was.
It was a murder.
It was a murder of 3,000 people.
Were they all the way?
And no question about that, and nobody should be doing that.
To me, it's not about revenge, but it's certainly about getting those people off the street.
uh... we want to talk to you know cattle like that you know but you know you don't really think him do you
that uh... the iraq war was a direct response to nine eleven or do you
well it was all kind of a slippery slope i guess you know it
Like I said, I'm more on the solution side.
I keep my ear open to this stuff.
Well, I was going to ask, is the war in Iraq part of the solution?
In other words, ultimately, will we get a whole lot of oil out of it?
No, I don't think so.
That's a no.
It's not going to matter.
It's not going to matter.
I mean, even if we got it.
Even if everything turned perfect tomorrow and we got it, it's still not going to really matter.
It may give us a couple more years or something like that.
Arctic Reserve, if they drill that, which will take them 11 years from what I understand, it's a few months of oil in terms of our consumption level.
A few months of oil.
And then, too, we're in competition now with China, of course, on the world oil market, right?
Yeah.
So all of these things, Iraq, perhaps a little bit bigger.
Well, let me back up a second and give you what I think is the succinct You know, first of all, if we had been doing what we should have been doing to become more, you know, just forget about the renewable development, just energy efficient, we would have basically pulled all the energy, economic energy, out of the Middle East that can be used for war.
I mean, this was reported by the Rocky Mountain Institute, you know, all kinds of different groups reported this, you know, like even if we made cars An average of 32 miles per gallon.
So if we had done all this, we would not have gone to war, Jim?
Well, we wouldn't.
I mean, I would say that the money in the Middle East that is now being used to attack
us wouldn't be there.
We'll check into the details for you as they become available, but it would appear that there is breaking news that the president of Saudi Arabia, King Fahd, has died.
And again, what that means, a little bit of time will have to tell, or if it's really true, but it does seem to be breaking news on CNN.
You might want to take a look.
Wildcard Line, you're on the air with Jim Bell.
Good morning.
Good morning.
Hi, do you have a question for my guest, sir?
Yeah, he had mentioned energy service companies.
Actually, the way they seem to work it down in the southeast part of the country, and I actually just got back from China working on it also, it's called performance contracts.
Okay.
And typically, many times it's not necessarily one technology such as solar or a transition from regular lights to fancy lights, things like that, that make it.
It's the companies that are offering a combination of new technologies and programs combined I'm sorry, are you still there?
Yeah, I'm here.
Okay, go ahead, I'm sorry.
It's typically five to nine months of return on investment, payback on performance contracts.
It's a straight energy consumption.
You talk about the politics a moment ago of energy, which is, it is all politics.
But when the politics step aside is when you don't have enough energy.
China.
I was in China for two weeks, just recently, a week ago.
Yes, it's a very enlightening experience, isn't it?
It is a very enlightening experience, and I'll tell you what's going on over there is that the politics play a part, but when it gets to the point where you don't have enough energy, period, and you're turning off skyscrapers for three or four hours a day, and the power's not there, that's when they start looking for alternative things.
I mean, China's got probably the largest coal production in the world, or at least some of it.
And yet, it's still not enough.
And so they're looking for solar answers, they're looking for, well, six nuclear reactors, I guess, is what I've been
told.
Things of that nature. So it is, politics will take a back seat to whatever's going on if the desperation becomes
strong enough.
I'm sure that's certainly true. Jim?
Yeah, like I said before, it doesn't really matter who does it first.
It's like somebody has to step up to the plate and say, hey, look, this is, we're in a very dangerous situation, you know, a lot of different, on a lot of different levels, and we need to, you know, develop a real practical, you know, cost-effective plan to get out of the mess we're in.
And, you know, and energy security plays, you know, one role in it.
I mean, it's like, you know, we say, well, gee, my payback is a long time, but, you know, What happens when your computer crashes because you don't have energy coming from the normal source?
What does that cost?
And what happens if you don't have energy and it's 117 degrees for five days because you don't have solar?
It's almost like the poison is so cheap we have to keep taking it.
Yes, the poison is so cheap we have to keep taking it.
And even though the gas prices are high, your statement is also true.
People may be hurting, they may be screaming and complaining, but they're still paying.
And they're still receiving.
So, for as long as that can go on, Jim, is there any real chance, any real hope of the kind of change that you're talking about?
It may occur on a small scale, but it's not going to really get underway until what this caller said begins to happen.
Skyscrapers getting turned off for a couple hours.
Oh yeah!
Then you start looking at alternatives.
Well, we have experienced that here.
People are kind of aware, but we get lulled, like you said before, with the gas price.
They go up, and they go down a little bit, and then, oh, what a relief, and then they go up a little higher, and they keep going a little bit higher.
And we kind of get lulled into it, and it didn't devastate our life, so we put up with it.
And with peak oil and things like that looming ahead of us, there's You know, peak oil is basically the point where there's not enough energy on a day-to-day basis to supply everybody's demand for it.
I'm not sure that's the definition of peak oil.
Are you?
I mean, I thought peak oil was when we had the first easy-to-get-half-of-oil-out-of-the-ground, but it isn't where we start to get stopped.
Well, but it sort of results in the same thing.
That once you reach that point, then it's like you're up against two things.
How do you change, Jim, the way people think?
energy that's required to get the oil out of the ground and process it and deliver it
versus the amount of energy that's in the oil.
So that's another peak that we're heading for that will happen close after the other
one I'm afraid.
How do you change, Jim, the way people think?
I'm 60 years old right now, alright?
And I'm looking at, if I'm lucky, say another 20 years of life.
Yeah, me too.
Well, the projections for the next 20 years aren't too bad, Jim.
Things are going to get tough, they're going to get expensive, but they're still going to be livable.
Frankly, the problem is going to be much worse after you and I are gone.
And it's almost impossible to keep the human from understanding that and reacting as you would imagine them to.
They'll be gone, why do they care?
I guess the way I look at it is I care.
And when I looked into my heart and I said, you know, I see when I see little kids and I think about the future and I think about, you know, all the generations of people that had to live and die and have kids and raise them long enough to, you know, so they could have kids and all that.
I can clearly hear that you care.
What I guess I'm asking about is the rest of most of everybody out there.
How do you change that?
Well, you know, I don't know.
I'm just doing the best I can.
But I think, you know, when I talk with people, it seems to me that everybody cares, but they're kind of, you know, their lives are, you know, in a way they need care, too, because, you know, the average person is, you know, working more than one job or, you know, something like that.
You know, trying to make the rent, and they've got a problem with their, you know, with their, their other, you know, their Paramore or whatever, and, you know, like all of us, we, you know, like life, life is what happens while we're making plans, and I'm, you know, I'm projecting economic plans to make regions energy self-sufficient, but nevertheless, I still think it's possible, and, and, you know, if you present a hopeful vision, practical vision, cost-effective vision, you know, why not?
I don't, I don't think we're quite that stupid.
Not to take advantage of it, if we really understand it.
You may be underestimating us.
You mean overestimating?
No, actually.
So anyway... I mean, we're all bumbly.
We don't have to put on airs or anything.
It's like, the sooner we respect that in ourselves, the sooner we're going to be able to work together and do something good.
No, I think I meant clearly, we could be that stupid.
Yeah, I heard you.
Yeah, we're kind of going along in a...
Well, as I described, how do you change a human being who doesn't think past the end of his life particularly?
How do you do that?
That's a sea change in a person's... Well, first of all, look at slavery and look at women having to vote.
I mean, that wasn't like all of a sudden 51% of the people signed up and said, yeah, this is a good idea.
And it was actually a relatively small number of people and it happened, you know, almost like faster than anybody imagined when it finally did happen.
Well, that's true.
Yeah, so big things happen, and I think when you really present a good idea, and like when I say I'm presenting this idea, I'm presenting this book and all that, you know, take my truth with a small t. I think we all should present our truth with a small t. You know, it's the best we've come up with so far.
That's all I'm sharing.
I think there's some good ideas there, and I'm hoping people will give it a fair look.
How about a small f, like fusion?
We talked about nuclear, well, there are problems with that, but fusion could be on, you know, it could be another 10, 15 years away, but when we get to fusion, it doesn't have the byproducts, but it's got a lot of real energy.
What do you think?
Well, if I can cover only 20% of my buildings and parking lots with solar panels and get all the energy I need with no danger of anything, you know, no 100 million degrees centigrade temperature to hold, I mean, magnetic bottles don't hold neutrons.
I mean, yeah, you can maybe contain the positive and negative charges, but you're not going to contain the neutrons, so the result will be the whole plant will become radioactive.
Well, okay, you know, we don't have fusion yet, but I'm presuming that... Well, but I mean, solar panels are warrantied by Shell Solar, BP Petroleum, Sharp Absolutely.
What about the fact, Jim, that producing that massive number of solar panels in itself is going to hit the economy really hard?
Those are not cheap to make.
Well, they're comparable to computer chips and all that, and they have been going down.
I know here, even Germany has really retarded the reduction in price because they are buying so much of them up on the world market.
They're doing what Something akin to what we should be doing here.
And they're, you know, kind of in a pretty far north country.
What is it that prompted the Germans to act so precipitously, so quickly, compared to us as we still sit back and basically do nothing?
I guess it probably has some influence, you know, the Green Party there has had some influence on it, but I think, you know, what, though I'm, you know, I'm not, I'm more focused on my own neighborhood, but, but, you know, I think people are making good arguments that, hey, this is, this makes more sense in terms of security, in terms of Of surety of energy in terms of pricing.
I mean, solar energy, once you have the capacity to collect it, the energy part doesn't go up in price.
Well, basically true.
What kind of life do modern solar cells have?
Well, they're warrantied for 25 years.
I mean, Shell Solar warranties them for 25 years.
British Petroleum warranties them.
And this is a performance warranty.
It's not that it failed, it's that the production goes down to a certain level.
Right.
There's a little bit of, you know, there's some things that need to be done better in terms of being able to monitor them, because, I mean, at the food co-op where I'm on the board, we have a 30 kilowatt system, and, you know, it provides about 30%, 35% of our energy, but it's hard to, you know, is any part of it malfunctioning?
It's sort of, we're sort of trying to figure out, well, how can we measure that so if there is any problem, we can attend to it right away, because it's If it isn't working properly, it's actually money out of our pocket.
That's right.
That's correct.
So you feel there's not sufficient monitoring available for this stuff?
Well, like when you're, like if you're net metered out, like a lot of people, you know, they put in enough so that they're actually pushing more kilowatt hours into the grid each year than they're using.
Right.
That you can measure.
That's not, but when you're like a business and you're producing 30 percent, it's like Well, energy prices are going up and down, like we said before, so it's kind of hard to keep track of where is, you know, what is that system doing?
And we actually have four systems, because we wanted to avoid the, you know, the net metering cost, or not the net metering cost, but the, you know, they were, if you're not on smaller meters, you're over 200 watts, you If the price of energy goes up, then they ding you for that increased energy cost.
We insulate ourselves by doing it that way, but it would be better to be able to understand exactly what's happening on a more moment-by-moment basis.
Going back again to make this happen, take the average homeowner out there listening to us right now.
Can they go out, Jim, and buy solar panels and the equipment it will take to power their home?
And will it be economically feasible for them to do that or not?
Well, if they focus on efficiency first, You know, really just do everything to, you know... No, I just want to focus on economics.
Well, but I mean, but see, that's where the economics comes in, because you can save energy much less, for much less money than you can produce it, no matter how you're producing it.
And so, the first step is that you put in that new refrigerator, you put in better lights, you do, you know, you do the things that are going to cut down your, you know, you're going to give you the same energy service, but you're not going to need very much energy to supply it.
Then you size your system.
If you do that, you're probably talking about eight, nine, ten year payback.
There are actually some companies, though, that will do... Alright, stop right there.
That should be enough.
You really feel As though the average household could replace the hoggy appliances with good and efficient ones and then scale it and go out and get the solar and the wind and the rest and have a payback in eight or nine years.
Yes.
That's not bad.
I mean, if you do the solar by itself, you know, like in your situation, it's probably a little more severe, but you know, you're looking at maybe a 20 year payback.
You know, at current interest rates, it's not too bad, but When you throw in the security and all that sort of stuff, you know, it sort of makes sense even economically, but the efficiency improvements is the key.
Because if you can get the same energy service for a lot less energy, you don't have to pay very much for those panels.
Speaking of panels, has the price of panels, you mentioned that Germany is buying a lot, and you're suggesting what?
That the price is artificially being held up by the German demand?
Yeah, and this is reflected in most of the solar companies are like doubling or close to doubling their production, whether it's Sharp or BP or Shell or whatever.
And also, even though there is the pressure, there are people, I've talked with some local installers here, and they're still getting panels around 3 to 315, maybe a little under 3 per peak watt, which is, you know, when you bought yours, it was much higher than that.
Yes.
Still been coming down.
All right, well, that's encouraging news.
Plus, if the world can look at Germany, and Germany actually solves its problems to a large degree, there's a lot of incentive there, isn't there?
Well, they're not taking advantage of, you know, they're doing it as foolishly as we are, in my view.
Oh?
They're just doing more of it.
But there's other, and what I'm pointing out in the book, that there's some very intelligent ways to do it that we're, you know, it's all gravy.
And you get the security, too.
Why aren't they doing it the smart way?
Well, it's new ideas.
I mean, I'm presenting with the help of my friends here in San Diego
a new way of looking at this.
You know, what I saw was like, well, you know, if you look at solar by itself or even wind,
unless you have a lot of wind, you know, the payback is a long time.
If I were a billionaire, which I'm certainly not, Jim, and I looked at investing a couple hundred million dollars into this, what kind of return would I get compared to other investments I might make with that $200 million?
You know, from my understanding, after talking with people in the energy service industry, they call them ESCOs.
Yes, yes.
Is it what?
Is that it's a very good business.
And I think their main problem is that it almost sounds too good to be true, even though it's totally true.
Well, try me.
In terms of a return, what kind of return might I get versus other places I could put my money?
Well, the last time I checked, they were getting on their money, and I think it's probably come down a little bit now because the interest rates in general were higher at the time, but they were getting something like 14% on the money that came from the utility consortium.
That's pretty good.
That's a big return.
Yeah, that's a big return.
And then they got a profit on top of that.
In the spreadsheet that's in my book, we assumed a 15% You know, profit, energy, you know, if we were going to have to borrow the money, it would be the energy, or whoever's borrowing it, it doesn't really matter, would be 15% return on the money and on top of that, profit.
You know, to basically do the plan where the work is done first and you just keep paying your utility bill and it gets paid off.
Well, that's all very convincing stuff, and you're suggesting that all of this information is in your book?
Yeah.
And I talk about becoming water and food self-sufficient as well in this region.
You do?
Yeah, definitely.
All right.
This is a worthwhile book.
And where can you get it?
Once again, your website is?
www.jimbell.com.
I like the way you say it better.
And then you click on Jim's new book, which is the first page that comes up on the left-hand side.
There's something at the top.
That's the opening page.
And then you click on Jim's new book.
Then the title comes up, which is Creating a Sustainable Economy and Future on our Planet, the San Diego-Tijuana Region, a Case Study.
So this gets into the nuts and bolts of how to do this.
And really, to a certain degree, it's almost like a perspective to sell this to the public, to sell this to the average taxpayer and voter, that here's a wonderful opportunity that not only that we can take advantage of, but pretty much anywhere in the Anywhere on the planet, you know, short of Antarctica.
And you're doing this completely on a non-profit basis, huh?
Yeah, well, you know, I did print up 6,000 copies of the book, and I'm giving out most of those for free, too.
I don't know what he thought.
He may have thought that everybody went to sleep.
I think he actually thought he put everybody to sleep.
we'll be right back and find out that actually was pretty funny
I had to call Jim back, and I think he thought... I think he thought that you put everybody to sleep or something.
Is that what you thought, Jim?
No, there was just silence on the phone for a long time.
I thought the show was over, and I was hoping you would come back on so I could thank you, but then... No, the show's not over.
Listen, I've got five lines here sitting here blinking at me of people that want to talk to you.
So no, it's not over.
You didn't put them to sleep.
Don't worry about it.
I do want to quickly, though, just give you this latest from CNN.
Saudi Arabia's King Fahd, whose reign was marked by unprecedented prosperity, but whose close ties with the United States stirred the passions of Islamic militants, has died.
The Saudi monarch had been in and out of the hospital in recent months, most recently suffering from pneumonia-like symptoms.
So I yielded day-to-day control of the kingdom a decade ago after suffering a stroke.
So with that in mind, one might imagine that not very much is going to change.
But I guess that tells you, you know, how important energy is to us.
When the king of Saudi Arabia dies, it flashes across the world.
As a gigantic bullet, I guess it would for any king, but I mean, the king of Saudi Arabia is very, very important.
And Saudi Arabia is very important to us, isn't it, Jim?
Oh, definitely.
I've heard some good things recently that they're actually installing a lot of solar in Saudi Arabia, which would, you know, why not keep your oil reserves and get your energy in a different way?
That's kind of an interesting thing you've just said, that Saudi Arabia is putting in a lot of... Are they really?
Solar energy?
I haven't done any exhaustive research, but I know I get a lot of emails along these lines, and I know I just read something recently, and I was saying that they were doing it, and I think it's very wise.
That's what they should be doing in Iraq as well, and in Iran, instead of building nuclear power plants.
Well, you see, Iran may actually want more than nuclear power.
They may be more interested, Jim, in the byproduct.
Well, you know, that's a whole other story.
Yes, well, it is and it isn't, Jim.
The byproduct, of course, would be enriched plutonium, which could be used to make atomic bombs, which could be used against us, which may be used against us, and really A lot of it centers around United States policy in the world, and that policy is shaped to a large degree by our needs, our energy needs.
None of that could be denied, could it, Jim?
Well, if you look at it this way, if we were completely renewable energy self-sufficient in this country, which we could easily, could actually accomplish, and we were helping those other countries do the same in their own countries, I think most of this conflict would go away.
You're probably partially right.
A lot of the conflict comes from very deeply held opposite convictions about things.
I don't think that's really true.
Say we hadn't gone to war and we would have treated what happened in 9-11 as a criminal act and we would have done the investigation and arrested people when we got them, like we did in Sarajevo and places like that.
I mean, once they really got down to doing the legal thing and trying an abstention and all that, I mean, you know, we haven't tried Osama Bin Laden in an abstention.
We haven't even tried, now that we have Saddam Hussein, we haven't even tried him.
You know, I thought it was, you know, as tragic as 9-11 was, it would have been a wonderful thing if we would have actually used that opportunity to show how a country run on a constitution with a free society, you know, that's run under law, you know, treats crime.
Instead of, we seemed, you know, like politically we sort of regressed to the very same tactics that the people we, you know, call so evil are, you know, using.
And the other thing is that if we would have just left it alone, we were already winning the war just through, you know, television, and I Love Lucy, and music, and all the cultural things that were happening.
What we did is we created the environment where we Where, say, the individual allies in these countries were subdued or less enthusiastic and we emboldened the radicals.
Yes, but Jim, those radicals seem to believe that we should be converted or killed.
I think that there are Christian fundamentalists in this country that would say, you know,
maybe some of them have done some terrorist things, and I'm not trying to blame anybody
or anything like that, but people hold strong views, but usually those views manifest in
any kind of organized way once they're out.
They're agitated, and if we were doing... Well, you're right about that.
...promoting democracy, really promoting democracy around the world all these years, I don't think...
Most of these conflicts wouldn't even exist.
Yeah, we are agitating, Jim.
There's no question about that.
We're making it worse.
But it was already bad, and certainly Islamic fundamentalism is growing, amazingly growing.
But we push the youth.
I mean, instead of the youth wanting freedom and rock and roll and the latest clothes and all that, now they have a reason to become suicide bombers.
All right.
A lot of people want to talk to you, so let me do that.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Jim Bell.
Yeah, thank you for taking my call, Art.
You bet.
Yeah, the caller earlier made a statement about China.
They're having, like, rolling blackouts.
Yes.
Well, I honestly believe that that's one of the main reasons everything was orchestrated and why we're in Iraq is to keep their war machines down.
War machines will always run on fossil fuel in our lifetime.
If we have every house with Solar panels, that would be great.
I'm all for that, but our war machines will not run on solar energy.
Yet.
Yet.
And until that time comes, we have to rely on fossil fuel.
And I honestly believe China was preparing to make a move to collect oil, to get oil, to take it by force if necessary.
They're rattling their sabers.
Against Taiwan, and even against us, a rogue general threatened nuclear attack.
Caller, just a quick sort of poll question.
If China makes a move on Taiwan right now, do you think the United States should stand behind Taiwan, risking nuclear war over Taiwan, or step back and say, okay China, she's yours?
No, we're going to have to, it has to be a United Nations deal, but I think we're going to have to step in and not Let China do as they do.
I don't believe nuclear conflict will come about.
They're more interested in oil reserves.
They can't, of course, if they don't have oil reserves.
The only thing they have left is nuclear.
It is a tough question to answer, I guess.
The whole China question is a very, very tough one, Jim.
they're going to have immense, well they're beginning to get now,
immense requirements for fossil fuels.
Yeah, you know, the whole issue with trying to buy Unical.
So as bad as the situation may be in the rest of the world, this whole China thing is coming up faster than anybody
thought, having more of an effect than anybody thought,
and driving up the price like crazy.
So I suppose from your point of view, it'll just hasten the development of everything you've been talking about this morning, yes?
Well, you know, if it happens too fast, we won't have time.
I mean, even, you know, in the book I lay out a very aggressive plan to make the San Diego County Renewable Energy self-sufficient, and even that plan would take 27 years.
I mean, and that's spending, you know, spending more money than would really make sense to spend initially, and we don't even have enough trained workers.
Do we have 25 years, Jim?
Well, I'm hoping we do.
You know, it's like, the way I look at it is the closer any region or country becomes to becoming renewable energy self-sufficient, the better able they're going to be able to withstand whatever comes our way on the energy front.
All right.
West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Jim Bell.
Good morning.
Yes, Art, good morning.
Where are you?
Yes, in La Jolla, California.
La Jolla, okay.
Yes, and actually I wanted to say hello to my friend Jim Bell.
We're fellow alumni from Claremont High School in San Diego.
Yes, hi, and hi, Jim.
It's great to hear you.
It kind of blew me away when I heard earlier that you were going to be on the show, and I would like to say in your defense that I know you know what you're talking about.
When Art was pressing you earlier for companies to name that are in the Energy Conservation Service and that kind of thing, If you look in the current San Diego Yellow Pages, you will find 14 companies under Energy Conversations, Conservation, and Energy Consulting and Documentation.
Alright, so you're saying all the names of the companies are there?
They are there.
Yeah, I don't mind naming them.
Well, I don't want to do that either, because I'm not on Jim's behalf, on behalf of his book, but he has run for mayor down here a couple of times.
Well, it's unusual that my callers are more unwilling than myself to name names, but it's a happy occasion.
Well, there are over two dozen energy companies here that provide cogeneration, home energy conservation, as you have done with your place in Pahrump and so on.
And it has everything to do with solar panels and the rest.
Well, it sounds like it's become cheaper and more efficient since I did it, but it's still, let's see, eight to nine years.
And that's if you're doing it as an individual.
I mean, if you actually have leadership in a community on the political level, and you do this efficiently, and you set up the parameters, I mean, the energy service company's not interested in your home because it's too small of a project by itself, but if it's a whole neighborhood, then they're totally interested.
No, but I'm still, and I ask the question on behalf of all the homeowners, because I want to know, and I think a lot of them want to know, can I do it?
Would it be reasonable for me to do it?
And a payback of eight or nine years for an individual, I think, is kind of encouraging.
It kind of depends on how much energy you use.
I mean, like if you're a bigger, you know, if you're like a more middle class or more affluent family, it's probably going to work better, you know, for you.
I mean, if you're like a, you know, you're like you're, you're a low income and, and, you know, it's going to take, Because you're not using so much energy, so the amount of money you have to actually make the payback over time is less.
That's why you want to average it together.
Instead of having these companies just pick the low-hanging fruit, we want you to have a good return, but we want you to maximize the efficiency improvement.
Improves the economic picture of the local economy.
Okay.
You're on the air with Jim Bell.
Good morning.
What is your first name, please?
Now you're on the air.
Hello.
Hello.
Yes, sir.
What is your first name, please?
David.
And where are you?
I'm off the coast of Vancouver Island, British Columbia.
Absolutely excellent.
Well, welcome.
Well, thank you very much.
Good morning, Art.
Good morning, Jim.
I am very impressed by your... Jim, it's about time finally someone came out.
I don't have internet access or email or anything like that.
I live on the ocean.
But I have a friend who is living in a sprayed concrete, seven and a half feet underground, at a constant 14 degrees Celsius, no matter if it's rain forest winter or summer.
He has set my vessel up.
Uh, fully solar, fully wind, and he's working on energy for a propulsion system that is completely magnetic electric.
And eventually I hope to get it, but I'm just calling basically to tell the world and whoever else is listening that it's about time someone came up with this kind of concept, just to say it to the rest of the world.
Is that enough?
It's like the Emperor's New Clothes story, and your friend is a pioneer, and that's the That's the inventive spirit of the United States, and really everybody has that in them, and we're the leader of that, and if we do the right things, there'll be so many ideas, like the things I'm proposing will seem quaint.
Well, I'm from Canada myself, but he also has water troughs and reserves for people if it ever came necessary.
He's got waterfalls and reserve tanks and he's got a hot water heater built on my vessel which is the simplest thing you could possibly imagine.
A little bit of black spray paint, a piece of glass and a nice small little unit that gets the water temperature in 15 minutes on a sunny day.
Up to 140 degrees Celsius.
Wow.
So, there you have it.
It's a good example.
The truth of the matter is, all of these things really can be done.
And all it comes down to is the dollar.
It always comes down to the dollar.
And how much it costs to do them, and how much it costs not to do them.
Well, I think it comes down to leadership.
We have a dearth of leadership in our country and in our world right now.
Everybody is kind of Going along to get along.
And everybody's afraid to say the truth.
Well, the one guy who ought not to be afraid to say the truth is our president.
And no bush bash here, just the facts, if you would, sir.
And I'm curious how you would rate our president.
You know, he's a dinosaur, like the fossil fuels that he tries to keep us hooked to.
Okay, I thought you might be afraid to say whatever you thought, but that obviously was not the case.
You know, and I feel he's, you know, he's got bad advisors, he's sorely misinformed and doesn't seem to want to have anybody else to, you know, and this is not just true for him, it's true of a lot of politicians, that they, you know, they get in there and it's just a game and they lose sight of why they wanted to run for office in the first place.
You would think that the safety, the welfare, the prosperity of the American citizens would be like the number one thing on a president's mind?
Well, you know, I think it was the number one thing on George Washington's mind.
I think it was the number one thing on Abraham Lincoln's mind.
I think it was the number one thing on Teddy Roosevelt's mind.
I think it was the number one thing on a lot of presidents' minds.
But I think we've kind of gone astray.
Well, you named some pretty liberal leadership.
Well, Betty was a Republican.
Well, some.
Two.
First time caller on the line, you're on the air with Jim Bell.
Hi.
Yes, my name is Mike.
Yes, Mike.
I live in Layton, Utah.
Previously a resident of Northern California.
And many of the things that you've been talking about, it's like I've seen different attempts with people in cities.
One, I believe, was Colfax, Northern California, where the city was so tired of their high utility bills that they actually went to recycling their sewage and producing methane and other forms for the municipal buildings.
And they found that it was paying back very well.
All right, hold it right there.
I mean, that's enough for us.
Methane, just saying the word methane.
There are a lot of projects in this area, Jim.
What about methane as a source of power?
Well, you know, we can produce all the energy we need with solar, but sometimes electricity isn't the best energy source to get the job done that we want to get done.
There are others.
So you can use solar, like methane works best when the temperature is about 95 degrees, so you can use solar energy to maintain the temperature so you don't have to waste energy, you know, you don't have to burn some of the gas you're producing to maintain the temperature.
Fair to say you're really a solar advocate, aren't you?
Well, I mean, all renewable energy.
Well, wind, for example, I understand wind, Jim, is cheaper than solar.
Well, if you're in an area where you have good wind, I would be all over that and would be recommending wind.
here in san diego we don't have you know we have some went up in the back country
but right it's not really sufficient once again here's jim bell
Jim, Joe from Richfield Springs, New York says, One thing always avoided when anybody, any of your guests talk about oil, not just energy use, is the fact that most products, most things, are made of petroleum one way or the other, or they're compounds.
Thus, although there are other energy sources, we cannot and will not eliminate oil, so President Bush or any other leader, For national security right now, has got to have oil.
And I just noticed that for some reason we've lost Jim again.
Maybe Jim, once again, thinks the program is over.
I don't know.
We'll call him back and find out.
Maybe he didn't know how long his stay on the air would be.
Anyway, it's kind of fun.
I think, once again, he probably concluded that he put you all to sleep or that the program was over.
I really don't know.
We'll find out.
Jim?
Sorry about that.
I was holding the phone to my shoulder trying to do something with my other hand, and my chin pushed some button.
I don't even know what happened.
I see.
All right.
Well, tragedy like that aside, I asked you a really good question from Joe in New York.
Did you hear it?
I did not.
No, it figures.
All right.
Joe says, Art, look, the one thing that always is avoided when any of your guests, you know, people talk about oil, it's not just energy use.
It's the fact that most products are made of petroleum compounds.
Thus, although there are other energy sources, we can't eliminate oil.
So, President Bush, or any other leader for that matter, needs oil anyway.
Yeah, with those, I mean, he's right.
But in terms of the oil and other fossil fuels we use for energy, even the plastic industry is pretty small potatoes in the bigger picture.
And anything, I mean, since oil is ultimately made out of plants, anything made from oil can ultimately be made out of plants.
Okay.
Well, that's a good answer.
All right.
First time caller on the line, you're on the air with Jim Bell.
Good morning.
Hi.
Good morning, gentlemen.
Hi.
Good to hear you all talking about this.
I just, through being part of a family who's worked in the energy industry, have, I don't know, just absorbed some knowledge through dinner table discussions.
And my father was talking about something that I thought I wanted to hear your comments on, which was, he thinks the future is certainly solar and renewable energy sources combined with whatever's left in the older grid.
The whole idea, the way we have distributed computing today, he thinks the best way to go about integrating more power with less environmental impact would be integrating small I mean, when I look at our region here, initially we can use the grid as a battery.
like a distributed network. A distributed grid of course.
Joe, or I'm sorry Jim, what about that? I mean like when I look at our region here, I
mean initially we can use the grid as a battery. As we're doing this, we're going to be
pushing the goal is to produce more kilowatt hours into the grid.
Yes, but the question was, why not use the whole country that way?
The whole country's grid?
Oh, definitely.
I mean, well, now, you know, there's the western state grid and there's other grids, so we're not necessarily completely connected to the whole country, but we're connected to Canada, so it's a pretty big, you know, it's a pretty big grid.
And initially, we would be, you know, basically pushing energy into the grid and then buying it back at nighttime.
You know, eventually we'd want to get completely free of fossil fuels, and that would mean we'd have to develop some storage.
And there's some excellent storage processes, like pump storage is used in the hydroelectric industry right now, because they don't like to change the speed of the generator, or the turbines.
Right.
So at nighttime, they're still producing the same amount of power, but nobody wants to buy it, so they use it to pump the water from the bottom of the dam back into the dam, and it's about 90% efficient.
Wow.
I mean, here in San Diego, we could pump salt water up to the top of the mountain and use something like that, or even do it with fresh water.
It's about 90% efficient.
I'm caught on that.
That's quite a statement.
To actually pump the water back up the hill and then let it fall again is 90% efficient.
And it's more cost effective because of the benefit of reducing the wear and tear on the turbines.
All right, Wild Card Line, you're on the air with Jim Bell.
Good morning.
Good morning, Art.
Bill calling from Jacksonville.
Okay.
I thought you might want to talk to Jim about your zero plane energy there on your antenna that you've got.
And the next thing I was going to say is I subscribe to the Sea Crane catalog and Yeah, you're bringing up a real good point.
Actually, two good points.
I'll address both.
One is the so-called zero-point energy in my antenna hogwash.
I never said any such thing.
I said there was energy there, a lot of voltage, and probably not very much current.
It hasn't all been You know, measured yet, but nor do we even know for sure that it might not be power line coupling or God knows what.
It is a strange mystery.
I'll give you that.
We'll test it.
We'll let you know.
I doubt there's much there, although who knows what science could bring us as, you know, with that as a starting point.
Having said that, Jim, you want to take on the rest of what he had to say?
Well, initially with the whole zero power idea, I think we should keep researching, but it's kind of hard to beat a 25 year warranty.
That's right.
With solar panels, and even in a way a longer warranty for double You actually had a question for some reason here about UFOs and space visitors and that kind of thing.
How did you manage to throw it, or did you just toss that in here so you'd have some sort of relevant question for some of this audience?
Well, it was kind of a funny thing because I think the last time I heard, you have never seen a flying saucer yourself.
That's wrong.
No, no, no.
I've had two sightings.
Oh, you have?
Oh, yeah.
Well, I had one.
And this was when I was a kid.
I was ten years old and I was actually living in Carlsbad, New Mexico.
Kind of outside Carlsbad, New Mexico.
And, you know, I had no idea or even imagined anything like a flying saucer.
I went over to some kid's house and they had captured some ground squirrels and had them in cages.
I'm ten years old and I'm fascinated by the animals.
and there was a it was kinda like a sunday but the bennett sunday or saturday
Yes.
because uh... there was a lot of adults around the country talking over the
fence of the housing project in and somebody could look up and everybody ended up looking
up and there was this big white cloud and then it
below the cloud with the shiny death and it wasn't like a wiggly liar if you'd
like to know that you the on tv and all that alright
It was like a jet plane!
Let me make an attempt at making these two relate to each other.
Any civilization capable of exceeding the speed of light to get here, to visit us, Jim, would have to have a source of energy That would be thousands of years ahead of where we might be right now.
I bet hundreds at least of years.
And in other words, there's leaders in ufology who are taking this angle.
The science we would learn from visitors.
Would save us in terms of energy.
So, you know, it does kind of fit in a way.
Well, no, I agree with you because the way I looked at it was, you know, because I had that experience and this, you know, this was like a jet and, you know, it flew straight.
It wasn't wiggly or wobbly.
It was shiny.
It was, you know, sort of silver aluminum colored and it Came toward us and it went, took a 90 degree up and then disappeared into the cloud and that was it, you know, and it was... Well, congratulations.
And I didn't really, you know, I didn't really, you know, I didn't really register because I was 10 years old, but I remember all the, you know, it kind of impressed me with the adult... Yes, but some leaders like Stephen Greer are saying, uh, yes, it's real.
Now, you've seen it with your own eyes, so you might even say, yes, it's real.
Yeah.
That we are being visited by something.
Yeah.
And as Dr. Greer points out, the energy from a device like that could save the world.
Well, you know, the way I look at it is until these people, beings, whatever, who are, if they are there and who are visiting us, Either start helping us to create a life support sustaining economy and way of life, or get in our way.
I think it's just titillation that we need.
We're the biggest threat to our planet's life support system.
Titillation, that's right.
So until they hand us a schematic and say, here, build this and your trouble's over, we had better get moving, right?
And I don't want to dismiss zero point energy or anything.
Nor do I. Let's keep looking.
We don't have to, you know, we can solve our problems right now.
We have the technology we need, and it's warranted for 25 years.
Yeah, I'm with you, Jim.
You know, he who helps himself, you know, probably gets help from God and all that.
East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Jim Bell.
Good morning.
Yeah, good morning.
Art Kinte, I'm calling from Iowa.
Yes.
You're a scholar and a gentleman, and it's a privilege to talk to you.
Privilege to have you.
The bells are ringing tonight.
I have a couple questions.
One for you.
I am perhaps our guest.
Have you heard any technology on the quantum dot or the solar paint that you mentioned a couple months back?
The solar paint, I think, is off the chart interesting.
So, Jim, what about that?
Have you heard about this new solar?
Probably about as much as you have, but I just say bring it on.
We're clever.
All we have to do is, like, mesh that with some wisdom and we're home free.
I think, you know, like I said earlier, I think what I'm presenting is probably going to pinpoint, you know, once more people start putting their mind and, you know, instead of thinking about how horrible it is and we're hopeless, they say, well, gee, what can I do to contribute to solving the problem?
That's why my second question actually leads to that.
How can one get a job being an ecological designer is what you are?
And don't people with your jobs frequently starve to death, Jim?
Well, you know, it's a little bit of an engineering feat in a way, but just so everybody knows, I eat regular, really good food and I have a warm place to sleep and a dry place to sleep and have a lot of fun.
I'm not so oriented toward money.
Money isn't my major.
That's clear.
That's clear.
You're giving your book away.
Well, in a way, if you just look at it from a selfish perspective, giving the book away will probably get me more money than if I tried to sell it, if that was really my intent.
Well, I think, Jim, when we finally get millionaire people like you, then we'll really be there.
In the meantime, you're like starving artists.
Well, I'm not starving at all.
Matter of fact, I got a little... Well, no, I got like three meals a day.
All right.
Wildcard Line, you're on the air with Jim Bell.
Hello.
Yeah, hello.
Good morning.
I just want to compliment you and thank you yourself, sir, because you've kept me awake most nights.
And so I want to thank you very much because you've got Starbucks beat, I want to say.
Thank you.
So you can keep them awake award.
Cool.
Oh, absolutely.
So my question I'm going to take off the air.
I'm actually also in Canada and I also live on Vancouver Island.
And I was just wondering if I could ask your guest's impressions and if he's aware of This new, I guess, process that they've been going through with local, like there's a company in Canada called Canadian Tire, and they've been putting out these integrated power packs that they sell in addition with solar cells.
Oh yes.
I've bought three of them and actually bought the solar panels that come with them.
No kidding.
Tell us about them.
What do they do?
The basic unit started anywhere from about $80 Canadian to about $200 Canadian.
And the solar panels that they sell along that line are about the same.
And I actually bought three of the heavy-duty units.
And I put my entire cabin on this.
And it cost me just about $750 for the whole entire thing.
Now, my cabin hydro bill before that averaged about $600 a year.
And since then, I've been able to take the entire thing off the grid.
This includes fridges, TVs, microwaves, the whole nine yards.
Alright, that's very impressive.
And again, for an investment of how much, totally?
$750, and I was able to buy it right from the Canadian Tire, which is my equivalent of a local hardware store and sporting goods store.
And so this is Solar Panels Plus?
Well, the solar panels come individually.
The solar panels, actually, this setup comes with conventional plug-ins, as well as plug-ins that have a cigarette lighter.
Hold it.
Slow down.
Stop.
The solar panels, plus what device?
Well, they're separate units, sir.
So what you do is you can buy a solar panel that'll either plug into the wall or plug into a cigarette lighter, conventional.
So you can either do car batteries with these things, Or plug them into the power pack with its cigarette lighter and charge the unit.
That's what I do.
So Jim, this fellow's talking about spending, what was it, hundreds of dollars.
It depends on how much you use.
I mean, if you are very efficient at using energy and getting whatever you need to get done.
I talked with a guy a few years ago.
He was up in, I think in Vermont or Maine or something like that.
He was like bragging to me about how he basically ran a computer business and he ran it all on solar and I'm going...
Well, gee, we're here in San Diego, and he was using a relatively small number of panels.
Have you heard of Home Power?
I have.
They do excellent work.
Of course I have.
And, of course, Sea Crane Company.
They are very, very, very ecologically minded.
I wrote down the offer.
The number for the offer, because I wanted to get one of those radios, but it was below my price.
Yeah, absolutely.
It's serious stuff.
I mean, these are some of the adjuncts you use to alternative power.
And they are sort of little alternative power things, but they meet needs.
Yeah.
These new... I do have one of the wind-ups.
These new lights are incredible.
These white LED lights.
You know, I went to a workshop recently, and they didn't really save energy In terms of amount of lumens, like fluorescents do.
I mean, fluorescents have their problems too, but... Man, they got ones you can screw into 110 volt sockets now.
And they're absolutely amazing.
I mean, they'll be alive and going after we're dead.
Well, but see, these are the positive things that are there, and it's almost like all I'm talking about is integrating them.
You know, so that we look at it, you know, as a whole community, as a whole region, or even as a whole country.
I mean, like right now, I don't know what the exact number is, but I would bet it's in excess of $100 billion a year that we export out of our country just to pay for imported oil.
All right.
Very quickly, east of the Rockies, you're on the air with Jim Bell.
Hi.
The energy spent on World War I was three times all previous history.
World War II was seven times.
I like your guess that Estimate what the Cold War cost up to the Berlin Wall.
And even if we're getting more efficient at killing one another, as long as the competition between people is violent, it distorts all other priorities that this man wants us to work on.
All right, that's a fair statement to work with right there.
Jim?
Well, you know, it's kind of like I figured out a long time ago the only person that I can change is me.
And so I'm working on it.
I figure, hey, life is short.
And I care about the future, and I think most people do, too.
They just have lost track of it.
And, you know, because I care, I look at the world and I say, well, what can I do?
And so I try to do what I can do.
And if I, you know, if me trying to fix myself or improve myself, help other people do the same for themselves, you know, that's what we have to go to.
Everybody has to really get in the driver's seat of their own life.
Congratulations, Jim.
That is what you have done.
Your book is available on your website.
Now we are ending the show, by the way.
Okay.
And it's www.jimbell.com.
That simple.
And you can download his book and the title of that again, Jim.
You click on Jim's new book and the title is Achieving Eco... No, I'm sorry.
I was giving the title to the book.
The title is Creating a Sustainable Economy and Future on our Planet, the San Diego-Tijuana Region, a Case Study.
A case study?
Good enough.
Buddy, thank you for being here.
I really appreciate it.
Good luck with all you do.
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