Paul Klinkman
Username
Paul Klinkman
Proposer First Name
Paul
Proposer Email
info@klinkmansolar.com
Proposer Last Name
Klinkman
Proposer Company/Organization
Klinkman Solar Design
Proposer Phone
(401) 351-9193

Boston 2022 Areas of Focus

Proposer Job Title
Principal
Proposed Session Description
NESEA’s primary focus seems to have gradually transitioned from engineering visionaries seeking a future for sustainable energy to a roundtable and network of businesspeople trying to earn incomes. However, our planet’s desperate need for long-term vision has only grown with the climate crisis. This workshop starts with a presentation of several promising medium-term climate innovations, focusing on solar heat storage in buildings, non-battery grid-scale electric power storage, transit, innovations for the inhibition of the Arctic meltdown and more generally on the state of sustainable energy and other climate R&D, as seen by a prolific inventor. Much time will be reserved for multiple needed discussions. We should make time to touch on inhibition of desertification, reduction of excess heat, megafires, sustainable water production and natural methods of carbon sequestration.
Diversity and Inclusiveness
Ultimately we need a worldwide focus on inhibiting climate change, not a USA focus. The USA only has 5% of the world’s population, and at that the richest .01% in the USA think too often about how they personally can avoid feeling guilty about their consumer role in the climate crisis, so at times only this tiny group can afford the innovations in our profit-hungry society. Northeast activists are likely to focus on our regional winter heat and urban energy use issues but we also need to coordinate with everybody else’s local climate engineering issues. If billions of people aren’t all activated to work locally on the climate crisis then we’ve been organizing things wrong.
Learning Objectives
Turn from despair to hope after seeing promising R&D horizons
Envision where you, as an engineer, as an architect or as an ally, might personally move to get to the cutting edge of a huge crisis/opportunity
Expand your visionary focus into climate remediation needs beyond displacing fossil fuels
Get a taste of climate organizing in the engineering sphere
Has this session been presented before?
No
Session Format
Presentation followed by facilitated discussion or breakout groups
Session Format Details
Scheduling: I work Tuesdays and Thursdays. I could use a conversation facilitator because I'll often be in an advocacy position.
Recommended Length
60-minute session
90-minute session

Strongest Content Connection - Boston 2022

Comments about your speaker roster
I might be the most prolific climate inventor of my generation. As of October, 2021 my innovation website, klinkmansolar.com, has passed 38,000 words. My website is evolving into a 360 degree engineering agenda on the R&D side of the climate crisis. Picture Buckminster Fuller writing a book that comes full bore at climate change with a touch of political savvy thrown in.
Anything else you'd like to tell us about your session proposal?
My wife and I have various RISEA memorabilia stored in boxes downstairs. For five years my wife and I typeset and proofread “Helio”, the newsletter of the Rhode Island Solar Energy Association, which RISEA President Domenic Bucci wrote. Domenic regularly held political and engineering opinions in his newsletter, as opposed to survey paper writers that always strive for official neutrality in all political matters. Domenic was a good example of NESEA’s previous generation. He wasn’t in the solar business to make money. He presided over RISEA and supported other people’s solar R&D because we’re going to need this work and soon. Following in Domenic’s footsteps, I’m not afraid to dish my perceived odds for any particular invention’s ultimate success. If some other inventor comes along with a better idea, I say that we’re going to need that idea ramped up and soon. The new generation seems to be somewhat of a roundtable to discuss collective business lobbying for the solar, wind and small hydro industries. I understand their collective need to try to stay financially sustainable, but their efforts collectively pull radically away from RISEA’s old focus. At one point in the past, a separate organization called NESEA-RI organized weekly business presentations in Providence separately from RISEA’s engineering activism. Neither organization seems to have survived. I see my role as an early organizer of an integrity-seeking non-governmental organization devoted to inhibiting climate change. If we call this group RISEA, that’s fine. I’m not on this planet to manufacture patents only to sell them to Exxon so that Exxon can lock the patents in a safe for 20 years. Profit needs to take a back seat to human survival. If other people can be arrested and if other people can go on hunger strike for the climate emergency then I can hang out close to the bleeding edge of solar. Power cedes nothing without specific demands and so I make R&D demands. My goal is to organize a group that is the engineering policy linkage between our world’s climate aspirations and getting each task done. I expect in time to grow a committee for this great climate task. I’m used to operating within a committee structure. Until the covid hit I was the regular co-coordinator of an annual mobility access project. For one week early in July for two decades at some nationally rotating college campus location we would coordinate six reimbursed staffers, 7-10 golf carts, 30-50 volunteer drivers, 120 priority riders and 1000 non-priority riders for eight days. We of course dealt with typical issues, but generally we delivered safe and effective mobility transit all over campus from 7 to 11 with some late night coverage too.
Reviewer 1
Nedzinski, Megan
Proposal #
149
Committee Decision
Rejected
Full Description
We must address the really big question, that elephant. The Arctic is melting down, releasing 1.4 gigatons of greenhouse gases, and that alone will nearly triple PPM in the earth’s atmosphere. We must displace most fossil fuel uses rather quickly. We must actively inhibit desertification, megafires and positive overheating feedback loops. We need fresh water. We need to sequester carbon somehow. Furthermore we need to do all of this at covid-19 speed and with determination. We’re late now. We need a network of adults taking on the responsibility to coordinate the planning of our crisis engineering while staying in communication with our various political negotiators.