Nightmare Scenario

Ignorance is Bliss.

That's what they say, but in reality, proceeding along in ignorance leads to anything but bliss. I heard about a study recently that was centered around the phenomenon of deception and one of the conclusions they came to was that some of the happiest people are people that lie to themselves. Those that tell themselves that they are fine and everything is fine and manage to convince themselves of this despite all evidence to the contrary are rewarded with not only happiness, but success. It's just another variation on the old Ignorance is Bliss adage.

I've always been a big fan of Science Fiction, so I've read a lot of it over the years. Many Science Fiction writers are engineers or scientists by training that went into writing because they spend a lot of time thinking about why things are the way they are and now things should be if we could just plan an orderly transition into the future. I like history, too, and I always thought that History and Science Fiction were perfect wings spreading out from the present. They answer the important questions of where have we been and where we are going. So many of the authors look at all the elements of what led up to this point and project a future based on what they know. That future is sometimes quite rosy, but often is the result of some really nasty times. The scary part of knowing a lot of these tales is that many of the story elements used in them are coming true.

A lot of storylines center around a crisis where the carrying capacity of the planet becomes outstripped by rising population. The scenarios differ in severity. Some hint at belt tightening, or new laws restricting freedoms in order to conserve food or energy or space. Others take the dire route and outline food riots and all-out war for survival. Technology plays various roles in future dramas, sometimes riding in to save the day, other times riding in as the pale horse of the apocalypse.

The stories I'm specifically thinking about while I write about this are Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, The Forever War by Joe Haldeman, The Stand by Stephen King, Across Realtime by Vernor Vinge, the Foundation series by Arthur C. Clark, the ancient history outlined by the Dune series by Brian Herbert, the backstory for the Terminator series, and the "history" of our upcoming times outlined by Star Trek (mostly Next Generation, but Enterprise too). Numerous short stories and other books touch on the subject, too.

I've been watching the Ethanol Boom over the past few years and noticed the unpleasant effect of unintended consequences. Due to high energy prices and instability in the world, it finally makes sense to start trying to make our own energy out of mostly corn. Half way through the "boom" of dozens of plants going up everywhere, people started talking about the downside of the scheme to grow our energy. Corn prices started to rise dramatically. But what the heck, it's not a boom without something exploding, right? So suddenly the profit numbers for ethanol production start to drop. These plants were not put up with efficiency in mind, they were constructed with low capital cost in mind. Not only is it so expensive to produce a gallon of ethanol, but no one wants to distribute it or use it because it's not a lot less expensive than gasoline (especially when you look at cost per mile you can drive). Then people start realizing that these plants use a lot of water and water is not something that is in such abundant supply that you can use it indiscriminately and not worry. Next, you start to hear about corn that used to go into food production drying up and people having a hard time feeding their cattle. Food prices start to rise. The reports say the food prices are rising a lot, but it's hard to tell unless you actually watch what you pay for things. The program that used to pay farmers not to try to farm marginally croplands and put them to rest for wildlife buffers has seen farmers withdrawing land and putting it back into production at an incredible rate. Recent rises in corn prices have caused land equal to the area of Rhode Island and Delaware to be brought out of this idling program and into production.

I heard that some countries are cutting off any export of food since they are finding food scarce all of the sudden. I've also heard that food prices are rising even faster in some parts of the world, cutting poor people off from a large portion of their daily intake. There is talk about food riots, so far just talk. Asia & Africa are supposedly the worst place to be right now in that respect, but Mexico, surprisingly, was listed as a place where food prices have really outstripped people's buying power and shortages are being felt. Some reports say the cost of food has doubled in some areas of the world.

Gasoline prices, in the mean time, keep going up and people are starting to personally feel the pinch. I grew up in the late 70s and up until just recently, they have been saying that gasoline is not as expensive now when you adjust for inflation. That is no longer true. Now gas is more expensive than it has ever been. This is starting to alter people's behaviors somewhat. It's not making people drive less, it's making them buy less of other things in order to feed their hungry gas tanks.

After energy and food, Water is due to become the next crisis. It already is in some parts of the world. I've heard for years that water will be the next spark to set off war in the Middle East. Fixed supplies of water and an ever increasing population make this a certainty. We're starting to see much more desalination plants going in around the world. This is a great solution except for the fact that it uses a huge amount of energy. And looking to the oceans has its limits, too. You may have heard about collapsing fish stocks due to overfishing, increasing dead zones near river deltas, and growing amounts of trash in our oceans.

So there are all these warning signs that a rough road is ahead of us. We've managed to curb widespread wars and learned to beat back many diseases, so our population isn't getting thinned out like it used to. We recognize a need for population control when it comes to deer, and justify hunting as a necessary thinning of the herd. There is no season on humans.

One thing is sure, if you ignore all this, life is sweet. For some reason, I can look at all this and not feel despair. I think there is a point past being realistic where it stops being depressing. One thing certain about human society, it doesn't make any fundamental changes until it is forced to. I think all these things coming to a head are just a wake up call that will force us to act. What we really need is a combination of solar, wind, tidal, nuclear, and fusion energy to power our growing energy needs. All these sources will have the added benefit of being clean as well as being renewable There is a place for biofuels, but more in the form of algae grown from our own wastewater than crops like corn. We'll have to learn to recycle our own waste back into drinking water. They have to do it in space, because space is a closed system, and Earth is too. We could afford to ignore that fact when our numbers were small, but there are enough of us now that there's no frontier or open space for us to move into. The days of the nomad or frontiersman are over. We'll have to learn to preserve the plants and animals of the world, because many of our solutions will come from them, their genetic tricks designed by nature and hundreds of millions of years of evolution. And their health and prosperity will be an indicator of our success. So rather than being bummed out by these prospects, I'm encouraged. We have a job to do and a sense of purpose to spur us on. What more could you ask from life?

Big Oil's Illogical Stance

News of the latest record profits by Exxon are stunning. They broke their previous record, which was also an all time record of the biggest profit of any company in the world. They made $1,300 a second in profit. We looked up the per capita & per employee profits, which dwarf the "economic incentive" tax refund we are about to get this year. What corporate policies lead to such extreme profits? Is there a direct correlation with the secret energy task force put together by Vice President Dick Cheney in the early days of the Bush administration and the resulting deregulation surge of uncontrolled lopsided capitalism?

I listen to the talking points of the Republican Party & Far Right, courtesy their effective brainwashing of the gullible masses. I have plenty of friends, acquaintances, and associates who dutifully repeat these pearls of wisdom sent down by their corporate overlords. One of my favorites is "The LIBERALS (use your own degree of degradation and scorn here) won't let us drill for oil of the coast". Never mind disastrous oil spills and the fact that oil won't last forever, and the fact that we are polluting our planet to death - all of our problems would be solved instantly by more drilling. This would already be happening except for the fact that crazy liberals, who have nothing better to do but plot the destruction of America, have insidiously inserted OVERREGULATION into the mix in order to thwart those civic minded saints at the oil companies, who just want to be allowed to help us all, out of the goodness of their hearts.

This ignores the fact that Republicans were in charge of both houses of congress and the presidency during the time when gas was soaring over $3 a gallon and this phony argument was most often heard. It also ignores that often restrictions to oil drilling are put on the ballot and supported by popular votes. I seem to remember that they found "the biggest oil reserve ever" under the seabed off of Louisiana. This is the one place where they can and do drill without any restrictions, so I've never understood the logic behind this complaint.

Then Katrina hit, and gasoline prices surged again, and we were told that the problem was that we don't have enough refining capability. Yet, curiously, you don't hear the Oil Industry lobbying to make more refineries. If you ask about this, the response is that there is too much regulation and it's almost impossible to make more refineries. The complaint of overregulation doesn't stop the industry from lobbying to drill for more oil, only to refine it. And why is this? This is because a bottleneck of refining capability is what drives the price up.

Wake up, America. We were sold out on this one.

Ill Wind

Book Review WITH SPOILERS

I was loaned Ill Wind by Kevin J. Anderson and Doug Beason by my brother, who recommended it. I'd read Anderson before, particularly his collaborations with Brian Herbert in the extended Dune series. A quick search shows that he was also the author of "The League of Extroidinary Gentlemen" which was made into a movie. He also wrote a lot of Star Wars books.

This book has a great premise, but it falls flat. There was something both unbelievable and incredibly irritating about the characters. I kept waiting for something very dramatic or very heroic to happen, and it didn't. Some characters had fatal flaws, but kept mucking around. Other characters were full of honor and purpose, but couldn't get their act together. While you could argue that this is a fair description of real life, the result here is a story you can't believe.

The premise is an interesting. I remember hearing about oil eating bacteria years ago as a solution to oil spills years ago. The intersting premise here is what if it gets out of control. They manage to make this very extreme, unbelievable, and not very interesting. Connoisseurs of the end of the world genre know that society breaks down pretty fast. They just sort of gloss over this effect. In all, I didn't care if the noble scientists trying to save the world succeeded, and I didn't believe either their triumphs or setbacks. Too bad. It's worth exploring in better detail later.

Ironically, there was an oil spill in the San Francisco Bay the week I started reading this book, and another in the Black Sea the next week, as well as a minor spill off of Israel, if I remember that last one properly. So it was a timely read, but not at all satisfying.

Energy Independence

I did a blog entry on this subject on September 5th. Obviously, I had been thinking about it for some time. Here's another story on the subject that I wrote on 8/18/04:

Energy Independence

It’s been 228 years since America has issued a good Declaration of Independence and I believe we are about 30 years overdue for another one. I think the only thing stopping us from embarking on a program of Complete Energy Independence is a misguided case of group-think. There are many cliches being repeated out there that stand in the way of our independence and I refuse to believe them. I would like to ask everyone’s help in breaking this dangerous cycle of negative group think.

We will never be independent of oil in our lifetime.
The major energy companies will do anything to hold onto their power.
It’s against the capitalist system to tamper with energy markets.
You will have to sacrifice freedom/fun/power/performance in order to save energy.
The average American will not stand for any change from what we now have.
There just aren’t enough alternative energy sources to replace oil.
You can’t expect a wasteful government to help develop new energy technology.
Big companies are in business for profits, not public welfare and won’t be interested in alternative energy.
Americans are too stupid to understand energy and technology issues.
We can’t do it.
It will take to long.
It’s too hard.

Look at these statements. How many are indesputably, undeniably true? How many of them cannot be challenged or refuted? None of them. Each statement is a self fulfilling prophecy of doom. If you believe them, they are certainly all true. Join me in crushing them and declaring to the rest of the nation, to the rest of the world, and in particular the Middle East that we reject all of these ideas.

Do you know what catapulted a young America past the rest of the world? Technological Innovation. In the early 19th century, we changed the way textiles were made. We put the entire process into one building and powered by our streams, we made new machines that cranked out cloth in quantities never before conceived. None of those ideas were new or originated here. They all came from Europe. These grand ideas were conceived in a Europe whose manufacturing guilds and trades were so entrenched that innovations that threatened those groups were simply not allowed. We were too naïve, crazy, young, idealistic, and enthusiastic to let that stop us. We shot past Europe in a generation and never looked back. We developed steam power and criss-crossed the nation with steamboats and railroads in one generation. We developed electricity and communications and knitted a far flung nation into a single unit in the next generation. We pioneered flight. We perfected the assembly line and mass production and developed the best standard of living in the world. We harnessed nuclear energy first. We saw space being exploited by our cold war adversary and passed them on the way to the moon and never looked back. The rest of the world has followed our lead closely.

We Americans can do anything we set our minds to do, our history proves it. As the saying goes, with great power comes great responsibility. We need to use our undeniable and overwhelming technological dominance responsibly. We need to move the world forward to unlimited energy sources not restricted to decidedly unfriendly parts of the globe. We need to develop renewable energy sources based on fusion, hydrogen, ethanol, wind, solar, geothermal, biological, and fuel cell technology. Maybe we’ll find something new with quantum physics that will astonish us all. We need to do it in such a way that we utilize the framework of the existing energy grid to make the transition to these new forms of energy. We need to find a way to use public money to help do this for the public good while also boosting corporate strength and health. This will provide jobs and help clean up the environment, but most importantly, it will put us strongly in control of our own destiny.

Once we have developed these sources and methods, we need to enrich our nation by exporting the technology to the rest of the world, and then push into space and begin the exploration and colonization of space in earnest.

We Americans can do this, I have no doubt in my mind. All we have to do is state our intentions and declare our independence. Do your part to help make it happen. Simply believe in us.

My Energy Policy

Sometimes I dream about what I would do as President to try to make things right. I've heard many of the arguments about how the President really doesn't have that much power and can't enact changes unilaterally. I would have agreed with this before, but the recent administration shows that the President has more than enough power to screw things up royally, so I'm proceeding under the assumption that he also has the power to start pointing the country in the right direction.

One thing that I dream about is fixing the energy situation.

Powerful forces are aligned to keep things the way they are now. I believe Exxon Mobile made more profits last year than any company in history, ever (even adjusted for inflation). This in a time where we are paying almost 3 times more for gasoline than at the beginning of the administration. During recent disruptions in production, notably when the refineries and offshore rigs in the Gulf were disrupted during Katrina, but also when we have had refinery problems (such as the flooding of the refinery in Coffeyville Kansas) we have seen fuel prices spike up due to these supply emergencies. Prices never go down to pre-mini-crisis levels, and we are told that we simply don't have the refinery capacity. Yet, with all the oil company record profits, not a single move is being made to increase refinery capacity. Administration apologists and industry advocates tell us that the problem is that we don't drill enough in the Gulf or in Anwar in Alaska, but we don't even have enough capacity to refine the oil that we do get. Who has any doubts or reservations about this administration, with it's tight relationship with the oil companies that environmental regulations won't be eased and permitting processes won't be simplified if the oil industry really wanted to build new refineries?

I'm all for making money and supplying a hungry nation with its needs, but why isn't anybody associated with public policy doing this in a sustainable or logical way? Does anyone think we'll be able to keep using oil without regard to where we get it, how long it will last, or what it is doing to our environment?

I think public policy, and by that I mean Government Policy, has to force the issue. True leaders would be looking ahead and positioning our energy use and production for the future. True leaders would start solving problems early, before they become crises instead of waiting until turmoil and sacrifice are required to get us out of the corner we've painted ourselves into.

True leaders would recognize that those that are supplying us with energy now are in the best position to supply us with the new forms of energy in the future, and therefore are best positioned to benefit from a changing energy profile. By partnering with energy companies while at the same time forcing them to adapt and innovate, we could insure a smooth transition into our energy future. I'm talking about gas stations selling hydrogen, ethanol, and biodiesel. I'm talking about power companies eventually generating with fusion plants, but also helping spread solar and wind energy, connecting individuals to the grid and profiting from financing the capital costs of individuals generating and adding to the grid.

I grew up during the height of the space race, during our moonshot era. That's a big part of why I became an engineer. I miss the days when America looked at technological challenges and only calculated how long it would take and how much it would cost, not whether we were capable or whether we should even try. Please explain to me why the engineers from the country that put men on the moon cannot invent a 100 mile to the gallon car, a rooftop solar array that is affordable, geothermal energy sources, tidal energy systems, or a fuel cell that provides all the energy your house needs without polluting at all? We used to be energized by these challenges, not politically divided over them.

I would advocated a crash program to develop fusion energy, as well as a study to look at the possibility to put a huge solar array in orbit, maybe one that also serves to shield the earth from the sun to counter CO2 induced global warming until we can get our emissions under control.

We need to look at a biologically derived chemical fuel that is equal in value to gasoline that we can produce with very little energy cost. We need to look at capturing motion and sound to generate energy. We need to extract energy from our wastes, whether it's our landfills or our wastewater treatment plants.

We need to plant more trees and manage the ones that we do have so that they don't all burn up in forest fires, contributing nothing to our well being and polluting the atmosphere in the process.

We need to control our weather. We need to learn how to divert atmospheric moisture such that no areas flood and no areas bake. This alone will expand the planet's carrying capacity by a factor of 2 or 3. The skills we learn in doing this, and in solving global warming, could someday be used to cool Venus down and warm Mars up to a habitable state. Imagine humanity with 3 habitable worlds in this solar system.

This is our future. This is not some scary scenario to be feared and resisted, this is where we are going, either voluntarily or involunarily. Why should we not accept this change, embrace it, and plunge headlong into the tasks to make it a reality?

Cooperation Makes Strength

Evolution has rewarded those that can out compete. Capitalism rewards those that can out compete at the expense of others. I have the vague sense that capitalism has some fatal flaws that will eventually drag democracy down the rathole.

I have great admiration for Benjamin Franklin. The guy was always curious, always questioning, and always sharing his knowledge. He's responsible for many of the concepts of cooperative civil society in America. Public Libraries and Fire Stations are just 2 of many things he came up with. He was the most renowned scientist in America in the mid 18th century, due to his work on electricity. He freely published the plans for building protection with lightning rods in order to help the greatest number of people. There's no patent for the lightning rod, Franklin did not profit monetarily from the sale of them. He also came up with the Franklin stove, and was encouraged to patent it. He refused, saying that ideas freely shared can be freely improved upon. He saw patents as a detriment to innovation. After all, how can you own knowledge? It's not as if a Franklin Stove could not have happened without Franklin, someone would have come up with it. Franklin's coin was the ability to see a need, study the concepts involved and come up with a useful idea.

So, am I a communist? Well, to be fair, the world has never seen true communism. It never got a clear and fair chance in its pure form. It was always used as a justification for totalitarianism. So you can't say that communism was tried and failed, it was never tried. I don't think it would work in all the forms it was described. The problem is that people do perform out of the profit motive, and people like to think they are being compensated for their time, efforts, and brilliance. So, the whole "from each according to his abilities to each according to his needs" is also bogus. If you are willfully ignorant or lazy, you should suffer somewhat for it. That's how you pay for your mental and/or physical slothfulness (if that's a word). We do have an obligation to care for those that are in need, if for no other reason than to prevent an atmosphere or spread of misery.

I believe competition has reached a point where it is destructive to society. When investment bankers and lawyers are being produced in more numbers and making more money than engineers and doctors, we are in trouble. The siren song of competition tells us to take what the other person has and become strong at the expense of others. When civilization was primitive, we could see these principles at work as barbarian hordes rode into all the civilized cities and killed everyone and took what they wanted. We put up with this kind of behavior within civilized society when we can dress it up with laws and procedures and make it seem clean and justified. But how is a lawyer suing a doctor for malpractice for a multimillion dollar settlement justified? This is ruining people who stepped forward, sacrificed and worked hard to serve society, and doing it for sport and profit. This is the worst perversion of democracy the legal system has ever come up with. Engineers get it pretty bad, too. Some bonehead either doesn't maintain a piece of equipment or uses it in a manner it was never meant to be used, and of course the engineer should pay to the point of ruin for someone else's mistake. I'm not saying there should never be consequences for medical incompetence or that flawed products should not be recalled or banned. However, companies that are trying to bring you the next wonder drug will never be able to do it at an affordable price if the number one sport of tort attorneys in this country is the class action lawsuit against pharmaceutical firms.

And what about our current energy crisis? I was in high school the last time gas prices skyrocketed. Right when I reached the age of the Teenaged American Dream including the magical driver's license and first car, gas was too expensive to allow for much freedom. America just spent the last 30 years drifting, not preparing for the next crisis. How does this happen? It's in the interests of the huge (enormously profitable) companies that bring you energy and transportation to keep their lock on the consumer. They've fought emissions and fuel efficiency standards for 30 years. This has not served us well. It has not served the auto companies either. Look at how Japan is sprinting past GM with the vigor of a marathoner passing a geriatric with emphysema. What happened to American know-how and ingenuity? What happened to leading the world with technology? Things are the way they are because competition demands that those on top with the money keep things going like they are and prevent any innovation.

America got its first technological boost in the 1700's with the innovation of textile mills. The concepts were simple, use water power and put all of the processes to manufacture cloth under one roof. Raw material in one side of the plant, finished product out the other. England had all the elements of this simple, cost effective, efficient, and highly profitable system in their hands, but were powerless to implement them. They had guilds that were threatened by this new way of doing things and worked to prevent any improvements. Look at England today compared to America. The textile revolution is where we catapulted past in technology and industry. How is what the oil and auto companies are doing to us now any different? If Congress had forced the U.S. Auto Industry to make continuous improvements on fuel efficiency, they would be as competitive if not more by now. They may not have liked it, they may have had to raise prices, but they would have all been in the same boat and would have all been equally hampered in the beginning, and equally healthy and profitable by now.

I believe the world needs to find ways to provide an individual's energy and clean water needs at a grass roots level. We should transform the technology we use to provide these commodities and then sell that technology to the rest of the world. We need to start a revolution and overthrow our corporate overlords. Capitalism has the potential to kill the golden goose if knowledge can be bottled up and either kept away from us or used against us. Information should be a free exchange that generates prosperity for everyone. A healthy a prosperous world, where everyone's energy, food, and water needs are met without taking away from others is a worthy goal. Can you imagine any group of people in the world being disgruntled if all their basic needs are met? Of course, health care and education are pretty basic needs, too, so there are social needs to be met as well to make the picture complete. I believe that terrorism would whither on the vine if it weren't for massive disparities in health, wealth, and opportunity. This is where the real strength of cooperation and the free exchange of knowledge comes in.