The G8 ministers meeting in Japan are up in arms about oil prices. The G8 are a group of eight rich nations whose influence goes well beyond that of the remaining 100+ countries on the planet. Nevertheless the G8 invited China, India, and South Korea, illustrating the power shift that is about to take place on the world stage. Soon the G8 will have to add to its magic number or consider booting some of it older members who are no longer carrying so much weight.
For now though, it appears the G8 mostly invited China and India so participants could scold these countries for their energy subsidies. The participants in question being mostly the US. Never mind that the US has its own energy subsidies in place. When you are the biggest bully on the block it is fine to attack others for what you yourself do all the time.
What worries the US is that world oil production has stalled since 2005, while global economic growth -read China and India- is pushing demand to ever higher levels. Much of that growth is fueled by US dollars and US demand for cheap goods. The US has moved much of its manufacturing base to China, and much of its low-level services base to India. When you buy a gadget in the US, chances are it was made in China, and when you call customer service to inquire about something, chances are someone in Bangalore will be answering the phone. That puts the US in a tricky position. What also puts the US in a tricky position is the increasing military might of the Chinese. That while we are busily trying to keep our head above the water in the Middle East.
We also read that the five top consumers, the US, China, Japan, South Korea, and India, urged oil producers to boost output, while pledging to develop clean energy alternatives and increase efficiency. It is unclear what if anything the US government means by its pledge to develop clean alternatives and increase efficiency. So far, all we have seen is quite to the contrary. Any attempt to take away subsidies from fossil fuels has been death on arrival. With two oil men in the White house, it seems unlikely such a pledge amounts to much more than window dressing. Other bills, to support alternative energy, or to reduce greenhouse gases, or other pollution have all been stalled, and received veto warnings to boot.
On a more practical level, both China and the US are increasingly reverting to coal, a fossil fuel that is even more damaging to the environment than oil. So much for progress. In the US, coal has been busy convincing consumers and politicians alike that there is such a thing as "clean coal." Ads on TV ask consumers to embrace clean coal as the energy of the future. Both the US and China unfortunately have huge coal reserves to feed their power hungry consumers.
The advertising is especially damaging. At this stage, clean coal is as real as cold fusion, or x-ray lasers. And we all know what happened there. Fortunately for us, the US is more constrained than China and US consumers are more sensitive to coal pollution than the Chinese, who have little say in what their government does. But there is no telling what US consumers will put up with once gas prices close in on $8 a gallon. It is a scenario that is more realistic than most people think. The US infrastructure is also more vulnerable than the Chinese infrastructure. In the US much of what is there, and almost all of what is being added daily is heavily dependent on cars and trucks. The layouts are very unfriendly towards alternatives such as walking, biking, or even public transportation.
If the US mortgage crisis has a silver lining it is right here. Now is the time to abandon much of this non-sensical infrastructure. If you have to leave because your house is in foreclosure, at least now you have the option to go live closer to work, closer to the city, or in a place where you can walk or use transit. The high oil prices give you an added incentive and one can only hope prices will stay high for long enough to support a mini-migration towards the population centers. It is important because there will be partial recoveries and people may be tempted to re-indulge in their bad habits. Ultimately though our economy is unsustainable and a collapse of one kind or another is inevitable. The more we adjust now, the better off we will be when that finally happens.
Sunday, June 8, 2008
Saturday, June 7, 2008
diapers, tires, and a global crisis
Oil prices are surging and soon the effect on the economy will become noticeable to all, not just drivers and travelers. Oil is not just used for transportation. It goes into everything from diapers, paper towels, laundry products, plastics to tires. Already many companies are switching back to the natural products that made up these goods before the advent of petroleum. Natural rubber, palm oil, and other natural commodities are making a huge comeback. But these items are not cheap either and prices are rising everywhere.
The reason is simple. Global warming is not our only problem. Not by a long shot. Global warming is but one symptom of a much larger problem. A problem that won't be so easy to ignore or deny. While it takes some understanding of mathematics, statistics and probability -not something most people excel at- to understand climate science and modeling, it won't take a PhD for people to see that nearly everything will soon be in short supply. Why? Too many humans, all acting as if they have infinite resources. Wasteful overindulgence on a global scale.
There have been other times in human history where people acted just as irresponsibly as we do now. Times of plenty, when excess and gluttony were the norm. Invariably such times were followed by rather dramatic collapses where the overall standard of living dropped significantly. The collapses were dramatic because they did not just affect the poor and the "middle classes," but also the rich and the very rich. In short, these events were not pretty and very few were immune.
Never before though have we experienced a global crisis. Even though previous crises affected all of the then known world, their scale was small compared to the planet. That is no longer true. We are now faced with global crises. That has never happened before and so in a very real sense, all bets are off. We are facing shortages in energy, natural resources, water, food and nearly everything imaginable. Furthermore, most of these problems are interconnected, so there is no telling which way the dice will roll. Food production is dependent on cheap oil. So is irrigation. The list goes on and on.
While it is certainly possible that we make a soft landing as slowly increasing prices eventually cure most excesses, I would not bet on it. The probability of that happening is close to zero. Soft landings are the stuff of dreams. Too many people's livelihoods depend on these excesses. Their jobs will have to go. It won't be as simple as designing eco-bottles to put water in. The whole bottled-water business has to disappear. And many other businesses too. That cannot be done without millions of job losses.
Given how many humans we have, and how long these humans live, these crises will not be resolved without some very bloody fighting and cruel warfare. Nobody is simply going to roll over and accept a much lower standard of living. And it appears the standard of living will have to drop rather dramatically from what we are used to today. It also appears that the population will have to shrink in a very real sense.
The reason is simple. Global warming is not our only problem. Not by a long shot. Global warming is but one symptom of a much larger problem. A problem that won't be so easy to ignore or deny. While it takes some understanding of mathematics, statistics and probability -not something most people excel at- to understand climate science and modeling, it won't take a PhD for people to see that nearly everything will soon be in short supply. Why? Too many humans, all acting as if they have infinite resources. Wasteful overindulgence on a global scale.
There have been other times in human history where people acted just as irresponsibly as we do now. Times of plenty, when excess and gluttony were the norm. Invariably such times were followed by rather dramatic collapses where the overall standard of living dropped significantly. The collapses were dramatic because they did not just affect the poor and the "middle classes," but also the rich and the very rich. In short, these events were not pretty and very few were immune.
Never before though have we experienced a global crisis. Even though previous crises affected all of the then known world, their scale was small compared to the planet. That is no longer true. We are now faced with global crises. That has never happened before and so in a very real sense, all bets are off. We are facing shortages in energy, natural resources, water, food and nearly everything imaginable. Furthermore, most of these problems are interconnected, so there is no telling which way the dice will roll. Food production is dependent on cheap oil. So is irrigation. The list goes on and on.
While it is certainly possible that we make a soft landing as slowly increasing prices eventually cure most excesses, I would not bet on it. The probability of that happening is close to zero. Soft landings are the stuff of dreams. Too many people's livelihoods depend on these excesses. Their jobs will have to go. It won't be as simple as designing eco-bottles to put water in. The whole bottled-water business has to disappear. And many other businesses too. That cannot be done without millions of job losses.
Given how many humans we have, and how long these humans live, these crises will not be resolved without some very bloody fighting and cruel warfare. Nobody is simply going to roll over and accept a much lower standard of living. And it appears the standard of living will have to drop rather dramatically from what we are used to today. It also appears that the population will have to shrink in a very real sense.
Friday, June 6, 2008
restless legs
You have to hear Bill Maher say it. Why do people like to travel ? Answer: to get laid. It is one of those instances where comedians tell us what we all know to be true. Sure, there are the tourist attractions, but the number one attraction is the other people who are also there to view them. There is ample evidence to support this non-conventional view. From the crusades to the missionaries, to modern day tourism, we can see the evidence plainly written in mitochondrial and Y chromosome DNA.
Have you ever wondered why people living in exotic travel destinations never go see the local sights? It often takes out of town visitors for them to even consider looking at those "fabulous treasures." I have lived in San Francisco for decades and never been to Alcatraz. I think I have been to Muir woods twice, both times because out of town visitors wanted to go there. The same applies to ChinaTown, Fisherman's Warf, Pier 39, and all other tourist attractions. I lived in other tourist hotspots and they too never inspired me to go see the sights.
And I am not alone. I went to Boston recently to visit a friend. He too took me places that are high on the tourist must-see list but that he, as a life-long Boston resident had never bothered to see. Everyone knows stories like these.It is not that we are immune to natural beauty. But natural beauty can be found everywhere and anytime. It is a free commodity and not something you need to go travel for to experience.
Furthermore, a lot of it is in the eye of the beholder. Sure you can look over the Grand Canyon or Monument Valley and be amazed. But as Marc Reisner points out in "Cadillac Desert," the desert only looks wondrous and attractive from an air-conditioned car with a cooler full of cold drinks. If you had to survive there, you wouldn't be nearly as impressed. Even Hawaii with its spectacular volcanoes is no different. If it weren't for all the goodies we constantly ship in, paradise would look as desperate and dreary as Father Damian saw it.
Hawaii, like all beach destinations is about the surfer dudes and the bikini girls. The hard bodies on the beach. Now that is a sight worth seeing ! Men of course would only grudgingly acknowledge this in public. Because men, as we all know, buy PlayBoy for the articles.
There are only so many sunsets one can watch. And only so many new and exciting landscapes. Sure the romantic pictures matter somewhat, but face it, it is not the tropical beach but the bodies lying on that beach that count. And the clubs and the nightlife. It is not the ski, but the apres-ski that we are looking for. If not, why put up with all the lift lines and the hassle?
In tourist hotspots such as Las Vegas, Bangkok, Phuket, and Spain, the sex industry is alive and well. That industry does not just comprise sex workers but also the many nightclubs and bars where eager souls can pick up new companions. In some cases it goes so far as to support a "scavenger population."
I saw a program recently documenting the many single males living a minimal existence on the Spanish coast. They try to survive winter doing odd jobs here and there. They live frugally to the point of poverty and have but one goal. Like raptors they are eagerly awaiting the tourists that arrive in Spring. To take advantage of the relaxed atmosphere that gives many women the green light for an adventure or a one-night stand.
Despite the reproductive advantage, traveling is not something that humans are well adapted for. It comes at a price. There are dangers on the road, and dangers in the encounter with foreigners. There are illnesses, some quite serious. Even today, with tourism bringing in billions of dollars, and tourist-destinations eager to protect their source of income, travelers are at increased risk for illness, injury, and death. It is not something you read about a lot and the travel industry does its best to ignore it or brush it away. But every year, a lot of people die. Even more are assaulted, robbed, or kidnapped.
Travel also plays a key role in epidemics and pandemics. Travel is a major contributor to global warming and environmental destruction. From the planes, cars, and buses, to the garbage people leave behind, tourism is damaging and destructive. Unfortunately, it does not end there. Tourism also leaves its mark in infrastructure. An infrastructure that is often poorly adapted to the local circumstances.
Tourism plays a major role in the current water crisis in Southern Spain. The crisis goes largely unnoticed for now, but its impact is devastating. Spain is a good example because it contains many fragile environments and receives more tourists than almost any other destination on the planet. Almost 50 million people make an annual trek to the Spanish coast each and every year. They go there to do those things that they would never contemplate doing at home. But what happens in Spain is not an isolated phenomenon. It happens everywhere else too. Florida's ecosystem has been trashed by retirees and visitors alike. The everglades have seen their best days. The reefs are all but depopulated. The same is happening to the SouthWest. The spread of golf courses and swimming pools is contributing to water shortages and putting stress on the ecosystems.
Like so many other things in modern life, travel is one area where the consumer does not pay the true cost of the trip. If they did, travel would once again become rare and be the prerogative of the very rich. Not that that would be a bad thing. After a while, I am sure nobody would miss it very much.
Have you ever wondered why people living in exotic travel destinations never go see the local sights? It often takes out of town visitors for them to even consider looking at those "fabulous treasures." I have lived in San Francisco for decades and never been to Alcatraz. I think I have been to Muir woods twice, both times because out of town visitors wanted to go there. The same applies to ChinaTown, Fisherman's Warf, Pier 39, and all other tourist attractions. I lived in other tourist hotspots and they too never inspired me to go see the sights.
And I am not alone. I went to Boston recently to visit a friend. He too took me places that are high on the tourist must-see list but that he, as a life-long Boston resident had never bothered to see. Everyone knows stories like these.It is not that we are immune to natural beauty. But natural beauty can be found everywhere and anytime. It is a free commodity and not something you need to go travel for to experience.
Furthermore, a lot of it is in the eye of the beholder. Sure you can look over the Grand Canyon or Monument Valley and be amazed. But as Marc Reisner points out in "Cadillac Desert," the desert only looks wondrous and attractive from an air-conditioned car with a cooler full of cold drinks. If you had to survive there, you wouldn't be nearly as impressed. Even Hawaii with its spectacular volcanoes is no different. If it weren't for all the goodies we constantly ship in, paradise would look as desperate and dreary as Father Damian saw it.
Hawaii, like all beach destinations is about the surfer dudes and the bikini girls. The hard bodies on the beach. Now that is a sight worth seeing ! Men of course would only grudgingly acknowledge this in public. Because men, as we all know, buy PlayBoy for the articles.
There are only so many sunsets one can watch. And only so many new and exciting landscapes. Sure the romantic pictures matter somewhat, but face it, it is not the tropical beach but the bodies lying on that beach that count. And the clubs and the nightlife. It is not the ski, but the apres-ski that we are looking for. If not, why put up with all the lift lines and the hassle?
In tourist hotspots such as Las Vegas, Bangkok, Phuket, and Spain, the sex industry is alive and well. That industry does not just comprise sex workers but also the many nightclubs and bars where eager souls can pick up new companions. In some cases it goes so far as to support a "scavenger population."
I saw a program recently documenting the many single males living a minimal existence on the Spanish coast. They try to survive winter doing odd jobs here and there. They live frugally to the point of poverty and have but one goal. Like raptors they are eagerly awaiting the tourists that arrive in Spring. To take advantage of the relaxed atmosphere that gives many women the green light for an adventure or a one-night stand.
Despite the reproductive advantage, traveling is not something that humans are well adapted for. It comes at a price. There are dangers on the road, and dangers in the encounter with foreigners. There are illnesses, some quite serious. Even today, with tourism bringing in billions of dollars, and tourist-destinations eager to protect their source of income, travelers are at increased risk for illness, injury, and death. It is not something you read about a lot and the travel industry does its best to ignore it or brush it away. But every year, a lot of people die. Even more are assaulted, robbed, or kidnapped.
Travel also plays a key role in epidemics and pandemics. Travel is a major contributor to global warming and environmental destruction. From the planes, cars, and buses, to the garbage people leave behind, tourism is damaging and destructive. Unfortunately, it does not end there. Tourism also leaves its mark in infrastructure. An infrastructure that is often poorly adapted to the local circumstances.
Tourism plays a major role in the current water crisis in Southern Spain. The crisis goes largely unnoticed for now, but its impact is devastating. Spain is a good example because it contains many fragile environments and receives more tourists than almost any other destination on the planet. Almost 50 million people make an annual trek to the Spanish coast each and every year. They go there to do those things that they would never contemplate doing at home. But what happens in Spain is not an isolated phenomenon. It happens everywhere else too. Florida's ecosystem has been trashed by retirees and visitors alike. The everglades have seen their best days. The reefs are all but depopulated. The same is happening to the SouthWest. The spread of golf courses and swimming pools is contributing to water shortages and putting stress on the ecosystems.
Like so many other things in modern life, travel is one area where the consumer does not pay the true cost of the trip. If they did, travel would once again become rare and be the prerogative of the very rich. Not that that would be a bad thing. After a while, I am sure nobody would miss it very much.
Thursday, June 5, 2008
the cost of change
Why is it so difficult to start saving energy? It turns out there are several reasons, ranging from laziness, poor habits to infrastructure. For example, when you live in suburbia, you almost certainly have to drive most places. You can buy a fuel efficient car, and try to limit trips by doubling up chores or carpooling with others, but there are clearly limits to what you can achieve. If you have a big house and only one heater/airconditioner you may be stuck having to heat or cool the entire house, regardless of whether you actually "use" the whole house.
There are remedies to these situations but all are expensive and unlikely to have a big return on investment. And if things don't save you money, you probably won't be motivated to do something about it. Furthermore, it isn't just about saving money, what counts is how much money you save relative to what you have or are willing to spend. Unless the items "register" you are unlikely to take action. Case in point is gasoline. It registers because you are faced with it on a regular basis. You may spend thousands of dollars on gas and that may cause you to abandon your beloved SUV. However, when you bought the monster, you probably did not worry too much about the extra $5,000 in useless options that the car dealer talked you into.
The same is true for gimmicks like $2.99 gas. If people offered you a $2,000 rebate you may not act, but buying gas cheaply certainly rings a bell. Even though the rebate has much more value. And that brings us to psychology. Psychology and habits. Habits are perhaps the most difficult of all to change. Once a person is used to doing things a certain way, they put up enormous barriers to change. Change may become frightening to the point of being unimaginable. Yet we all have energy wasting habits. Unless you spent the last 10 years of your life in a cave, chances are you picked up a great many energy wasting and pollution producing habits. If you watched TV on a regular basis and were thus subjected to thousands of ads, chances are most of your habits are insanely wasteful. Because ads are there to make you consume. And the more you consume the more you waste. Consumption is waste.
How about cutting back on your spending? Spending money for the sake of spending is not smart and it isn't patriotic either, no matter what the President thinks. It also isn't fun. People just talked you into believing it is fun. How can it be fun to throw away your money and make others rich? It is probably fun for them to watch you be so foolish. Remember that over 90% of the items that American buy end up in the trash within 6 months. Clearly these items were not all that exciting or valuable to begin with.
How about getting rid of your lawn and plant vegetables? Every time food prices rise and recession looms, more people plant vegetables. But when the tide turns, they quickly remove the "ugly" plants and replace them with a lush green lawn. They also ditch their fuel efficient cars and replace them with a "fun" gas-guzzler. What is so beautiful about a lawn or so fun about a truck with leather seats? Are you just trying to impress your friends and neighbors? Guess what, rather than be impressed they quickly set out to outdo you. And then you can counter and so on, until you are both broke.
How about ditching bottled water and sodas? Your tap water is better quality and the sodas do nothing more than make you fat. How about turning off your lights? There is a suburban myth that keeping your lights on deters crime. Give me a break. Most break-ins happen in the morning when people are out at work and when the presence of another van or truck in the neighborhood is expected.
There is so much you can do that will make a very significant difference to humanity. This is true democracy in action. You need not follow the lead of the advertisers. Chart your own path. A path that is in harmony with the environment you live in.
There are remedies to these situations but all are expensive and unlikely to have a big return on investment. And if things don't save you money, you probably won't be motivated to do something about it. Furthermore, it isn't just about saving money, what counts is how much money you save relative to what you have or are willing to spend. Unless the items "register" you are unlikely to take action. Case in point is gasoline. It registers because you are faced with it on a regular basis. You may spend thousands of dollars on gas and that may cause you to abandon your beloved SUV. However, when you bought the monster, you probably did not worry too much about the extra $5,000 in useless options that the car dealer talked you into.
The same is true for gimmicks like $2.99 gas. If people offered you a $2,000 rebate you may not act, but buying gas cheaply certainly rings a bell. Even though the rebate has much more value. And that brings us to psychology. Psychology and habits. Habits are perhaps the most difficult of all to change. Once a person is used to doing things a certain way, they put up enormous barriers to change. Change may become frightening to the point of being unimaginable. Yet we all have energy wasting habits. Unless you spent the last 10 years of your life in a cave, chances are you picked up a great many energy wasting and pollution producing habits. If you watched TV on a regular basis and were thus subjected to thousands of ads, chances are most of your habits are insanely wasteful. Because ads are there to make you consume. And the more you consume the more you waste. Consumption is waste.
How about cutting back on your spending? Spending money for the sake of spending is not smart and it isn't patriotic either, no matter what the President thinks. It also isn't fun. People just talked you into believing it is fun. How can it be fun to throw away your money and make others rich? It is probably fun for them to watch you be so foolish. Remember that over 90% of the items that American buy end up in the trash within 6 months. Clearly these items were not all that exciting or valuable to begin with.
How about getting rid of your lawn and plant vegetables? Every time food prices rise and recession looms, more people plant vegetables. But when the tide turns, they quickly remove the "ugly" plants and replace them with a lush green lawn. They also ditch their fuel efficient cars and replace them with a "fun" gas-guzzler. What is so beautiful about a lawn or so fun about a truck with leather seats? Are you just trying to impress your friends and neighbors? Guess what, rather than be impressed they quickly set out to outdo you. And then you can counter and so on, until you are both broke.
How about ditching bottled water and sodas? Your tap water is better quality and the sodas do nothing more than make you fat. How about turning off your lights? There is a suburban myth that keeping your lights on deters crime. Give me a break. Most break-ins happen in the morning when people are out at work and when the presence of another van or truck in the neighborhood is expected.
There is so much you can do that will make a very significant difference to humanity. This is true democracy in action. You need not follow the lead of the advertisers. Chart your own path. A path that is in harmony with the environment you live in.
Wednesday, June 4, 2008
energy policy
The more I look into the energy issue the more optimistic I become that we can solve our problems. Theoretically at least the solution seems straightforward and simple. We are consuming resources in an incredibly wasteful manner and we are living life-styles that are seriously out of touch with our surroundings. If we simply paid more attention to our energy use and did not attempt to live artificial lives, we would be able to reduce our resource consumption to levels needed to stave off long term ill effects. What that means is serious cutbacks from where we are, but not the type of cutbacks that would send us back to the stone age.
Although I feel much more optimistic about our ability to fix things, I am also increasingly pessimistic about the prospect that it will really happen. I fear that we will just continue to hold on to our life-styles for as long as we can, and thereby forego our only chance to solve problems before they go out of control. We will cling to the promise of technology much like the ancients clung to their religious icons. It will prove to be equally ineffective.
History shows that civilizations tend to run almost unchecked until they hit the wall and collapse. The premise of Jared Diamond's book "Collapse" was that some civilizations manage to avoid disaster by taking action, while others do nothing and fail. But upon closer inspection of the case studies we see that those civilizations that survived, did so not by changing their wasteful life-styles, but by finding new resources to exploit and new places to dump their waste. Those that failed lacked that option.
Unfortunately, these types of solutions arew not available once the problems are planet-wide. We are faced with global crises now: global warming, global deforestation, global destruction of ecosystems, global shortages of food, water, and oil. There are no outside places to dump and no other planets to mine. At least not within the reaches of our current technology. Even if that technology grows exponentially fast.
Furthermore, the real situation is a bit worse. We are faced with mechanisms that exhibit long lag times and have the potential for autonomous growth and positive -in the engineering sense that is- feedback. Our problems too can grow exponentially as Mr. Kurzweil forgot to point out.
We have set in motion processes that will affect us for centuries to come. Even if we stopped polluting, the CO2 that we have already put out will continue to exert long term effects. Some of these effects are still unknown to us, but at least some are active processes that may amplify or cross thresholds without any further intervention. It is clear that we have already crossed the threshold of CO2 homeostasis. We have started a fire. Now we are making it worse by feeding it some more.
What it means is that we have to act quickly and decisively. We have to drastically reduce our consumption in absolute terms. All the talk about efficiency is meaningless. It is meaningless to discuss whether flying cross country is more efficient than driving. What we need to ask is whether we honestly need to travel there. What counts is not CO2 per capita, but CO2 in absolute terms.
Unfortunately, all proposed solutions are to phase out pollution over several decades, and they are not sensible. These are politically palatable band-aid "solutions" whose aim is to defer actions that voters find objectionable. These will not work even if they are implemented and the likelihood of that happening is actually quite small. Experience shows that when politicians approve actions that affect future generations, these generations quickly undo such actions when their time comes. And that is the bad news.
The good news is that you, dear reader, can do something about that. And you can start right now. You can reduce your energy consumption right away. No alternative energy or other kool-aid. Reduction is the only option. It will make a huge and lasting difference and it maybe the best thing you can do for humanity.
Although I feel much more optimistic about our ability to fix things, I am also increasingly pessimistic about the prospect that it will really happen. I fear that we will just continue to hold on to our life-styles for as long as we can, and thereby forego our only chance to solve problems before they go out of control. We will cling to the promise of technology much like the ancients clung to their religious icons. It will prove to be equally ineffective.
History shows that civilizations tend to run almost unchecked until they hit the wall and collapse. The premise of Jared Diamond's book "Collapse" was that some civilizations manage to avoid disaster by taking action, while others do nothing and fail. But upon closer inspection of the case studies we see that those civilizations that survived, did so not by changing their wasteful life-styles, but by finding new resources to exploit and new places to dump their waste. Those that failed lacked that option.
Unfortunately, these types of solutions arew not available once the problems are planet-wide. We are faced with global crises now: global warming, global deforestation, global destruction of ecosystems, global shortages of food, water, and oil. There are no outside places to dump and no other planets to mine. At least not within the reaches of our current technology. Even if that technology grows exponentially fast.
Furthermore, the real situation is a bit worse. We are faced with mechanisms that exhibit long lag times and have the potential for autonomous growth and positive -in the engineering sense that is- feedback. Our problems too can grow exponentially as Mr. Kurzweil forgot to point out.
We have set in motion processes that will affect us for centuries to come. Even if we stopped polluting, the CO2 that we have already put out will continue to exert long term effects. Some of these effects are still unknown to us, but at least some are active processes that may amplify or cross thresholds without any further intervention. It is clear that we have already crossed the threshold of CO2 homeostasis. We have started a fire. Now we are making it worse by feeding it some more.
What it means is that we have to act quickly and decisively. We have to drastically reduce our consumption in absolute terms. All the talk about efficiency is meaningless. It is meaningless to discuss whether flying cross country is more efficient than driving. What we need to ask is whether we honestly need to travel there. What counts is not CO2 per capita, but CO2 in absolute terms.
Unfortunately, all proposed solutions are to phase out pollution over several decades, and they are not sensible. These are politically palatable band-aid "solutions" whose aim is to defer actions that voters find objectionable. These will not work even if they are implemented and the likelihood of that happening is actually quite small. Experience shows that when politicians approve actions that affect future generations, these generations quickly undo such actions when their time comes. And that is the bad news.
The good news is that you, dear reader, can do something about that. And you can start right now. You can reduce your energy consumption right away. No alternative energy or other kool-aid. Reduction is the only option. It will make a huge and lasting difference and it maybe the best thing you can do for humanity.
Tuesday, June 3, 2008
exponential optimism
Maverick futurist Ray Kurzweil gave an upbeat presentation at the World Science Festival in New York recently. I wasn't there and my story comes through John Tierney of the NY Times, but I have no reason to believe John would misrepresent the claims, so here we go. Among some of the bullish assertions made, we learn that within 10 years we will have a diet pill that will let us eat whatever we want without gaining weight. Not convinced?
That is just the beginning, here are some more happy tidings. Solar power will be cost competitive with fossil fuels in five years, and in twenty years all our energy will come from clean sources. In 15 years our life-expectancy will keep growing faster than we age, and then by mid-century we will experience the "singularity" that will let us transcend biology and create intelligent machines. Then we and/or the machines will live forever. Now, there is something to look forward to! Because, by some other calculations there will be nine billion of us then, and if we all live forever and keep reproducing we won't need any diet pills to keep us from gaining weight. Maybe the machines will figure this out and help us along!
Dr. Kurzweil, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, makes his predictions using the law of Accelerating Returns, and he apparently brought a widget to the show to prove his point. Both the honors and the widget are mentioned to assure us the Dr. Kruzweil is no lightweight. The widget, a text reader, may appear impressive to those of us who have been around long enough to know what computers were like, but the honors do little to convince me. There is a whole slew of Nobel Laureates who made fools of themselves post-Nobel by voicing opinions or starting projects in areas they knew nothing about. Nothing more dangerous than a man who receives the highest awards at a relatively young age.
Kurzweil, we read has many graphs showing exponential growth for everything from the spread of telephones, to patents issued, to money spent. His latest graphs show exponential growth in nanotechnology, gene splicing, sequencing, and the resolution of brain scans. Therefore, we will see tremendous breakthroughs in all these areas. All these breakthroughs will come through the spread of information, and now that information technology has sunk its teeth into biology, the equivalent of the text reading gadget will be an intelligent machine that transcends biology. And it will come sooner than you think.
Jokes aside, there are a few things in this story that are worth discussing. One is the following quote:" Scientists imagine they'll keep working at the present pace. They make linear extrapolations from the past." It is a very important statement and one that does not just apply to scientists. It applies to all people. People are linear thinkers. They always think things will move along smoothly as they did in the past. They think if one item is good for you, then 100 items must be 100 times as good.
Many natural processes however, are not linear. They accelerate and some grow exponentially. And when they do, they cross thresholds or become essentially irreversible. Processes that were easy to understand and control may suddenly enter a runaway phase where neither understanding nor control is possible.
Exponential growth is pretty amazing to people. According to Kurzweil, "If you reach 1% and keep doubling growth every year, you'll hit 100% in just seven years." Here is another well known example. You probably heard the riddle of the waterlillies that double every day. On day 10 they cover half the lake. Then the narrator asks, When will they cover the whole lake? Most people, thinking linearly, will say on day 20. Or maybe you heard the story about the inventor of the chess board who wanted the following reward for his ingenuity: one grain of rice on the first square, and then double the amount on every subsequent square on the board. It turns out there isn't enough grain on the planet to fill square 64.
These interesting properties don't just apply to inventions and engineering. They also apply to "nasties" such as greenhouse gas accumulation, pollution, and food shortages. And here is where linear thinking gets us into trouble. We never envision a runaway heating process. As with any exponential growth, the initial steps are so minuscule that they are easy to ignore. But when the curve raises its ugly head, it will be too late to do something about it.
Unfortunately, these undesirable effects are likely to get to us well before we reach the wondrous utopia that Dr. Kurzweil envisions. Not that anyone has really thought through the issues raised by immortality. Always be careful for what you ask for!
That is just the beginning, here are some more happy tidings. Solar power will be cost competitive with fossil fuels in five years, and in twenty years all our energy will come from clean sources. In 15 years our life-expectancy will keep growing faster than we age, and then by mid-century we will experience the "singularity" that will let us transcend biology and create intelligent machines. Then we and/or the machines will live forever. Now, there is something to look forward to! Because, by some other calculations there will be nine billion of us then, and if we all live forever and keep reproducing we won't need any diet pills to keep us from gaining weight. Maybe the machines will figure this out and help us along!
Dr. Kurzweil, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, makes his predictions using the law of Accelerating Returns, and he apparently brought a widget to the show to prove his point. Both the honors and the widget are mentioned to assure us the Dr. Kruzweil is no lightweight. The widget, a text reader, may appear impressive to those of us who have been around long enough to know what computers were like, but the honors do little to convince me. There is a whole slew of Nobel Laureates who made fools of themselves post-Nobel by voicing opinions or starting projects in areas they knew nothing about. Nothing more dangerous than a man who receives the highest awards at a relatively young age.
Kurzweil, we read has many graphs showing exponential growth for everything from the spread of telephones, to patents issued, to money spent. His latest graphs show exponential growth in nanotechnology, gene splicing, sequencing, and the resolution of brain scans. Therefore, we will see tremendous breakthroughs in all these areas. All these breakthroughs will come through the spread of information, and now that information technology has sunk its teeth into biology, the equivalent of the text reading gadget will be an intelligent machine that transcends biology. And it will come sooner than you think.
Jokes aside, there are a few things in this story that are worth discussing. One is the following quote:" Scientists imagine they'll keep working at the present pace. They make linear extrapolations from the past." It is a very important statement and one that does not just apply to scientists. It applies to all people. People are linear thinkers. They always think things will move along smoothly as they did in the past. They think if one item is good for you, then 100 items must be 100 times as good.
Many natural processes however, are not linear. They accelerate and some grow exponentially. And when they do, they cross thresholds or become essentially irreversible. Processes that were easy to understand and control may suddenly enter a runaway phase where neither understanding nor control is possible.
Exponential growth is pretty amazing to people. According to Kurzweil, "If you reach 1% and keep doubling growth every year, you'll hit 100% in just seven years." Here is another well known example. You probably heard the riddle of the waterlillies that double every day. On day 10 they cover half the lake. Then the narrator asks, When will they cover the whole lake? Most people, thinking linearly, will say on day 20. Or maybe you heard the story about the inventor of the chess board who wanted the following reward for his ingenuity: one grain of rice on the first square, and then double the amount on every subsequent square on the board. It turns out there isn't enough grain on the planet to fill square 64.
These interesting properties don't just apply to inventions and engineering. They also apply to "nasties" such as greenhouse gas accumulation, pollution, and food shortages. And here is where linear thinking gets us into trouble. We never envision a runaway heating process. As with any exponential growth, the initial steps are so minuscule that they are easy to ignore. But when the curve raises its ugly head, it will be too late to do something about it.
Unfortunately, these undesirable effects are likely to get to us well before we reach the wondrous utopia that Dr. Kurzweil envisions. Not that anyone has really thought through the issues raised by immortality. Always be careful for what you ask for!
Monday, June 2, 2008
calories explained
Most people in the Western world know or think they know what calories are. Yet it appears that few connect calories and energy. Witness to that the success of foods and drinks that promise to deliver energy without calories. Another common example of disconnect are the ubiquitous zero-calorie energy drinks. In case you wonder, the calorie is a unit of energy. There is no such thing as energy without calories and the expression makes about as much sense as saying length without meters (or feet) or weight without kilograms (or pounds).
The word calorie contains the root "calor" or heat and calories were originally defined as the energy required to heat a certain quantity of water (a gram) by a certain amount (a degree centigrade). The definition does not limit the calorie to heating however, and calories are a universal unit for energy. You can calculate the energy content of food, gasoline, natural gas, heating oil, and even nuclear materials, and express it in calories. Since the calorie is a rather small unit, it is not used all that often for gasoline or heating oil. Even the food calorie is in reality a kilo-calorie (or 1,000 calories).
Nutritionists will tell you that the average adult needs about 2,500,000 calories, or 2,500 "food calories" to stay healthy. Most of us consume quite a bit more and these excess calories are stored away as fat. Today, over half the population in the civilized world has excess calories stored away. The mantra in the West is how to loose weight, not how to stay properly fed.
The calorie is an older unit, and the official SI unit of energy is the joule. You may have noticed that some food packages express energy as both calories (Kcal to be exact) and KJ or kilo-joules. When you bought a portable heater or installed an air-conditioner, you may have noticed its rating in BTU or British thermal units. A BTU is approximately 252.5 calories. When you look at your gas bill, you may see yet another unit, called a Therm. A therm is 100,000 BTU or 25.25 million calories.
A kilogram of fat contains 9,000,000 calories or almost 36,000 BTU. A cubic foot of natural gas has approximately 1030 BTU or 260,000 calories. That is equivalent to 260 food calories, and you would need 10 cubic feet of gas per day to stay healthy (provided you could utilize the energy in natural gas).
Why go through this physics lesson?
The reason is to get a better understanding of how we stay alive. We stay alive because farmers produce excess calories that they do not need to feed their families. These excess calories can be traded (sold) to keep non-farmers alive. The non-farmers in turn mine and produce the other goodies we all use. That includes many items that farmers can use to make their yields go higher. And farm yields have increased significantly over the last 100 years. In the 1930's one farmer could sustain 10 people. These days, one farmer sustains 80 or more individuals. In a primitive economy, farmers could only produce enough food for 3-4 individuals. We have come a long way you might say. Yet there is no such thing as a free lunch.
One key reason why farmers have become so successful is because they put in a lot more energy to produce food. Whereas farmers were once limited to manual labor, supported by domesticated animals, today's farmers rely heavily on oil-powered machinery. They also depend on artificial irrigation systems, and heavy doses of fertilizers and pesticides. All in all, they are not just using more energy to produce food, they are using more energy per unit of food produced. What that means is that they are putting in more calories than they get out. And not just by a small margin. Estimates are that we consume 9-10 calories to produce one calorie worth of food. We are definitely entering a region of diminished returns.
All that excess food has had some serious consequences. Not only did we all get fatter, we also reproduced more. A lot more. The population boom of the last century was largely a result of the earlier "green revolution" in farming. Suddenly we could sustain a lot more people, and guess what, a lot more people quickly appeared. Now it seems, we are entering an era of more limited resources. Unfortunately, all those extra people are still with us. And they will be with us for a while to come. Not only that, but those people have already started reproducing too.
And therein lies our key problem.
The word calorie contains the root "calor" or heat and calories were originally defined as the energy required to heat a certain quantity of water (a gram) by a certain amount (a degree centigrade). The definition does not limit the calorie to heating however, and calories are a universal unit for energy. You can calculate the energy content of food, gasoline, natural gas, heating oil, and even nuclear materials, and express it in calories. Since the calorie is a rather small unit, it is not used all that often for gasoline or heating oil. Even the food calorie is in reality a kilo-calorie (or 1,000 calories).
Nutritionists will tell you that the average adult needs about 2,500,000 calories, or 2,500 "food calories" to stay healthy. Most of us consume quite a bit more and these excess calories are stored away as fat. Today, over half the population in the civilized world has excess calories stored away. The mantra in the West is how to loose weight, not how to stay properly fed.
The calorie is an older unit, and the official SI unit of energy is the joule. You may have noticed that some food packages express energy as both calories (Kcal to be exact) and KJ or kilo-joules. When you bought a portable heater or installed an air-conditioner, you may have noticed its rating in BTU or British thermal units. A BTU is approximately 252.5 calories. When you look at your gas bill, you may see yet another unit, called a Therm. A therm is 100,000 BTU or 25.25 million calories.
A kilogram of fat contains 9,000,000 calories or almost 36,000 BTU. A cubic foot of natural gas has approximately 1030 BTU or 260,000 calories. That is equivalent to 260 food calories, and you would need 10 cubic feet of gas per day to stay healthy (provided you could utilize the energy in natural gas).
Why go through this physics lesson?
The reason is to get a better understanding of how we stay alive. We stay alive because farmers produce excess calories that they do not need to feed their families. These excess calories can be traded (sold) to keep non-farmers alive. The non-farmers in turn mine and produce the other goodies we all use. That includes many items that farmers can use to make their yields go higher. And farm yields have increased significantly over the last 100 years. In the 1930's one farmer could sustain 10 people. These days, one farmer sustains 80 or more individuals. In a primitive economy, farmers could only produce enough food for 3-4 individuals. We have come a long way you might say. Yet there is no such thing as a free lunch.
One key reason why farmers have become so successful is because they put in a lot more energy to produce food. Whereas farmers were once limited to manual labor, supported by domesticated animals, today's farmers rely heavily on oil-powered machinery. They also depend on artificial irrigation systems, and heavy doses of fertilizers and pesticides. All in all, they are not just using more energy to produce food, they are using more energy per unit of food produced. What that means is that they are putting in more calories than they get out. And not just by a small margin. Estimates are that we consume 9-10 calories to produce one calorie worth of food. We are definitely entering a region of diminished returns.
All that excess food has had some serious consequences. Not only did we all get fatter, we also reproduced more. A lot more. The population boom of the last century was largely a result of the earlier "green revolution" in farming. Suddenly we could sustain a lot more people, and guess what, a lot more people quickly appeared. Now it seems, we are entering an era of more limited resources. Unfortunately, all those extra people are still with us. And they will be with us for a while to come. Not only that, but those people have already started reproducing too.
And therein lies our key problem.
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