From: Anne Marie Tobias (atobias@interwoven.com)
Date: Thu Jun 07 2001 - 17:20:14 MDT
First of all...
I want to change the direction this conversation is heading in... I also
want to point at something... this group to my knowledege, is made up
of many of the best and brightest this society has to offer. Samantha is
somebody I know personally and profoundly respect, so jousting with
her intellectually is more than just an intellectual romp... it's a wonderful
opportunity to bounce ideas off somebody who has a wonderful grasp
of what matters, and a fascinating pespective on the world... somebody
whose eyes look from a very different position than my own. It trues me
up, demands that I give up being sloppy in either my thinking or the
presenting of my thoughts. For that I can't thank Samantha enough.
As well, though I might agree or disagree with Samantha on a thouand
points of political or philisophical analysis... I can always count on her
to be rigorous in her thinking, tenacious in her stand, and passionate in
her beliefs... so above all... this conversation should not be about the
proving of a point (though that may or may not happen), or justifying a
position (though that may or may not also happen)... it should be a
discourse that ultimately shines light on ideas, and provides all who are
attending something new to carry away. If it is really well done, it will
present new alternatives for solutions that can only come from the
thrash of desparate ideas. I just want to make sure that we are all on
the same page, and that this conversation is framed in a context that
provides value for those who are speaking and those who are reading.
Samantha Atkins wrote:
> Anne Marie Tobias wrote:
> >
> > Samantha Atkins wrote:
> >
> > > Anne Marie Tobias wrote:
> > >
> > > > I think an ethanol economy is an awesome idea... it's renewable,
> > >
> > > Much more costly. Do the calculations on how much organics you
> > > need to grow at what input of energy and resources and at what
> > > costs including land costs, labor costs, cultivation costs
> > > (don't forget fertilizers and such), harvesting costs and
> > > processing costs for the equivalent amount of power. It is
> > > quite inferior to any of the major sources today. It might be
> > > reasonable for running fuel cells in vehicles, but not for major
> > > power generation.
> > >
> > > you
> >
> > Actually if you compare it so gasoline... in the same way the gas is
> > expensed in our culture... it's about twice as expensive as gasoline...
> > However, if you look at methanol production from several major
> > environmental reclaimations... it would be possible to make it pay
> > very handsomely and it's total cost to our civilization would be
> > less than 25% of the current cost of gasoline. The measure of cost
> > for a methanol society is predicated on numbers produced by
> > advocates of fossil fuels most of whom talk about Methanol that
> > is made from corn... though corn has a high sugar content, and is
> > a high yield crop for fuel production, it is a high maintenance crop
> > that produces major environmental impact.
>
> So, show a model that does work and the investors will flock to
> your door. It doesn't go far to claim that don't because of the
> evil corporations keeping your superior solution down.
Actually, I can immediately demonstate simple technology that is as
we speak beginning to be used in the third world, that allows small
scale energy production at the level of community. Such facilities
have been installed as pilot generators in India and Africa... and as
we improve on the technolgy... there huge breakthroughs in infrared
to electrical conversion, and a dozen new fronts of advance the may
make it possible for renewable fuels to provide 30% or more the
power needed for a first world technologically advanced population.
The cool part is that such systems, could also produce high quality
organic fertilizer, and decompose a fairly wide selection of organic
toxic wastes. The other cool bit, is that they reduce the amount of
solid waste destined for landfill by nearly 60%. Part of what makes
these technologies viable is that they simultaneously address multiple
issues, that they have benefits across multiple domains.
Again, the problem with methanol as a viable business... is that large
business can't build a fence around it. Same problem with sunlight.
You can't monopolize these things because anybody can use them.
That means not only can large business not keep the fish on the hook...
there is no hook.
The energy business took that page from the tobacco folks a long
time ago... first you have to get them hooked. Look at the design
of our society through the 30s and 40s and 50s... America's current
energy use was designed as you now see it by big oil, big auto, and
big fat men in Washington DC. People were told to move out to the
spaceous west... the hollywood PR machine marketed California as
the new Eldorado... suburbs were laid down in massive blocks. Rapid
mass transit was bought by detroit and ripped out (in fact, LA won a
2 billion dollar settlement from detroit, to be used for the installation
of it's Metro line, when all the fact surrounding the purchase of the red
car lines came out, and oil companies were there as codefendants).
Automotive and Oil financed legislation was rammed through the state
legislature promoting freeways and single owner vehicles. A system of
roads and freeways to rival anything in the world (of course at the later
expense of mass transit.).
Some of these things were arguably evil or self serving, the things that
people did to promote their vision as well as line their pockets were
both grand and horrific. What Mulholland and the water moguls of the
Southern California region did to surrounding counties amounts to little
more than piracy and land war (if this is at all of interest... a fascinating
book on the shame of our water past and the imminent disaster that is
coming can be found in Cadillac Deserts... a fascinating and incredibly
well documented look at the past, present, and future state of water in
the southwest.)
It is just as arguable that these men were visionary, and refused to
be restained by the limiting laws and stubborn few who stood in
the way of what they deamed progress. However you choose to
see it, by the 50s, our country was hooked... dependent on big oil
for power, commerce, transportation, petrochemicals... we would
not last a day without our fix... and the oil companies never had it
so good. Being bright children themselves, and good business men,
it should be obvious that they were going to make sure that their
position of dominance remained stable and intact into the future.
> > To get a better grip on real cost, look at atmospheric carbon, cost
> > of managing and remediating old wells, damage to land and water
> > ecosystems and their related cleanup cost, cost of toxic chemical
> > handling and storage, enhanced fuel safety and notable reduction
> > on accidents and property loss, reduced fuel transportation costs,
> > reduced storage and refining costs, and reduce overall environmental
> > impact... methanol is a real savings.
> >
>
> Show the real numbers in terms of costs per unit of energy.
> That is the number that will effect costs across the board for
> goods and services and directly effect standard of living and
> health of the economy. You need these numbers to work, as well
> as having better environmental impact, to have a better energy
> source.
Unfortunately, one of the problems with our existing economic model,
is that there is no financial reconning for financial and social costs. In
many cases, if a business had to account for the mess it made, of the
social impact it had, the business would cease to be economically
feasible. As it is, the hidden costs of business is now absorbed by
society in the form of environmental damage, resource damage and
destruction, infrastructure damage or destruction, and rising social
costs... invaribly these costs are passed on as higher taxes, pollution,
destruction of habitat and natural resources.
We need to begin looking at all the costs... we need to begin using a
far more responsible method for tallying the books. One of the great
values of a menthanol economy, is that instead of making messes that
tax payers have to clean up later, it actually supports half a dozen
other businesses, and works together in a cycle of businesses that
acn easily prove to be an economic boon to a community.
A decade ago, Eureka California decided it needed a new sewage
treatment plant. They had several choices. A chemical plant not unlike
the ones dotting the coast of California or a radical new plants that had
multiply stages designed to treat sewage in a natural fashion. What they
ended up with was a manmade estuary... that releases water that is
safe enough to drink... clean recycled water resources that are now a
major worldwide tourist attraction because they have become a new
staging site for birds on the Pacific flyway. A boom in local aquaculture,
which a huge increase in clam and oyster populations, and the ability to
produce enough biomass to make the town self sufficient in producing
their own biofuel (mostly from rushes and reeds harvested from the
clearing ponds.) If you look at methanol or methane biogas, as one
piece separate from the rest... it might well be financially infeasible. It
suddenly becomes perfectly feasible in a construct of symbiotic
business engineered to support both the human and natural ecology.
That is one more reason the old business models don't work... they
fail to measure, plan for, or account for the effects of a business in a
complex human ecology. Better planning, taking large interlocking
structures and makes them symbiotic, allows the waste of one to
feed the other, allows for a network of small facilities capable of
sustaining local communities, with enough overflow capacity to more
than cover peak, or emergency situations. All of this goes dead in
the face of a large monolithic energy industry. This kind of energy
infrastructure decentralizes control, and makes it virtually impossible
for big industry or big government to dictate to consumers. As much
as this is not where big government or big business want us to go,
it is exactly where we as a culture should be headed. Clean, efficient,
renewable sources, scaled to use, and made ubiquitous be progressive
local governments should be the order of the day. Certainly this is not
the complete solution, but it should be a major share of it.
I do agree with you Samantha, that we should be proposing business
plans, there are thousands of places up and down the coast (seeing
that Oregon and Washington state are in nearly as much trouble as we
are.) Several towns have already proven pilot plants can work, we
need to expand these technologies spread them all over the place.
Though nuclear isn't my first choice, I'll even conceed that it beats oil
and coal across the board for longevity, and cleanliness... my only
concern is the handling of wastes by an industry that has demonstrated
it isn't very good at making sure that messes don't happen. If we can
come up with reliable waste handling (that includes waste produced in
mining, and processing nuclear fuel...) nuclear would be a highly viable
technology from an ecological viewpoint.
> > > If we kept breeder reactors and got our collective head out of
> > > our nether regions we would find that handling nuclear wastes is
> > > a lot simpler than handling the wastes from coal and and
> > > hydrocarbons. There are also other less troublesome nuclear
> > > sources like Thorium which we have a tremendous abundance of.
> > >
> > > We have a bad rap on the waste handling because we killed
> > > breeders and never reached an agreement to deal with the wastes
> > > intelligently for mainly political BS reasons. That is not the
> > > fault of nuclear energy. It is the fault of our own
> > > irrationality and of those who manipulated us to turn away from
> > > the superior solution.
> >
> > Actually the bad rap came from companies that just did a shitty job
> > of managing nuclear waste especially plotonium. Read "The day we
>
> Companies could not alone determine how it was measured when
> there were no real effective disposal sites or methods
> implemented.
>
> > nearly lost Denver" for the low down on the insanely sloppy and
> > dangerous fashion in which the Rocky Flats plutonium treatment
> > facility was run, and the fire(s) that nearly resulted in a plotonium
> > criticality that would have been a major disaster.
> >
>
> I haven't the time to decipher this one right now. Sorry.
If you want an URL, "the day they almost lost Denver" is online, and
you can get to it by checking out the webpage for the "Bulletin of the
Atomic Scientists". Actually you can get there by going to;
http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/1999/ja99/ja99ackland.html
it goes though to describe in detail the processing of plutonium and
insanity at Rocky Flats as the folks in charge pinched pennies, and
lost millions in fires and critical system failures...
> > GE and serveral other companies just did a piss poor job, and
> > compare to the military, GE was a saint. The nuclear waste that
> > is produced by our aging nukes, has found it's way into the water
>
> Again because we played politics and didn't implement a score of
> known decent solutions and instead just ignored the problem as
> it became hopeless bogged in red tape. That was not the fault
> of nuclear power per se.
No, I'm saying that the folks who handled plutonium, knew right
where it was going... and they did a nasty job of handling it.
Plutonium was isolated from the rest of the waste and was made into
buttons and fuses... for nuclear devices... they had hundred of small
files (plutonium is pyrolytic), and a number of disasterous fires.
> > > Non-affiliation does not equal truth, affiliation does not equal
> > > deceit. Socially is not relevant to finding the best power
> > > generation solution. We have been running our energy policy on
> > > social/political grounds for far too long in this country. It
> > > is causing us to really eat it in California and many other
> > > parts of this supposedly rich country are not far behind in
> > > self-destructive, cripping energy madness.
> > >
> > > - samantha
> >
> > But it does mean I have one less reason not to trust them... and I'm so
> > tired of having people just baldface lie to me, because they're on some
> > body's payroll... That just bytes.
> >
>
> As opposed to lying to you because they have painted themself as
> some uninterested saint in order to push their own individual
> agenda or that of the organizations that adhere to?
>
> Personally I think we should make it a hanging offense for a
> scientist or technologist to knowingly lie about something in
> their realm of expertise.
Here, here... let's follow that with a simiilar law for Government
officials, and lawyers... of course it's gonna get mighty quiet in
DC... but I can live with that!
> > I'm still strongly of the mind that we could move the economy to
> > ethanol, and between harvesting seaweed, and organic recycled
> > waste, and ventures that treat large scale sewage facilities by the
> > same method that has been tried successfully in northern CA, we
> > should be able to produce more fuel than we need... then we ship
> > it to the third world and help them get started cleanly.
>
> Show me the numbers that prove this.
>
> - samantha
Cool beans... I'll try to dig up the work I did. It would be neat to see
how it reads a decade later.
Marie
P.S. I know I'm bouncing all over the place, but even that's part of
what I'm pointing at... it's all connected, the distinctions are fallicious,
and simply artifacts of limited mindsets, and in no small way a serious
part of the problem. Life is a knot that you need to learn how to
untie all at once...
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