From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Fri Jun 08 2001 - 03:06:25 MDT
Anne Marie Tobias wrote:
>
> 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
I am not that rigorous. I do not have time enough to be really
rigorous often or I am writing at the end of a long day.
>... 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.
Thanks for writing that. It is important to know and keep in
mind what we are here for.
> Samantha Atkins wrote:
>
> > 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
Well, note that the descriptors here are "small scale" and
"pilot". To be a viable candidate for replacing current
mainline energy sources these things have to scale well. So far
no one has shown how to do this. They certainly work well in
communities with fewer mainstream alternatives.
> 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.
This is still a pretty soft statement in terms of evidence and
actual factory ready scalable technology. Please point out what
exactly you are talking about also. The above jumps around a
bit. I thought you were talking methanol exclusively but after
the last section I am not so sure.
> 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.
>
If you could actually draw operationa costs and profit from all
of those it would help. But we do the same in fossil fuels
already.
> 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.
>
Certainly I can build plants to produce various methanol and
derivative packagings. It is not much harder to "fence" than
fossil fuel plants are. Anybody can use them but not just
anyone can refine and package them with economies of scale and
side industries fully utilized.
> 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
Here you seem to want to go back into tirade mode just a bit
again. What for? You could easily point to big government as
being central to any real perversions of the market. That some
perversion of the economy and of transportation and energy
occurred argues for avoiding such opportunities in the future
but does not support the contention that some other technology
like methanol is better somehow because of past abuses
associated with existing energy technologies and/or players or
that there is no chance for the new because of these abuses.
>
> 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.
>
The nice thing about making a lot of money is that you have a
lot of resources to find and invest in the next great thing
(tm). Real wealth simply isn't some hoard of treasure in a
castle surrounded by moats to be defended at all costs. That
model is grossly antiquated. The castle busters of new
technology and investment capital are too effective at breaching
such walls.
This is not to say that some very short-sighted things are not
done or that various owners of capital do not occassionally
forget this. But your implication seems to be that wealth will
seek to wall itself off from change instead of embracing and
extending into the new and better. I don't see how that is
justified as a generalization.
> >
> > 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
This is said over and over again but without better models being
produced it is a very empty claim that really says nothing at
all about which technologies are best.
>
> 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.
So does fossil fuel economy. Or are you forgetting platics,
chemicals, fertilizers and so on?
>
> 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.
It can be feasible and best in certain circumstances. But it
still does not scale well to be cost competitive in widescale
use. It may eventually, just not yet.
> 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
Businesses have looked for ways to do this from the beginning.
It is more profitable to operate this way when you can.
> 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
There are economies of scale involved. Micro-generation does
not reduce costs when widely used. It raises them and is more
difficult to manage.
> 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.
>
Sounds lovely, but it does not work on the scale you propose
it. It will work with much better technology that I am sure we
will eventually have. But it is not here yet.
> 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.
>
It also beats them on the basis of cost now, even with the
over-regulation of nuclear power plants and high legal costs.
It beats them hands down in safety record when you remove the
irrelevant to nuclear power generation incident of Chernobyl.
We have reliable waste handling plans. The drawback is
political, getting the plans into production at (finally)
approved sites. The mining of nuclear fuels is not inherently
as nasty as coal or more nasty than oil. And it scales a lot
better than most renewable sources at earth's surface using
current technology. It is going to take a lot more power to
build some of our dreams than you are likely to get from
processing biomass.
> 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...
Now you are scaring me. Distinctions, in terms of ideas,
ideals, business practices, social forces, legal forces, actual
facts and their implications and interconnections, are utterly
required to evaluate these things. Disctinction are not "simply
aritifacts of limited mindsets". That is a bit too close to
New-Agey. You don't untie complex knots by failing to identify
the strands as well as how they are interlocked.
I certainly agree we have to envision a solutions that work and
weave often from the vision using all of our tools, intellectual
and otherwise. But this is not the same as eschewing
distinctions.
- samantha
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