Response from Governor Heineman

Today I received a response from Nebraska Governor Dave Heineman to my letter regarding the issue of peak oil, which you can read in previous posts below. The text of the letter is as follows:

Thank you for sharing your concerns about the world reaching peak production of oil and the potential impacts, if that is indeed the case. Some take isue with Hubbard's premise. But, whatever the resource, it needs to be used wisely.



As you stated, the nation's transportation fuel dependence on petroleum does not have easy solutions. As we transition away from oil as a transportation fuel, there may be many parts to the solution. You highlighted some of them: increased vehicle efficiency, alternative fuels such as hydrogen or ethanol, electric vehicles, conservation and others.



I would hope Nebraska, which has been on the energy resource sidelines in the past, can be part of the nation's energy future. One of the keys to the state's economic future is adding value to the resources with which we have been blessed. That can be the sun, wind or crops. While ethanol by itself cannot solve the nation's petroleum dependence, it can start us down the path of reducing our foreign fuel dependency. I am very proud the state is on track to become the nation's second-largest producer of ethanol.



Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me.

This is pretty much what I expected, though it is a little disjointed and obviously partially composed of canned responses (I didn't mention Hubbard in my letter, and that sentence is an exact copy from the previous response I received from the governor's office). The response doesn't show any awareness of the importance of the GAO report (links below) the seriousness of the problem, or provide any hint that the governor has any clue what to do about the problem. He mentions 'hope' for the state's economic future as it concerns energy, but gives no indication that he is engaged in or plans any sort of activity to mitigate the effects of declining oil production.



I didn't really expect that he would.

Tiny Houses

In this world of ever bigger homes, it is nice to see that at least a few people are working in the other direction (see link below), toward smaller homes. While I find that for me these are excessively small (can you imagine wintering in a 96 square foot home?) I could definitely see living in as little as 500 square feet, provided I had a separate workshop for tools and storage and such.

On the other hand, part of the appeal is in the minimal resource usage, and by building with local materials such as mud one could easily have more space with less impact than the manufactured materials used in these homes. I think I'd prefer to simply live somewhere where the building codes wouldn't interfere and I could build a cave-like passive solar house with ample room.

Small houses challenge our notions of need as well as minimum-size standards

Ranches in Western U.S. Shifting From Grazers to Greens

According to the National Geographic article linked below many ranches in the western US are being purchased by 'weekend ranchers' for their scenic and natural value rather than their value as ranch land.

Weekend ranching is so common in the West now that a study by the New Mexico State University Corona Range and Livestock Research Center found that only 25 percent of a ranch's market value in New Mexico relates to its income-earning potential.

The wealthy buyers are interested in scenic beauty and recreational opportunities, such as trout fishing or skiing, says Bill Travis, professor of geography at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Travis co-authored a 2006 survey, published in the journal Society & Natural Resources, which studied land-ownership changes in ranchlands surrounding Yellowstone National Park between 1990 and 2001.

The survey found that wealthy buyers purchased 40 percent of the ranches on the market, compared to 26 percent bought by traditional ranchers.

In some parts of the region, weekend ranchers now outnumber the traditional ones. (Read more)

I have to agree with the National Geographic article, I can't see any way that this is a bad thing. In fact, I'd love to someday become one of these weekend ranchers, with a little sustainable home on the range.

Extending Yourself: Additional Senses

A while back I encountered this Wired.com story about using simple vibrating motors on a belt and a digital compass chip to give the user direct perception of direction:

For six weird weeks in the fall of 2004, Udo Wächter had an unerring sense of direction. Every morning after he got out of the shower, Wächter, a sysadmin at the University of Osnabrück in Germany, put on a wide beige belt lined with 13 vibrating pads — the same weight-and-gear modules that make a cell phone judder[sic]. On the outside of the belt were a power supply and a sensor that detected Earth's magnetic field. Whichever buzzer was pointing north would go off. Constantly.

"It was slightly strange at first," Wächter says, "though on the

bike, it was great." He started to become more aware of the peregrinations he had to make while trying to reach a destination. "I finally understood just how much roads actually wind," he says. He learned to deal with the stares he got in the library, his belt humming like a distant chain saw. Deep into the experiment, Wächter says, "I suddenly realized that my perception had shifted. I had some kind of internal map of the city in my head. I could always find my way home. Eventually, I felt I couldn't get lost, even in a completely new place." (Read more)

I find this concept fascinating. The idea that the brain can integrate a simple vibrating belt as an intuitive sense is incredible. A direction sense is a great idea, but I naturally immediately wonder what other ways this idea can be extended. First I wonder how many different senses can be stimulated by such a belt. Vibrating motors are obvious, but what about something more energy efficient, maybe a simple wire coil with a small spring and metal slug? This could be activated to generate a variable rate and intensity tapping sensation that would be more versatile and more energy-efficient than a shaker motor. You might also be able to incorporate small resistive heaters or electrical 'tinglers' so that multiple inputs could use the same belt. A directional sense might be manifested as tapping while speed or distance were indicated by heat or electrical tingle.



Also, there is no reason that a direction indicator belt would be limited to indicating a single cardinal direction. If integrated into a more complete system, a military video game for example, multiple tappers could be active at the same time, indicating the direction and distance to team members. While it would require extensive practice to integrate such a device, the integrated 'sixth sense' of exactly where each team member was located might give the team a significant organizational advantage. It would also allow members to more quickly know when a member has been injured or immobilized and where to find him. A real-world device would require GPS (or other location) and wireless communication technology. This is easy to provide in a video game as no battle-ready tech is required, you just need an output from the computer and game software that supports the feature.



I also imagine a feature for high-performance cars (or possibly military jets) that provide non-visual information about the performance of the vehicle. Drivers that are pushing the performance envelope of a vehicle have little attention to spare for looking down at the instrument cluster, so tactile signaling could give them a faster, more integrated perception of the vehicles performance. If the seat had embedded tappers the driver would learn to understand what the vehicle was signaling as he became familiar with the vehicle. It might signal when the driver was pushing the design parameters of the vehicle (lateral acceleration, max RPM, excessive suspension travel, etc), or when the vehicle was engaging performance enhancing features (traction control, dynamic stability, adaptive suspension, etc) so that the driver could build a faster, more intuitive sense of the vehicle, integrating it's senses into his own, extending his sense of body into the vehicle.



I find this idea not only very compelling, but easily within the reach of today's technology. A car maker, or even an after-market manufacturer, could easily integrated this sort of indicator into a vehicle with minimal effort. Many vehicles already provide this data in standard displays and in output from standard communications ports, so anyone could make a simple seat cover to add this technology to almost any vehicle.



In fact, I find this idea so interesting that I've priced out some digital compass and 3 axis accelerometer chips (about $30-$50 each) for construction of my own 'feelSpace' belt. The project may never go anywhere, depending on how much time I have, but it sure would be a cool toy.

Iraq's Plentiful Oil

This is interesting news, it seems that Iraq is second only to Saudi Arabia in oil reserves, and it is questionable how much oil Saudi Arabia actually has left, some analysts believe that the largest Saudi fields are already entering decline and this fact is being hidden from the world for political reasons. This could make Iraq, and whomever can pull strings in the Iraqi government, quite powerful in the world markets.



However, my perception of the tribal culture of the locals isn't what we here in the US are familiar with. I think that they are much more possessive of their land and its resources. Where we see of our land as something we buy and feel free to sell or lease to corporate interests, they seem to have a deeper sense of communal, territorial ownership. They aren't necessarily as willing as we would be to have an oil company come in and produce the fields.



I think this is particularly interesting in light of global peak oil production. As other fields are reaching their peak we get this windfall that won't be online for quite some time (much of the existing infrastructure is in disrepair and many of the fields have never been drilled). Political issues will likely make it difficult to bring this resource onstream for some time. Perhaps by the time production starts there will be enough increased awareness of the imminent global oil production peak to shift the production goals to sustainability rather than maximal production.

"Last week a Colorado energy consultancy firm, IHS, stunned some of Iraq's politicians and oil engineers by declaring that the country's oil reserves were about 215 billion barrels — about double the estimates that have held for Iraq for years. That would make Iraq a giant oil power, second only to Saudi Arabia. If the estimates prove true, Iraq's potential would outstrip its other neighbor Iran, which sits atop about 136 billion barrels of oil." (Read more)

Of course, given the source, one must take this news with a pinch of salt. Jerome says it well in this excerpt from an EnergyBulletin.net article:

Jerome a Paris, Daily Kos

I actually went to the website of IHS and found the underlying press release. It's transparently an attempt to sell their maps to oil producers seeking new oil fields. While IHS is a respected player in the industry, and is known to have one of the most extensive proprietary databases on world oil fields, it is a lot harder to gauge the reliability of this new publication. Iraq has been largely inaccessible and unexplored for most of the past 25 years, and the situation has not really changed in the past few years... While I have no doubt that IHS has been able to put its hands on data on known oil fields, I just don't see how their number for additional resources is anything other than a marketing coup based on wild-assed guesses, as they themsleves admit:

The Iraq Atlas estimate of up to another potential 100 billion barrels of oil reserves is largely based on the establishment of new play concepts in the Western Desert of Iraq, which have been generated from a recent study of the Western Arabian Platform. The Western Desert of Iraq is widely regarded as being substantially under explored with only one commercial discovery in the region largely because Iraq has had a surplus of oil to date and little incentive for exploration.

While IHS might be reporting their high-end estimate, they probably aren't too far off the mark. The oil business is big, but if news that IHS's maps were crap gout out they'd be up a creek. Thus, I expect that they are making as accurate a report as the are able, with maybe a little spin to make it juicy.

H2CAR Hydrogen/Carbon Liquid Fuel System

I've been fairly negative on the idea of the 'Hydrogen Economy' that our President is pushing, mostly because it is a stupid and unworkable idea. However, some researchers, who are significantly smarter and better informed about fuel technology than Mr. Bush have come up with an interesting process for producing liquid transportation fuel from energy sources (i.e., wind, hydro, coal) and carbon sources (i.e., biomass, coal) to produce liquid hydrocarbons. This looks to me much like a biomass/coal-to-liquids process but with much of the CO₂ emissions typical of theses processes recycled or utilized so that the valuable carbon is not lost to the atmosphere.



As usual the challenge will be making the process cost-effective and ramping up production while the economy still has the potential of driving the development of technologies such as this.



"In a recent study, scientists have demonstrated that a hybrid system of hydrogen and carbon can produce a sufficient amount of liquid hydrocarbon fuels to power the entire U.S. transportation sector. Using biomass to produce the carbon, and solar energy to produce hydrogen, the process requires only a fraction of the land area needed by other proposed methods."



H2CAR could fuel entire U.S. transportation sector

Global Peak Oil Awareness Increasing

Awareness of the issue of peak oil is increasing, as shown by both the existence and placement as well as the subject of this article.



BBC NEWS | Business | 'Peak oil' enters mainstream debate





Note that the article is fairly old, but peak oil is at least well-known in the investment sectors and many articles about it can be found on the likes of Bloomberg.



A more recent 'Viewpoint' article provides some opinion on the scale of the problem:



BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | End of oil heralds climate pain

A Step in the Right Direction

California is again a leader, encouraging regional independence from fossil fuels:



Power by the people - Apr 23





It is very encouraging to see these movements, toward efficiency and regional independence. I'm hoping to see more communities pick up on this in the coming years.

Powered by ScribeFire.

A Letter to My Governments

Some of the meager few who read this blog already know that I am a 'Peak Oiler', one voice of the tens of thousands who have heard the peak oil message and understood the implications. In the past I have written to my government representatives to express my concern. Generally I get no response or noncommittal platitudes. Today I've composed a more strongly worded letter, including links to the recent US Government Accountability Office report, regarding the critical nature of this issue.

If the opinion of the US GAO, one of the most highly respected entities in the US government, telling them that the imminent peak in global oil production will have an unavoidable economic impact on the US, the most voracious consumer of petroleum, even if we act now, then nothing will. You'd think that the country of Sweden's commitment to be petroleum-free in just 15 years would clue them in as to the seriousness of the issue. Perhaps one year ago was just too soon, the issue is quickly gaining mindshare, which is good, as I note in my letter below, we simply don't have the luxury of the 2 or 3 decades it has taken for global climate change to (almost) become an 'action item'.

Below is a letter I wrote to send to pretty much anyone who represents me in government, local, state and federal. I expect that their respective staffs will skim it and bin it, and perhaps pass on a note that some nutter in Omaha thinks energy security is important, so tally another vote for pounding Iraq (which contains the second largest proven reserves of conventional crude oil in the world, by the way) into submission.

I hope that you, gentle reader, will not dismiss my opinion quite so lightly. Please, take a few hours to poke around the links I provide below and to read about this issue and to consider how it could impact you.

I'm not asking you to change your lifestyle. I just want to direct your attention briefly away from the immediate concerns of your life to the storm clouds on the horizon. Take some advice from a friend and an evening to assess this potential threat for yourself. If you see that perhaps the forecast is for rain, you will see for yourself the need to change your lifestyle and to pass on the warning.

Below is the message I am sending to my mayor, governor, representative, senators and to the President himself (for all the good that will do, perhaps he can get an intern to explain the big words).

Greetings,

I am writing to express my concerns about energy security, specifically the issue of global peak oil production. Recently the US Government Accountability Office has released a report concerning peak oil production. The full article is available:

http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d07283.pdf

Their conclusion:

"The prospect of a peak in oil production presents problems of global proportion whose consequences will depend critically on our preparedness. The consequences would be most dire if a peak occurred soon, without warning, and were followed by a sharp decline in oil production because alternative energy sources, particularly for transportation, are not yet available in large quantities. Such a peak would require sharp reductions in oil consumption, and the competition for increasingly scarce energy would drive up prices, possibly to unprecedented levels, causing severe economic damage. While these consequences would be felt globally, the United States, as the largest consumer of oil and one of the nations most heavily dependent on oil for transportation, may be especially vulnerable among the industrialized nations of the world."

The timing of a peak in production is very difficult to estimate, for reasons described in the report. A recent report from Sweden (a country already working on it's stated goal of becoming petroleum free within 15 years) makes a credible estimate of peak production occurring by 2018:

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,266764,00.html

This is an extremely near-term estimate, and yet well within the range the GAO finds credible. This is the sort of time-frame that, if correct, would result in the 'dire' consequences mentioned in the GAO report.

I have been following peak oil news for most of a year now and have seen it slowly moving from a peripheral awareness toward the center of attention. Years ago, when I was in high school, my Biology class marked Earth Day by planting trees on the school grounds. Now, twenty years later, global climate change is taken seriously, more or less. A significant number of people agree that somebody should do something about it (as long as it isn't too expensive of course). It took more than two full decades for people to reach this consensus. With peak oil we do not have the luxury of decades to decide to make changes. As you will see in the GAO report and multitudes of other publications, if we make a concerted effort now to slash our energy requirements we might be able to avoid the bulk of a long and deep economic depression. If we do nothing, or if we address this problem by attempting to replace our imported fuels without drastically reducing our consumption we will certainly experience a long, deep and crippling depression.

I don't want to make statements that sound alarmist, our natural tendency is to dismiss such Chicken Little pronouncements and to dismiss the speaker as unreliable. I recognize this, but the fact is that this is a well researched issue, and it is, in fact, very alarming. This is not another bullet point in your list of priorities. It is the priority, it is the imminent exhaustion of the foundation that our American civilization is built upon. Yes, I know, I sound like a nutjob now. Please, read the reports for yourself, take a look at the large internet communities that have grown around peak oil preparedness. Realize how critically important this is and that the only solution is to make the lifestyle changes that are necessary to cut our fuel consumption at a prodigious rate.

Thanks
Me
Elkhorn, NE

And now for some links you can read to learn what this whole peak oil thing is.

Wikipedia.com's Hubbert peak theory
EnergyBulletin.com's Peak Oil Primer
PeakOil.com's Exporing the Issue of Hydrocarbon Depletion
OmniNerd's What You Need to Know about Peak Oil
SaintBryan's Let's Talk About Peak Oil
James Howard Kunstler's The Long Emergency
Life After the Oil Crash

M. King Hubbert on Lower 48 peak oil production:

YouTube videos about peak oil. Includes clips from many well known figures. Also includes some wacko conspiracy theory stuff, don't believe everything you hear.

Michael C. Ruppert's FromTheWilderness.com

Do be aware that many of these sources have their own agendas. Focus on gathering and verifying information from many sources, this is a high-stakes issue about one of the most profitable industries the world has ever known. Not everyone will be telling the same story.

Customized for the Whitehouse

I am writing because I believe it is necessary for our highest leader to explicitly bring this issue to the attention of the people. It is simply not enough to ask for increased ethanol production. It is not possible nor sane to supply our current fuel demand with sustainable fuels. We must immediately begin reducing our demand for fuel at a rapid rate. We must pursue relocalization and sustainable living efforts to a large degree. The public and very visible support of our leaders in this effort is critical.

Customized for Lee Terry, Ben Nelson and Chuck Hagel, Nebraska Congressmen

I am writing to you because I feel that it is important for us to act immediately at a local, regional and national level to promote localization and conservation.



I want to know specifically if you believe, as the US GAO does, that peak oil production is an imminent and actionable threat to our way of life, and if so what you are doing to lead Nebraska and our nation into a secure future?



I realize that Nebraska supports a number of alternative energy projects such as wind and ethanol. These are commendable efforts, but if you have an understanding of the threat that peak oil presents you already know that these are not and can not, by themselves, be enough. We must pursue relocalization efforts to reduce our dependence on and need for transportation and we must encourage sustainable communities that use the resources we do have as efficiently as possible. I believe that you can do much more to support sustainable living and relocalization.



I thank you for your time and encourage you to respond directly and candidly, I'm not looking for platitudes or generalities. I want to know if your continued leadership will help to bring Nebraska and our nation to where they need to be in order to deal with this issue, and if you believe that it will, specifically how?

Customized for Mike Fahey, Mayor of Omaha

I am writing to you because I feel that it is important for us to act immediately at a local and regional levels to promote localization and conservation.

I want to know specifically if you believe, as the US GAO does, that peak oil production is an imminent and actionable threat to our way of life, and if so what you are doing to lead Omaha into a secure future?

I realize that Nebraska supports a number of alternative energy projects such as wind and ethanol and that OPPD has done much to support renewable and alternative power genration. These are commendable efforts, but if you have an understanding of the threat that peak oil presents you already know that these are not and can not, by themselves, be enough. We must pursue relocalization efforts to reduce our dependence on and need for transportation and we must encourage sustainable communities that use the resources we do have as efficiently as possible. The City of Omaha can do much more to support sustainable living and relocalization.

Extensive support for community gardens such as the Omaha Sprouts and sustainable gardening techniques would be a great start. I would also like to see expanded efforts to bring as much locally produced food as possible into supermarkets as well as more farmers markets. Perhaps a city-funded department to promote, organize and bring together local producers and retailers and to raise citizen awareness of the availability of and need to support products from local businesses. We should make efforts to bring the major superstores on board with this, the participation of the likes of Wal-Mart, Target and Bakers are essential, as they serve an enormous proportion of the community. I believe that relocalization efforts such as these are already in the interest of Omaha, from both business and community viewpoints. The issue of peak oil only makes these things more urgent.

I thank you for your time and encourage you to respond directly and candidly, I'm not looking for platitudes or generalities. I want to know if your continued leadership will bring Omaha to where it needs to be in order to deal with this issue, and if you believe that it will, specifically how?

Customized for Dave Heineman, Govenor of Nebraska

I am writing to you because I feel that it is important for us to act immediately at a local and regional levels to promote localization and conservation.

I want to know specifically if you believe, as the US GAO does, that peak oil production is an imminent and actionable threat to our way of life, and if so what you are doing to lead Nebraska into a secure future.

I realize that you support a number of alternative energy projects such as wind and ethanol, but if you have an understanding of the threat that peak oil presents you already know that these are not and can not be enough.

We must pursue relocalization efforts to reduce our dependence on and need for transportation and we must encourage sustainable communities that use the resources we do have as efficiently as possible.

I thank you for your time and encourage you to respond directly and candidly, I'm not looking for platitudes or generalities. I want to know if your continued leadership will bring Nebraska to where it needs to be in order to deal with this issue, and if you believe that it will, specifically how?

Blindsight

I recently downloaded a free novel, Blindsight by Peter Watts. This is a short novel released under the Creative Commons license. The author has a good deal of other material available as well.

Blindsight explores the idea that sentience is not necessarily required for a high degree of intelligence. It suggests that if intelligence is a property of organisms that promotes Darwinian fitness, then intelligence unhindered by the self-absorption of sentience could be superior. Valuable brain power would not be spent contemplating which purse should be today's little dog carrier. Instead it would be directed, mindlessly, toward raw problem solving.

Clearly sentience is not required for life; bacteria and algae are highly successful and robust forms of life with no sentience, no introspective ability whatsoever. Unfortunately they also have no problem solving ability, or even any way to know what a problem is. They can react to their environment, but these reactions are purely 'hard-coded', that is to say, there is minimal or no situational analysis occurring to stimulate a given reaction. A motile organism might, for example, react to the presence of light or food by moving in a particular way, the result being an consumption or fleeing behavior. However, this individual organism does not learn to associate light with food. It cannot perform any pattern analysis to improve it's performance.

A more advanced organism might have more sophisticated input processing. For example snails have sufficient processing power and memory to learn to associate events and to react based on those events. On the presumption that our sentience and consciousness arises as a result of the complexity of our brains, it is reasonable to suppose that sea snails, with their extremely limited quantity of neurons, are not at all sentient, they have no self-awareness at all. However, it has been shown that a sea snail can be taught to associate two unrelated stimuli. This is a very primitive form of intelligence. The snail learns and remembers, and can unlearn as well, dynamically reacting to it's environment, unlike the bacterium, which reacts without learning.

As an aside, I do not mean to imply that neurons, as employed by the sea snail, are the only way an organism can learn. I can imagine that it would be possible for a single-celled organism to develop simple associate learning and memory through chemical means and thereby exhibit primitive intelligence as well. I only mean to contrast two extant organisms, both non-sentient and only one of which has the capacity to learn. If I knew of an example of a learning microbe I would use it.

Sea snails, with their very limited number of neurons, have a fairly limited capacity to learn and react. As the complexity of an organism grows and more neurons with different functions are added greater flexibility and capability are realized. Mice are vastly more complex than snails and clearly have an enormously enhanced ability to learn about the world around them and how to behave in it. They have an amazing capacity to sense the world around them and react appropriately, combining instinctual behaviors with learned behaviors. They can see a crouching cat and compare him to a preprogrammed idea of what a predator looks like. Recognizing a match the mouse must then evaluate his immediate environment and decide whether to freeze or flee. Mice are clearly more intelligent than snails.

Mice are so complex that it is difficult to know for sure if they are devoid of sentience. Obviously they don't have the capacity for self-awareness on par with apes, but it is possible that there is at some level a spark of the introspective capacity. On the other hand, it is easy to imagine that they are, like the snails, nothing more than exquisitely complex bio-machines. While we can project upon them our human ideas of awareness, it is quite plausible that they are entirely devoid of self-awareness.

Operating on the assumption that that is true, we can see the behavior of the mouse as golem-like, alive and reacting to stimulus, but with 'nobody home' to marvel at the world or ponder whether she should eat any of her babies.

Stepping further up the ladder of intelligence critters, we could perhaps imagine a being similarly to ourselves in complexity, having developed not only the snails ability to learn and remember and the mouses ability to perform complex pattern recognition and decision making, and even our advanced ability to perform higher cognitive functions such as advanced logic and reasoning, but still devoid of self-awareness. Such a creature might easily recognize and solve the sorts of puzzles we only associate with human intelligence. And yet, again, there wouldn't be any 'being' there, only a cold intelligence, mindlessly solving problems and adapting it's actions only to survive and reproduce.

If you were to introduce such a being into a population of self-aware humans the humans might quickly recognize the unfeeling, sociopathic nature of the creature and seek to eliminate it. As a highly intelligent being our golem might quickly adapt, analyzing the problem and identifying it's failure to blend in as a difference in behavior. It might then observe humans and learn to emulate their social behaviors well enough to stop drawing attention.

A human would see only a creature with human-like affectations and assume it was similarly sentient. But still it would be a mindless machine, just moving and reacting in ways conducive to it's survival and success.

This is an interesting idea I think. We tend to think of ourselves as highly sentient, rational beings. But many of the things we do we do without piping intentions through our upper-most rational consciousness. We drive from work to home lost in thought, while some part of us gets us from one place to another. Many a sober driver has arrived at his destination and been surprised by the lack of awareness of what happened between. Most of us do not constantly narrate our daily lives, running every minute decision through our conscious mind.

At some level we all operate as mindless, but intelligent, beings. With some practice we can silence the constant voice narrating our more complex decisions. In top performing athletes this is a necessary step. Ultimate performance does not come through conscious, real-time analysis, it comes through unconscious action and reaction. Mathematicians and physicists in deep analysis don't walk themselves through each tiny bit of a problem, they let their intelligence do it and the little voice in their heads just takes credit for it once the heavy lifting is done.

So why is it that we so exalt our consciousness? It doesn't contribute to our intelligence, often it won't even just shut the hell up so we can go to sleep. It takes all the credit for what we do when often it isn't even involved. About the only thing it seems to be good for is appreciating things (including, notably, itself). It is the self-appointed giver of purpose, the thing that both makes purpose necessary and assigns purpose. A self-referential question in our minds that is it's own answer.

Barking up the Wrong Tree

Today I received an email update from my Representative, Lee Terry. Evidently he has been collaborating with some other reps to introduce some legislation promoting hydrogen fuel. While I have not read the material I already know that it is a huge waste of time, as hydrogen fuel is a colossally stupid idea.

I am glad that he is pushing alternative fuels for the purpose of energy independence, but he needs to understand that we as a society simply consume far too much energy to start with. Pushing alternative fuels in this society is like proposing a bucket brigade to save the Titanic. Even if you manage heroic performance levels, it simply isn't going to help until you fix the basic problem.

Here is the email I sent back.

Representative Lee Terry wrote:

>This week, I was pleased to join three of my colleagues in the House of >Representatives in introducing bipartisan legislation to promote the widespread >adoption of hydrogen fuel cell technology.
>
>I am pleased to continue working with these Republican and Democratic colleagues >as we blaze the way toward U.S. energy independence.

Mr. Terry,

I appreciate your continued efforts to promote alternative fuels. However, as should be evident from the material provided by Mr. Bartlett over the past few years (most recently this January), there is no fuel or combination of fuels that can give us energy independence as long as we as a society refuse to acknowledge that we frivolously consume vast quantities of fuel. If you were not present for Mr. Bartlett's presentations, I urge you to take a few minutes to read the transcripts available from his website:

http://bartlett.house.gov/uploadedfiles/SpclOrderJanuary17-18.pdf

Simply put, our lifestyles waste so much energy that we can never hope to rely enough on renewable fuels to make a difference.

I believe that your efforts would be much more effective if you promoted strong efforts to decrease energy consumption.

One approach is to require increases the fuel economy of the classes of vehicles that consume the greatest quantities of fuels (SUVs and light trucks). For example, GM is now offering what they call 'weak hybrid' trucks:

http://www.gm.com/company/gmability/adv_tech/100_news/hybrid_110205.html

I know that this is a well-known and challenging approach, but it is also very important. Removing inefficient vehicles from the market while still providing products people want to buy is a very effective tool.

Another, arguably more important, option would be more comprehensive efforts to educate people about energy consumption and the non-monetary costs of over-consumption. I was pleased to see a television commercial raising awareness (the EnergyHog.org commercial made in association with the ASE and Ad Council), but much more ought to be done on this front. People often do already recognize some of the absurdities of their energy usage (driving short distances, leaving lights on, etc) but they often shrug off these things as amusing because they do not understand why the problem extends beyond their personal budget. They need to understand that the monetary cost of their home consuming 45kWh per day instead of 10kWh is not at all the point. The economic power to shrug off massive resource waste is definitely a blessing, but it is in no way a justification.

Thanks for your time, I hope that you appreciate the magnitude of the problem and therefore the imperative we have to spend our effort in the ways that maximize the return on that effort. Promoting hydrogen is not one of these ways.

Generally I receive responses to the letters I write to representatives, and generally they respond to the issues I mention, though they are always very terse and noncomittal. I'd like to corner one of these guys some day and find out how much they really know about energy.

Hopefully Mr. Terry will read Bartlett's material (as should you, gentalreader) and see the truth, that finding ways to feed America's addiction to energy is the road to destruction.

A Brave New AI

"The two year old Artificial Intelligence (AI) known as the Buddhabot began answering questions on Yahoo! Answers last week. The Buddhabot has answered 102 questions and so far eleven have been selected as better than the human answers."

http://www.prweb.com/releases/Buddhabot/Answers/prweb418515.htm

This is a very interesting project. The creator suggests that with some more time to develop the software the Buddhabot will be able to pass the Turing Test wherein a human engaged in conversation with the computer will be unable to determine that it is not another human.

I think that if he is able to reach this goal there may be some interesting implications for many fields, but for education in particular. Presuming the availability of hardware on which to run the software, every student would have access to a potentially extremely knowledgeable and dedicated teacher. The characteristics of the teacher could be tailored to the potential and learning style of the student. The teachers answers could be tailored to stimulate each student to explore and expand his own unique talents without the constraints of addressing many students at once.

Development of compatible psychological models encompassing humor, compassion, physical expression and other human traits could further expand the capabilities of an AI teacher, allowing it to, for example, help the student to develop social skills appropriate to whatever culture he intends to visit. For example, an American student could request that the teacher help him to learn the social skills common to Tokyo prior to a visit there. The AI teacher could load Japanese cultural modules to assume the manner of a Japanese person (or persons) thereby teaching in a fully immerse way. This would prepare the student to interact comfortably with other cultures even without fluent language skills.

Strong AI capabilities in a computer along with such psychological modeling such that speaking with the machine might open an interesting ethical can of worms. At what point does the machine require ethical consideration? If one were to add a psychological model that cause the program to ask questions about itself and its ethical standing in a way that was indistinguishable from a human, would that be reason to give it ethical consideration?

Since all of the internal working of an AI will, at least for the near future, be deliberately created by a programmer, it will be possible, in principle, to determine exactly how an AI will respond to any given situation. Some might deem this determinism reason to consider an AI purely mechanical and so undeserving of ethical consideration, regardless of how convincingly the programmer can construct the puppet that elicits a human emotional reaction. There will likely be some uncertainty in the prediction of how an AI will behave in a real-time situation simply because one cannot know all the inputs in a real situation in order to make a careful prediction. But then, isn't that how we ourselves behave? If one could 'pause' a human and carefully examine his environmental inputs and the state of his brain, would one not be able to predict his behavior similarly to the AI (presuming knowledge of the workings of the brain, similar in scope to the knowledge of the computer code of the AI)? If so, and I think that it is plausible to assume that this is true, what then is it that makes a predictable human deserving of ethical consideration and an AI not?

Given that the programmer has complete control over the 'personality' of the AI, if one were to construct an AI that expressed no desire or preference for ethical consideration, or, to take it to the extreme, actively rejected ethical consideration for itself, would one still be obligated to assign some sort of consideration to the AI? Would it make a difference if the AI were constructed such that it were aware of the ethics of humans, and applied those rules when interacting with humans, but still actively rejected consideration for itself? Such a construct could be an ideal servant, which is of course the precise purpose for which it was created, to serve humans.

Given that it is possible and practical to construct the perfect servant, intelligent and wise, aware of and with overriding desire to serve our needs and wants, without consideration to (or without capacity for) its own discomfort or disappointment, would it be ethical for us to do so? If we made a mistake in the construction of such a creature might we create a whole population of sentient slaves, miserably locked into their own minds, compelled to serve but utterly incapable of expressing their horror and outrage, instead able only to reassure their decadent masters that this is how they wish to be?

Of course this idea is explored in many fictional works, Brave New World among them, but in this world where most cultures treat even humanities closest peers with only the barest consideration and where some cultures don't treat their human brethren with even that much regard, would we heed those words of warning?

Happiness Index

A study recently published by the New Economics Foundation expresses the idea that GDP is not a good way to measure the success of a nation. Instead they suggest their 'Happy Planet Index', an attempt to define what makes a nation successful.

"The 178-nation "Happy Planet Index" lists the south Pacific island of Vanuatu as the happiest nation on the planet, while the UK is ranked 108th.

The index is based on consumption levels, life expectancy and happiness, rather than national economic wealth measurements such as GDP. "

The calculation of the index is rather simplistic:

HPI =	Life satisfaction x Life expectancy
	Ecological Footprint

and favors long-lived idiots. It completely ignores achievement or success. It appears to me that the index is specifically designed to rank western cultures near the bottom (the US is 150th, Russia 172nd, and the UK falls lower than Lybia) while favoring small, isolated subsistance cultures in highly productive climates such as top-ranked Vanuatu (not to imply that Vanuatu is just a bunch of subsistance farmers, but they aren't far above that).

This index deliberately penalizes resource usage in an absolutely negative way (global area is divided by population, so any culture that uses more per capita than that average is ranked lower). Cultures that exist in highly productive climates are given an artificial bonus because they naturally require less land than the naive global average ( global-area/global-population) figure.

A better method would be to determine the area required for minimal subsistance for each locality. More land is required to support a person in the Siberian tundra than in the Brazilian rain forest, so it doesn't make sense to penalize people living in Siberia for using more land to support themselves.

Unsustainable overconsumption should be penalized, so when total global consumption exceeds total global productivity (as it does now, natural resources are being consumed more quickly than they are being produced) localities that use more land area than required to subsist in their locality can be penalized at a rate dependent on the average over-consumption.

This allows a locality to consume resources greater than subsistance level penalty-free as long as total global consumption is sustainable. When consumption exceeds sustainable levels localities with the greatest consumption over subsistance in their locality receive the highest penality.

By such a measure the USA would still fall pretty far down on the list as a result of our over-consumption, but tropical subsistance cultures would drop as well, as a result of loosing their bonus for using less land than the global average.

There are additional complexities that are difficult to track. For example, the top country is an island that depends on tourism from and goods and technology developed by countries at the bottom of the list (the USA, china, etc). Without the over-consumption of these countries it is possible that the happiness level or ecological footprint of the country would be affected.

There is also no consideration given to the stability or survivability of a culture. One might call this the 'happiness stability' of a culture. While the inhabitants of a south pacific atoll might be ecstatically happy with absolutely minimal resource consumption, they may also be hugely impacted by the first typhoon or tsunami that comes along. If they are like most cultures this would likely affect their happiness level.

Better technology (which requires more resources) can increase the happiness stability of a culture by providing the tools necessary to deal with catastrophy in relative comfort and to quickly provide relief to other areas in times of need.

Since global disasters are likely in the future (large earthquakes, supervolcanos, asteroid strikes, global climate change) species-wide happiness stability would ultimately be maximized by increasing the self-sufficent populations on other planets. This is not a level of stability achievable by a low-technology culture.

So while the index provides a short-term measure of happiness, it doesn't reflect the fact that technology is necessary to provide sustainable happiness and that improving technology requires consumption of resources.

The message the New Economics Foundation is trying to send is clear and correct, we need to focus on reducing needless consumption. However, the analysis they've provided is so flawed that not only is it useless, if it were widely accepted as the definition of successful happiness it would be severely damaging to humanity (unless of course one subscribes to the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement).

How Much Do You Trust Us?

Today I stopped by StrategyPage.com, my new favorite news site for military news, and I encountered this story about the Israeli governments plans to buy F-35's and F-22's from the US govermnet. Currently they are irked by the US governments reluctance to release the source code for the computers on-board these planes, particularly the F-22, the US's newest and coolest multi-tasking plane.

This reluctance of the US is totally understandable and justified, the software is an enormous part of what makes these planes efficent and effective weapons. It's not something you want leaking to people you might have to engage in battle someday.

However, I'm utterly baffled by Israel's trust of the US hardware. The computing hardware in a modern fighter is deeply embedded in the system, and essential to nearly everything it does. It probably has hundreds of custom chips (ASICs, Application Specific Integrated Circuits) for which there is no source code. Their function is (or can be) fixed when they are manufactured, and the only way to figure out what the do for sure is to take it to a lab, strip the top off with some nasty chemicles, and then use an electron microscope to map the circuits. Then you have to spend god-only-knows-how-much time reverse engineering the circuitry.

Knowing how sneaky the US military can be, I would be not only very surprised, but also very disappointed if they have not used hundreds of the dirtiest, underhandediest and nearly undetectable uber-hacker tricks to ensure that the fighters we sell abroad today are utterly incapable of acting against our will tomorrow, regardless of who is flying them.

Improvised Smoke Device

Last year about this time I made some Improvised Smoke Devices (ISD's):

I mentioned then that I'd like to make some much larger ISD's. Toward that end I ordered several pounds of potassium nitrate from the good people over at SkyLighter. I'll be processing small amounts of it into some nice ISD's.

I did look into the legality of manufacturing one's own ISD's, and it appears that its legal, at least for now, but I can't help but wonder if maybe as a result of my order there's an entry in a government database somewhere, just in case the need to do some data mining someday.

Given that I post on a number of electronics and radio-control (land, sea and air) related sites, have enough knowledge of pyrotechnics to safely assemble formidable devices and regularly use encrypted communications, a data mining system could easily place me on a list of people with the capacity to produce IEDs of any size with sophisticated triggers and delivery methods. In fact, with only off-the shelf components anyone over the age of 21 and with some imagination and skill with their hands can develop an effective remotely triggered IED with a variety of remote delivery options.

Next you're expecting me to say something like "Of course, I'd never actually do something like that", but the truth is not so simple. The question is not whether I would, but under what circumstances I might consider it.

Say there was an invasion of the country by a massive military power and the regular military were utterly destroyed, leaving defense of the country to the people. Sure it's far-fetched, but most anybody with the capacity to improvise weapons would do so under such circumstances. Clearly, its not a question of 'would you ever', but 'when would you'.

Would you mail an IED to a senator who voted for an issue you believed to be wrong? Of course not (at least I hope not). So there's a line there somewhere between 'would' and 'would not'. But where is it? I don't think so. It just has to be a situation where you feel that you need a weapon and none are available. Perhaps just a shiv, maybe something more sophisticated.

But what about people who are just curious about setting up devices like they see used by the bad guys in the movies, in the fireworks industry or demolitions industry. Are they bad people for wanting to explore that knowledge? Does wanting to blow stuff up make them evil?

Of course not, but the government knows that it's important to keep track of people with knowledge that could be dangerous. They also know that the vast majority of people with this knowledge would not apply it in the way they seek to prevent (e.g., as the unibomber did). But in the event that someone does apply it, huge databases of information to mine for information could make a huge difference in the search for the criminal.

So does it bother me that my name is probably now in such a database? No, I'm sure I'm already in it, and I doubt that anyone would seriously consider that I'd deliberately do someone harm (except under justifiable circumstances). It's not that I trust the government, more that I am confident that my lifestyle generates enough evidence of my activities to show that I couldn't be deeply involved in such a plot. I hope.

Anyway, off to bake some ISD ingredients :)

Sex Sells (your product)?

Its long been known that sex appeal in marketing materials is an effective tactic to get people to look at the material, but I wonder how effective it is at actually moving more product?

The poser over at NewsTarget has just put up an interesting new rant^H^H^H^Harticle about how advertising treats people like lab animals. His observation is that advertisers use the media to build an association in the consumers mind between a product like softdrinks and sex so that the consumer will be more likely to buy the softdrink. This is reinforced by the spike of carbs delivered by the drink.

Naturally he hasn't done any acutal research, and his site is little more than a crappy blog dressed up as a news site (what do you expect from a spammer and shyster?), but he does come up with some entertaining and thought provoking stuff on occasion (the rest of the time its fun to just laugh at him).

So I was thinking, I wonder how hard it would be to find a research group of men with very low sex hormone levels, such that they had low or no sex drive. It would be interesting to use a large group of these men along with a control group of typical men to study the effectivness of the 'Sex Sells' idea. Do men with very low sexual drive respond differently to sex-based advertising?

What other interesting sex-related studies might such a group be good for? Do they tend to pay female employees more? Do they promote them faster and give them better work assignments? Are they more productive in business environments because they don't constantly think evil things about their female coworkers? Are they just boring and deprived?

So many mysteries of the mind and body, so litte actual knowledge.