Misdirected energy development

I keep wondering about energy being provided by large companies vs. decentralized energy. I found a couple of interesting statements about this in "A fight over the future of solar", a Perspective article published in CNET News.

Herman Scheer argues that many undeveloped areas of the world will not be able to afford large distribution networks to provide power from centralized power stations. He also mentions how power distribution networks are a terrorist target. I think it was in the 80's some disgruntled people were toppling towers. Distribution networks are also vulnerable to weather and human error.

I think the oil companies and the power companies have to recast themselves more as energy companies, providing not energy but energy solutions. This may be providing self-contained systems for a factory or a residence, especially a rural residence, or providing linked systems for small areas. Whether we bring coal hundreds of miles or string hundreds of miles of power lines, we lose energy doing so.

I would hope that energy companies first look to their own energy needs and how they could become less dependent on other sources.

Mallard Fillmore

I mentioned the "Mallard Fillmore" comic strip in my latest column, "General Ization battles truth" for the Reader Weekly. I posted it today to my website; and when I do so, I add as many links as possible, one of them being to the Mallard Fillmore strip. When I find a URL I often visit the site.

I found out that the creator, Bruce Tinsley, was fired by the paper where he created the strip. The website said it was because he "wouldn't tone down its conservative bias." I agree that it has a conservative bias and is often off the wall. But firing him just plays into the hands of those who say the media is "liberal".

I think a better solution would have been to have a "truth squad" cartoon that debunked some of Tinsley's outrageous statements. For example, when Mallard bashes the post office for damaging packages, the "truth squad" could ask, and maybe answer, how many packages UPS or FedEx damage.

Are "Wars on..." successful?

First there was the "War on Crime" which had mixed results. Many Mafia leaders were caught and prosecuted, but crime is still a problem in many cities.

Then there was the "War on Drugs" which has filled many prisons. But drugs still come into the country and find buyers.

Now we have the "War on Terror". Some think it is succeeding: "We will keep the enemy on the run." (George W. Bush, October 19, 2006) Unfortunately, he thinks the enemy is in Iraq and Afghanistan, but it is global and growing larger. In fact, the war in Iraq probably helped al Quaeda grow. See "Al Qaeda Strikes Back", Bruce Reidel, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2007.

With the military already stretched thin, Bush is giving hints that he would like to attack Iran. Riedel writes that al Qaeda would like to see Bush attack Iran. Consider that the Iranian weapons found in Iraq may have been smuggled in by al Qaeda with the hope of proking the U.S. to attack Iran.

Would the U.S. leaving Iraq strengthen the terrorists' position or weaken it? If the U.S. leaves, Iran may come in to protect the Shia majority against the Sunni insurgents and the Sunni-based al Qaeda. A good general often lets somebody else do the fighting.

National Defense includes climate and energy

The Eisenhower Administration promoted the Interstate Highway System as necessary for national defense - to be able to move men and material quickly around the country.

Some lone voices are calling for energy and climate to be considered national defense issues. Energy is obvious because petrodollars are funding terrorists and authoritarian governments. It is ironic that the fuel needed to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan is being provided by the people who supply major funding to terrorist organizations.

Climate change as it affects food supplies will cause major instability in many countries, leading to worse governments and more stress among nations. See Terror in the Weather Forecast by Thomas Homer-Dixon, New York Times, April 24, 2007.

Whither Iraq?

In 1808, Napoleon thought he "decided" the campaign in Spain by "dispersing the formal Spanish armies," but "had inadvertently encouraged the local populace to resort to guerrilla warfare". He still didn't solve the problem in 1810-1811 sending 300,000 troops into Spain. Spain's population was over 11 million.

"Mission accomplished" was the banner in 2003, Iraq's army was vanquished. Four years later about 150,000 troops are trying to quell guerrilla warfare in a country of over 27 million.

And George W. Bush isn't as good a commander-in-chief as Napoleon was. Unfortunately, they both share the characteristic of hubris, thinking they knew better than anyone else.

For a hopeful outlook, see "How to Win in Iraq, and How to Lose", by Arthur Herman, Commentary, April 2007, http://www.commentarymagazine.com/cm/main/viewArticle.aip?id=10856&page=all
Will George W. Bush put in the necessary diplomacy to make it work? Or will his strategy be lots of high-tech bang-bang?

Astute analysis or lucky guess?

As the fiasco of the fired District Attorney unfolds and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales comes under increasing criticism from Republican Senators, I wonder if I was making a good prediction in my April Fool's column for the Reader Weekly, "Tomorrow's news you can use today" or just a lucky guess.

I started with the premise that Gonzales would resign rather than face a lot of questioning from the Senate or possible impeachment from the House. From there, the President's house of cards would collapse, leading to a surprise replacement for Bush.

I will say that the fruits of giving more allegiance to party than to the Constitution are starting to ripen.

Flawed science understanding

A letter writer in today's Star Tribune claims that the global warming predictions are based on the same science that can be "incapable of accurately predicting local conditions just hours into the future." The Strib titled his letter "Global warming, Flawed science".

I think his understanding of science is what is flawed. First, what is accuracy in weather forecasting? Does he want the exact temperature to the nearest degree and the exact amount of precipitation to the tenth of an inch? Even if he wants the temperature within five degrees and definite precipitation if predicted, it might not happen. Weather does not behave with such precision; there are just too many unknown quantities. We are dealing with chaos.

Consider dust devils. Walking down the street, one may see a small whirlwind of snow or dust, no more than a foot in diameter and three feet high, that comes and goes in an instant. What happens if the sun shines through a hole in the clouds on a large parking lot? Isn't there going to be a big temperature difference between the parking lot and a park or lake nearby? Weather is filled with these little anomalies that can affect local weather.

However, if one looks at weather prediction as giving the general trend for a given area, then I think most forecasters do a darn good job. Rarely do we have a forecast of a clear, sunny day and get a rainstorm. On the other hand, we may get a forecast of precipitation and get none, the weather having been blown in a different direction by some of the chaos that can't be measured.

In other words, weather forecasters and climatologists can make reasonable predictions about trends, but they cannot give precision for a very specific locale or time. For example, in global warming, Europe may get colder. Why? If melting Greenland glaciers dump enough fresh water into the Atlantic, the Gulf Stream could be disrupted by either the decreased salinity or the cooler water. If the Gulf Stream is disrupted, Europe will get less warm air.

Logging can be dangerous

This past weekend we went to our cabin to gather firewood, mostly for next year. We were considering taking small trees from a path we were widening, but we discovered two recently broken trees close to the cabin.

We first delimbed and cut in fireplace lengths the former top of the larger tree, about nine inches in diameter. After we had moved all that away, I started to cut the trunk at about two chain saw bar lengths from the ground. I cut about half-way through on the west side of the tree, the direction I wanted it to fall. Then I started cutting on the east side of the tree an inch or two above the other cut. The saw jammed!

I pushed the tree to the west and got the saw out, but the tree didn't fall. I cut a bit more and the tree started to fall, but to the south. I was not in the way or had gotten out of the way, and it crashed down.

Omigosh! My wife had been working about 30 feet away to the southwest of the tree. I looked in panic for her and didn't see her. She had gone inside for some reason. Whew!

Moral: always have lots of clear space when cutting down trees and keep others well away.

My accuracy is one reason we're asking a professional logger to fell some trees near things that could be damaged, like our cabin or the solar panel for the sauna.

Why don't I allow comments?

I decided not to allow comments to this blog because they can be too time consuming. If time is a problem, I could ignore them; but that is not in my nature. If someone sends me a meaningful message, then I feel I owe them a response.

As you can see by my frequency of posts here that I was probably right. My email is even worse, I have 27 "unanswered" messages and have been running about that for over a week. Each of these require some action on my part, paying a bill, visiting a web site, or responding to a friend or relative.

I think I understand the complaints of some users of the Genealogy Roundtable on GEnie when I was its sysop in the last century. They just didn't have time to check everyday if someone responded to their query nor did they have an evening to spare to participate in an online discussion. Worse yet, their monthly costs could mount up at $12 or $6 an hour, much of that "wasted" time at 1200 or 2400 bits per second.

Even though my online time is "free", I feel like my users did in the use of my own time. I, like you, am being constantly bombarded to participate in some forum or other. Companies want us to visit their forums to get answers to our problems rather than answer them specifically. Political and advocacy organizations want us to visit their sites and participate in the "discussion". Publicly traded companies want us to get annual reports online rather than as paper copies; how fast can you scan 100 pages online?

All of our creditors want us to pay online rather than by check. Let's see, two minutes to write a check and put it in an envelope, but five minutes to go to the site, log on, read the statement, enter the payment, verify the payment, submit the payment, and log off.

Let me end on a positive note. The Web provides a vast resource of reading material. I could not move from the New York Times to The Atlantic to local papers to newspapers around the world as fast, even if my library stocked all these publications. Second, if I find something I would like to save, I don't have to go to the copier with a stack of dimes for a single article. With a quick cut and paste I can save the file in a folder that fits, not in some physical overcrowder drawer, but in a tiny bit of space under my fingertips.

We've come a long way from the cards in and cards out when I started in computers 48 years ago. And we ain't seen nothing yet!

Parking is too cheap!

Many people think parking is too expensive, especially those who use meters. But if you look at the larger pictures of global warming and national defense it is far too inexpensive.

Shopping centers, even strip malls of four or five stores, offer free parking. These are located all over a city of any size. Free parking is a disincentive to taking a bus. From the perspective of global warming, buses may pollute more than cars, but we need buses for those who can't or shouldn't drive. So, each car adds to the pollution. Also, each car adds to the oil we need to import, and oil wealth is supporting unstable nations and terrorists. What will the cost to our economy be when the next terrorist attack comes?

Even paid parking is too cheap. If I take the bus to a fitness center, it costs me $1.20 round-trip in non-peak hours. I can park on the street for $1.00 for an hour, and I get to come and go on my own schedule. I can park in the ramp for $1.25 for an hour or $1.75 for two hours. If one of my bus trips is in a peak hour, then my fare will be $1.85.

If my wife and I go together, then our combined fare is $2.40 or $3.70. Since we have a car already and it costs only a few pennies in fuel for the two-mile trip, why should we take the bus.

Even downtown parking is too cheap. One lot is $3.75 all day. One person driving alone would pay $2.50 for bus fare, but two would pay $5.00. Wouldn't trudging out to the street or garage in the snow to one's car be easier than trudging to the corner through the snow and worth the extra $1.25 per day?

Even if the weather is nice, one has to plan one's schedule around an every half-hour bus. Forget something as you leave your house and you are late for work.

See also my article "Cost sharing or cost shifting"?

Tectonic shift in politics coming?

Before I started writing blog entries today, I checked my friend Harry Welty's blog, http://www.lincolndemocrat.org

He had an interesting link to Andrew Sullivan's blog entry on "Why we went to war".

I thanked Harry for posting the link and replied:

Thanks for posting the link to “Why We Went to War”. I’ve long suspected that it was more “projection of power” than real defense. However, if it had been executed properly it might have worked. But then ideologues have an unrealistic view of their own capabilities. I think about Carl Becker’s assertion that Lincoln went to war not so much to quell a rebellion or to abolish slavery but to keep the power of the whole United States against depradations on a splintered America by European powers. See, “The United States: An Experiment in Democracy”. Sorry, I don’t have a page number.

I had also emailed him a link to David Brooks' column "No U-Turns", New York Times, March 29, 2007. Brooks said that the political environment is not for the rugged individualism of Goldwater and Reagan. He called it the "Liberty vs. Power paradigm". He wrote that the new paradigm is "security leads to freedom".

I sort of agree that Goldwater and Reagan aren't the future of the GOP but its a mystery to me how the party can recover from Bush,Cheney, Rove, Dobson and company.

I replied:

I think the only hope for politics is some new, grand coalition like I suggested in my April Fool Reader article. It doesn’t have to be Olympia Snowe, but somebody of stature who works on governance rather than power and posturing. Maybe Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas or Arnold Schwarzenegger of California. The latter can’t become President under the current rules, but he could be an enabler.

I did send webforms to Snow, Sebelius, and Schwazenegger with the link to my article and the hope that they would continue their work on the common ground.

Retired? I'm too busy!

A friend is using blog software that has a bug for certain browsers. If he uses block quotes in some conditions, the text is lost against the background. He said that he has too many other things to do detect and fix such errors.

I replied:

I’m kinda with you on not maintaining your blog for all comers. I also find it amazing how we retirees can find so much to occupy our time that we can’t do all we want to do. Shouldn’t we be out fishing, golfing, or skiing, and when we’re not doing that curled up in front of the fireplace with a good book?

What does "Support our troops" really mean?

Garry Trudeau had an interesting take on "Support our troops" in today's "Doonesbury". Two soldiers are discussing whether support means providing them with ammo and armor so they can keep fighting or letting them come home to their families and friends.

Human effect on global warming

Some argue that the human effect on global warming has not been proven because some scientists don't think so and that even the scientific community does not give 100% certainty to this assertion.

Consider that Lord Kelvin, a prolific contributor thermodynamics, refused to believe that the Earth could be older than his calculations. These were based on the mass of the Earth and the heat loss into space. Even when radioactivity was shown to be a source of heat, and even when he agreed that radioactivity did produce heat, Lord Kelvin stood by his calculations. See Bill Bryson, "A Short History of Nearly Everything". Just because an eminent scientist like Lord Kelvin said the Earth was only 24 million years old didn't make other calculations uncertain or even false.

Some scientists claim that there have always been cycles of warming and cooling and that the Earth is just in another warming time. However, they and their supporters are ignoring the rate of change, which is unprecedented going back over 500 milliion years. Furthermore, the addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere had never exceeded 30 parts per million by volume in a thousand years. It has increased by that rate in the last seventeen years. See "Deep ice tells long climate story", a report by BBC News.