Before we fall into the inane fear of the “unknown unknowns”, as one unfortunate soul of history had trumped up, let us ponder on a slightly related issue. Is it possible to hold the clock and stop evolution in its steps, without influencing it? From our knowledge of quantum physics, we should know that it is impossible to do so. But nevertheless we try and try again, in this never-ending search for equilibrium that has evaded humankind since time existed.

The majority of people would not have heard about Willapa Bay in Washington State, USA, or ever get to see that part of the world. What is taking place there is a microcosm of our (mis-)conception of what we perceive to be the ‘correct’ evolution of species. This could be an oxymoron or a dangerous precedent that has its antecedents in eugenics, which was practiced on humans in the not too distant past. Animal and plant breeding has been practiced for thousands of years, with some success and an equal amount of failure. In a modern day 12 loaves story, they have been instrumental in providing nutrition for millions worldwide.

Monsanto Corporation has been in the limelight for decades for reasons that any company would prefer not to be in. This appears to be the fate of many large corporations working in fields such as biology, chemistry or pharmaceuticals. Are we dealing with greedy corporations who seek their own self-aggrandisement at the expense of many others? Or does it go with the territory of offering solutions that have, by their very nature, a flip side?

The presence of a salt water grass, spartina alterniflora, in large numbers in Willapa Bay has provided Monsanto, with their Roundup and Rodeo and BASF with their Imazapyr herbicides a good commercial opportunity in the governmental attempt to eradicate this weed, which incidentally is not classified as a weed on the US east coast.

A quite incisive, neutral and detailed write-up can be read at Truth Out.

The greater issue that should be of concern to us is our wish for a constant, static and highly regulated change process that refuses to acknowledge that evolution has been a timeless and a never-ending process. If any species can be termed as the master of invasion, it would be the dubious privilege conferred on homo sapiens sapiens.

It is but opportune for us to reflect on the positive (and negative effects) of the Scotch Broom, cytisus scoparius, introduced to America from Europe and the effect of PL 480 (US Food for Peace!), which brought Parthenium aka Congress Grass to India from the US in the late fifties.

In the words of Portia from The Merchant of Venice act 4, scene 1)

“Tarry a little, there is something else.

This bond doth give thee here no jot of blood;

The words expressly are ‘a pound of flesh’.”

Our perceptions on the water cycle are deeply flawed and much is related to the inherent ignorance that energy consumption plays in the entire water cycle. The primary aim must lie in reducing water pollution and the secondary goal should be in rejuvenating water with minimal energy. This is again a call to, especially in big cities, cut down on the size of centralized treatment plants and have more local sewage treatment that can effectively carry out the process at a lower price, with many advantages such as reductions in energy consumption and recovery of exothermic energy for local use either for heating and/or electricity generation.

Present day sewage treatment plants carry out a combined mechanical and biological treatment process, thereby discharging the water into large flow water bodies. These water bodies later serve as a source  of drinking water. A partial closed loop process that has been effective in providing clean drinking water where such facilities are available and large water bodies are a perennial source.

The paradigm shift that many have to face is the need to close and shorten the loop, leading to a quick turnaround that could lead to a 50% and higher reduction in the need for fresh water. It is possible, using today’s technology, to recycle water and reuse it. See my blog entry on The Darn Energy Shift and the need for decentralized solutions.

All that stands in the way in the words of Carol Nemeroff is “It is quite difficult to get the cognitive sewage out of the water, even after the real sewage is gone.”

We need to get the dirt out of our minds! NPR has a feature on ‘Why Cleaned Wastewater Stays Dirty In Our Minds‘.

Switzerland’s Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich has crunched billions of Bytes of open-source data and in a recently published report, The Global Network of Corporate Control, listed machinations of the evil empire – The web of corporate institutes owned and operated by a select few. It is but apt that Vladimir Ilyich Lenin wrote his impression of finance capitalism in ‘Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism’ in 1916 in the very same city, Zurich. History repeats itself, or the same verbiage rehashed in a new package? Long before the 1% vs. the 99% turned main-stream, we have had many apostles warning about the exploitation of the proletariat. Lenin must be having a laugh in his mausoleum at the Red Square.

Analysing over 43’000 trans-national corporations (TNCs) as defined by the OECD and using the Orbis database for data on ownership. The scientists at the Chair of Systems Design at the ETH have whittled down the mass to a core of 1’300 companies that are interwoven to the extent that 3/4ths of the shares remain within the core. The study whittles down the number to 147 corporates or individuals who own and control 40% of TNCs worldwide. Before the conspiracy theorists start screaming, only the dependency and interconnection of the entities was examined. The study does not inquire or study the motivations and whether there has been deliberate collusion or attempt to collude within these entities.

Lord Acton is quoted to have said “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Does the democratization of the world in the past hundred years have a decisive influence on societal processes? In other words does democracy enable an evening out of power and control both within political and corporate institutions? If history is anything to go by perhaps not, if the recent exposures can be verified. As can be seen by revelations that regularly surface in public space, about the acts of democratically elected representatives, who seem to have their own peccadilloes and predilections take the upper hand.

So does size matter? Fat Man and Little Boy, the atomic bombs dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, had an explosive force equivalent to 21 kt and 18 kt TNT respectively. The B-53 series of atomic bombs, now considered obsolete, have an explosive force of 9 mt TNT. After having taken care of ringing in Armageddon on Earth with the B-53, the pilots will then fly off to paradise, wherever that may be. Keeping in mind the improvements in technology and circular error probability (CEP), it appears that we no longer require a sledge hammer for castration.

Their LED street lamp, Orion, provides autonomous street lighting that goes a long way in reducing power consumption. The comparative figures between high power Sodium vapour (HPS) lamps and Orion’s LED lamps are truly attractive with power consumption savings that can go up to 70%, for the same light intensity. With a rechargeable battery system that can provide power for 10 hours, this is a product that must find use worldwide. Undoubtedly there is the issue of the initial price and the life of the accompanying electronic boards together with the vexing issue of electronic parts recycling. None of these are insurmountable and can be resolved with due process.

Our lives are determined by the use of artificial light and it is imperative that we reduce our energy consumption and this also includes the ‘grey’ energy, which is the energy put into the manufacturing process and logistical chain.

It is this ‘wonderful world’ that appears to be the tag line of Matt Ridley’s sheer optimism that makes him popular, holding lectures, talking to audiences, selling books and generally spreading the ‘good news’. A relief one could say, in a world that has been clouded with doomsday prophets from time immemorial.

Having recalled the grave and unmistakable message of the ‘Club of Rome‘ with the ‘Limits of Growth’ or the rather cute reflections in ‘Small is Beautiful‘ from E.F. Schumacher in the seventies, to be followed by the likes of Francis Fukuyama with the ‘End of history‘, we find ourselves often hampered in our progressive steps by our own fear of mortal degradation.

In a compilation of facts and figures, Matt Ridley has comparative figures that seem to underline his thesis that we have made tremendous progress from our beginnings in the African Savannah. And this in spite of all the drawbacks and slippages! The rational optimist or is he the ‘Town crier’ by profession? Matt Ridley was the Managing Director of Northern Rock, the British bank led to the brink of bankruptcy and to the privileged statehood of governmental takeover. Lest we fall into witch hunting, nobody is perfect.

Division of Labour

Ridley’s theory is that our ability to barter goods and services has been instrumental in the rapid progress of humans. That it is our capability to use our individual talents to the best of our abilities and, last but not least, the freedom to exchange these worldwide that has been hugely responsible for the improved standard of living. Hindsight is a great relief to many, so much so that we wish  we had a gluteal rear-view of sorts (pun intended). Unfortunately, hindsight can be rarely brought to play within a generation. The doomsday energy scenarios in the seventies is a case in point. We should be running out of oil just about now, if the pundits of yore were right. Anyone who has dabbled at the stock exchange and lost will find no relief to know that the trend has always been positive!

The Great Divide

Ridley’s factual thesis must however take a beating, when he discounts the well documented fact that the divide between the rich and the poor has indeed grown. This is a grave error of judgement and a misinterpretation of facts, on his part. Distribution of wealth, and this it is not a socialist agenda, has been skewed to epic proportions. The fatal error that anyone can make in interpreting statistical data, an error that Winston Churchill is attributed to have said, and which has never been substantiated: The only statistics you can trust are those you falsified yourself. Matt Ridley’s fatal error is using different base lines and disparate data, in coming to false conclusions.

Free Markets

Matt Ridley is quite right in warning of dire consequences, if markets are protected and free trade hampered. The concept of home (urban) gardening or the sole use of organically grown produce is cute but unsustainable both to feed the population and to the economy. However, it is time to reflect and look for a judicious mix that would and can provide for the population without running the economy aground.

Environment

Ridley’s thesis on CO2 emission is indeed highly controversial, as he supports economic growth at any cost, expecting nations to clean up after the debacle. The effects of green house gas (GHG) emissions are insidious and long-term, their influence cannot be switched off like he does with his much revered iPhone. Perhaps his book royalties would finance a trip to the island nations that are literally swamped by rising sea levels, to help him change his mind.

Epilogue: A good read taken with a pinch of salt. No one is infallible!

Subsidies apparently lead to manufacturers raising production, in anticipation of higher sales, and to charge them higher prices, as the customer can apparently now afford it! A slight but important “willingness to pay” factor in a free market economy. Apparently the drawing down of subsidies (See www.dailykos.com) in countries like Germany and Italy has played a major role. Now that the subsidies are gone, the customers have also disappeared. Subsidies apparently have multi-fold repercussions, one of which is to largely improve  corporate profits! Something that was not the primary purpose of the subsidy.

The improvement of technology that has improved power output has also contributed to a drop in unit watt prices. First Solar’s Cadmium Telluride solar cells – oops hazardous disposal – now have a test laboratory output efficiency going from 11.7% to 17.3%, bringing down the unit cost of power to $0.75/Watt in comparison to $1.40/Watt for Silicon solar cells. Innovalight’s Silicon-Ink technology improvements has made DuPont see a market potential.

IPCC’s price trend curve appears to have been spot on, showing a price drop from $6.50/Watt in 1985. The $0.75/Watt price is still way above the price that a consumer is willing to pay, so that one does have to continue to factor in a life-cycle cost covering pricing mechanism, which would look at the carbon footprint of power production. Power producers still require incentives to make the change, and this means that governments must find ways and means to provide negative tax subsidies to facilitate an energy shift. With the parochial interests at stake and the vested interests of oil, gas and coal producers, it will be a long haul before we can make the energy shift.

It is naive to think that the ‘natural’ drop in renewable energy prices will make it attractive to customers. Even a cursory look at the price of oil and natural gas in the past couple of decades shows that the moment demand drops there will be a commensurate drop in energy prices. There is no way around than to look at the entire life-cycle cost and the carbon footprint, in determining how taxation can channel development.

In what I must say has been an eye opener is the fact that the largest contribution to  (GHG) through consumption comes from our nutrition! Over 30% in fact followed by housing with over 20%. An interesting blog called Eaternity (some pages in English) in German has touched upon a subject that we may need to factor-in when calculating our CO2 footprint. The actual production process of meat and meat products appears to contribute just a shade short of 60% to total emissions, whereas fruit and vegetables contribute just 6.5%. The caveat however is that vegetarian per se is not necessarily less of a GHG contributor. Secondary milk products such as cheese have higher levels of GHG emissions during the production process. Just as the production of rice and potato chips have high levels of GHG emissions. See Environmental
Impact of Products (EIPRO) for further information.

The basic and quite well documented tenets of sustainable nutrition are based on three primary factors vegetarian, seasonal and local. Now if that isn’t an invitation to go to the local farmers market and skip that prime beef steak once in a while? Provided of course the produce is indeed local.

The one issue is the effect of GMOs on the environment. The other issue is the corporate driven need to have exclusive rights with the help of patents. Both are exclusive and independent issues, but unfortunately they often get put in the same witches cauldron, when the spirits are called upon to mediate. I would like to dwell on the the effects of GMOs on the environment, which has caused fear among many.

Are GMOs dangerous?

A recent report from the Nanjing University refers to the presence of MiRNA in the blood of humans, which has been sourced from food consumed in the intestinal tract. These MiRNAs, as carriers of information, have a regulatory impact on the health and metabolism of the human body.

Phytotherapy

This report has a multi-fold impact in our understanding of metabolism, health,  co-evolution, cross-domain (animal-plant) and prey-predator interactions. It also substantiates many claims of the efficacy of traditional phytotherapy that has been practised for aeons.

The most important and mind-breaking aspect is the impact on our ‘traditional’ understanding that has damned the GMO field as too risky with unknown consequences. There is clearly a well practised and fine-tuned process that nature has, in combining the advantages across many species, that we may want to ponder on nature’s practice of  regularly ‘cross-breeding’ with more advantages than we can think of.

This is in effect what GMOs is about: The use of the beneficial effects of a particular organism in another, including but not exclusively, species. See also my blog entry on our Gene therapy phobia, which touches upon this aspect in detail. It also goes into the resistance to stem cell therapy and the general abhorrence to genetic engineering.

Apart from the known issue of a certain level of unreliability – When it is literally ‘Gone with the Wind’, and there is wind still, there is another important issue: Wind turbines close to habitations are not silent. Though the amplitude as measured in decibels is well within permissible levels, the steady ‘whoosh’ of the blades can be disconcerting if not unhealthy to those close by. Besides birds stand little chance with those rotating blades. But then again glass has also been a trap for birds and that has not prevented us from using glass as facades and windows.

We do need to also look at micro wind turbines in the sub kW range. Micro wind turbines that can be fitted in and around residential and commercial buildings. They would help in decentralising energy production.

In those places where large wind turbines have an important role to play, it is imperative that we look for ways and means of maximising wind power production. The Renewable Energy department at  Kyushu University in Japan has show that a simple diffuser device can increase the energy output by a factor of 2.5.

Using a diffuser and a brim at the end the wind turbine is quite, due to the suppression of tip vortices, which makes it an ideal solution for built up areas. The increase in energy output is speed dependent and is minimal at slow wind speeds.

Some  conservative analysis shows that the US could cover a third of its energy requirements using the equivalent of 25% of Alaska’s land mass. It does not take much imagination to realise that this can be done today with available resources, but unfortunately the parochial interests of quite a few, many of them caught in a gridlock of self-fulfilling prophesies, will still prevent quick implementation.

The proposed Trans West Express Transmission & Sierra Madre Wind Energy Project by Anschutz Corporation that is to produce 9 MWh of clean wind energy and transmit it to a distribution hub in Nevada may well question President Obama’s decision to pump Canadian tar sand oil to the US.

The investment and operating expenses of wind energy plants are now below that of traditional fossil fuel plants. Nevertheless, we do need to keep in mind that moving away from one energy source has implications to those who rely on it for their livelihood.

A coal miner and those dependent on his income will take a hard hit, when coal mines in West Virginia have to close down. None of this continual change is new, it never has been. It is just that we are limited in our perceptions of change and tradition, both of which have never been stagnant. In fact the only times we have repeatedly insisted on retaining the status quo has been at our own peril.

The entire US automobile industry refused to change and even when they did so, it was too late and too little. The reverberations of that debacle can be felt today. The bankruptcy cases of solar firms such as Evergreen, SpectraWatt and Solyndra touch upon issues with causes that go from lack of governmental support (subsidies for users), exchange rates, pricing, production costs etc. to name a few.

I have in another post, Carbon Footprint of Electricity Generation, touched upon the need to look at the life cycle cost that has been missing in today’s calculation. Especially in the case of Silicon, there are environmental issues that have yet to be factored in in the production of Silicon ingots and the yet to come disposal of solar cells.

It truly is a long way to go in ensuring that our energy production is clean and reliable that our greenhouse gas production is reduced, our carbon footprint tends downwards and pollution levels sink. There are unknown factors that may make us revisit our solutions, but we have to make a start and learn. So it may well not have ‘Gone with the Wind’.

Though we may well want to differentiate between nuclear reactors (both natural and man-made), we need to reconcile ourselves with the fact that dates back to the creation of the Universe. Nuclear reaction was a part of the evolving story and the Earth today has remnants of radioactive substances contributing a substantial amount to the Earth’s natural heat.

In the greater scheme of the Earth’s energy budget, with influences on wind, solar energy, tidal movements and geothermal energy it may well be necessary for us to incorporate natural radioactive decay as an essential part of our renewable energy resource.