I'm going a little off topic today, and returning briefly to a prior life: a time when, instead of rummaging daily through various "participatory web" issues, I was a successful energy consultant. More specifically, I was an engineer making a good living focused upon how digitally-networked control systems make better use of energy in the built environment. And, like most all engineers then and now, I find myself at the bottom the professional knowledge food chain. `more on that in a minute...
Like most every thoughtful person on the planet, I also follow the "green energy" debate with an interest that's as selfish as it altruist; who doesn't want to both live well as well as leave this place to their children as good as they found it? But, I have to say, the reporting on this debate is often as amateurish as the reactions to it are polarized. It seems that any legitimate question about global warming, for instance, is met with charges of lunacy, luudism, ludicrousness and, often, worse. After all, the popular chant is, there's "consensus of scientists" that have concluded the causes, effects, solutions, etc., that are "undeniable": e.g., today's NYT article . Most all of it's bullshit!
Energy consumption, and it's effects upon climate change, are enourmously complex phenomena; and their nature, let alone their interelationships, cannot be dispatched in popular-press-digestable prose, political banter, slogans and especially not in intentionally-distorted full-length films.
The engineer in me prefers to deal in facts. And, the "undeniable" fact is that climate is trending toward somewhat higher average termperatures. News Flash: temperatures cycle daily, seasonally and periodically through different ages, eons and epochs. The first two (diurnal and annual) changes we attribute to solar coincidences not of our own making. But, curiously, the spiritually-reproaching meglamania in many of us seems to presume that, when in doubt, the blame for everything, that we can't lay off somewhere else, must fall to us. Maybe it should?
Doubtless there is a connection between greenhouses gasses and climate change. But, exacly how and how much (Al Gore notwithstanding), is still very open to debate. And, from a more practical standpoint, there's a need for difficult value judgements: i.e., over the relative return on choices of how best to apply our painfully limited resources (time, money, mental cycles, etc). In other words, there is an important calculus that's being largely ignored: i.e., how/how-much can/should we really do to reverse whatever effect that we're really having upon climate?
Sadly, I don't have these answers; more sadly still, I'm pretty sure that no one else really has them either.
So, what about this bullshit "consnsus" [of climate scientists]?
First, you have to understand how the professional knowledge industry really works. As I said earlier, us engineers sit at the bottom of the food chain: we work on real-world problems that someone has funded, ususally on the basis of an expected return. In other words, we tend to focus upoon things that will probably work and return investments in the near/mid-term. At the other end of the spectrum are the theorists (f.k.a., philosophers) who occaisionaly inspire real R&D (but rarely stoop to verifiable experiments of their own); they are, therefore, largely ignored except in SciFi and other popular media (e.g., Money Never Sleeps' reprise of the aging fusion energy day-dream ).
At the intermediate "scientist" level, we find the experts: the ones that conduct the R&D, write the articles and texts, appear on TV and teach the engineesrs. A cynical view from the right would cast theses accademicians as the real culprits in the real-world climate drama. Scientists' objectives are often centered upon securing an extension of the grant, endowment, department budget, etc, that supports their ongoing work; and their accountability is, mainly, to the small peer group that competitvely reviews their findings. Don't get me wrong, the scholars' work is hard; and, only those with a stake in the results invest the considerable effort needed to participate. But, when the public appetite runs to, say, solar energy all we get from folks in that field are competiing recipes for solar energy. None of the players there are incented to question the larger case for (or against) solar; and all the other "scientisits" are out chasing other topics (to publish upon, seek funding for, etc). There's (generally speaking) nothing dishonest in all this, only incomplete. What is dangerously dishonest is its reperesentation as a "consensus."
`back to the popular press: the more generalized characterizing of environmental negligence as a crime against "the planet" often borders on the absurd. The earth and its biosphere was here long before humans came along and, barring some natural catastrophe, it will almost certainly continue to thrive long after we're gone. Indeed, the most disruptive environmental disaster are, by far, not of our making (e.g., volcanos, floods, comets, etc). Even the Greenies chosen color betrays a certain naivete: i.e., the world's flora thrives upon carbon dioxide, and it gives us back that much more "green" and pure oxygen in return for it! Moreover, even the most cursory look at the real propsects for renewable energy reveals that, owing to its low power density (which inescapably devours much larger quantities of land and other resources), taxes our environment's ability to sustain the earth's population far more (than, say, far more promising supplies of natural gas, nuclear and sober conservation alternatives)
But that's a different hornet's nest for another day. (For the truly interested, I'd recommend Robert Bryce's excellent book Power Hungry for a dispassionately comprehensive accounting of the true facts).
I'd like to turn to one last point here: one a bit more obscure but nonetherless vital to the topic.
Given the clear scientific case against the more radically Green direction (that Al Gore, Amory Lovins, et/al advocate), how is that more scientists, jounalists, politicians, etc, aren't blowing the whistle and exposing the green bullshit as the populist palaver that it is? I'm not sure. But, I can learn from my own reluctances and reticence to speculate that it has to do with perceptions of `right for the wrong reason' thinking: `sure it's wrong science, but it's getting the right result.' So what "right result" is that?
Many of us have heretofore thought that the real energy threat was more geopolitical and economic than it is environmental in nature: the implicit threats brought by too much dependence upon Mideastern pertroleum supplies are the real danger. Then, along comes a piece like yesterday's NYT editorial in which Nobel laureate (and closet socialist) Paul Krugman wherein he decries certain "Rare and Foollish" Chinese policies. Specifically, he quite properly sounds an alarm bell over the Chineses decision to embargo all shipments of "rare earth" commodities to Japan (in retaliation for Japan apprehension of a Chinese fishing boat illegally trolling its waters). So, `What's that have to do with America's green movement', you may ask. Just this: an assortment of rare earth compounds (lanthanide, lithium, scandium and other "rare" oxides) are essential to hybrid auto batteries, photovoltic cells, windmill generators...in short, all the good things that bring grins to greenie faces. Sadly, China holds a monopoly on them all: a one nation cartel stroner than OPEC ever had!
Inasmuch as China has now signaled its willinness to use it's rare-earth monopoly for something as relativley unimportant as a fishing dispute and, inasmuch as China is pumping umparalled subsidies into its burgeoning alterntive energy industry (unmasking its realtively crucial economic importance), what sort of OPEC-like leverage might we expect in a more rare-earth-dependent future? In other words, the one good reason to let the Gore's goons run amuck, may be fading into this "Dark Green Scenario."
p.s. Japan uncermoniously succombed and relaesed the nefarious fisherman
Quick update, today China suspended shipments of green-energy-critical "rare earth" materials tot he U.S. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/20/business/global/20rare.html?nl=&emc=aua1
Maybe it's time to consider fighting [the trade war that China's declaring] to win?
Posted by: Doug | October 19, 2010 at 06:57 PM