In any case nature "knows" how to fill empty niches. Nothing is forever.
We know about mass extinctions where 99% of all species were eliminated. Nature seems to have bounced back nicely. Man is insignificant compared to an asteroid hit.
Last edited by MSimon on Sun May 17, 2009 4:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
I just don't want to be "holier than thou" over such grand issues.
Christianity (which I do not myself subscribe to but which in many ways informs my moral outlook) has something to say on the matter about specks and beams in eyes.
Value humans? Human civilisations, all cultures, all epochs, have consistently treated human life as of less importance than many other things - riches for the few, national pride, religious precepts, etc, etc.
This is fact, not personal opinion. You sound like a well-meaning liberal who does not see the dichotomy between intention and reality. I expect however, from your characterisation of me, that any such metaphor would make you uncomfortable?
You view me as an old-fashioned Marxist (I think this is your import) because I am ideologically uncertain and unwilling to make grand pronouncements about what is right in hypothetical situations. Surely such ideological certainty is exactly what characterises the destructive isms of the 20th Century, whether right or left wing?
Tom
Territorial species collect riches to improve their mating potential. This is natural. To be against greed is to be against nature.
Nature selects for greed. It ought to be celebrated. National pride is about selecting for kin groups. Religion is about favorable vs unfavorable cultural adaptations.
Man is a product of nature. If you love nature you should love man with all his appurtenances.
All creatures exploit their habitat to the maximum of their ability. It is why you get predator/prey cycles.
Man is unusual in one respect. Above a certain average income level his general reproductive fitness declines.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
I actually do not pay much attention to "environmental" issues any more, for two reasons. One, at least in the developed world, they have been largely solved. I lived in SoCal during the late 80's. The pollution in certain areas (like the San Gabriel valley and Riverside) was so bad that I literally could not visit those placed on a weekday. You usually could not see the mountains over looking Pasadena. While living in Asia, I visited and stayed in SoCal for 2 months during the summer of '99. I found that I could actually visit places like Rancho Cucamonga and other areas of the San Gabriel valley during the week and could actually see the mountains every time I went there. More recently, I make sales visits to SoCal (in '06-'07) and find that the place is far cleaner than it was in the 80's.
Tokyo is another example. My friends who grew up there as kids in the 70's said that the pollution was really bad, especially in the summers. As of the 90's, it was far cleaner. My experience is that pollution, like sweat shops, is part of the transition from poor to developed society. Places that I have been that are really polluted, like Kaoshiung, Bangkok, or Shanghai, will improve as these places ascend the techno-economic ladder. The best way to cure the environmental problem is to get the rest of the world to develop as quickly as possible.
The other reason why I do not pay attention to the environmental issues is that they have been largely hijacked by political special interest groups who are much more interested in promoting a de-industrial agenda than they are in actually solving environmental problems. The best example of this is when the greens actually denounced the original cold fusion claims back in 1989. It was this experience that convinced me that the "greens" are full of s**t.
Great comments Simon - no more than I expect from you.
I agree mostly but have a few issues with this thinking.
I marvel at nature. I marvel even more at humankind. And (for evolutionarily explainable reasons, no doubt) I love a few humans. I don't see any of this as properly affecting my moral compass.
Natural selection selects for successful genes. How that translates epigenetically is extremely complex (and in my view one of the true marvels of nature). Greed is one possible expression, as 9less often) is altrusim. But if you happen to be a hive animal greed does not exist and altrusim is paramount.
There is no certainty that all human epigenetic characteristics are well-adapted. This is particularly likely for those dependent on higher cortex since this is a recent evolutionary development and affecting our environment now (though its ability to enable complex technology) in ways that are unprecedenced and certainly did not exist on evolutionary timescales.
There can be much speculation about whether religion is selected, and, if selected, whether this selection is (in the long run) favourable or unfavourable. (Not all natural selection is to the long-term benefit of species). The route from genes to phenotype to epigenetic learnt behaviour is so complex that any simple causal relationship is suspect.
As for predator/prey cycles -
I (naively) hope that along with our unprecedented technology-augmented ability to be destructive we now have the possibility to modify our behavious so as to acheive outcomes - to us as groups - which are more satisfactory. Will this happen? Perhaps not...
Greed is a general characteristic. Altruism is related to kin selection. The farther away from kinship the less altruism. In fact the altruism/kin selection relationship is now embodied in a mathematical formula.
Culture dampens those characteristics some. We are still confronted with the 80/20 rule which is also a general biological rule. Twenty percent of a population will command 80% of the resources roughly.
Why? Small marginal differences in ability translate into large differences in outcome.
Take Polywell. I believe you need an IQ of at least 120 to effectively enter the discussion. And 140 is much better. Guys like Dr. B with IQs above 160 are the ones who really advance science and technology.
Assuming a mean of 100 and a std dev of 15, IQs above 120 are 9% of the population. That is 27 million in a population of 300 million. Above 140? That is 12 million in a population of 300 million. Above 150? That is 120,00 in a population of 300 million. Above 160? Statistically insignificant. And yet it is the above 160 people who contribute most to progress.
I (naively) hope that along with our unprecedented technology-augmented ability to be destructive we now have the possibility to modify our behavious so as to acheive outcomes - to us as groups - which are more satisfactory. Will this happen? Perhaps not...
It seems to happen naturally Tom. For reasons no one has a good explanation for above a certain average income level pollution and population decline in industrial societies.
So where is my effort going? I'm endeavoring to do things that will raise the general income level. Or as Bucky Fuller put it: Energy Slaves Per Capita.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
With regard to sociobiological theories. Climate change may be complex and diffciult to model, but anything to do with human society and evolution is a lot worse. You could with merit apply your inherent engineer's skepticism to all these soft science theories.
Not that bwe should not work on them - just that in such complex multi-faceted systems it is easier to attribute causility incorrectly.
Best wishes, Tom
Re energy - windmills remind me of Don Qixote. But solar energy is plentiful, conversion understood, and the prospects for cheap high-efficiency thin-film solar cells remain good. Lots of approaches, all making rapid incremental improvements in efficiency. We are still practically at <20% when >50% is acheivable.
High efficiency reduces relative install and maintenance cost. And manufacturing cost can in principle be very small. (According to nansolar it is already small but I am not sure whether to believe them, others will know better than I).
But your efforts for Polywell will earn you a place in the enviromentalists heaven - though most of them will not understand this
Climate change may be complex and diffciult to model, but anything to do with human society and evolution is a lot worse. You could with merit apply your inherent engineer's skepticism to all these soft science theories.
There are no adequate theoretical explanations for the income / population - pollution correlation.
My basis is empirical.
China is a good test case. (there have been many others) Their income is starting to rise above the inflection point (currently thought to be about $3K to $4K per capita) and they are beginning to address pollution issues.
And you know James Watt designed better steam engines empirically. There was no thermodynamic theory when he did his work. Carnot was many decades in his future.
Engineers are rather familiar with using empirical data to reach desired outcomes. In fact auto-tuning PID loops (which I have designed) are not based on Laplace or Hamilton or even Fourier. They are based on three measurements. Delay time, and two points (to get the initial slope) on the rising (falling) response curve. I don't bother computing the S parameters of the plant. I don't even work out a Bode plot. I just introduce a step change in set point (feedback disabled) and watch what happens. I then expect the PID control to make up for any deviations from the exact parameters. It works rather well because in a real plant the response does change over time. So you never get exact in the real world anyway.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
The bit I quote in that piece is by an engineer familiar with the engineering and economic issues. You might find it of interest.
Being closer to Europe than us Americans you are no doubt familiar with the withdrawal of subsidies for wind and solar there. It has devastated the solar market and if it wasn't for the stupid Americans the wind market would be killed as well.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
Storage is a big issue. With many possible technological solutions, as you know. All expensive, but getting cheaper. like solar. In any case while solar is relatively small fraction of total load (which it will be for some time) it need not be stored - though this makes it worth less of course.
When we all have EVs (which will certainly happen in UK, with massive givernment subsidy etc, and traffic patterns more suitable to it) there will be gigawatts of power charging EVs which can be intelligently switched to equalise demand and so reduce need for storage. Proper heating system designs in houses that use heat pumps can do the same thing, etc, etc.
There is more than one way to skin a cat.
I realise this still does not give you an all-solar future but I was talking about diversity of energy supplies.
I don't want to rain on the solar parade, but I was involved in it for a while last year and I can definitely tell you that it has some serious technical issues to overcome before it is ready for the prime time.
In order for solar to be cost effective, the PV cells have to be by a process technology that does not require fabrication in a vacuum chamber. The reason is that vacuum processing is inherently expensive. It is cost effective to make high value added products such as ICs and displays. But, it is not cost effective for making solar cells, which have to be made in millions of square meters per year at low cost. A non-vacuum roll-to-roll process technology (like printable electronics and displays) is necessary.
This is why silicon solar cells will never be cost effective. New technology is needed. CIGS (Nanosolar) is the current front runner. The others are conductive polymers (Plextronix) and dye-sensitized SiO2 (Konarka and G24i). First, CIGS uses both Indium and Gallium as the active PV material. The problem is supply limitations on the Indium. Indium is not mined directly. It is made as a by-product of refining Zinc and is actually quite scarce. About 1/3 of the worlds supply of Indium (used for the transparent electrode in displays) comes from recycled ITO sputtering targets that are used to make displays. The amount of Indium to make CIGS solar cells would be far greater than that currently used to make displays. This is a real material supply constraint. So, CIGS solar cells are out.
The are three technical hurtles to over come to make the other two technologies (conductive polymer and dye-sensitized SiO2) a reality:
1) A replacement for ITO is neccessary. ITO requires vacuum deposition. I know this because I worked with a guy who tried to develop a spray deposition process for ITO deposition around '02-'03 and was not successful. As far as we knew, no one else was attempting to do this. We were the only people in the world that was working on this process. Anyone who succeeds with this will make millions of dollars because the display people are interested in this. So, there is a huge economic incentive to develop a replacement for ITO.
The three solar companies I contacted about this are actually looking for a strategic partner to develop this for them! In other words, no one in the solar industry is working on this problem.
2) Life time. Conductive organics, used in both polymer and dye-sensitized SiO2 reacts with Oxygen and there is lots of Oxygen in the atmosphere. So, an effective sealing technology that can last 15-20 years is necessary for this kind of solar technology. The solar people I talked to are not currently working on this either. All of them told me that this is a part of their development roadmap for the next 5 years.
3) Conversion efficiency. This is currently 4-5% for both polymer and dye-sensitized SiO2. The target is 10% (I think 15% is necessary). At least the guys I talked to ARE working on this one. It is unlikely that this is ever going to rise above 20%. One of the benefits of both polymer and SiO2 solar cells is that they actually work quite well with diffuse lighting (non-direct light). So, they would actually work OK on cloudy days (which Japan has lots of).
All of these technologies are a good 5-10 years away from cost competitiveness.
Energy storage is another issue. A very simple energy storage technique is to use solar and wind power to pump water into reservoirs, then use hydroelectric power from the draining of these reservoirs to provide baseline electrical power. Of course this is not an desirable option because these kinds of reservoirs take up large land areas and are not attractive to look at.
I won't argue with those who know more that me about number of years to commercialisation. Though sometimes things happen quicker than expected, especially if success is highly profitable.
Re CIGS and indium - I wonder whether the supply constraint will remain with higher prices? The cost of indium will rise significantly, without changing economics of thin-film PV - so if this technology is as successful as promised maybe Indium extraction methods will get more efficient?
What percentage of mined zinc currently is processed for Indium extraction?
Best wishes, Tom
Looking at wikipedia - perhaps not very reliable - if economics were right indium could be produced at same level as silver since it is more abundant. And current supply is restricted by numbers of Chinese zinc producers no longer extracting indium. Which makes me think this is a potentially easily flexible markert.
Although it does not seem to be a market yet! The Indium Corporation probably has an interest in the price being high, and appears to be in a monopoly position... Who knows the commercial reality of rare metal supply?