Does The Global "Thermostat" Have a Governor?

A relatively recent study of the atmospheric impact of water vapor in the tropics has come to a decidedly unique conclusion: once temperatures hit a certain point, the infamously powerful greenhouse gas called 'water vapor' has a cooling effect. Read more:

During the composite oscillation’s rainy, tropospheric warming phase, the longwave flux anomalies unexpectedly transitioned from warming to cooling, behavior which was traced to a decrease in ice cloud coverage. This decrease in ice cloud coverage is nominally supportive of Lindzen’s ‘‘infrared iris’’ hypothesis. While the time scales addressed here are short and not necessarily indicative of climate time scales, it must be remembered that all moist convective adjustment occurs on short time scales. Since these intraseasonal oscillations represent a dominant mode of convective variability in the tropical troposphere, their behavior should be considered when testing the convective and cloud parameterizations in climate models that are used to predict global warming.

The full study, in PDF format, behind this link.

To rehash:

[...]the longwave flux anomalies unexpectedly transitioned from warming to cooling[...]

[...]Since these intraseasonal oscillations represent a dominant mode of convective variability in the tropical troposphere[...]

Hulabaloo: Have Biofuels Really Failed?

There has been news all over the press about how the biofuels "solution" to the 'global warming crisis' just hasn't worked out. You can find it in a number of more conservative news journals, of course, such as New Zealand's Stuff -- which is of course owned by Fox-With-A-British-Accent. But if it's also hit Wired Magazine, then you know there's something to it.

Quoth said Wired article:

Several studies have intimated it, but two blockbusters published in the lofty journal "Science" yesterday confirm that biofuels cause more emissions than fossil fuels when everything is taken into account.

Both studies take a detailed look at the effects of converting large tracts of land worldwide into cropland used to raise fuel. While it is true that biofuel crops such as sugarcane, corn, switchgrass and the like absorb greenhouse gases as they grow, they absorb far less than rain forests and even scrubland. Also, turning plants into fuel creates its own emissions, especially when transportation is figured into the equation.

The "Science" article, "Use of U.S. Croplands for Biofuels Increases Greenhouse Gases Through Emissions from Land Use Change," (subscription), maintains that the clearance of grassland for fuel releases 93 times the amount of greenhouse gas that would be saved the fuel made annually on that same land. Of course, not everybody agrees with the study.The Renewable Fuels Association, a coalition of ethanol producers, called the researchers' view of land-use changes "simplistic" and said the study "fails to put the issue in context."

[...]

This is of course a major issue. But the question is, how much of one is it, really? There are of course a number of angles -- a wide number of them -- that one could take to approach the problem that, apparently, biofuels produce more CO₂ than they pull out of the air. So what, then, are we to do? Is the world doomed to turn into a charred cinder thanks to the human contribution?

Obviously, such hyperbole answers itself: No. For one, no person who was serious about biofuels looked to corn ethanol or palm oil as even a viable solution to the fuel problem. Certainly, this author saw through that deception quite some time ago (at least, "quite some time ago" in political terms -- who remembers anything more than two years ago in that arena?):

To compare, the most effective gallon-per-acre biofuel crop right now is palm oil, which hovers around 680 gallons-per-acre. So this is more than triple the amount -- and it's good ol' fashioned gasoline to boot! Here comes the number crunching. In 2004, the US used approximately 318 billion gallons of oil. At 2,000 gallons per acre, that comes out to roughly 159 million acres of arable land -- and this is assuming that the cellulosic starch problem can be overcome -- for which there are no hypothetical solutions yet available. According to the CIA's "World Factbook", the US has 9,161,923 square kilometers of land, 18.01% of which are arable. That's 1,650,62 square kilometers. 1 acre = 0.00404685642 square kilometers, so the US has 407,739,281 acres of arable land. To maintain the energy usage levels of 2004 purely from biofuels derived from this process would require ~40% of all arable land in the nation.

For the record, the cellulosic ethanol problem has been pretty much licked -- or so the press reports would tell us, thanks to many different approaches, one of which piques this author's amusement simply because it calls on the same bacteria you'd find in the gut of a termite: moorella thermoacetica (depicted in abstract crystalline form below). The process is simple enough, yet of course that's only true if you're a science geek. From Biopact.com:

ZeaChem replaces yeast with a type of bacteria called Moorella thermoacetica, which can be found in a number of places in nature, including termite guts and the ruminant of cows, where it helps break down grass. Instead of making ethanol and carbon dioxide, the bacteria convert sugars into a component of vinegar called acetic acid, a process that releases no carbon dioxide.

To convert acetic acid into ethanol, ZeaChem turns to chemistry.

(The entire process is explained over at BioPact. H/T for this to Al Fin).

This development of course means that starchy or "woody" materials -- such as, oh say, wood) can be harvested for ethanol production. But there are easier, cheaper solutions than ethanol production: algal biodiesel is something that seems cannot be harped enough: Rather than a mere 2,000 gallons per acre, the current expected yields of the startups building factories or putting their factories into production now is 30,000 gallons per acre. This would reduce the needed landmass for energy production to .0036% of the available landmass (arable and non-arable combined).

Is it even necessary to worry at all? Well, current weather patterns would seem to indicate otherwise -- but don't expect to hear that from the mainstream media.

Nanosolar Press Release

Nanosolar Ships First Panels
December 18, 2007

After five years of product development – including aggressively pipelined science, research and development, manufacturing process development, product testing, manufacturing engineering and tool development, and factory construction – we now have shipped first product and received our first check of product revenue.

We are grateful to everyone who supported us through all these years and the many occasions where there appeared to be mile-high concrete walls in our path; the unusual intensity and creativity of our team deserves all the credit for achieving this major milestone today.

Our product is defining in more ways I can enumerate here but includes:

- the world's first printed thin-film solar cell in a commercial panel product;

- the world's first thin-film solar cell with a low-cost back-contact capability;

- the world's lowest-cost solar panel – which we believe will make us the first solar manufacturer capable of profitably selling solar panels at as little as $.99/Watt;

- the world's highest-current thin-film solar panel – delivering five times the current of any other thin-film panel on the market today and thus simplifying system deployment;

- an intensely systems-optimized product with the lowest balance-of-system cost of any thin-film panel – due to innovations in design we have included.

Today we are announcing that we have begun shipping panels for freefield deployment in Eastern Germany and that the first Megawatt of our panels will go into a power plant installation there.

As far as the first three of our commercial panels are concerned:

Panel #1 will remain at Nanosolar for exhibit.

Panel #2 can be purchased by you in an auction on eBay starting today.

Panel #3 has been donated to the Tech Museum in San Jose.

[These are obviously not the first three we ever produced – we have produced loads for testing – but these are the first three of what we consider our commercial panels.]

Take that, you vapor-ware claiming bastards!

Scientific Literacy: More Necessary Today Than Ever

It is all to easy to complain, these days, about any number of things. And it seems that where politics are concerned, all anyone is based on is what they complain about the most. Pessimism is chíc these days; optimism is considered naíve. So what, then, do we make of something that is both optimistic and pessimistic?

First; the pessimism. Much ado has been made about the fact that the Northwest Passage has been freed "for the first time ever". This video is proof of it:

Now, nobody is suggesting that this isn't going to have implications on global warming & global climate change in general. But this is used, once again, as evidence of man's fault: when NASA itself says this isn't so. Their culprit? Shifting wind patterns.

And this gets let go, by the public -- because the general comprehension of the media's representation is that "well, they did the research, so I don't have to." And that, more than anything, is the greatest threat facing society. Why? Because it means that whoever does do that research, controls society's opinions on everything under the sun. Are you comfortable with this? I certainly am not.

So where does this come from?

From the National Education Association:

A historic turnover is taking place in the teaching profession. While student enrollments are rising rapidly, more than a million veteran teachers are nearing retirement. Experts predict that overall we will need more than 2 million new teachers in the next decade.

This teacher recruitment problem, which has reached crisis proportions in some areas, is most acute in urban and rural schools; for high-need subject areas such as special education, math and science, and for teachers of color.

[...]

The statistics for turnover among new teachers are startling. Some 20 percent of all new hires leave the classroom within three years. In urban districts, the numbers are worse—close to 50 percent of newcomers flee the profession during their first five years of teaching.

Why do new teachers leave? They say they feel overwhelmed by the expectations and scope of the job. Many say they feel isolated and unsupported in their classrooms, or that expectations are unclear.

Nothing is particularly new about this. In fact, it is used as the most powerful argument for increasing teacher pay, for increasing funding to the Department of Education, and in general all sorts of interesting/curious events. But let us take a somewhat deeper examination of this plight -- one that won't exactly raise us up from this pessimism, but perhaps allow us to understand it a step or two further:

It is not in the best interests of the education lobby for education to actually improve.

It's a statement that we don't often think about, but bear with me and I will explain my logic -- or at least what passes for it. It's actually fairly simple. We'll use Washington, DC as the example for this. From the Cato@Liberty blog:

Is the problem insufficient funding? As it happens, DCPS’s total gross budget for the last school year was upwards of one billion dollars according to its own website, and its enrollment was about 52,000 students. That means DCPS had total per pupil spending of nearly $20,000 last year, or half a million dollars per class of 25 students. You’d think that would cover books.

In a previous article on this blog, "It's For The Children! ... And Other Lies My Government Told Me", I documented the fact that the national average annual cost per student for public schools was $8,701; whereas the cost per student for private schools was $3,116/yr. Almost a third the cost. So, going back to Washington, DC. How could this be so bloated over both the national average for both public and private schools? Well, the answer to that question can also be found in the public record: From The Examiner, circa August 24, 2007: "D.C. Public Schools will pay nearly $5.4 million in full-time salaries to 68 teachers and staff who won’t work full-time jobs this year, schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee told The Examiner on Thursday."

From all of the above, we have learned thus far three things:

Scholastic Acheivement is sliding continuously

This isn't much of a shocker, really: search anywhere and you'll see that there are, annually, fewer and fewer American engineering & physics graduates every year. There really isn't anybody whom is impressed with NCLB -- and that's not even if you include the people who actually study the topic.

Public schools cost more per student than private

There's not much equivocating there: $8.7k for public as compared to $3.1k for private? And let us not forget here that private schools -- even the 'average' ones -- have their impression of prestige for a reason: traditionally, private schools achieve greater scholastic results than public schools.

Washington DC schools spend millions of dollars on faculty that, literally, does nothing.

That incident reported was by no means a singular incident. It has happened before, and in larger numbers. Even so, these were actual teachers being discussed: lets not forget that schools also have administrative staffing; there have been entire studies to compare the number of non-teaching faculty members to the numbers of pupils... which says that this is a problem as well; less, one can only assume, for private schools than for public ones.

Even so; is simply privatizing all the schools the solution to this problem? (If our military security is any lesson, the answer to that question is an emphatic "NO!") Still, creating competition between schools simply couldn't hurt. Perhaps, if schools themselves were held accountable for the allocation of their resources on their students, we might see some streamlining of costs and some improvement of scholastic acheivement. And time and time again, the records have shown: the only effective mechanism for accountability is to put the fiscal survival of an institution on the line. That's called "market competition." However, there's no sign that given today's political and social climates, that honest markets can be restored to so ubiquitous and socialized -- which is what our educational system is. Should things actually turn around, however, it is effectively already too late. The day of the Renaissance man has been dead and buried for centuries.

So where do we go from here? Well, our nation's resident mad military scientist organization -- DARPA -- has already begun to aid in this:

Famous for funding futuristic technology, DARPA is spending $24 million to launch the Brain-Machine Interface Program (BMI), with the five-year research monies divided among six laboratories. High on its development wish list are mind-controlled battle robots, as well as airplanes flown and weapons or equipment operated with nothing more than thought – even from a distance – all through wireless neural interfaces.

And mind you, DARPA is not alone on this. Should true data-in BMI be developed, the problem of education and scientific literacy in particular could be resolved absolutely. Howso? Because the possibility of having a microchip -- or ten -- implanted in your head, and thus allowing you a replete factual education -- with said procedure to cost in the same ballpark as a breast augmentation does today -- between $4,000 to $10,000, USD -- would allow for wholly 'humanities'-esque education; focusing on reasoning skills and the like.

Without such a development, we are likely to face a scenario where the amount of information necessary to make an informed opinion on any given subject continues to fall further and further from the grasp of even our communities of "experts" -- but thankfully, if DARPA, Cyberkinetics, and other such organizations/companies have anything to say, we won't have too much to worry about there: the money is being spent, the effort is being made. While a complicated task, so long as the funding doesn't dry up it's essentially inevitable. (I suppose that statement makes me a functionalist -- but gee, isn't that a shocker to anyone whom has read the title of this blog?)

(Yes, for you AGI enthusiasts; the same gains can be made by AGI as can be made by BMI -- if and only if we hand over control of society to our AGI's. Which, if they are "Seed" AGIs, is entirely likely. But that is too "post-singularity" a subject for this author to be fully comfortable attempting to discuss.)

Video: China Attempts To Go Green

It's a message some of us don't seem to want to hear; that there is a balance between the cost of 'alternative technology', and the cost of energy. Once that threshold is crossed, without incentives and without mandates, the crossover will happen on its own. And for China, water heating seems to have already reached that point.

The Global Warming Game! (By The Makers of Global Thermonuclear Warfare)

Global Warming. Climate Change. Carbon Dioxide. Solar Forcing. These words get thrown around, back-and-forth, in today's politics. Recent news has discussed the fact that "anthropogenic global warming advocates" are extremely reluctant to provide their data and research techniques. It is within this context that one must ask -- what other assumptions are being left "uninvestigated"?

Another item that made waves within the internet not too long ago was this video:

glumbert.com - The Most Terrifying Video You'll Ever See

Now, if you prefer not to actually watch said video, it makes a fairly standard "game theory" argument that our best bet is to "do something" about global warming -- even if global warming isn't man-made -- because the costs of doing something when nothing is necessary are far less than the costs of doing nothing if something is necessary. And yes, this is a fair argument. But what of the implications of this argument? What is the "something" that we are best off doing?

For the record, there are a few items of global warming hysteria that need to be thoroughly debunked.

One: "Global warming will cause famine and drought within the US":

Applying the model to a global-warming scenario shows a significantly lower estimated impact of global warming on U.S. agriculture than the traditional production-function approach and, in one case, suggests that, even without carbon dioxide fertilization, global warming may have economic benefits for agriculture.

A decent bit of research on the part of the reader will turn up the result that food production has been going up fairly consistently since the 1970's in the "developed" world, despite all the practices impinging upon it. It is considered a historical axiom that when the world is warmer, there is more food production. Consider; once upon a time, Britain was a source of wine, and Newfoundland was prime farming territory.

Two: "Global warming will result in more heat deaths!":

Second, there are many more cold-related deaths than heat-related deaths in Europe. "Mean annual heat related mortalities were 304 in North Finland, 445 in Athens, and 40 in London. Cold related mortalities were 2457, 2533, and 3129 respectively." The researchers argue that, "Our data suggest that any increases in mortality due to increased temperatures would be outweighed by much larger short term declines in cold related mortalities."

It's simple: It takes less energy to survive routinely high temperatures than it does to survive routinely low temperatures. That would be why Sun City, AZ -- in the middle of the Mohave Desert, with temperatures near to 110°F for what seems like 1/2 of the year -- is a prime retirement community for the US.

So much for those; while they have been more thoroughly discussed elsewhere, the item at concern is that there is possibly to probably just as much reason to look forward to global warming in those contexts as there is to seek to avoid it. But what of the other great item of concern to global warming, increased sea levels?

Well, it turns out -- that may just be inevitable no matter what we do:

If Dr. Frank’s numbers are correct, minicomets could also account for all of the world’s oceans arising in about a billion years, extrapolating from the current influx rate. Even if his numbers are too large, minicomets still can be credited with supplying a significant portion of the planet’s ocean water. If this supply of water from the minicomets were shut off, the earth’s oceans would be lost in just a few billion years by "mantle subduction," one crustal plate’s edge sliding under the edge of an adjacent plate.

That's right, folks; all those little comets and such in the space our little mudball is whirling through, well -- some of them hit us from time to time! And over time, it would seem, the overall amount of H₂O on this planet is increasing. If all the earth's oceans were derived over the course of a billion years or so, and we want to be on this ball of dirt for a significant course of time, it would seem rational to develop strategies for maintaining our quality of life in the face of increasing sea levels. Since only the most hysterical of individuals believe that anything even close to a full meter -- let alone more -- of sea-level rise is imminent in the next 100 years, one would think that this could be viewed as plenty of breathing room for technology to do so. Of course, there is (are) the one (or two) qualifier(s) to that thought: technology only progresses in places where laws are relaxed, allowing for inventiveness and individual ingenuity for problem solving rather than brute social force -- and the economy isn't being totally hamstrung by hairbrained efforts like the Kyoto Protocol, which even the AGW advocates admit would cost more in money than what it would save in terms of damages from global warming -- by orders of magnitude.

But do keep in mind, this article isn't about skepticism nor is it about admonitions on bad or past behavior; it is simply about trying to discern what the best course of action is. In light of the following statement from Overcoming Bias: "Skeptics accuse Believers of 9 cognitive biases. Believers and Skeptics mutually accuse each other of 4 more. Why don't Believers accuse Skeptics of any others?"(Emphasis mine.) Why does this matter? Without recognizing the areas where our own reasoning is deeply flawed -- and without allowing others to force us to make our research more rigorous, by making scientific data & analytical techniques just as public as the results of the analysis from said data & techniques -- all that is left is essentially screaming and hyperbole; "politics as usual." Is it any surprise, then, that while so many people say they care about global warming, so few are actually willing to "get up off their duffs" and do something about it -- especially in the light of the fact that in the US, for example, only roughly 1 out of 4 people capable of voting for major elections ever bother to do so -- and that number falls to less than 1 in 10 when looking at more local elections?


So here's the question: Rather than wonder if there's more benefit than cost to global warming, or vice versa, why is it, precisely, that the option of "mitigating specific symptoms" of global warming isn't on the table? Why is it that, politically speaking, the only 'available' option is "Whole hawg or no hawg" -- when that is precisely the least plausible route?


DISCLAIMERS: This author is an anthropogenic global warming denier -- not skeptic. I accept the fact that the world is getting warmer, and attribute it to the same cause as do the Henrik Svensmarks, the Nir Shavivs, the Tim Pattersons, and the Khabibullo Abdusamatovs of the world. Also -- with regards to "Reasons.org", the source of the article on minicomets:

I see no way for life, unless governed by a super-intelligent Creator, to predict and respond perfectly to ongoing changes in the other balanced features. Life is so information rich13 and its environment so narrowly defined14 as to defy strictly natural explanation

-- Somebody has obviously never heard of extremophiles, such as fish that live in sulfuric acid.

An Atheist Speaks Out: Evolution Is Science Fiction

Sensational headlines, such as the one above, are always entertaining -- to say the least. And yet, after a fashion, it is indeed true: Evolution is a myth. At least, evolution as creationists understand it is. Why is this so important? The reason is as follows -- it is impossible for either side in the debate within American politics to 'win' the argument; and it will remain that way so long as both sides argue with different definitions for the same words.

We all live in the age of Semanticism. In an article within this blog, "What You Know -- It Just Ain't So: Why Facts Can't Win Arguments", I discussed the fact that simply having the facts is essentially useless when it comes to politics and the like -- and the reasons why.

As a disclaimer -- yes, as the headline reads: I am an atheist. I have also taken the time to understand evolutionary theory, and can compare that to the story of evolution. It is within this context that I will make the following less-sensational-than-it-appears declaration: The "Theory of Evolution" is science fiction. To be precise, it is "Hard" science fiction (defined by Wikipedia as follows: "Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by an emphasis on scientific or technical detail, or on scientific accuracy, or on both."). Hard science fiction is useful, but it is essentially important to recognize that the greatest gap in the understanding of the origin of species can be found in two areas: the emergence of ribonucleic acids, the concomittant emergence of deoxiribonucleic acids, and the emergence of biological mechanisms within the context of these molecules; the second being the "bridging of the gap" between single-celled and multi-cellular organisms.

Now, the second gap we have better information with, as 'intermediary species' still exist today: the humble sea-sponge, for example. Colonial organisms, for another. It is possible to infer what likely happened from such things -- but to do so is to delve into the realm of science fiction. Very good, very accurate science fiction, but science fiction none-the-less. The former gap, however, is an area where there is almost no information whatsoever. We know -- and have shown -- that the primordial oceans of the earth were subjected to conditions which would spontaneously develop proteins. And we know that the same can -- and does -- happen in comets. It has been shown that protein chains (the "precursors", if you will, to RNA/DNA) can -- and do -- develop when proteinaceous waters are exposed to electrical charges; it has been hypothesized that the primordial earth also had to be an extremely storm-wracked environment. So the connection thus flows, in many ways.

With this being said -- there is an important distinction to make here. Even this fictional account of how things happened, with its "as few liberties as possible", is rejected as outright fantasy by the "Creationist" side of the 'debate'. There is a deep and abiding schism between the manner in which "evolutionists" think and the way "creationists" think. This is revealed by the following, from "www.storyofevolution.com":

In the "Grown-up Version" of this Fairy Tale, the Fairy God Mother named Mutation becomes a "Gradual Scientific Process", a process never actually seen in this whole world, but still strongly believed as a matter of pure religious faith by "Scientists". Scientists, after all, are never wrong! "The Scientist says it. They believe it. That settles it!" With such great faith, evolution must be true, right?

"Scientists are never wrong"? Tell that to anyone on either side of that other great modern canard: the "Global Warming debate". And yes, there are scientists on both sides. Honest, ethical ones who are not "bought out" by anyone, alongside the ones who are -- and this is, again, both sides. Peer-reviewed scientists.

For those not in the know, the modern area of debate or argument over evolution isn't wether evolution itself exists. Creationists admit that evolution; the adaptation of species, that is -- it happens. What they deny, however, is the idea that evolution can produce significant changes in species. This is the "microevolution" vs. "macroevolution" argument, and it is a fairly ingenious one -- especially as it allows for creationists to ignore the ubiquitous evidence that macroevolution -- as defined by evolutionary biologists -- has happened -- in plants, as well as in animals. They speak of "Genesis kinds", and have attempted to develop entire fields of research dedicated to determining what these 'kinds' are. Baraminology is one such:

Baraminology, also referred to as typology, is a creationist system that classifies animals into created kinds according to the account of creation in the book of Genesis and other parts of the Bible. These kinds are presumed to be isolated from one another.

This should all document the depth of this divide.

It isn't really all that amazing, when one considers things -- both sides are using their own terminology on the topic. Species, kind, evolution -- they are literally using a different language, or dialect at least; the words may be the same, but their jargon-contexts are fundamentally alternate from one another -- and neither side is even willing to acknowledge, it seems, the very existance of the other's definitions.

There are many arenas where similar things happen; take for example the "global warming" menace. So much time and effort is spent on advocating the elimination of carbon-dioxide output as though this would be sufficient to solve the earth's problems, and yet even the Kyoto Protocol, if it had been successful (instead of the abysmal failure it was) would only have reduced -- according to 'their' own terms -- the problem by roughly 1-5%. It should be clear that warming is happening; everyone agrees on this. The cause is what is up for grabs -- and so, too, should what is to be done about it. Game theory, for example, has been used to dictate that we ought to end all CO² output -- and yet, even that is admitted to not be a solution at this point. Never mentioned is the fact that game theory's best solution to this 'problem' would be the increase in industry; to create sufficient wealth that humanity can allocate sufficient resources to "ride out" the changes to come. (Build up funds to relocate those whose homes would be lost due to sea rise, for example.) Of course, there is no such "compromise" for creationism vs. evolution.

Or is there? So much of this heated debate comes from the fact that parents are unwilling to allow their children to be taught certain things on the taxpayer's (read: their) dime. This is not really all that unreasonable, when you come down to it. The problem comes when parents are unwilling to allow the children of other people to be taught a certain thing. Since everyone is clamoring for things to be taught or not taught, the end result is what we've got: kids don't get taught anything -- at least, not well; as proven in the following article also from this blog: Informational Awareness, Carlin Style: You Are All Diseased. Some battles can only be won by not fighting them. This, it would seem, is one such battle; and the only way not to fight it is to not have your kids sharing space with the children of those who believe radically differently than you do. So -- evolution = myth? Yes; using the definitions of both sides, Yes. The trick is -- which myth is closer to what actually happened? That's a hard question, now isn't it?

Now comes the time to take the harder route; and get both sides to just shut the hell up and let the future determine these things. Neither evolution nor creationism have any place in the world of politics; science should never be used to attempt to guide political policy -- and neither should religion do so. The only things that should guide government are rights; the protection & definition of the rights of those within a government's boundaries. It's the only way to avoid such unwinnable battles as this.

Biofuel -- The Corn-Ethanol Deception & A Real Solution

There is so much hype, today, about biofuels. They are seen as the savior of our nation -- especially corn-ethanol; especially if one were to compare the subsidization that goes on here. But is this the right approach?

What will follow this is a bit of news, a bit of number crunching, and a lot of personal perspective. Hopefully you'll follow along with me. To start off -- ethanol is widely recognized as being less effective, on a gallon-per-gallon basis, than gasoline as a fuel. For one, it has 30% less energy density -- that is, if you got 100 miles to the gallon with gasoline, you'd only get 70 miles if you used a gallon of ethanol. Ethanol is also horribly hydroscopic (water-absorbing), which creates all sorts of infrastructure problems with its transportation; unlike gasoline, which doesn't draw water into itself -- a trait which allows it to be transported via pipelines. Even so, however, it isn't all that infeasible to imagine a (near or distant) future where these problems just aren't enough to justify the continued use of gasoline, simply on a price basis. Imagine gas becoming so dear that, even with all the additional infrastructure problems & transportation problems (which raise prices), gas is still more expensive -- without subsidy.

This is, effectively, the industrial equivalent of the Malthusian problem -- that there won't be enough energy (normally that'd read food) to go around.

Now, in recent news there has been much acclaim -- and rightly so -- of a start-up biofuel company, LS9, that has created genetically engineered microbes that turn sugars into petroleum -- and, yes gasoline. "We're saved!" we hear, of this -- all those problems with ethanol -- such as its 65% increased energy cost compared to turning sugar into gasoline due to the need to distill the water out of the ethanol -- instantly can go away. Energy independence is just around the corner! We should give these Ls9 people Medals of Honor, or something. Or something, indeed. Via Technology Review:

The biofuel of the future could well be gasoline. That's the hope of one biotech startup that on Monday described for the first time how it is coaxing bacteria into producing hydrocarbons that could be processed into fuels like those made from petroleum.

[...]

LS9's current work uses sugar derived from corn kernels as the food source for the bacteria--the same source used by ethanol-producing yeast. To produce greater volumes of fuel, and to not have energy competing with food, both approaches will need to use cellulosic biomass, such as switchgrass, as the feedstock. Del Cardayre estimates that cellulosic biomass could produce about 2,000 gallons of renewable petroleum per acre.

Producing hydrocarbon fuels is more efficient than producing ethanol, del Cardayre adds, because the former packs about 30 percent more energy per gallon. And it takes less energy to produce, too. The ethanol produced by yeast needs to be distilled to remove the water, so ethanol production requires 65 percent more energy than hydrocarbon production does.

To compare, the most effective gallon-per-acre biofuel crop right now is palm oil, which hovers around 680 gallons-per-acre. So this is more than triple the amount -- and it's good ol' fashioned gasoline to boot! Here comes the number crunching. In 2004, the US used approximately 318 billion gallons of oil. At 2,000 gallons per acre, that comes out to roughly 159 million acres of arable land -- and this is assuming that the cellulosic starch problem can be overcome -- for which there are no hypothetical solutions yet available. According to the CIA's "World Factbook", the US has 9,161,923 square kilometers of land, 18.01% of which are arable. That's 1,650,62 square kilometers. 1 acre = 0.00404685642 square kilometers, so the US has 407,739,281 acres of arable land. To maintain the energy usage levels of 2004 purely from biofuels derived from this process would require ~40% of all arable land in the nation.

And that's if it is gasoline. If it were ethanol -- and we'll assume that same 2,000 gallons per acre per year, which is more than triple the amount derived from any crop yet -- we'd have to increase that by 30% to reflect the gas-to-ethanol energy variance -- and then increase to cover the 65% increase in energy cost to distill the ethanol. We'll be generous and call that a 10% increase. So overall, a 43% increase in area used -- from 40% of all land. That's ~55% (I allow for error here) of all arable land. One thing is certain -- corn ethanol is not a solution. Nor is crop-based biodiesel -- which has at best 680 gallons per acre. It'd take more than 100% of our arable land.

Regardless -- on with the Medals of Honor! (Okay, okay -- I'll turn off my sarcasm chip now.) Turns out, there's more hope "on the horizon" than you might otherwise think, but it's not going to come from turning our crops into fuel. More likely, it's going to come from turning our sewage into fuel. Of all sources, Wikipedia has something to say here:

A company based in Lexington, MA USA has a patent pending technology that is intended to boost algae growth rates so that the oil yields from algae are even higher than the 20,000 gallon per acre amount cited above. The founder of the company believes that his technology may be capable of producing as much as 100,000 gallons per acre. So far, this claim is based only on theoretical calculations. He will begin physical testing of the system in August 2007.

What's sewage got to do with this? Many of the companies involved in algal production are looking at using sewage ponds as the source for algae; those production numbers have already reached 10,000 barrels for a one-acre pond. There are two significant elements to compare algal biodiesel to ethanol or terrestrial-crop biodiesel: 1) The massive increase in output; even if that number only reaches, say, 20,000 barrels and had to be on arable land, it would still only account for 4% of all arable land. 2) It would be most productive in what is currently considered non-arable desert landscapes.

The sole problem with biodiesel is that it can only be used as a fuel source; it is extremely difficult to convert into plastics and the like, unlike traditional petroleum hydrocarbons. And that is where LS9's work comes into the foreground once again. It turns out that fuel products account for nearly 9 out of every 10 barrels of petroleum used in the United States Double that number, and you'd still only be accounting for roughly 8% of all arable land. Round that up to 10% for good measure. (This can even be scalable if the new 'trend' of "skyscraper farms" comes into full swing -- that 10% could easily become 1%).

So, yes -- the next couple of years promise to be very interesting in terms of energy production & energy independence; which even a non-mercantilist can see the appeal of in terms of eliminating US sensitivity to global instability (Read: We'd finally have an excuse good enough to get our government to stop pissing off the entire Middle East). However, one cannot help but ask: What the devil is the justification of the subsidization of corn-ethanol production? Especially in light of the impact this has on the poor of the world? And why is it that our liberal (and conservative) friends cannot see the connection between ethanol and starving the poor of the world?

NASA Reports: 5 of 10 hottest years on record before WW II

Al Fin Writes: "That's right! The warmest US year on record is 1934, next is 1998, next is 1921..." [...] "Notice that James Hansen--celebrated by the climate orthodoxy for his courage and integrity--fought tooth and nail to prevent his data from getting into the hands of anyone who might contradict his climate apocalyptics."

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